Sure, if your definition of "Christian" is "someone who doesn't kill anybody" (as it seems to be), then no Christian has ever killed anybody.
My definition of a Christian would be something like "someone who has decided to entrust his or her life to Jesus Christ." I feel (now I think you will say that this doesn't count because this is what I feel) that if you truly entrust your life to Jesus, you will trust Him, do what He says, have faith in Him, etc. The Bible explicitly says that Christians aren't supposed to kill people.
Do you see how this is a "self-fulfilling" claim? You say "atheists have killed more than Christians", and then you define that someone who kills people isn't a true Christian. Of course your claim becomes true when you define the terms like that. This is precisely the "no true Scotsman" fallacy in action.
The idea that the Earth was round was probably considered something like "pseudoscientific crap" when it was first said.
You are reversing the entire issue. There has been, of course, lots of misconceptions and wrong ideas during the history of humanity. In the vast majority of cases, however, the misconception in question was someones proposed explanation for something presented without proper evidence, measurement and controlled tests (or, in more colloquial terms, a total ass-pull). When the explanation was later actually tested for verification, using a more scientific method, it was then found to be completely unjustified and discarded.
Of course there have also been actual scientific hypotheses that were wrong. Invariably, the direction has always been: 1) Hypothesis based on limited evidence and experimentation. 2) More evidence and experimentation. 3) Discard the wrong hypothesis. (The luminiferous aether hypothesis is an example. It was not an unreasonable hypothesis, but it was not backed up by actual evidence.)
Also other hypotheses have not been wrong per se, but have required fixes to account for new evidence discovered afterwards. (Newton's laws of physics would be a good example. The Theory of Evolution itself also counts. Both of the original authors were definitely on the right track, but didn't have all possible evidence available at the time.)
What the young earth creationists try to accomplish is more or less the reverse of this. Rather than drawing unbiased conclusions from evidence, measurements and testing, they have a preconceived conclusion and try to find evidence for it (and try to explain away evidence that seems to contradict the preconception). They are precisely like the old philosophers of antiquity who pulled explanations for natural phenomena from their behinds, and then refused to acknowledge any evidence of the contrary. Rather than letting evidence lead to conclusions, they make a preconceived conclusion and try to find evidence for it. And then they accuse science of doing this very thing (ie. psychological projection).
You also seem to promote this view that if someone presents lots of evidence that seemingly contradict a currently established scientific theory, it would be reasonable to doubt the validity of the theory in question. Having studied conspiracy theories quite a lot, I can say that enticing evidence against something can be no more than smoke and mirrors. All kinds of evidence can be distorted, presented out of context, misinterpreted and given a plausible-sounding (at least to the layman) but ultimately wrong interpretation, and if you are talented enough, you can construct something that looks convincing (again, mostly to a layman) but has no truth whatsoever in it. This isn't even very difficult.
I like to compare conspiracy theorists to magicians: A magician can present you with a magic trick to which you have no explanation whatsoever. You simply have no idea how it works or how it's possible. Should you conclude from this that something physically impossible, something supernatural happened? Of course not! You always know that it's just a trick. You might not know what the trick is, but it's just a trick. There's nothing supernatural about it.
In the same way a conspiracy theorist can present you with some piece of evidence for the conspiracy, and you might not have no idea whatsoever what the true explanation for that evidence might be. Should you conclude that the conspiracy theory is true and accurate? No!
You'll respond to that with: "The scientific community can also do that!" No, it can't. It takes but one person to build up a plausible-sounding conspiracy theory. He doesn't need the cooperation of anybody else. However, the world-wide scientific community couldn't do that even if someone wanted, because the other people in the community would object. Not all of them (and not even a significant portion) can be in the same conspiracy to create a lie and create fake evidence.
The scientific community is much more reliable at interpreting evidence than some conspiracy theory nutjob. They have studied the required fields of science and they know what they are talking about. The explanation does not depend on a few individuals, but on the world-wide community as a whole. If there are flaws in the explanation, they will be pointed out. The explanations will be backed up by actual experimental evidence rather than someone's personal interpretation of it.
Also, if there was no evidence for these things, then why have there been many cases of scientists/atheists (I even heard this happened to a certain lawyer) who decide to look at the evidence for creation, then get converted?
"Many"? From the hundreds of thousands, if not even millions of scientists, how many is "many"? A hundred? Why is it that when the other hundreds of thousands of scientists examine these things they do not convert?
A direct correlation can be seen between how closely related the person's degree is to the relevant field of science, and how unlikely it is for them to "convert". In other words, the better they understand the subject, the less likely it is for them to discard it.
The whole scientific community isn't in a huge conspiracy to deny it. There are multiple reasons that people would believe these things when they aren't true.
Scientists are not idiots. They are smart. You are basically saying that they can be fooled in the very things they study.
The few people who have looked at the evidence either actually think the evidence points that way, or they do just lie about it.
You claim that you are not a conspiracy theorist, yet everything you write is pure conspiracy theory material. I'm sorry to say this, but the above text is just idiotic. You are basically telling that the very people whose life work is to examine evidence do not examine evidence, and only a very small minority of them actually do. The majority are just mindless cultists who have been brainwashed into not doing their jobs.
