Assault has never tasted better.

SoL@R : " "Absolute statements go both ways. If someone is going to state that a God exists they better have some absolute proof to back it up."
I think I did a couple of posts ago with the "painting and painter" comment "

Wow that sure is some absolute proof. Thanks for enlightening me. I mean it's so obvious, paintings have a painter therefore god must exist! So simple and brilliant!

Now would you care to tell me where God put his signature on this "painting" ?

SoL@R : " So to sum up what you said   If I say: "There is no God".  That is called an ABSOLUTE statement.  In order to make an absolute statement and be right, you have to have ABSOLUTE knowledge. "

First of all, I pretty much agree with you. If an absolute statement is made then there should be , as you put it, absolute knowledge on the subject. In this case the statement "There is no God" is really vague. Just what exactly is this God? It is practically impossible to determine if their is a supernatural being or not when nothing is known about the being. Does this "God" even have the ability to interact with humans and the world they live in? If not it would be pretty damn hard to come to a conclusion one way or another.

With that said I have no problems saying "There is no Abrahamic God" because luckily the description of this God isn't as vague -- we do have knowledge of how this God (supposedly) behaves. I am of course talking about all the interactions between this God and humans found throughout the Bible. It doesn't matter how many times I pray for this God to spontaneously light a fire to prove that he is the true God, that fire will not get miraculously lit. That was referring to 1 Kings 18 if you aren't familiar with it.

I used this example in a different thread (or maybe it was this thread) but I want to use it again.
When I say  "the true God is named Jim" it is pretty tough to determine if this is true or not due to the vagueness like I described in the first paragraph. However, if I were to say " The true God is named Jim and he lives under a boulder in my backyard" you only need to look under the boulder to determine the truth. This is obviously a simplification of the topic but I feel like it portrays the reason why I feel justified in saying that  the Abrahamic God doesn't exist.

Absolute statements go both ways. If someone is going to state that a God exists they better have some absolute proof to back it up.

Ogre Battle 64 is one of my favourite games. Check it out if you like strategy or RPG games.

Sword legion :
Perhaps I did misunderstand some of your questions but that is most likely due to the vagueness of them. The questions/arguments of "why are comets still around?" and "why are Saturn's rings still intact?" are so vague that I have no idea what argument are trying to make. I would appreciate it if you would be kind enough to explain how comets or rings around planets has anything to do with biological evolution or a god creating static life forms. I just can't seem to wrap my head around the argument of 'Comets exist therefore creationism is true' or any similarly structured argument.

"And about Noah's genes? That's a bigger problem for evolution because of the amount of time that it says humans were on the earth."

Do you have any idea of how long various sciences say humans have been around? Here's a hint, its a hell of a lot longer than your ancient bedouin book suggests.

"to decide how many animals there are you need to know how many basic kinds of animals there were, not species."
Are you implying that Noah only saved some animals and they later evolved into other species? I'm not an expert regarding Christian apologetics but this seems like an absurd way to argue against evolution. When the bible says "a male and a female, of all animals" I assume it means what it says.

Sword legion : As pretty much everyone else has mentioned I believe the tally or point system is , well,  pointless. Most debates I've seen that determine a "winner" don't have the debaters pick the winner but by polling the audience instead. Often they will poll the audience before the debate to see what side the audience is intially on and then another poll after the debate finishes to see if there was any significant sway in the audiences position. Since this is a forum debate with a lack of a traditional audience where any one can participate I would say that there isn't a very reliable way to govern the debate or gauge the non-participating members opinions. A debate of this fashion is more of a formal discussion.


