Currently there is more similarity, on a genetic level, between chimpanzees and humans than there is between horses and donkeys.
Yeah. I don’t know why everyone’s so down on “monkies” anyway.
Well, sophocles07, that's just your own personal opinion. I would say that most Christians who read those propositions of mine would conclude that they make rational sense. I was asking by what standards or laws of reasoning were you making the claim that my thoughts were "utterly irrational." Are these standards just your own personal feelings about what rational thought should be, or are they universal and independent laws of reasoning?
No, they’re not my “own personal feelings”; I mean(t) that you lack reason in the sense that your claims are unverifiable, and mean close to nothing.
I’ve explained this already:
You cannot say “This is true because it says it’s true.” You see how easily this could be applied to ANYTHING, right? You would have to say “This is true because I’ve verified it is true in some other way.” Like if someone tells me a cat just got run over by a car in the street. The person telling me could be entirely lying. I would have to go to the street and
verify whether or not it is true.
I don’t know what you mean when you ask “what standards or laws of reasoning” I am using. This is LOGIC 101. Maybe you should read up on it; been up-n-goin since the Greeks, man.
Absolute truth is an eternal, true, and actual state of something or someone that conforms with reality and facts, and it is verifiable, indisputable, and immutable, not necessarily contingent upon universal human acceptance and emotion. Absolute truth and objective truth are interchangeable.
Alright. I don’t object to that idea, but I doubt very much that you’ve “hit upon absolute truth” in the Bible.
Your question assumes that the existence of God is unverifiable, therefore, it's not objectively true, but you couldn't be more wrong about this sophocles07. God reveals Himself daily to all of mankind, so that no man is without excuse. God does this in three ways: by His creation (general revelation),
Yes, but this “creation” could have come about 10,000,000 + different ways. You only believe that your God did this because the Bible tells you so. What about the Hindu creation stories?
by the human conscience (the "heart" of men),
This is just as easily explained—something it is not by religion—by evolution.
and by His own infallible, inspired, and inerrant Word (specific revelation).
Paul tellin’ you so, ay?
So, it's not that God hasn't given men sufficient knowledge and resources to know Who He is; the problem is men refuse to acknowledge God, having these evidences, by suppressing the truth in unrighteousness due to their love for themselves and sin itself (the breaking of God's commandments).
Yes I do love myself (as do you); I love me some sin, too. God needs to come end several famines before I give him a glance.
So, the truth of God is verifiable, sophocles07. Just ask the billions of Christians in the world today who have been touched by God's word, felt God's presence by His Spirit, experienced life-changing miracles in their lives by God's power, and have received answers to their questions in scientific experimentation and analysis by God's wisdom in providence. No, God has made Himself plenty known to multitudes of people since the beginning of time, my friend.
This is just as applicable to someone in an insane asylum.
Tommy says he’s reincarnated Jesus. Go ask him, he’ll tell you he’s “been touched by God’s word.” It’s his time; messiah-time. Do I need to believe him or figure out what part of his brain has
gone AWOL?
Give some specific examples of “life-changing miracles” specifically accomplished through “God’s power”; some that “have received answers to their questions in scientific experimentation and analysis by God’s wisdom in providence”.
By the way, this isn’t “verification.” This would amount to a bunch of people claiming they “believed” something in their life was caused by “God”. You’d have to show me some sort of PROOF that that was the actual cause of their life-changing/whatever “Miracle.” As I said above, the person claiming a cat was hit on the street is not the verification; it is SEEING the cat.
As Mick Jagger sings,
“Don’t want to talk, talk about Jesus—I just wanna see his faaace...”
There are some things which aren't immediately verifiable about God due to the immaterial or transcendental nature of God. Because God is a Spirit, you can't just go into a laboratory and run scientific methods on Him personally. I think that's what you mean when you say "God is unverifiable." His existence is in a totally different realm of knowledge and metaphysics than just testing the biological composition of a white rat in a lab.
He showed himself undeniably in the narrative—literary narrative—of the Bible. What’d he do, disappear after we started keeping modern records?
But suffice it to say, that you can know absolutely and positively that God exists, and that's one of the reasons why I continue in this discussion on this forum thread. God has changed my life and brought me through so many things that I can't even count them. That's why I get frustrated when antitheists, such as you, ridicule, rail, and repudiate my God (revealing your hatred for Him) because He's verified Himself to me and other Christians over and over and over again, and He continues to do so. Rationally speaking, if there were no evidences for the existence of God, I would have relinquished my belief in Him a long time ago! But here I stand today, a theist who has been loved by God, protected by God, and made to live and think more like Him in my life. As Martin Luther once said, "I can do no other, and I will not recant."
I can’t hate something that does not exist. I hate the self-righteousness of those who claim to not only KNOW God exists, but further that they KNOW what he wants and desires in civic institutions, and FURTHER to WANT to impress their “claims” on the entire world.