I don't know where to look for scientific papers, but if you just google search
That's like making a google search for "911 truth" or "the moon landing". Of course you are going to find a majority of websites with conspiracy theories in them because the conspiracy theorists are most vocal. Likewise creationists inundate the internet with their arguments, while actual geologists don't care about such nutjobs. They have more interesting things to do than to engage in endless discussions with people who won't listen to them anyways.
you either get someone claiming that it's how macroevolutionists say it is with barely any evidence to back up their claim
Ok, you are a conspiracy theorist in my books from now on. Believe whatever you want.
I have heard that some Christians believe this, but I have never (you may say that this is because I only read creationist "pseudoscientific crap") heard that they are the majority. Please show some evidence that this is the case.
Catholicism is not a young earth creationist denomination, and catholics are by far the majority of Christians. The official catholic dogma has nothing against evolution. (Save your "no true Scotsman" fallacy; no need for it.) Most protestant denominations aren't young earth creationists either.
How do you know they have no purpose at all? That was what was thought about a lot of organs in humans, but they still serve a purpose.
What exactly do you not understand in "vestigial does not mean useless"? It doesn't matter if an organ has been adapted for a secondary purpose; it doesn't make it any less vestigial.
(I'll wait for your "no true Scotsman" fallacy to follow.)
All of the bad things done by Christians are (in my point of view) done by people who weren't Christians.
You are so predictable.
Also, many more people were killed by atheists in the last century than by Christians in the last two millenia. Atheist people like those communist leaders kiled millions of people. World War 2 was caused by Hitler. How many people died by these atheists?
Sure, if your definition of "Christian" is "someone who doesn't kill anybody" (as it seems to be), then no Christian has ever killed anybody. Obviously if an atheist has killed even one single person, then "atheists have killed more than Christians".
The difference is: Even if someone responsible for a genocide was truly an atheist, did he commit the genocide because of his atheism? Did they proclaim things like "there is no God, hence these people deserve to be exterminated"? In contrast, most genocides performed by religious leaders were motivated by their religion. Their religion directly caused them to commit the genocides.
(Inconsequential, but Hitler being an atheist is just creationist propaganda that contradicts what Hitler actually wrote. It's the "no true Scotsman" fallacy all over.)
it's basically all the things you dismissed saying they were "pseudoscientific crap".
Why should I believe the pseudoscientific crap?
There's a lot of pseudoscientific crap out there. Tons and tons of "evidence" is presented about lots of irrational things, such as for a flat Earth (yes, seriously), for a hollow Earth with inhabitants inside (I'm not joking), about cryptozoology, ufology, homeopathy, psychic powers of the human mind, parapsychology, against vaccines, aids denial, holocaust denial, against the germ theory of disease, about the various conspiracy theories out there... The list goes on. Young Earth creationism is not any different from those. (You won't accept that, but it's just a fact.)
All of those movements, all of them, claim that their evidence is valid, and that the scientific community is in a huge conspiracy to deny it.
However, once you understand how science actually works, and that that kind of worldwide conspiracy is a physical impossibility, it all comes crumbling down. Those people will not be convinced, but that doesn't change the facts.
Why would Paul say a dead man is the messiah?
I don't understand your question. (Is it completely out of the realm of possibility that a person could lie? Like that has never happened in the history of mankind.)
You also didn't answer my question about where exactly I have made an excuse.
Mainly, as I said before, "pseudoscientific crap". And all the creationist things you say can't be accurate because you think so. How do you know they aren't accurate? Every single one of them I've seen have a bunch of references to scientific works.
I have written a small book worth of explanations in this thread about your claims, about the things I'm familiar with. You ignore all of them and just shove them into a "because you think so" dismissal.
I'm not an expert in every single field of science. I can't respond to every single claim. However, I don't have to, because all of them have been explained elsewhere already. If you honestly wanted to find information about them, then you could. Of course you don't want to.
You don't dismiss scientific evidence about things that you don't know about in the vast majority of cases either. It's only when said evidence contradicts your young Earth creationism, that you oppose it based solely on principle.
jimsfriend wrote:
Would a rational person continue an argument with an opponent who has clearly stated they will not be swayed no matter what you say or how convincing you are? I think a rational person would not waste their efforts on such a useless venture.
Perhaps another person reading this thread might get some useful information about it, and learn to spot argumentative fallacies (such as "miracles happen, hence God", which is an extremely common fallacious argument).
Of course the longer the thread is, the less likely for this to happen, so you might be right.
We don't know how the geological column was formed
You keep saying that. Can you give some references to actual papers published in the field of geology to back that up? (Don't bother linking to creationist websites. They are useless. You could just as well link to ufology or urantia websites.)
Birds having some similarities to reptiles doesn't show anything. They could have been created with those similarities.
And you having similarities to other humans doesn't necessarily mean you are a human. Perhaps you were created yesterday to look like one.
Did you know that a good majority of Christians do not have any problem in accepting that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs? It's only the young earth creationists that can't accept it. Are you so bold that you claim to know the truth better than all those other Christian believers?
I’m going to clump all the vestigial organs together. He says that they are the remains of older organisms we have evolved from, but this isn’t the case. There was once a list of 180 vestigial organs in humans, but now that list has been reduced to 0. While some aren’t necessary, they still have a role to play.
You are repeating creationist propaganda without even understanding it.
"Vestigial" does not mean "useless, without role". It means "it has lost its original role". For example the wings of an ostrich, as well as the ones of a penguin, are vestigial because they have lost their original role (ie. flying). It doesn't matter that they have adapted for a secondary role.
