What he was asking is if you have any evidence if these things you call fairy-tales did not happen. Do they seem improbable to an intelligent person? They sure do, I wont deny that. Yet you cant provide evidence for them not happening and when you realize that the stuff you see around you and the life you are living in itself seems most improbable yet they are very real, then its not a far stretch of the imagination that things like this could have actually occurred.
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you see this is one of those little points that people disagree on, I am shocked and surprised that some of our protestant friends didn't challenge you on this. many protestants do take the old testament literally, in fact these same christians take every single word in both testaments as the literal word of god. they say once you start saying well that isn't what the bible meant well then you lose all credibility, they say it is what it says. this was one of those little points that caused the death of hundreds of thousands, at least.Comment -
Tell you what M, if I had a time machine and only one attempt at going back in history that is exactly where I would go. Being at the crucifixion and allowed to stay for at least three days would be my destination. When billions of people believe in something it simply can't be dismissed easily. Yes, I think it is improbable, yes I think most of the teachings are simply contrary to natural and scientific law but I will tell you this very honestly. I am jealous of people that have great faith, yep I wish I could have the faith that they exhibit, the faith of a little child and I am not writing this sarcastically.
I have spent a great deal of time considering these questions and even studying at least a half dozen denominations and what they teach. I have also looked at religion particularly christianity and how it relates to what science is teaching us every day. I do think they are at great odds. Evolution to me is a done deal.
Did any of you ever think this thought. If a supreme being exists we all take for granted a few basic ideas, am I correct? First, he must be all knowing and all powerful able to do anything at all. Second he must be holy and all good never ever able to do any wrong, or at least what we as humans consider wrong. Third, we as humans cannot compare to this being and our actions are always at least less holy than his/hers. So consider this, almost all of us realize that great evil exists in this world and most of us would if we could stop that evil. I know I would I think you would too. So if you and I would stop this evil why would a good all powerful god allow it to continue. Are we better than god? Of course not, then why? No answer is available except we can't question the mind of god which I think is a cop out.Comment -
The fact that the church and its associated programs they named religion are one big criminal network is evident enough for the smarter people. The fact that what they try and push as religion, some of it, is on par with an animal's moral compass, many times not even approaching that much.
The fact that the best men, par none, in building and advancing civilization as we know it - have always veered away from the teaching's of the church and were never priest's, arch bishops, etc. show that is an inferior type of community (criminals). In fact, they created social constructs that were totally opposed to the theocracy of the church, these social constructs we call government that have been of the highest quality ever seen, show the quality of what it opposed, the jewish church.
The fact that you have to resort to altered, slandered, distorted, and plain false history (war propaganda for the church's supremacy) show's me even more that you are an inferior type of man, even more so than your master's. This goes for the prominent pro-religious poster's in this thread.Comment -
This is the type of faith that makes me jealous. The faith of an innocent child the faith that at one time most of possessed. I am jealous, nothing any person can say will dissuade him, nothing science can prove will change his mind, his fervor is passionate and to be admired. And what does it hurt, as long as his beliefs never infringe on others?Comment -
Wasn't trying to be a dick but I see that it's in your nature to do so. You think that the movie was shitty but I see how close minded you are to not understand and your just trolling around looking for your bully badge so here's a lil help you BDF!!!
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True, but I don't know how you thought my enigmatic post was meant for you. Anyway I see no need to fck this thread up with needless bickering so let's just leave it be. Btw…I think the movie is pretty good and fits perfect with this subject, I mean if we were created then who created the creator??? Maybe just check out the meaning behind the movie itself and you might be surprised.Comment -
Misunderstanding agree let's forget this
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The fact that you have to pop up yet again to get your little quips in about me being an inferior type of man just shows that you cant do anything but attack religion any way that you can. Ive already stated what kind of man I think you are and it continues to show in the way you carry a conversation. You contribute absolutely nothing to this discussion other than show us all what kind of person you are and contrary to what you may believe, the way you argue is probably pushing people away from your line of thought rather than bring them on your side. So please continue. I know you cant help yourself.