I am going to try to answer the questions or give my opinion for the questions you asked and mentioned in the first post (even the ones you've seemed tallied up allready).

  why aren't there more  bones in the ground?
It's great that you have sifted through the entire landmass of the Earth and determined that there is a lack of bones as this is something unachievable for the average person. Let's all give thanks to your God for giving you this miraculous ability. On a less sarcastic note I am not sure how the amount of bones discovered can support creationism or evolution. Most bones (and fossils) found are the ones that are easily accessible. Just because humans haven't dug up the entire Earth in search of old bones doesn't mean that there aren't bones down there.

  transitionary fossils?
For many creationists it seems like it doesn't matter how many dinosaurs with feathers or fish and snakes with limbs are found. They usually just say it isn't a biological change but just some different creature that their God placed on Earth. Honestly, I don't know what creationists expect or want out of "transitionary fossils".

  why are comets still around?
I'm not sure why you think comets existing has anything to do with life forms being a static creation or evolving but I will answer anyways. I can think of a couple ways (there's probably other ways) a comet might be destroyed. 1) Melting from a heat source like a star or atmospheric entry. 2) Colliding with another large object.
A comet that hasn't been destroyed obviously hasn't gone through a process that would destroy it ... it's a pretty simple concept to wrap your head around in my opinion.

  why are Saturn's rings still intact?
My answer is pretty much the same as it was for the comet question. I am unfamiliar with the "braiding theory"  but your argument was "If the earth is millions of years old, then Saturns rings should not still exist because of the complex braiding process.". It seems as if you assume that the Earth and Saturn's rings are the same age. Saturn's rings most likely formed a very long time after Saturn was around. Scientists believe that the Earth is billions of years old but that doesn't mean they believe EVERY damn thing in the universe is the same age.

Where does the Bible record that Noah's ark landed?
On the mountains of Ararat 3 months before the tops of the mountains were seen.

First of all, how big was the boat?
About 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high which is roughly half the size of the Titanic.

 and how many animals did Noah have to take on the ark?
This depends on which bible verse you read.

"And to him on board the ark went one pair, a male and a female, of all animals, clean and unclean, of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, two by two, as God had commanded....Those which came were one male and one female of all living things; they came in as God had commanded Noah...the water had increased over the earth for a hundred and fifty days." (Genesis Chapter 7 verses 15, 24)

"Take with you seven pairs, a male and a female, of all ritually clean animals, and one pair, a male and a female, of all unclean animals; also seven pairs, male and female, of every bird-to ensure that life continues on the earth. For in seven days I am going to send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights." (Genesis Chapter 7 verse 2)

As you can probably tell the number of species varies depending on which account you go by. For example just the birds alone would change from 20,000 to 140,000 (based on the current recorded amount of bird species) between the two verses. I'm not exactly sure which animals the bible considers clean and unclean so I can't give you an approximate number but one thing is for certain, there were a ton of animals on Noah's 450ft boat. God bless Noah for living on a boat with over 1,200,000 spiders ( 8,400,000 if spiders are considered "clean") I sure as hell wouldn't want to do it.


Who says that Noah took adult animals? Why not take younger animals that are old enough to support themselves
but take less space, and why get ahold of the biggest Dinosaurs that you can find when you can get much smaller ones?
You are right, the bible doesn't state that Noah took adult animals. Maybe Noah was limited to the first 2 animals he could find and wasn't very picky. It would make much more sense to cram millions of smaller animals onto a boat rather than larger ones. That's how I would have done it if I were God ... well actually I would just create all these animals out of thin air after killing all the existing animals with my magical powers instead of worrying about a flood and a man having to make a fairly large boat ... you know because I'm God and I can do that. Who said that the bible was always logical though.

While I am on the topic hypothetical scenarios dealing with Noah I have a question to ask you. How much viagra did God give a 600 year old Noah to be able to reproduce humanity with his daughters?

Sword legion :   "There would be a lot more bones in the ground every where
if macroevolution were true, but there are zero."

There are zero bones in the ground now? I'm not even going to get into a serious discussion because I think you are just trolling. Even with the off chance you aren't trolling I feel that it would be pointless to have a discussion because all your counter arguments seem to be illogical. Now if you will excuse me I'm going to go talk to some people that don't believe the sun revolves around the earth.