Besides, there are many animals which have vestigial organs that are truly completely useless and serve no purpose whatsoever. For example many animals living in deep caves have vestigial eyes that are completely blind and do not serve any purpose. (But, as said, even if they had adapted to use them for some other purpose, that doesn't make them any less vestigial. They do not serve their original purpose, ie. seeing, anymore.)
You know who makes all the good things in a succesful society? Christians.
The slave owners of the American south were all Christians. The witch hunting was performed by Christians. The inquisition was created by Christians.
(I'll wait for your "no true Scotsman" fallacy to follow.)
Likewise there are many secular countries, especially in Europe. For example in many of the mid and northern European countries something like 85% of people are atheists. Are these corrupted and depraved societies?
How about countries where the predominant religion is not Christianity? Are they all corrupted and depraved?
macroevolutionists lying
Please stop repeating that. It only makes you sound like a conspiracy theory nutjob. It isn't helping your case.
Warp wrote:
Can you tell me exactly what is it that I don't believe that you have said, that I should?
I could basically say the things I've been trying to convince you about.
Like what, exactly?
It is also historical that there was a man named Jesus and that he died on a cross.
Even if that's completely true and accurate, what does it demonstrate, exactly?
I was just making sure you knew what was historical.
You didn't answer my question.
You also didn't answer my question about where exactly I have made an excuse. You ought to back that up with a quote and an explanation. Else I expect you to admit that you can't, rather than just avoiding it.
Warp, I can tell it is useless trying to convince you because you always just say that I am making up all my evidence.
I have never said that you are making up evidence. What I have said is that you seem to be making up your own terminology for things that already have a well-defined meaning (such as "mutation") or that are obsolete (such as "microevolution" and "macroevolution").
Every single time you have brought up actual evidence (such as a miracle healing) I have not dismissed said evidence. I have simply pointed out that your deduction that the evidence demonstrates the existence of a god doesn't follow. (Whether the evidence is correct and accurate is a different topic.)
If you won't believe me, I don't see any reason to argue with you.
I have never cast doubt on your personal experience. Also, the things that I have said you are wrong have always been your personal definitions of terms which contradict their established meanings, or if you have made a claim that's contrary to observation.
Can you tell me exactly what is it that I don't believe that you have said, that I should?
I have a lot more I could say, but I know you will simply either make an excuse or say I made it up.
Please point out specifically where have I made any kind of excuse, and explain why it's an excuse. (It's easy to throw such accusations without backing up your claim with actual quotes and explanations.) If there's a flaw in my argumentation, I would like to correct it.
As for your personal definitions of terminology, you may be right: Perhaps you have not made it up, but instead you have read it in some creationist website. It makes little difference in practice, though.
This is not me saying you won the argument
It's not about winning or losing an argument. It never has been. Winning or losing an argument is completely meaningless. It doesn't prove anything, nor does it change the truth of things.
The reason why I engage in this argument is in the faint hope that perhaps people will realize that arguments like "miracles happen, hence God" are fallacious, and why they are so. (It's basically a non-sequitur.)
It is also historical that there was a man named Jesus and that he died on a cross.
Even if that's completely true and accurate, what does it demonstrate, exactly?
nfq wrote:
Proof of God:
God said his name is "I am", in other words God is consciousness.
Consciousness exists, therefore God exists.
If that had been written by anybody else, I'd assume it's a joke. With you, I'm not so sure.
I wouldn't be surprised if entire planets and galaxies could appear from space, it's probably full of more spiritual dimensions beyond its apparent emptiness, just like ancient mythology teaches.
That's more like the nfq that we know and love. For a moment I was wondering if you actually had become more rational. Maybe it was just temporary sanity.
Btw, about this:
We have evolved technologically so much in just a couple of hundred years, so imagine if we could live just 500 millions years more, how supernatural our technology would seem.
That's not how evolution works. We don't "evolve technologycally" (in the same sense as living being evolve biologically). (You could use the word "evolve" in relation to technology, but it would be just using the same word for two completely unrelated things.)
Humans keep evolving biologically, but we are not heading for a better versions of ourselves. In fact, we are probably heading towards worse versions of ourselves. That's because we have overcome much of natural selection thanks to advanced medicine and things like genetic diseases are not being removed from the gene pool. This means that they will become more and more prevalent as millenia pass. (The only hope that humanity has is that we might be able to develop technology to fix these genetic defects. Hopefully by that time religion will not be an impediment to do so, as it is now.)
If universes arise from immensly complex processes, it would be very much justified to call them God from our perspective.
The major problem with labeling this unknown with the name "God" is that this name is very loaded. People tend to make all kinds of unjustified assumptions immediately when the word "God" is used (usually without even considering what the definition meant by the speaker/writer actually is). Thus using this name to label the unknown is very misleading.
Take Einstein, for instance. He famously said "God doesn't play dice with the world". Many creationists have jumped to the conclusion that Einstein believed in God (moreover, that he believed in the Christian God) and use this as an argument that even many of the top scientists in the world believe in God.
Of course they completely ignore what Einstein said later, when explicitly asked about God. He specifically answered that he does not believe in a personal God. With "God" he meant the universe and its laws. (Technically speaking this would be materialistic pantheism, where "God" means the same thing as "the Universe". This "God" is not sentient, because it's nature itself.)
This is the problem that happens when you use the word "God" for something else than the Christian one.
