There is also the proff.  Everything that the Bible says about history has been found to be true, when found by archeologists.

Egyptian history directly contradicts Exodus and the Great Flood.

Evolution has so many problems that there is no way a pure thinking person can believe it.

Is it possible that you just simply don't understand evolution?

There's also the resurrection.  Can't be explained away no matter how hard some others try.

All I have to do is operate on the assumption that the bible isn't the truth, and suddenly the resurrection becomes very easy to explain away.

I respectfully beg to differ. Exactly what other religions have you studied? I'm Celtic Pagan, and a solitary practitioner. I observe the Sabbats and Esbats of my religion, but beyond that I do pretty much what I want. Respecting my own body, respecting Mother Earth, and the like all fall within my natural beliefs, and anything else is my choice. I can worship skyclad or not as I choose, I can keep an elaborate altar or a simple one, and I have threads of several other religious branches that mingle with my own beliefs. There isn't a single thing in the pagan religions I've studied that says you must do this at this time, or you can't wear this piece of clothing. If there is, I've not seen it.

With religion, it's all about what moves you to believe in something besides utter emptiness. For you, that may be God, or Jehovah, or whatever name He goes by for you. For me, it's the Goddess Herself, in Her many forms. For a Shinto believer, it may be Amaterasu-sama. For a Hindu person, it may be Shakti; for the Norse, Odin. The list could go on forever, but what matters most is whatever you believe is right.

Edit: Oh, and welcome! ^_^
This message was last edited by the player at 23:03, Thu 09 Oct 2008.

If we can just make things up, and make up beliefs, that doesn't really make sense. We generally are selfish, and don't really have the ability to just say whatever we want is now true, just because we say it is.

Mr or Mrs. Falkus,

Thank you.  Your comments are well appreciated, but I have to point out some flaws in your reasoning.  You are saying that one culture's history out weights another.  Sometimes this would work, but heres the problem.  First the Egyptians would have a HUGE benefit in quelling the fact that they let their whole slave population leave.  No matter how terrible the plagues where, neighboring countries would have seen this as a weekness and would have attempted to take them over.  Remember ancient people may not have had out technologies, but their motivations are all the same.  Second, if the Great Flood happened before the Egyptians were even a nation, how could they know anything of the Great Flood.

So as you can see your agruement is flawd, at least how you presented in here.  Maybe you could elaborate and put in more of what your point is.



No I understand evolution as it is understood today.  Evolution is the thereoy, of how we came to be, which is the same as the Creation thereoy.  Alot of interesting arguements could be brought up, but the web site www.answersingenesis.org has alot of good ones.

I see that there is an evolution thread, do you wish to move this there?



This arguement is being worked on in the Jesus thread, wish to comment there?

Again thank you for your time.

Thank you.  Your comments are well appreciated, but I have to point out some flaws in your reasoning.  You are saying that one culture's history out weights another.  Sometimes this would work, but heres the problem.  First the Egyptians would have a HUGE benefit in quelling the fact that they let their whole slave population leave

The numbers of Exodus indicate that six hundred thousand fighting men, plus two to three million children, wives and elderly and unspecified others. the Egpytian population at that time was just over three million, maxing at six million The loss of that many people would have thrown Egyptian economy into utter chaos, regardless of how much the government wanted to cover it up. It would have been discovered by archeological research into that era. No such evidence has ever been found. No evidence has ever been found of a massive population increase in Canaan either, since the population there, at that era was, at most, a hundred thousand.

Second, if the Great Flood happened before the Egyptians were even a nation, how could they know anything of the Great Flood.

Except that the calculated date of the great flood, according to biblican literialists, is 2345 BCE, right in the middle of the Old Kingdom period of Egyptian history. Egypt didn't suddenly cease to exist when the entire population drowned in a great flood, so we can therefore draw the conclusion that a global flood did not actually happen.

No I understand evolution as it is understood today.  Evolution is the thereoy, of how we came to be, which is the same as the Creation thereoy

...

Okay.

Evolution is a scientific theory. In science, a theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from or is supported by rigorous observations in the natural world, or by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations, and is predictive, logical, and testable. In principle, scientific theories are always tentative, and subject to corrections, inclusion in a yet wider theory, or succession.

Creationism, on the other hand, is nothing more than an unfalsifiable hypothesis (meaning you can't disprove it, which makes it worthless in science), since it can't actually be tested, is not the result of scientific observations and doesn't contribute in any meaningful way to the knowledge of humanity.

I see that there is an evolution thread, do you wish to move this there?

Sure.
This message was last edited by the player at 10:46, Fri 10 Oct 2008.

Most of those who believe in the Bible are not literalists, so your logic only applies to the small minority who believe that, not the majority of us who don't.  And those literalists have an even greater problem when they are finally told that "begat" refers to descendants, not father-son, meaning there could be hundreds of years of more between "begets."

