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<p>Thank you! My opinions of your beliefs are the same.</p>
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<p>Not my religion, at least.</p>
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<p>Agreed.</p>
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<p>You are unwilling that anyone should hear the alternative theories?</p>
<p>Personally, I’d rather that students were made aware of the contraversy, and that it be left up to the parents to help their children choose what to believe.</p>
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<p>If I told you that, you’d be justified in disbelieving me.</p>
<p>I think that you are making too many assumptions here.</p>
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<p>False. Reality is. It does not depend on whether we are able to perceive it, or whether we understand it correctly or not.</p>
<p>You can “observe” that 2+2=5, but that does not change the fact that 2+2=4. Reality is by definition independent of our understanding of it.</p>
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<p>There is a point – they believe he exists. And you are starting with the assumption that only empiricism provides “backing up.” Not so to religious.</p>
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<p>Genetics has proven that the human race did NOT share a common ancestor only a few thousand years ago. If you deny that genetics, radiocarbon dating, and a whole host of other scientific principles are not real, what’s the point in arguing with you? If you won’t look at facts when presented with them, it’s completely pointless in arguing with someone who is not rational.</p>
<p>How do you account for genetic variation in human beings then?</p>
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<p>There exists NO EVIDENCE that the natural or supernatural entity exists! Unless you provide me with any evidence that god exists, I cannot accept the existence of such a being. Go ahead right now. Provide evidence that God exists. In your case, that the Christian god exists. Please go ahead. Also provide evidence, in your case, that evolution is false and that the Earth is 6000 years old. Please, in your case, provide evidence that the world’s men are descended from Noah and Adam and Eve.</p>
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<p>That’s “evidence” that radiometric dating is not reliable. </p>
<p>that doesn’t account for the other methods for realizing the age of the Earth and I find it VERY FUNNY that you did not answer my initial question. I stated that I accept you believe that radiocarbon dating is wrong but WHY is the Earth 6000 years old? Is there any positive evidence to indicate it is 6000 years old (instead of “evidence” to show that radiocarbon dating is false)?</p>
<p>edit: i don’t find it funny, I find it sad.</p>
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<p>please justify that statement. The Big Bang is just as observable as Dinosaurs are. They were both events or objects that existed in the natural world at some point in time. Just because humans werent there to witness it doesnt make the phenomena not “observable”. The definition of observable doesnt require humans to be present.</p>
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<p>You don’t understand the analogy. If the matrix is by defintiion something we CANNONT observe, we cannot live our lives thinking the Matrix exists (since we have no proof that it does). The same way, if God is by definition not capable of being observed, it’s pointless to live thinking he exists.</p>
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<p>Can you prove specific evidence in favor of your Christian (or, any god for that matter)?</p>
<p>Can you provide evidence for the divinity of Jesus?
Can you provide evidence for Noah’s flood?
Can you provide evidence for the age of the Earth being 6000 years old? (No, I am not asking you to say why you think the Earth isnt 5 billion years old, I’m asking you to state why you think it is very specifically 6000 years old).</p>
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<p>Will you condone the teaching of Xenu and the Scientology myth in science classrooms?
<a href=“Xenu - Wikipedia”>Xenu - Wikipedia;
<p>Will you condone the teaching of the Hindu and Mayan creation myths? How about Satanism and Buddhism? Can we teach our children, in science classrooms, that the Earth was created by the Evil Overlord Xenu?</p>
<p>Please, if you want to teach “The controversy”, why not the “Controversy” over Xenu?</p>
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<p>Those ideas are from the Bible. You understand why atheists think Christianity is ********.</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. Observable doesn’t have to have any connection with our eyes and Ears. If we observe the effects of a supernova thousands of light years away, we do not see the supernova but we know it exists due to the after effects of said supernova. We see the after-effects of the Big Bang and the THEORY is that the Big Bang occurred. We don’t need to understand it but we can observe it or can indicate its existence by analyzing the effects of the event.</p>
<p>We have never seen God or anything that indicates he exists.</p>
<p>Please provide proof that he exists.</p>
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<p>You betray your ignorance with such a statement. Exodus is primarily a set of physical and civil laws for the Israelites, who at the time were camped out in the Sainai Desert, not necessarily a catalyst for the betterment of the society. In the segment of Exodus you quoted, there are several precepts that persist even today, like capital punishment, which in this case was meted out on a hierarchical scale, much like that of the Code of Hammurabi - which, curiously enough, is hailed as a major milestone but in the Bible is made out to be an atrocity. </p>
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<p>This is a complete extrapolation, and a juvenile, venomous one at that.</p>
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<p>They are representations of civil law, and that is all. Given your current stance on religion and lack of context - it is rather clear that you have culled your references from isolated portions of the Bible dealing with particular civil statutes - one cannot take your quotes in isolation from the whole.</p>
<p>An example:</p>
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<p>Molech was a foreign god. In essence, those who sacrificed their children to such an idol would be punished as if committing a capital crime, which would be a clear violation of the First Commandment.</p>