Anyways, the issue is not whether the mechanism that caused our universe to exist (assuming it started to exist in the first place, which isn't actually a given) is simple or complex. The issue is whether it's sentient, intelligent and made this universe deliberately according to its will and with a purpose (ie. to create life). A random process would not have such purpose and sentience.
I don't think you can argue from Occam's razor
I disagree. The more assumptions one makes, the more unreasonable the position. When talking about an unknown, the less things you assume, the better. "I don't know" is always better than "I believe it's X, even though I don't have any actual evidence for it". This works in practical situations much more often that it doesn't.
I wonder if you can really apply that kind of logic when it comes to hypotheses that go beyond the known universe. What if in all meta-universes (I hope this is the correct term) intelligent beings that naturally create universes all the time emerge at one point?
The hypothesis was that there might be a "meta-universe" which contains "normal" universes (which pop up into existence at random, via some property of said meta-universe).
The beauty of this hypothesis is that it doesn't require an intelligence to have created our universe. If countless universes appear all the time, each with a randomly varying set of natural laws and constants (as well as energy), some of them are bound to have the proper constants for life to be possible. This without the need for them to have been specifically "fine-tuned".
The hypothesis that a supernatural (meaning "not bound to this universe") god formed somehow, and it was this god that created this universe, only adds an unneeded additional complex step to the process. It only adds more questions than it answers.
Either way, be there a god or not, it's just not possible to know what kind of "god" it might be, and arguing from ignorance is quite useless.
nfq wrote:
Only materialists would probably agree that it makes less assumptions. I think it's more logical to assume that consciousness was created first, because we don't even know if matter exists separately from us (it's an unfalsifiable assumption), while it's a certainty that our consciousness exists.
(I'm sorry to be a bit prejudiced against you, but I find it a bit surprising that you sometimes make quite sensible posts to these types of threads, instead of your usual nonsensical ramblings.)
I think you got it backwards. It's not very likely that matter is bound to our consciousness, but quite likely that it's the other way around, ie. our consciousness is bound to matter (well, energy, really). There's little reason to believe that human consciousness could exist without a physical brain. Instead, there are tons of reasons to believe that it's tightly bound to it. (For example, an injury to the brain could change your personality and belief system radically and permanently. It's quite evident that the brain is not simply some kind of physical conduit for a "soul" to express its independent consciousness and thinking. A damage to this "conduit" could only lose part of such thinking, not change it radically, even to the opposite of what it was before.)
There's certainly absolutely no reason to believe that the universe could not exist without us. Even the idea would be bizarre in the extreme.
If the universe is physical, how could it come into being from nothing?
It's part of common sense to think that something cannot appear from nothing. However, even inside the confines of this universe that's not necessarily the case. You just have to study a bit of quantum mechanics to realize that the answers are not that simple, and that the world does not always work like our common sense dictates. For instance, quantum fluctuations can produce virtual particle pairs from nothing (and without any apparent cause). This does not violate any conservation laws. (What the conservation laws cause is precisely the production of virtual particle pairs. AFAIK if a single virtual particle appeared from nothing, that would break a conservation law.)
If there exists a metaverse where our universe resides in, it's not completely inconceivable that some kind of fluctuations cause universe pairs to pop up "from nothing". (And this isn't even completely far-fetched, even though we know nothing about the properties of this hypothetical metaverse.)
Okay, an Arcade run just obsoleted a NES run? How does that make any sense? Is the Super Mario All-Stars run of SMB1 going to obsolete the NES run because it has better graphics? Of course it shouldn't, because differences in the code and fundamental differences in the platform make tricks possible in one version that aren't possible in the other. It makes absolutely no sense for a run from one platform to obsolete a run on another.
In principle I agree, but I wouldn't say it's as clear-cut.
In general, if there's a game for some system, and then there's a (clearly inferior) port for another less efficient system, it's usually preferable to TAS the game of the original system rather than the port. (For example, if we ever make a TAS of Doom, it would be infinitely more preferable to TAS the original DOS Doom than, for example, one of the various console ports such as Doom64.)
What happens if the port is TASed first, and the original is TASed much later? Now the question becomes difficult.
In this particular case, however, I'm leaning towards siding with your opinion. The NES port is unique enough, and has such a long history in this website, that I think it should deserve its own TAS. (But I don't mind too much if it's kept obsoleted either...)
There are many online forums which have an anti-necroposting policy (in other words, the older the thread, the more shunned it is if someone "revives" it by posting to it). Some forums even go so far as to automatically lock threads that have had no traffic in some time.
Fortunately this kind of policy has not been adopted here, and I really see no reason why it should. There's nothing wrong in posting to old threads. (In fact I'd say it's actually recommended in cases where, as Bisqwit said, you want to talk about the same topic, and thus the context is relevant. It avoids the "this was already discussed in this another thread" responses.)
Basicaly, two organisms that can not reproduce are from different species.
Ring species contradict that definition. Each adjacent pair of populations can produce fertile offspring between themselves, but when you reach the ends of the two chains, you end up with two populations that cannot. Hence if you follow the chain in one direction you get a contiguous list of populations that can reproduce between themselves and thus are by definition the same species, but if you follow it the other way, you get a pair of populations that cannot reproduce, and hence are by definition not the same species.