I don't usually create lyrics for the songs I make, but that is because I'm not a very creative writer and I can barely play guitar and sing at the same time. Most of my time spent playing guitar is just messing around with various rhythms and note/cord progressions. Usually I will make a riff that sounds interesting or unique and try to flesh it out by experimenting with the different sections of the song until I get something that sounds coherent. The biggest problem I have is not physically writing the music down. Months after making a song I say to myself "Hey how did I play that one song?" lol.

Sword legion : There is no need to list everything that evolves. Evolution simply means changing so something like cosmic evolution is irrelevant to this debate. Damn near everything evolves in some form. The only kind of evolution that needs to be discussed is biological evolution and abiogenesis.

"All of the other types of evolution are only theories, they have never been observed."

Creationism is just a hypothesis that hasn't been observed. Creationism gets it's "evidence" from a book while biological evolution gets its evidence from life forms and the remnants of them. You are correct in saying that macro evolution hasn't been observed, or the actual change anyways, but there are plenty of sources that support the theory like DNA, fossils and geology.

As our collective knowledge base grows we are continuing to finding new evidence that supports the theory of evolution. Here's an example, Years ago there was a hypothesis that birds evolved from dinosaurs. This was mainly brought about from the similarities in the bone structure between birds and dinosaurs. Years later paleontologists discover dinosaur fossils with clear signs of feathers.

You all ready agree that organisms change over time with micro evolution , which is understandable because it is fairly hard to deny, but is it really that big of a stretch of the imagination to believe that a larger change (or a large amount of small changes) can happen over a much larger time scale? Many creationists give me the impression that they expect evolution to be a rapid change, as if they expect to see an alligator turn into a duck over night. I think they would be hard pressed to find a biologist that has a similar view of evolution.

mrfe : Whether or not God  "always was, and always will be" has no impact on whether or not God originated from Earth. If God isn't from Earth he is by definition an extraterrestrial or more commonly known as an alien. The original question didn't specify life on another planet or something along those lines. Since God created angels I would have to say that the bible itself states there are intelligent beings that don't originate from Earth.

In my opinion the only thing that Genesis 1 proves is that Jewish people were using a 7 day calendar prior to writing the bible.

Oldschool41 : A logical fallacy is in simple terms just an unreasonable argument. In this case it comes to a conclusion that can't exactly be pinpointed with the given evidence. If someone were to say "Evil (or good) exists therefore God does exist" it would be equally faulty.

Really the main problem with the argument is that it comes to an absolute conclusion. The existence of evil actions doesn't necessarily prove or disprove a God but it does allow you to come to some indefinite conclusions or possibilities.

A similar but more logically sound argument should look more like this.

Evil exists, therefore:
A) God doesn't exist and evil just happens
B) God does exist and allows evil to exist
C) God does exist and has no control over the existence of evil

*Note- This example/argument likely has other possibilities and could be expanded further. I'm just trying to show the uncertainty that is inherent.

Of course this is dependent on how "God" is defined (and probably "evil" too). If someone's particular belief was that God didn't allow evil actions to occur than the existence of evil would more likely than not disprove their God.


This was a bit longer than I expected but I hope it helps you understand what I originally meant.

On Christmas morning this (edit- last) year I awoke to news that my grandfather had been taken to the hospital due to a stroke. It must have been a considerably hard time for my aunt as she had just returned from the hospital the night before and had to drive my grandpa their on Christmas day. Her husband had emergency brain surgery in the days leading up to Christmas. Her birthday happens to be the 25th of December so she not only had a horrible X-mas but also a horrible birthday. Fortunately both are doing well. The doctors are surprised at how well my uncle is doing and my grandfather is feeling better, he will most likely have to live in a nursing home from now on but things could be worse.

There is never a good time for bad news but I would like to think that being surrounded by family and loved ones makes things a bit easier to handle.