So this affects your conclusion that a global flood did not actually happen.  That's premised on your assertion that the timing of the flood was as the literalists predict.  Since you erred in that, your conclusion that there cannot have been a global flood is also a fallacious conclusion (except as applied to the Literalists, who are the minority).
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:43, Fri 10 Oct 2008.

That was just an example, the first and simplest one. Here's a different one: There is no evidence of a global flood in the geological strata of the world. A global flood would leave an even layer of sediment at a specific point in the geological strata over the entire world. There is no such layer present.

I disagree with that Falkus. The amount of strata is evidence of a global Flood.

Have you ever seen oil and vinegar dressing? The little seasoning, vegetables, and chunks make nice little different colored layers of sediment based on weight, size, and density. It does so because of a liquid medium.

If you were to take dirt, rocks, sand and water, shake it up, it will eventually settle into layers too. Imagine water raining, creating waves, and shifting around. It would allow for layers of different densities to form.

What do we see over the entire global earth? Layers of sediment. Now seismic action allows layers to form as well, but a global flood does have some evidence.

Additionally, we know that catastrophic events seem to lead to a good chance of fossilization of creatures. The sudden death, and burying of animals in minerals that lead to fossilization helps in preserving the animal for fossilization.

An animal left to die on the exposed surface gets eaten, spread apart, absorbed, etc.

What do we see all around the world in what can only be considered large and expansive fossil sites? We see fossils. Would a global flood leave lots of fossils? Yes. That too is evidence for a global flood.

Do we see many fossils from modern times? No, not many. Don't we have lots of animals dying? Yes we do. What don't we have happening any more? We don't have any more global floods.

I know that's written pretty silly, but seriously, most fossils can be attributed to the flood.

I disagree with that Falkus. The amount of strata is evidence of a global Flood.

If the geological strata was settled in just a year, it would release 5.6 x 10²⁶ joules of energy from the physical processes involved, more than enough to vaporize all the water on earth, raising the surface temperature of the planet to 1000 degrees Celsius, and boiling most of the atmosphere off into space.

What do we see over the entire global earth? Layers of sediment. Now seismic action allows layers to form as well, but a global flood does have some evidence.

Then why isn't that evidence visible in ice core dating, which gives insight into geological events up to forty thousand years back? How come we still have ice caps, which would have broken up in a global flood, and would take hundreds of thousands of years to grow back? How come there are tree ring records over ten thousand years old with no evidence of a global flood?

I know that's written pretty silly, but seriously, most fossils can be attributed to the flood.

The Karoo formation in Africa contains eight hundred billion vertebrate fossils. A very conservative measure would is that this is one percent of the all fossils in the world. If all these animals were alive at the same time prior to the flood, as your hypothesis suggest, there would be 2100 living animals per acre of the planet, ranging from shrews to elephants. That's not possible.

I don't think that result is from observation, and I see no way to test this. Doesn't science require observation or testability?

Conflict doesn't mean there is no evidence for a Flood. You're talking about two different things. You stated there is no evidence for the flood in the geological strata. I've pointed out there is evidence for it in the strata. Conflict doesn't mean there is no evidence.


I'd like for you to show me the math you use to come to this conclusion.

I'd suggest moving this to another threat, guys.  Perhaps the "errors or accusations of errors thread?"  I think this one is better left as a place to simply state beliefs, and debates about them can go on in other threads.

Here here, there is the Noah thread at the bottom of the thread's list.

Since we have a few new members, I thought I'd bump this thread, in case any wanted to share their views.

Why do I believe in what I believe?

I believe that humankind can be transformed, as an article of faith.  Logically, the religion that transforms the highest percentage of its adherents into saints is the most true.

Christianity started off well.  The true miracle of the New Testament isn't the resurrection of Christ, it was the transformation of Saul on the road to Damascus.  But since then, there have been very few Christians who exemplify this example.  I have met true saints, people who are fonts of the human spirit, and some of them were Christian.  But more were something else.

Never really discussed what I believed.  Simply because I only believe a few things.

1. That the most basic of morality is influenced by experiences of stick and carrot, whether natural or human-applied. To feel aversion from taking an action is to have had a negative experience beforehand with a similar situation.

2. That we are self-conscious is not the most admirable trait; that we are conscious of others as equal to ourselves is.  Without this, we could not be empathic; we would feel no regret, no sympathy, no compassion. We would not feel the pains of others, and would be limited only to our personal stick and carrot.

3. Teaching contrary to Empathy leads to Apathy, and leads to the thinking of others as lesser than ourselves.
-------------------

Why do I believe these things?  Because all hate I have seen has resulted from somebody thinking less of somebody else.