However, this is not a contradiction in evolution, but on the contrary, conforms perfectly with evolution (and is predicted by it). (Ring species are also a marvelous example of "transitional fossils", except that instead of being fossils they are actually alive and we can study their full biology. Not only is the mantra "there are no transitional fossils" untrue, but there are actually living species that are "transitional" between two different species.)
I have two definitions for mutation:
Mutation: A radical chemical change in one or more alleles.
Mutation: An abrubt and marked difference between offspring and parent.
You are inventing your own definition of mutation, which differs from how it is defined in biology. (The vast majority of mutations have no or extremely little effect. There's nothing "radical" about them. That doesn't make them any less of a mutation.)
Apparently your definition of mutation comes from sci-fi, where "mutants" are always hideous deformed abominations, or superpowered freaks.
Yes. Microevolution can create new information. But the long story you just described was an example of macroevolution, not microevolution. If a mutation occurs and somehow changes the organism, it is macroevolution.
How can I make you understand that your personal definitions of those terms isn't how things work in real life?
The vast majority of mutations have no or very little effect, and do not produce new species (they may cause small variations inside a species, what is usually called "microevolution"). In fact, while biologists believed in the past that mutations were the main force behind evolution, it has now become clearer that it's not so. Mutations can drive evolution (and it's possible, even probable, that new species have formed via significant mutations), but this is significantly less prevalent than once thought. In fact, it is estimated that even human DNA experiences hundreds of mutations during his lifetime; however, by far the vast majority of them have no effect on anything.
New species can form without significant mutations. Even you agree with this.
And, we don't have any fossils of these "in between chromosome 250 and 1200" creatures.
Fossils are minerals. They do not contain DNA nor chromosomes that we could count. (I'm not a biologist, but I'm assuming one cannot even guesstimate the amount of chromosomes that a species had by simply examining its skeletal structure.) Any of the fossils could contain any amount of chromosomes between those two numbers.
Does that mean that you consider it possible for a starfish to have evolved into a red panda via "microevolution" because they both have 36 chromosomes? Or will you now invent another made-up reason why that's not possible?
Their chromosomes have a different structure. Sorry for not explaining this earlier. This is still an example of macroevolution.
Your definition of "macroevolution" becomes more and more complicated.
Also, with the reliability of the Bible, all historic/religious texts can be interpreted differently. The Bible is the one that this has happened to the most probably because it's been used for a long time and because there are many different people that have interpreted it.
So is, for example, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Many religions (especially the oriental ones) also have really old literature. Age means nothing.
First, I looked up more on abiogenesis, and they do say that it started out as little blobs that could split. But they still have to say that proteins were made randomly. They have performed experiments that show that amino acids can be made naturally, and that they can link up randomly. It would still be a very small chance that the amino acids would link just right.
That sounds like you have been reading creationist websites rather than scientific ones (because that info is a bit outdated AFAIK). There's much more research that has been done. I could find a youtube video giving a brief introduction if you like.
Also, with your hypothesis that there may be another universe that created this one (along with an infinite amount of others), what if one of those other ones happened to create a god? What if he found a way (because of what his physics were like) to travel to other universes? There would still be a god! And I feel this hypothesis is as far fetched as the hypothesis you made earlier.
Of course that could have happened, as well as a myriad of other possible combinations. The thing is: That kind of "god" would be completely different from the God of the Bible (or at least your interpretation of it). This "god" has not always existed, but was created. And we still wouldn't know anything at all about this supposed god (for example, we wouldn't know if he still exists, if there's more than one, or what kind of properties he has).
However, the hypothesis that random universes are randomly popping into existence all the time (possibly in positive-negative pairs to keep the balance of energy) makes less assumptions and thus is more plausible than a sentient, intelligent "god" popping up into existence at random and then creating this universe. (Of course there's still no evidence of either, but usually the hypothesis that makes less assumptions is preferable.)
And third, just curious, Warp, how do you think Christianity got started? Was it the twelve disciples wanted to try to make a new religion, they were mislead or what? This is just a curiosity.
The historically most neutral and accurate information we have is that a jewish preacher named Paul (the one who wrote all those letters) existed some time at the beginning of the first century, who advocated that the Messiah of the jewish religion had come. He created several congregations at different locations and preached in them and sent letters to them. (AFAIK there's little doubt among historians that Paul existed, although there's some discussion that at least one or a few of the letters might not have been penned by him.) There are of course letters from a few other people in the New Testament as well.
Some decades later at least two people (but possibly more) wrote the four gospels and Acts of the Apostles. It's estimated that the Gospel of Mark was written first, and the others later. Regardless of the names, their authorship is not clear.
Those are the most well-known facts that we have strongest evidence for. Other details claimed in the texts themselves are not as clear-cut from a historical point of view.
They do not need secret societies or contract killers when they can use employment interviews to screen out applicants.
*sigh*
Furthermore, independent peer-reviewed publications do exist
I was talking about peer-reviewed scientific publications, not peer-reviewed pseudo-scientific publications. Of course there exist peer-reviewed publications of all kinds, in ufology, homeopathy, astrology, cryptozoology, and so on.
Even if every scientist in the world agrees about something, that doesn't make it true. Truth isn't defined by popular opinion, scientific opinion, religious opinion, or any other kind of opinion one may invoke.
That's why the scientific method is based on evidence, observation, measurements and testing, not opinions nor preconceived biased notions.