<p>At any rate, I shall not argue over each and every point with you, as my posts would then become unbearably long. Let it suffice to say this: the Old Testament, from which you drew the majority of your references, signifies an Old Covenant, in which one of the parties - in this case, Israel - repeatedly broke their end of the bargain. The New Testament, which is a new pact, invalidates many of those stipulations by transferring the punitive measures out of temporal and into divine hands.</p>
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<p>The Law of Moses’ time was the Law of “God” at some point. Taken literally, you follow a God who, at one point, advocated the atrocities in the Old Testament? Why?</p>
<p>Why would God make laws that were “only shadows” and not “reality” that were followed for thousands of years?</p>
<p>If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why would he need to change the laws? Why not keep them the same? or get them right from the beginning?</p>
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<p>Logic fail. For several reasons:</p>
<p>1) You seem to be incapable of reading my posts. Most religious would agree that God is not empirically observable in the same way that, say, tides are. But they would disagree that proof of something is limited to observation – i.e., does natural law exist? I absolutely reject your assumption because I think it’s bull**** and I will not let this discussion continue until you prove it.</p>
<p>2) Reality does not wait for us to observe it. If you believe something is correct, it is foolish NOT to live by it.</p>
<p>@foolfromhell:</p>
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<p>Critics of the Bible attempt to prove that God’s Word is contradictory, and therefore invalid, by pointing to Malachi 3:6. There, Christ, the Rock of the Old Testament (I Cor. 10:1-5), stated, “For I am the Lord, I change not.”</p>
<p>The answer is simple: Think of God’s Word as a contract between God and His people. The Old Covenant was essentially a marriage contract. The terms of the contract never change. But the terms cease to be in effect between those two parties if either party defaults—fails to keep his end of the bargain. The contract would have been broken. The terms of the contract would not change. But, within those terms are built-in “annulment” provisions.</p>
<p>Just as the Old Covenant was an agreement between God and physical Israel, the New Covenant is an agreement between God and spiritual Israel—true Christians today.</p>
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<p>We may not have the capability to observe something but that may not exist, I agree, but that merely means that we not have the means to observe. If something is NOT observable, it cannot be a part of reality. If got is not observable, if his actions have no effect on us, what point is there in believing he even exists? What point is there in acknowledging his existence? We cannot observe a great many things merely because we lack the means to do so. If it is by definition unobservable, it exists outside our reality and is irrelevant.</p>
<p>Aliens may exist but their impact on my life will be zero. What point is there in acknowledging their existence?</p>
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<p>Alright but I still stand that God’s “first” contract was spiteful, bigoted, and “immoral”. Why would such a contract need to be made in the first place? Why would there need to be any such thing? The words in the Old Testament are still God’s words. Even if an omniscient being can change his words (something that boggles the mind), why would this supposedly compassionate omniscient being have such a radically different view of the world before and after Jesus Christ?</p>
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<p>Firstly, these “transgressions” you so sanctimoniously decry were commonplace among all cultures of the time. Secondly, God’s “mind” was not changed, as you so put it - the terms of the contract were altered to fit a new reality, in which much of what had been dealt with in the temporal realm was transferred to the spiritual.</p>
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<p>And this is a perfectly feasible fact. Stars in space undoubtedly existed before our sun.</p>
<p>Furthermore, take a look at a quote from Genesis itself:</p>
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<p>This can be taken to mean that it did not exist in its current form and had not been put into the current form we associate the Earth with today.</p>
<p>The book of Genesis is open to such a wide variety of interpretations as to make your conclusion utterly false. Your argument is unsound, as it is based upon a set of false premises with an appropriately false conclusion, in which you interpret the opening book of the Bible as literally as any well-seasoned fundamentalist.</p>
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<p>God operates outside of the human conception of time. Who is to say that the formation of the firmament/heavens and dry land were created within our notion of a day?</p>
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<p>And I say you are propounding hogwash. What of the Code of Hammurabi?</p>
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<p>To establish a relationship between God and His people.</p>
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<p>To provide the Israelites with guidelines on how to fulfill the abstractions of the Ten Commandments, with literal examples and rules for each.</p>
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<p>I have nowhere disputed this as false.</p>
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<p>Erroneous on so many counts. If a being is omniscient, then clearly that being can change their words. Simply because the application of God’s rules changed over time does not imply that He is not omniscient; simply that He adapted the nature of His relationship to fit in with His overarching plan.</p>
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<p>There is no radical disparity in God’s “worldview” - a term that I find ludicrous. Both in the Old and New Testament are mentions of Jesus Christ and how it would alter humanity’s relationship with God, not God’s relationship with humanity.</p>
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<p>A subjective viewpoint is being promoted here as an ultimate truth: this is the essence of demagoguery. You’d make an excellent televangelist.
The first point of your entirely unqualified statement is not empirically provable by any means, as is the second - can you say with utmost confidence that God did not invent the concept of gravity?</p>
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<p>Not at all. Quite simply, my claim was that the existence of one does not negate the possibility of another. My previous claim, in which I stated that the laws that govern all we see around us are examples of the work of God, do not in any way intimate that there is a quantifiable means of obtaining concrete proof of the lack of any supernatural realm.</p>