The best men, huh? You tear down the church and the great men of faith that have contributed a ton to humanity yet fail to mention any of these godless men you look up to that are somehow so much better.
The best social constructs which are of the highest quality we have ever seen? Please. This world is a mess.
So I am an inferior type of man, but you acknowledge that its even more so than my Master. Which is yours too by the way. I am inferior to God. Are you trying to get me to say otherwise? The fact that you are incapable of saying the name Jesus Christ or His Father without turning it into a slur further solidifies my belief that you are a wicked man. God help you.Comment -
I would do the exact thing.
Religions come and go, but there are 3 which all worship the same God and have been going strong for a very long time to this day. This is nothing short of a miracle and one would be foolish to dismiss it without further research into why that is. I guess you could argue such religions as Hinduism and Paganism have been around longer, but these don't have any set doctrine that remains unchanged. They continue to morph thru time as followers are allowed to pick and choose who and what they believe adding and subtracting gods as they see fit. It a free-for-all.
For thousands of people to leave Judaism which they had followed their whole lives to follow a man called a heretic by their Jewish religions leaders, and stick by his side throughout persecution up to the possibility of execution, Jesus had to be pretty convincing. For the faith to survive many attempts of eradication by the Jewish and Roman people, and then the Romans actually taking up Christianity as their faith and laying down their pagan Gods is incredible when you think about it.
For every disciple of Jesus to be executed for their faith, EVERY ONE OF THEM!!( edit: except John), and NONE of them ever denounced Jesus as savior, for the apostle Paul to live for decades in pain and suffering, being beaten, stoned, thrown into cold and wet prisons without proper clothing twice, to be shipwrecked THREE times, mocked, spit on, and finally beheaded in Rome all for the cause of spreading the Good News. Either Paul was absolutely insane or he was truly an apostle and devout man of god more than we can imagine.
Paul was a Jewish rabbi, who was also a Roman, where his job was to find and kill Christians. For him to have a change of heart and go the opposite way spreading the word of Jesus throughout the whole Mediterranean, perhaps he really did see Jesus on his walk down the road!
When I was an atheist, I used to mock Christians and the bible calling it a fairytale, stupid, a phony book of lies followed by a bunch of religious wackos, you name it just like all of the lost atheists here. Yet my soul felt empty, and I was in denial about it. I used to believe that Jesus must of been a schizophrenic followed by a bunch of crazies, but read the 4 gospels and everything in red print then tell me if that's how you think a crazy man talks or if its on such a high level of morality that those words couldn't just come from any man but the Son of God.
You can deny it all you want, but when you look at all of this information and try to reach some kind of conclusion you cant help but admit that perhaps, just MAYBE, it really is true!Last edited by Footy4Jesus; 02-10-14, 01:19 AM.Comment -
How the apostles of Jesus died:
Judas- hung himself after being a traitor to Jesus.
Stephen- stoned to death.
James- Killed by a sword. Executioner also killed afterwards because he converted after killing James
Peter- Crucified upside down
Andrew- Crucified
Thomas- Tortured, speared, then burned alive
Philip - Tortured then crucified
Matthew- Beheaded
Bartholomew- skinned alive then crucified
lesser James- thrown down the temple steps then beaten in the head with a club until dead
Simon - crucified
Judas Thaddeus - beaten to death with sticks
Matthias- stoned to death while hanging on a cross
John- thrown into boiling oil. Survived the execution attempt, then wrote the book of Revelation.
Paul- Beheaded.
There is plenty of reliable documented evidence to support the martyrdom of these apostles if you dont believe it. I actually encourage you to look into it. Its jaw dropping.
I don't know about you guys, but these things are why I hold my faith so firmly. It may take a leap of faith to believe that Christ is Lord, but I think after being presented with this kind of evidence it takes a greater leap of faith not to.Last edited by Footy4Jesus; 02-10-14, 01:29 AM.Comment -
bill nye took a dump on ham in that debate. he pretty much disproved creationism and probably made a lot of people rethink their beliefs who watched that debateComment -
Many valid points, points I have pondered for decades. However I have some questions.