Science does not start with an alleged truth, such as "the universe is 6000 years old", and then proceed to find evidence that supports this preconceived truth. Instead, science makes observations and then tries to find out why and how it happens. This is much unlike "creation science" which starts from a preconceived notion and then tries to force all evidence to fit it. If some evidence does not seem to fit the preconceived truth, it's mangled and maimed until it does.
Naturally creationists try to reverse this and claim that science does exactly this.
Warp wrote:
AFAIK there are over 30000 denominations of Christianity. No two of them interpret the Bible 100% the same. Many of them have wildly different interpretations, even in the most basic core tenets, not just unimportant minutia.
Where did you get that 30,000, and how do you know how "wildly different" the interpretations are? In other words, please provide references for those claims.
*sigh* Not everything needs references.
If I say that millions of people around the world drove a car today, I don't need to point to factual references to back that up. It's a well-known fact. The number "30000" isn't, but that's not the point. It means "a lot, and a bit more", and that's well-known fact. I could probably list about a hundred different Christian denominations from the top of my head with ease. There are lots and lots more of them around the world.
Many of them do have wildly different interpretations of the Bible, even in its most basic core tenets. For example, some denominations believe that Jesus is not God while others do. Some denominations believe that you can pray to God for your sins only through Jesus, while others believe that you can do it also through others (Mary, various saints...) There's a wild variety of dogmas about what constitutes sin, and how one should repent, and how one is saved. Likewise there's a wild variety of dogma on how much Moses' laws should be obeyed (all kinds of nuances between and including the two extremes, ie. "they should be followed strictly and literally" to "they must not be followed at all".)
If you don't know about basic Christian theology, then you should read some online literature about it. I'm sure you'll find plenty.
I am saying that first, the Bible is more reliable than observation, measurement and testing
Speaking of which, how exactly do you estimate the reliability of the Bible?
At the very least, it isn't very unambiguous. AFAIK there are over 30000 denominations of Christianity. No two of them interpret the Bible 100% the same. Many of them have wildly different interpretations, even in the most basic core tenets, not just unimportant minutia. All of them believe that their interpretation is correct. (The interpretation of other denominations is usually correct in their view only to the same extent that it agrees with theirs, or at least doesn't heavily contradict it.)
A significant portion (if not even the vast majority) of them claim to have a literal interpretation, so it's not enough to say "the Bible is literally true", because almost all of the denominations claim to interpret it literally. (There might be some denominations who say that the Bible is only an approximation to the real truth, more metaphoric than literal, but I'd estimate those are only a small minority of all denominations.)
Which one of these differing (but allegedly literal) interpretations is the most reliable one, and why? And why do you consider your own personal interpretation of it to be more reliable than someone else's, who also claims to interpret it literally (but differently than you)?
Actually, only the editors of said publications need to censor differing opinions in order to provide the impression that everyone in a field believes whatever theory they personally uphold.
Yeah, and these editors have a secret society where they hold secret meetings to decide what is and isn't currently accepted as the truth, and no person shall ever get an editorial position without being inducted to this secret society. They also employ contract killers to silence any scientists who would publicly complain about editorial bias, so that the dissenting scientists will never form an independent peer-reviewed publication of their own.
Sure, sure. And the Illuminati controls the world banking system.
There are astrophysicists who believe in creation,
Newton himself believed in alchemy. Individual scientists can believe whatever they like. That doesn't make it true.
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Warp wrote:
And yes, there are other possible explanations, both natural and supernatural, even when assuming it was a true "miracle".
Only one of them is correct, however.
The point is that you can't argue for one of them to be correct over the others based on an unknown or personal conviction.
Warp wrote:
The most distant stars in our universe are moving away from us faster than c. However, we cannot see them (for that very reason). However, that's an entirely different subject.
Not meaning to get further off topic, but how do we know these stars exist if we can't see them?
The age and rate of expansion of the universe can be estimated, and it's quite likely that the universe is larger than the observable part of it. There's no reason to believe that all the matter in the universe was confined to the part of the universe that is visible to us. If stars and galaxies have formed here, why shouldn't they form everywhere? The Earth is not in any kind of special position.
That explanation doesn't account for why each subsequent generation would acquire the duplicated chromosomes. What type of reproduction are you envisioning?
Yes, some of the species now may have evolved from one to another, but some mutations must have occured (I wasn't saying that every single case of one species turning into another was through mutation).
Those two sentences are contradictory.
Would you mind telling me what the contradiction is?
First you say that some mutations must have occurred for a species to have evolved into another, and then you say it's not necessary.
And also, how could the genus Ophioglossum have 1200 to 1260 chromosomes (I didn't know this when I mentioned the crab) when there is no species that has a chromosome number greater than around the 250 of crabs and less than the 1200 of it?
I'm not a biologist, but it's not odd at all that no "in-between" species exist today, even if the transition from 250 to 1200 happened one chromosome at a time (although I believe duplication of whole chromosome sets is possible and has been observed). It simply means that the ancestral species with chromosome amounts between those two have all gone extinct. IIRC significantly more species have gone extinct during the history of the Earth than exist today. It's no surprise that each ancestral species has not survived to this day.
A typical creationist objection is that evolution of more complex organisms from simpler organisms requires adding information to the gene pool, and that this is, according to them, somehow impossible. Yet many of these same creationists don't have the problem with the idea that chromosomes are self-replicating and that small changes can happen to alleles/genes from one generation to the next. They are unable to see how the latter is a mechanism for the former (although it's probably not the only mechanism, but probably an important one).