"How would you counter the argument made by someone that evil exists, therefore God must not exist?"

The best way to counter this argument is to point out that it is a logical fallacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

This is a list of many failed doomsday predictions. At the bottom of the page it has a few "Future Predictions". I'm sure there's probably a bunch missing but its a rather large list regardless. Here are the next two predictions on the page.

2013 May 19      Ronald Weinland's revised prediction of Jesus Christ's return following his failed 2011 and 2012 predictions.

2020-2037         Jeane Dixon    This psychic claimed that Armageddon would take place in 2020 and Jesus would return to defeat the unholy Trinity of the Antichrist, Satan and the False prophet between 2020 and 2037. Dixon previously predicted the world would end on February 4, 1962.

Any one else find it funny how they both got previous predictions wrong?

Columbine High School had an armed officer that was assigned to the school. It obviously didn't stop that shooting from occurring.

JigSaw :   You seem to be confused (most people usually are I would say) about what atheism means. It is not a cult and does not imply that the atheist believes in NOTHING. Atheism is the disbelief in a claim of god but it doesn't necessarily mean that an atheist rejects every claim of a god or completely rules out the possibility of some sort of supernatural being.

As an example, lets say I tell you about my belief in a god. His name is Jim , he rules the universe and lives under a rock in my backyard. Now assuming you don't believe my claim this would make you an atheist in regards to my god. Does your lack of belief in Jim make you part of some anti-Jim cult? Does it mean you believe in nothing or make you nothing?

In my particular case (and I assume many other atheists too), I haven't heard a God claim that fits with my understanding of the world and universe. I don't rule out the possibility of a supernatural entity but I have rejected all of the claims I have heard. Now there are people who think that no God could possibly exist but that is quite a bit different than rejecting any given claim that a certain God does exist. This is a common misconception about atheism, even among atheists themselves. Hopefully I worded this in a way that is clear and makes sense lol.

Feel free to describe or expand upon your statement that atheism is a cult about nothing, I would like to hear what you have to say.




This part isn't necessarily for you Jigsaw, I just want to try and get this post somewhat back on topic.

If an atheist were to say  "Don't tell me about your religion or beliefs" and then preceded to tell you about their own beliefs that would obviously make them a hypocrite but an atheist telling you about their beliefs doesn't mean that they don't want to hear yours. I personally never shy away from discussions of this nature but I also believe that people should be more open and willing to discussing their beliefs.

There are two major topics that are often considered taboo to talk about , religion and politics. I find it odd or even counter-productive (as a society) to consider these topics as a sort of taboo. They play such large role globally in everyone's life so I feel it should be encouraged to talk about these things.

I don't really have a problem with them publishing the picture. Would they have still ran this story if they didn't have a picture to go with it? It's impossible to say for sure but I bet they would have, maybe not on the front page but they would have. In my opinion there isn't much of a difference between giving the readers a mental image by describing the event and showing a visual image.

That's not to say I have no issues with this story at all. As everyone else said it would have been wiser for the photographer to try and rescue the man instead of trying to slow down the train. It's not like any type of signal he could possibly give the driver is going to slow down that much weight/momentum in time anyways. It may not have been possible for him to get to the man in time and was probably reacting very instinctually, not logically so I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

Where the real problem lies in this story is the tastelessness of it. A front page story of a man about to die titled "Pushed on the subway track, this man is about to die ... DOOMED". Really? I realize newspapers and media in general aren't always the most tasteful but this truly shows how low they can get just to try and sell more papers. I doubt they had gotten permission of the victims family to print the picture within the 12 hours between the incident and the article being posted. If that's not illegal it should be.

RalphTheWonderLlama :

"It's exactly equivalent to denying that there are many Christians who evangelize aggressively and obnoxiously just because they don't do it unless somebody sets them off by saying anything remotely different from what they believe."

Good so you got my point, although I'm not sure what I'm denying if that's what you meant. Typically atheists are the ones responding to theists and not the other way around. Again that's from my experience.