It’s the most arrogant fucking thing you could possibly participate in.
That would be the logical conclusion from what you believe, if I've understood you correctly.
Apparently you haven’t.
Do you believe man has a soul?
I have no idea. But I suspect not. The “idea of the soul” can be historically traced back to primitive, animistic societies. It didn’t pop out of Christian theology as new.
If not, then where does reason, emotion, intellect, volition, etc. take place in human beings, according to your worldview of "atheism"?
I don’t know what you mean by this. NONE of these things necessitate a god; they are all easily explainable through scientific study.
Where does the capacity for men to create constitutions, write books, and debate come from, if human beings do not have a soul (an immaterial being within themselves), sophocles07? That's why it matters.
From the same instinct that allows a Chimp to make a tool. We are merely further developed.
I don’t know what souls have to do with debating.
Lest I be mistaken, I do believe that it's important to get into the original languages when studying the Bible. Good exegesis of Scripture is necessary for this. However, I do not believe that every single word in an English translation needs to be doubted when reading it, either. For instance, when reading John 3:16 in the Bible, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life," I don't need to say, "What does 'For' mean in the Greek? What does 'God' mean in the Greek? What does 'so' mean in the Greek?" so on, and so forth.
Obviously, as these are common Greek words. And this passage, I’ll admit, is very close to the actual Greek:
For God loved (gar o theos egaresen) the world in this way (ton kosmon outos), so that he gave (oste edoken) the single/only-begotten son ton monogene ton uion), (in order) that all (those) trusting in him (ina pas o misteuon eis auton) would not perish (me apoletai) but have everlasting life (alla eche sdoen aionion).
You also have to see that the original, which is very non-decorative, non-ornamented—PLAIN GREEK—attains a kind of polished “Englishness” in translation. This occurs in much of the translations from Classical and Attic Greek works. Look at the translations of Sappho or Pindar throughout the ages (in English); the original—which is far superior in literary terms than the Biblical Greek—often becomes horribly twisted and an entire loss of tone happens. Translations of Euripides and the Greek tragedians (and Aristophanes actually, possibly even more so) all have been mangled out of their original by 9th rate Thomas Wyatts.
Anyway, I might go look through and find some more doubtful passages as examples. I don’t really feel like it though, as it’s probably all on Google for a search (and has probably been discussed and re-discusses 1,000000000 times).
As I've said before, God is perfectly capable of transmitting His thoughts to whatever family, tribe, or nation He wants in whatever language it is because He is powerful enough to do that.
Of course, fuck—God godda be dat strong, right???
You do see that “God” didn’t translate the Bible into English, RIIIIGHT?
I also believe that God gifts His own people with the knowledge, wisdom, understanding, and discernment to read and translate His own word to the masses faithfully. This is one way God preserves His own word, which God has promised He would do unto eternity. And yes, God is powerful enough to overcome the errant infirmities of sinful men in order to do it. If He can create a universe by His own breath, overcome death on the Earth by resurrection, perform miraculous healings, etc., etc., then surely He can preserve His own word through inferior means, if it's His will. And He has. It would be foolish to consider the contrary.
You know, one time Hercules took Atlas’ place for a while. He was pretty fuckin strong, too.
But, I still agree with you that we should get into the original languages to get a better understanding of what's going on in a passage, if possible. But we as Christians do not hold to what I call "strict and exclusive purity of the original tongue" exegesis, like the medieval Roman Catholics with their Latin and the Muslims with their Arabic, which says that no one can fully understand God's revelation unless they know the original language. God gives us more liberty and variety as His people to study and live His word by the language He has us born under.
You mean: it’s ok if you’re a lazy bastard—you can still get the God juice through the KJV?
Once again, you've missed the whole point, sophocles07. I'm saying that without this God, you wouldn't even know if it were wrong to murder someone! But since God has given you a conscience to know right from wrong, because He has written His law (think "Ten Commandments") upon your "heart," you can know and reason that it's bad to kill someone in an immoral way. You may not believe that, but the truth of it is not dependent upon your assent to it or lack thereof.
Blah blah blah
Believe this because you or the Bible tells me so? This is ridiculous.
But it brings me back to an earlier question. If you believe that God does not give us a conscience to know right and wrong by writing His laws within our "hearts," then what is the original source within humans to know such things? Is it the chemicals inside us, the cells living in us, the synapses firing in our brains, the blood flowing from our hearts that gives us a "moral compass" by which we make rational and ethical choices and respond to them in our environment, given the presuppositions of your materialistic and "atheistic" worldview?
Let me ask you a question: how does “emotion” occur? Is it not a product of a biological system? This can just as easily be applied to language, the operations of internal organs, the moral conscience, memory, and so on, all in their respective operations, all coming about through evolution.