In other words, if a descendant has somehow duplicate copies of one or more chromosomes, no new information per se has been added. It simply has two copies of some of the chromosomes instead of one. I don't think these creationists would disagree with this: It's just the same information duplicated (and chromosomes can be duplicated), so there's no new information added.
But now the second effect kicks in: As this descendant has its own descendants, each can have small changes to the alleles of their chromosomes. Small mutations might also happen, although they are not strictly necessary. (Btw, the vast majority of mutations are so minuscule that they have no or extremely little effect on anything.) Creationists do not deny that changes happen to alleles on each new generation.
Nothing forces the exact same changes to happen to the duplicated chromosomes. Different changes can happen to each one. They will start differing more and more until they are effectively not duplicates of each other anylonger. It's very similar to what happens to two species that are separated and isolated, but on the chromosome level instead of a species level.
Now, do you see how your "microevolution" can create new information? (Which makes it no different from your "macroevolution".)
(Disclaimer: As said, I'm not a biologist.)
Macroevolution is when the chromosome number actually changes through some kind of reproductive mutation. Some mutations must occur for some of the species to evolve into other species.
Your definition of mutation is that the amount of chromosomes changes? I don't think that's how mutation is defined. Also, I don't think mutations are necessary for chromosome duplication to happen.
The reason that that can not happen is because microevolution has limits.
And what exactly limits this? An unknown force? God?
Macroevolution must happen for a dog to evolve into a horse.
Dogs don't evolve into horses. Dogs and horses have a common ancestor species (a freaking long time ago).
Dogs (both wild and domestic, showing that they are a result of microevolution) have 78 chromoses. Horses have 64. Macroevolution must happen for the chromosome number to change.
Does that mean that you consider it possible for a starfish to have evolved into a red panda via "microevolution" because they both have 36 chromosomes? Or will you now invent another made-up reason why that's not possible?
You don't even know what I read because I have not mentioned any of the literature I may be reading. And scientific papers seldom have a bias; instead, they report findings, results of experiments and measurements, and occasionally hypotheses to describe phenomena. (Sure, some papers might have a clear bias, and a fraction of those might even pass the peer-reviewing test, but I'd estimate that's a relatively rare occurrence.)
3. He got healed in a way that nobody could explain (except if it was a miracle).
Do you understand what "argument from ignorance" means? If not, then please tell me so I can explain it to you, and why it doesn't work.
I was not saying this was an argument from ignorance. Can you explain it any other way?
You were not saying it, but it's an archetypal example. You argued for the existence of God, and as evidence for it, you mention a "miracle healing" that, according to your own words, "nobody could explain". Hence you are arguing from something unexplained. That's the very definition of argument from ignorance.
"This cannot be explained, hence God" is an argumentative fallacy. The conclusion does not follow from the premise. I'm pretty sure you see this (even if you refuse to admit it).
(Also, you are clearly implying that there can be only one possible explanation. However, in practice it means "there is only one possible explanation I will accept; I will refuse to accept any other explanation". This is bias. And yes, there are other possible explanations, both natural and supernatural, even when assuming it was a true "miracle".)
Yes, some of the species now may have evolved from one to another, but some mutations must have occured (I wasn't saying that every single case of one species turning into another was through mutation).
Those two sentences are contradictory.
And also, hermit crabs have 127 pairs of chromosomes (making 254 in the end), so some have more than 30-60 chromosomes.
*sigh* Will you at least acknowledge that you were confusing terminology when you originally said that each species has a different amount of chromosomes? It's not hard. Just write something like: "Oops, yeah. I was confusing chromosomes with something else entirely. Sorry."
Also, you don't need mutations for new species to form. Just look up, for example, the so-called ring species.
Ring species are probably the result of microevolution.
You haven't even clearly defined this mythical "microevolution" of yours. Apparently "microevolution" can form new species, yet it's different from "macroevolution", which also can form new species... How exactly are they different? (Answer: They aren't. The distinction is artificially kept by creationists.)
More importantly: What exactly stops these two new species from deviating more and more from each other during eons, until they look nothing like each other? Also, what stops these two species from spawning yet other new species in a similar way (which then may spawn yet new species, and so on)?
You see how diversity of life can be explained via evolution?
I am saying that first, the Bible is more reliable than observation, measurement and testing
That's your belief, but what's your justification for it? Why do you think that?
1. Which would mean that stars would be moving way faster than c, and 2. kept in their orbits around the Earth by an unknown force.
1. Stars, according to today’s measurements, are farther than 13.75 light years away from us.
I think you have an error of scale here. (Yes, that's certainly true, but I don't think that's what you meant.)
They say that this happens because they move away from us and that the space in between us are expanding as well.
Technically speaking yes (because in the beginning all space and energy was compressed into a single point which expanded), but I don't think that's what you mean with that. I understand what you are writing that the current stars we see were closer to Earth and have gotten farther since. No. The current stars we see formed long before Earth even existed.
This could also easily explain how the stars are moving away faster than c.
Now you are confusing two entirely different subjects. The context was this (probably not completely serious) idea that stars are orbiting Earth. In other words, the movement of the stars would be parallel to us, not away from us.
The most distant stars in our universe are moving away from us faster than c. However, we cannot see them (for that very reason). However, that's an entirely different subject.
2. God could be that force.
And so could fairies or the fire spirit Volcanos. Or me, for that matter.