Your next to last paragraph is telling, you know what I think, I believe research has suggested that most men have a yearning for a god. I am not sure this is a religious thing but more of a hope that there is more to life than live, love and die. I think most people might admit that yes they wish a supreme being who has control of everything existed but they just are unable to get over the scientific evidence that it is improbable at the very least.
Paul, I believe never really met Jesus. Except metaphorically or religiously on his travels. I believe Paul made his travels after JC was gone.
Not sure if it was thousands of people that left and converted in the early times of Christianity, I don't think anybody knows the exact numbers however many did that is a fact. You must try to keep separate what is taught in the bible vs what is taught historically about these times. And there is very little historical facts, some but not much. One famous jewish historian mentions some about christians and JC but it is limited. Other than that very little remains. I realize assimilation probably erased the proof but where are these one time jews that are now Christians because of JC? We do have a number of Jews that proclaim their belief in Jesus, I sometimes watch one preach on TV. But, where is the proof about first century Jews that became Christians?
Yes religions do come and go and yes we have other religions that are much older. However, Christianity is the only religion I know of that has a flesh and blood god. May be others but as of right now I can't think of one. Maybe some obscure religions follow the same example because I do know that much of what Christianity taught was also taught by other ancient and pagan beliefs.
But interesting stuff, no doubt.Comment -
Bill Nye is a pompous,arrogant, leftist jerk. To take him seriously as the spokesperson for all of science just because you remember him growing up on a tv show is silly. And Ham needs to brush up on his debating skills. He doesn't speak for all of creationists and creationism (the militant, unscientific kind) doesn't speak for all of Christianity.Last edited by Footy4Jesus; 02-10-14, 10:29 AM.Comment -
Evolution is false. That is a fact.
Ape to Man transformation never occurred. If it did, we would have found it in the fossil record.
Evolution has way too many holes in it for it to be a credible theory.
It can't even answer the most basic questions.
Take a look at DNA structure. DNA absolutely refutes evolution. DNA is a code of a sophisticated language system with letters and words where the meaning of the words is unrelated to the chemical properties of the letters.
What other coding system has existed without intelligent design? How did the DNA coding system arise without it being created?
Evolutionists also never take into account all the species that have remained UNCHANGED. Horseshoe crabs are a great example. We find their fossils in "deep time" fossil deposits. Evolutionists will tell you they are at least 200 million years old. There must be something wrong with their theory because in 200 million years not a single change has ever occurred in the horseshoe crab.
Even Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard paleontologist and evolutionist said:
Yeah, no shit Sherlock.“The maintenance of stability within species must be considered as a major evolutionary problem.”
The famous Fruit Fly experiments are also another witness to the fallacy of evolution. Fruit fly experiments began over 100 years ago. To date, countless millions of generations of fruit flies have been bred and reproduced and studied over their short life span.
What has been observed? No evolution.
July 22, 2010, marked the 100th anniversary of genetic investigations using fruit flies. The first such study appeared in Science in 1910 and described the unexpected appearance of a male fruit fly with white eyes after generations of flies with pigmented eyes.1 This began a century of focused studies on fruit fly mutations, but what has really been learned by all this tinkering?
For most of the past century--and especially since the discovery of DNA as a physical molecule carrying heritable information--the prevailing concept of neo-Darwinian evolution has held mutations to be the central generator of new and useful information. Thus, mutations have been given ample opportunity to prove themselves, if they are naturally selected, as having "the power to drive the evolution of all living things in the direction of positive improvement."2
Fruit flies, with their short generation times and only four pairs of chromosomes, presented prime testing ground for evolution. In laboratories worldwide, they have been subjected to all manner of mutation-inducing phenomena, including hosts of chemicals and radiation treatments, to try and accelerate evolution-mimicking mutations. After all this, fruit flies should have certainly exemplified evolution by now.2 But they haven't.