I think you’ve too far “Platonized” a conception of right and wrong and logic. They are not “FORMS” placed in us or around us by God. They are processes and operations which, like the fact of our liver or emotion doing a job within our body and mental state, do a job with respect to the outside world. We reason and have moral/ethical conscience as a result of evolution; it is entirely MATERIAL based.
I have a sense of humor, but George Carlin is not funny. He's an irate, pompous, miserable, ignorant, hopeless, and cynical old fool. He meant what he said in his Ten Commandments skit, so he wasn't trying to be hilarious. Maybe he was being facetious about worshiping the sun, though.
Meant what he said so he can’t be trying to be hilarious? You are aware that Aristophanes, when he wrote
Lysistrata actually wanted the war to stop, RIGHT?
When you say "You can believe what you want--you could believe it is ok to rape children--but it is NOT OK to actually do it," you're just begging the question, my friend.
You should be aware that you are taking up the same position as Morton Downey Jr. toward Ron Paul in 1988.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...=15&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1
Note also his desire to have “Freedom of Religion.”
You have not established nor proven why it's wrong to rape children, especially within the context of your worldview which believes that men are just evolved animals by means of natural selection (the best of a species will survive by their superior gene speciation or adaptability to the environment). In nature, animals get raped all the time, so why should we as "evolved animals" stop that which is only a part of our "animal instincts"? Who made you the arbiter that raping children is morally wrong to act upon? What if my "animal instincts" lead me to "prey" upon this children in order to satisfy my own natural and sexual drive? Can you really answer that, sophocles07, and stay true to the tenets of your "atheism" without being arbitrary and inconsistent? At least I know why Dr. Paul believes these things are wrong, and that's because he believes in a God Who gives us our rights and gives us laws by which we should live. That is his belief as a Christian. So what's your excuse, sophocles07?
The fact that rape occurs in the animal world—as it does in the human-animal world—has nothing, or little, to do with human morality.
I’m not sure exactly what you want me to say here; I’ve already said I believe human conscience, morality, and reason to descend from innate, evolutionary traits. It should be deduced by you, then, that not raping children is one of these innate moral rules. The raping of children, even in a purely psychological kind of study, would be an
abnormality within the human population. That is, the person is, in some way, retarded. This could be either genetic or socially-produced.
Also, raping of children, in a social kind of sense, causes mass unrest, more psychological problems, and is therefore undesired.
Plus the plain fact that you’re infringing on someone’s right to have personal freedom—which is, even if not an evolutionary trait (though I believe it is, as did Kropotkin), something which should be man-made: even if these things were not evolutionary, we could/should still create them as man-made moral laws (which is the same thing the Bible did, create man-made laws; I just wouldn’t say God made them).
You can also see WilliamC and beachmaster’s posts, which also sum up my view of this.
You're right, WilliamC. I do need God to tell me it's wrong to rape children because of my sinful nature, but guess what. So do you and all of mankind. That's why God has given us a conscience to know right from wrong by means of His holy laws being "written on our hearts" (Romans 1:18-23; Romans 2:11-16).
Damn, you’re fucked up.
For instance, a parent may discipline his or her child by spanking them, but it's meant to help the child behave better, even though it hurts the child for a moment. A physician may have to give a shot to someone in order to fight off or protect the patient from a sickness or disease, but the painful injection may harm the patient for a little bit. I just hope you aren't implying that because something harms you, that makes it automatically wrong.
This is all true.
It’s also obviously SOPHISTRY of the worst kind.
By the way, I absolutely believe that rape is wrong and immoral because it's stealing sexual pleasure and comfort from someone which was only intended for marriage.
OOOOHHHH
so that’s why it’s wrong.
Gotcha.
Psycho.
Believe it or not, there are some crazy and sick people out there who actually like to be raped. They even have movies showing women getting raped and killed, with their own consent. To them, rape is just as enjoyable as eating ice cream or something like that. There are many people who get pleasure out of being harmed or even harming themselves, like those who cut themselves to punish themselves or whip themselves out of self-mortification.
This is fetishism. Most of these people would not like to be raped in the real sense. It’s fantasy.
Then again, if they cooperated with the “rapist” in this way, it ceases to become rape.
Once again, you don't know this for sure. There are cultures where people actually sacrifice their own children to a deity of some kind. Even God's chosen people in the Bible at the time, the Israelites, offered their children to the pagan gods of Moloch and Baal by burning them in fire. Even in times of sore famines, it was recorded that the Israelites would eat their own children! Hell, we harm our children all the time in this country whenever a woman has an abortion. So, it's not necessarily true that other people don't want to harm their own children just because you choose not to.
Yeah, thanks religion.
I’m sure no one ever sacrificed their child to “reason”.
Just think: poor Iphigenia could be jammin with us right now if not for your kind of neurosis.