It is impossible to have a rational discussion with somebody who stubborningly maintains the position that all opinions and points of view on how the world works are equally valid simply because we can never have a 100% certainty of anything.
That position is both ridiculous and impractical.
Suppose that someone asks me "what color is that car?" and I tell him "blue". Then he argues: "How can you be so certain? Can you prove with absolute certainty that it's blue and not for example yellow?"
I proceed to ask a third person what color he thinks the car is. He answers "blue". I ask ten people, all say "blue". I ask a thousand people, all say "blue". I photograph the car with a digital camera and corroborate from the pixel values that the car is, indeed, blue. I take a spectrometer and measure the light reflected from the car's surface and corroborate that it's blue. I ask the car manufacturer what color the car is, and he responds blue.
"But you still can't be 100% certain. Maybe 99.9%, but not 100%. Thus the opinion that the car is really yellow is equally valid."
No it's not. The car is blue beyond all reasonable doubt, and the car is definitely not yellow beyond all reasonable doubt. The two positions "the car is blue" and "the car is yellow" are not equally valid. It doesn't matter that one can never prove with 100% certainty that the former is true. Claiming otherwise is both ridiculous and impractical.
Now in the subject of religion, it's not difficult to figure out they're just scams.
Many/most religions are not scams. They are sometimes used for scamming, but the religion itself is not one. They are simply people believing something (maybe something they themselves came up with), and spreading that belief to other naive people, who spread it further and so on. It's all done honestly, not for scamming people, even if they may be all deceived by the products of someone's imagination.
Not to argue, but "on a regular basis" means in this case "each 5 years or so" (especially in the case of consoles; it's not like you need to buy a new console twice a year). I don't think that's a huge investment... :P
― Lack of hardware which to dedicate for playing games.
And being too stingy to invest in such hardware.
That isn't really a huge problem nowadays. While a good gaming PC that will be able to run recent games at full details will cost you quite a moderate amount of money (1000 euros is a typical amount; assuming you don't need to buy a monitor, in which case you'll have to add 200-300 euros to that at the very least) there's a cheaper alternative: Buy a console. (For example you can get an xbox 360 for less than 200 euros. It might not fully compare to a top-of-the-line PC anymore, but games are optimized for it, so they mostly look nice and run smoothly.)
(Ok, you probably don't have a TV, so you'll either need to use one of your existing monitors, and spend about 30 euros on an adapter, or if you really want a good gaming experience, buy a new widescreen LCD monitor, which will be another 200-300 euros. Well, still cheaper than the decent gaming PC...)
Of course I'm not saying that you should do this. I'm just saying that if you wanted, you could get a decent gaming platform for relatively cheap.
I have heard people who have had medical miracles happen to them; people whom I know somewhat well and people who have come abroad to tell. Supposedly, those miracles are objectively verifiable, but I have not had the opportunity to verify them myself (no access to medical records, etc). But all of that is dismissable as well. In the words of Yeshua, even if Moses or someone of the dead come back and witness to us, we would not believe. There's always a theory, rational explanation.
People are masters of explaining.
It's not a question of "dismissing the evidence". It's a question of "what does the evidence prove?" When dealing with things like miracle healings, there are two completely separate issues:
1) What can be deduced from the miracle healing (assuming that it's accurate and factual)?
2) Are there any more natural explanations for the event?
The problem with believers is that they take the existence of miracles as proof of the existence of God. As I have already explained in this thread, they aren't. That's a deductive fallacy. This is not a dismissal of the "evidence". It's an objection to the faulty reasoning.
Question number 2 is a completely different subject. Do miracle healings really happen? Are they really supernatural miracles, or are they caused by something else? Are they as prevalent as Christians want us to believe? Those are interesting questions, but do not affect question number 1 above.
As for the second question: Why is it that when such miracle healings are studied, they tend more often than not to be either inexistent, easily explained by natural means, or just hoaxes? Christians often argue that medical science is biased and has an atheistic agenda, and actively tries to deny all miracles. I don't want to repeat again why this worldwide conspiracy theory is ridiculous.
Stories about miracle healings abound, but many of them can be easily explained by simple psychology. People misinterpret and misremember what they see, stories get always changed a bit when they are retold (and people who are very dogmatic tend to exaggerate things without even noticing), and even minor apparent healings such as a chronic back pain going away (which can often be attributed to pure placebo effects) can soon become great impossible miracles such as someone who was paralyzed regaining the ability to walk. (It isn't even far-fetched to imagine how a mouth-to-mouth story slowly changes from "chronic back pain" to "paralysis, couldn't walk".)
(Though you sometimes have to be careful about optical effects in special relativity. Objects can appear to move faster than light if they are moving directly toward the observer.)
Actually no. If an observer measures the speed of another object, he will always measure a speed less than c, no matter how that object moves relative to the observer.
There are, however, other phenomena that, while they don't cause objects to move faster than c, they cause the distance between two objects to increase faster than c. (The difference between these two things might not be immediately apparent, but they are not the same thing.) Two examples include the metric expansion of the universe, and the frame dragging effect around a rotating black hole (between the event horizon and the so-called ergosphere).
In these cases, however, the object cannot be observed (which is the reason why the observable part of the universe is smaller than the entire universe).
(Disclaimer: I'm not an astrophysicist, nor any kind of physicist, so errors in the text above are possible.)