So, having achieved no evolutionary progression in fruit flies by these random means, researchers made them the focus of countless purposeful gene manipulation studies. The most popular, from an evolutionary perspective, were experiments with what are called HOX genes.
HOX, an abbreviation of "homeobox," are genes used by the organism during embryonic development. Many reasoned that it would be simpler for evolution to operate by mutating these genes, since a small alteration could produce a large effect in the fly's body. However, this was before recent studies showed that embyronic development is more heavily influenced by regulatory DNA, not genes. And mutating (through substituting, deleting, or duplicating) developmental genes like HOX has only ever yielded a dead fly, a normal fly (if the mutation happened to have no noticeable effect), or a tiny monster. None of these results match the "positive improvement" expected of Darwinian evolution.
Extra body segments, an extra set of wings, or legs in the place of antennae characterized the weird forms that were generated. Three generations of specifically designed DNA alterations were required to produce fruit flies with four wings--but they couldn't fly. The extra wings had no muscles and were dead weight. One recent exploration of neo-Darwinism remarked:In his book Evolution, Colin Patterson summarized the lost hope of finding evolution from HOX investigations:The mutants that produce four-winged fruit flies survive today only in a carefully controlled environment and only when skilled researchers meticulously guide their subjects through one non-functional stage after another. This carefully controlled experiment does not tell us much about what undirected mutations can produce in the wild.3
Whereas fruit fly studies have provided critical information about how genes, nerves, longevity, and other biological machines and processes operate, no progress whatsoever has been made in the quest to accelerate these insects' "evolution" by ramping up their mutations. The survivors of 100 years of lab torture are still just fruit flies.The spectacular effects of homeobox gene mutations were first seen in Drosophila, early in the history of genetics. Carriers of some of these mutations certainly qualify as monsters--though without much hope.4
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That yearning for God shouldnt be dismissed so easily. Everything occurs for a reason, and that little voice inside that pulls on your heart is coming from somewhere else than yourself. The same thing with that other voice trying to pull you down. If youve ever wondered how a conscience could be your own when it often comes in an instant without actually thinking about what you are doing, or for some random reason the thought entered your mind to call a friend or relative and then they died or something right after, those uncanny instances arent coincidence. What science calls your conscience is really Gods voice. Some people like serial killers and other criminals seem to have no conscience though. It is because they are so far apart from God and evil has taken over their life so much that they dont even hear the voice of God anymore. If you turn your back on God and flee from him, hes not going to keep chasing you down because it was your choice to follow him or not. Although the door is always open for you to turn back. Deep down many people just know there is a God, and because we have a hard time believing in something unless we can see it with our own two eyes, we keep pushing it off.
Because you cant see him doesn't mean he don't exist, but the same thing goes for things you do see it doesn't mean they do exist. Magicians and illusionists have made their careers out of fooling people into believing what they see. Yet even though we may not see Jesus, you do see God everyday but may not even know it. He is right in front of your eyes and everywhere you look right now. God is in everything good and everywhere.
Paul never met Jesus before he died you are right. Jesus appeared to him on his walk down the road to Damascus. Its hard to believe he didn't just make this story up, but when you see that all of the apostles who were Jesus disciples unanimously believed Paul, and then the hard life Paul lived but his faith never swayed, it makes it a lot more believable.