I'm not trying to say that atheist's have never preached on the streets, went picketing in public areas, put up billboards, knocked on doors with The Origin of Species in hand, handed out candy to kids in public parks asking them to recite quotes from atheistic books (personal local example) , randomly proclaimed their belief system to people or even made youtube videos promoting their beliefs ... I'm sure some atheist out there probably has done crap like this but the truth of the matter is that this type of crap is usually done by theists. These actions are just asking for a response.

This thread is titled "Are atheists hypocrites" and the topic creator said "I bring this up because i heard a joke.  I think it is semi-accurate:  "How do you know if someone's an Atheist?  Because they'll F****ING TELL YOU!" " .

Basically what I'm trying to say is that they (generally) only "F****ING TELL YOU!" because you F****ING TELL THEM about your belief system. The message in the original post seemed kind of hypocritical in itself when viewed in this way.

If you are going to publicly display your beliefs you should expect reactions from people who both agree and disagree with you. I think it's a rather simple conclusion to come to that I was trying to point out to the topic creator. This goes for any topic and subject matter and is as relevant to atheists as it is theists.


" Bookstores are choked now with nasty, bullying, childish 300(0)-page rants on God and religion."
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone since many homes, hotels, churches and some schools have been choked full of these type of books for looooong time. (Jokes are allowed in this thread right?)

"Do they specifically target Christianity or do they also hate Muslims, Jews, and other religions? "

I'm not sure if your religion pushes you to hate people with other belief systems but my atheism certainly doesn't.  Maybe you meant to say "do they also hate Islam, Judaism and other religions" which changes the hatred from the people who practice the religion to the actual religion itself. Either way I feel like you are making a broad generalization that is most likely false.

One thing to keep in mind is that everyone is an atheist to some degree. Since atheism is just rejecting the claim of a god it means that people of one religion have an atheistic view of other religions gods. Does your atheism towards non-Christian religions mean you hate those who practice these religions or that religion in itself??


As for atheists specifically targeting Christianity I would say that statement could be considered true but is purely situational. Let me ask you this, Why aren't atheists targeting people who believe in Zeus? Because even if there are people who still believe in Zeus (which I doubt there really are) they aren't a big enough group to establish any sort of enforcement or push an agenda based on their religion.

Take a look at this pie graph representing religious populations in the USA.
According to this graph 79% of the United States is Christian. If ever there were a single religion that made sense for American atheists to target surely it would be Christianity. With the same reasoning it makes sense for atheists in other parts of the world to focus on the religion that dominates their location. For example, in the middle east I fully expect atheists to target Islam ( or Judaism in the case of Israel). I also expect there to be a much smaller percentage of atheists in that part of the world due to religion playing a big part of politics but that is off topic and for another discussion.

Since Islam and Christianity are offshoots of Judaism, an atheist who refutes the god claims of one of these religions is actually refuting the claim of god in all of these religions. If some one were to say that Jesus or Mohammad didn't exist but believed that the main god figure in these religions did exist it would make them more or less Jewish and not a complete atheist (based on my understanding of the relationships between all three religions ... but I am no expert).



I want to ask you and any other religious people reading this a question. Have you ever had an encounter with some one advocating atheism without an initial declaration with any sort of religious context. In other words, is the atheist instigating the discussion or simply responding to your religious claim.

I only ask because I have never seen or even heard of an atheist engaging in this sort of action without being provoked by a religious statement. It's not like atheists are going door to door to spread the good news of no lord. From my experience atheists generally respond to religious claims instead of just randomly telling people they are atheists which is the opposite of the joke in the original post portrays.

The way I see things it's kind of like the golden rule to treat others as you want to be treated or as Jesus said in Matthew 7:12 " Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them " . If you don't want to hear about atheists beliefs than don't tell them about yours. If you publicly display your beliefs than you should fully expect others to share their beliefs with you.