There is actually a lot of evidence surrounding 1st century Jewish converts to Christianity. There would probably be a lot more but was burned down and destroyed. It is hard to come to exact numbers because of the fierce persecution they endured by Jewish leaders. At this time Jewish-Christians were being stoned by fellow Jews, burned at the stake, ripped limb from limb, fed alive to wild animals, and many other sadistic forms of annihilation. 1st century Jews were forced to live underground and many sought refuge in other countries like in Africa, Europe and Asia. If you look into it, there are groups in the world that can trace their lineage back this far. When I was in the middle east, I was surprised to find there were tribes that could trace their lineage back even further to the times of David, Moses, and Abraham. Many of those tribes continue to live in the same villages that were built over 4000 years ago. Family history is taken far more lightly in the modern western world. And many people walking around right now probably have Jewish blood running through them and don't even know it. With DNA genealogy testing being done recently, you can find where all of your ancestors came from and you'd probably be surprised at the results. I really want to do this, it only costs like $100 to get it done.Last edited by Footy4Jesus; 02-10-14, 10:41 AM.Comment -
Spreading lies again jew boy?Comment -
Charles Darwin Was Mentally Ill
Bill Bryson writes:
For over forty years Darwin suffered intermittently from various combinations of symptoms such as: malaise, vertigo, dizziness, muscle spasms and tremors, vomiting, cramps and colics, bloating and nocturnal intestinal gas, headaches, alterations of vision, severe tiredness, nervous exhaustion, dyspnea, skin problems such as blisters all over the scalp and eczema, crying, anxiety, sensation of impending death and loss of consciousness, fainting, tachycardia, insomnia, tinnitus, and depression.severely debilitated for long periods of time, incapable of normal life and intellectual production, staying in bed most of the time for months. Charles Darwin wrote, "Constant attacks...makes life an intolerable bother and stops all work."Darwinian scholar Michael Ruse even concluded that "Darwin himself was an invalid from the age of 30" (2003, p. 1523)George Pickering, in an extensive study of Darwin's illness, concluded that in his early thirties, Darwin became an "invalid recluse" (1974, p. 34). UCLA School of Medicine Professor Dr. Robert Pasnau (1990, p. 123) noted that Darwin also "remained ill almost continually" for the entire five years that he was on his HMS Beagle trip.Darwin suffered from several serious and incapacitating psychiatric disorders, including agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is characterized by fear of panic attacks (or actual panic attacks) when not in a psychologically safe environment, such as at home. Darwin, as is common among agoraphobiacs, also developed many additional phobias—being in crowds, being alone, or leaving home unless accompanied by his wife (Kaplan and Sadock, 1990, pp. 958-959).Agoraphobia is also frequently associated with depersonalization, a malady that Darwin also suffered (Barloon and Noyes, 1997, p. 138). A study of Darwin's mental condition by Barloon and Noyes concluded that Darwin suffered from anxiety disorders that so severely impaired his functioning that it limited his ability to leave his home, even just to meet with colleagues or other friends.Darwin's behavior also indicates that he suffered from a mental disorder. Although devoted to his wife and daughters, he "treated them as children" even after his daughters were fully grown (Picover, 1998, p. 289)
Evolutionists put their faith not in God but in the ravings of an english madman!
Life came from dead matter.
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Yes Paul never wavered and neither did most of the apostles and many christians however keep in mind that Hitler never wavered either and tens of thousands probably hundreds of thousands died with his name on their lips. In fact, at the Nuremberg trials very few even exhibited any remorse with the glaring exception of A Speer, which probably saved his life. So not swaying from a cause only shows blind allegiance nothing more, the terrorists do the same. Not sure this is a positive.
Also if you are well versed in the two testaments you must know that they teach contradictions, they teach especially in the old testament things that are considered today to be gross injustice and even murder, how can this be. How do you reconcile things in your holiest book that recommends actions that you know and everybody knows are criminal in nature? You would think that an all knowing god would not allow such inconsistencies to be written in a book that is supposedly inspired by him. Makes no sense. The bible is filled with crazy talk and ideas that are so foreign to civilized man that they are simply ignored by most christians. Yet many of those same Christians especially fundamentalists tell us that it is the inspired word of god and cannot be wrong and every single word means what it says literally. Again, makes no sense. It is a religion based on fallacy and if you don't see that you are diluted. I certainly respect your opinion and will fight for your rights but at least attempt to be honest.Last edited by dante1; 02-10-14, 11:30 AM.Comment -
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Bee Gees great group, fantastic singers but they also believed in drug filled parties, sex and rock and roll and hit men. lolComment -
I always wondered who created space,I honestly dont think anyone can explain it.Comment