To think of a person or people as less than oneself is to plant the seeds of hatred.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:09, Sat 20 June 2009.

First and foremost, I have a personal, undeniable witness of the Truth*.

Second, as supporting evidence, the more I learn of science, philosophy, etc. The more it all fits together. I should reiterate that I can't base my belief on this fact, because the sciences and human study is imperfect. Thus, there can be mistakes in understanding and in what is presented as truth. But much of it obviously fits, and that body of knowledge serves as good supporting evidence to my belief.

*I capitalize truth here to state my belief that there is an underlying truth of all things and that science, religion, and any other approach to gaining understanding will agree perfectly at this truth.

I guess it comes down to this:  I have tested what I have understood about God and His word and found it to be true.  I have understood enough and tested enough of it to be true that I can accept what I do not understand to be true, as well.  This is because one of the things I have tested and found true is that what is hidden will be revealed in due time.

I think I can add one more statement of belief at this time.

God, Gods, or no Gods; Your God, my God, his God, it's all irrelevant to me. Death doesn't bother me, and neither does the end of Life.  The only thing that is good in life is how you feel, so the only good that an Afterlife could give is to continue to feel.

Some religions have dual Afterlives, one of Feel-Goods and another of Feel-Bads.  It's usually assumed by the people who remind you of their Afterlifes that you would want to go to the Feel-Good place instead of the Feel-Bad place.

If there is an afterlife or afterlives, I don't care whether I end up in a Feel-Bad or a Feel-Good.  I have a Feeling that comes from my memories, and it's a Feeling of Love, Sadness, Despair, and Agony all mixed together to become one; sometimes it's stronger, sometimes I don't feel it at all, but it never goes away. I don't particularly want it to, and I welcome the periods where it's strongest even as I lay on the floor paralyzed by emotion.

No Feel-Good place could take it away, and no Feel-Bad place could conjure a painful enough distraction.

I don't really think there is an afterlife but I sometimes hope there is; I never want to stop feeling this horrible pain, and if this is all there is, it will lose all of its beauty.

With all due respect, that's a load of mumbo jumbo.  You cannot objectively test for proof of god, or any of the other things that we need religion and philosophy for.  Could you publish your findings?  Show me your tests and statistics?  Or are they just what you feel based on experience?

If it's just personal experience, that's fine for you!  You found something that works for you, and that's great!  But don't assume it must also be true for everyone else without numbers to back you up.

In my case, I've known far too many christians who are jerks to believe that being christian transforms you spiritually in any way.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:41, Sun 27 Sept 2009.

Grandmaster, this is "Why do I believe what I believe" not "Why I think you should believe what I believe".

;) that theme is left to the rest of the Community Chat. Of course these are personal and subjective.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:08, Sun 27 Sept 2009.

On further thought, I also think I should mention here that not only do I, as someone who relies on Empirical evidence for whether or not to accept a concept, but I also heavily distrust testimony and eyewitness accounts.

It'd be one thing if we were incapable of fooling ourselves and others, didn't hallucinate, didn't have overactive imaginations, and couldn't lie.  But we are not so fortunate.

This is equal for all things; I give testimony for Jesus performing Miracles or entering hearts as much credence as I might give testimony to weight-loss scams, pyramid schemes, alien abduction survivors, or the people David Blaine does card tricks on.

If somebody in a scientific field was presenting something as a hypothesis because "he just knew it had to be right", I might give him the benefit of the doubt and hear him out.

But if when we came to the point where we needed to test the hypothesis and he instead recounted an eyewitness account of it working, I'd need to have some way to share the eyewitness's perspective (hopefully through Audio-Video).

Even then, I would need to test the hypothesis myself before I accepted it tentatively until new evidence came to be.
--------------------------------------------------------

To summarize,

1) Extraordinary claims require Extraordinary evidence.

2) Testimony of any kind carries the least weight of any evidence given the fallibility of mind and our nature to make shit up when we don't know how something happened.

3) If a company has a "Testimonials" on it's website, I tend to take my business elsewhere if I haven't already sampled and liked the product they're offering.

Here is an example scenario of what I'm trying to convey in another thread:

Do you believe in love?
Do you believe in a love that is separate from sexual desire?

Doesn't matter if it's yes or no, more important is the why of the matter. Perhaps even the history of your Why as well, how it's changed.

I'd never felt love until I was around 18, when I met somebody that I really liked, through this site, no less. Before then I didn't really care one way or another about love.  It seemed very unimportant to me, not really worth my time.

Once I had felt it though, I couldn't get my mind off of it, and I could never remember being so happy. Unfortunately, I might have overembellished everything in my mind, as near the end (over the course of about two years) to my utter dismay we had gone from speaking nearly every day to her calling me a stalker.

I was bed-ridden for six months in severe suicidal depression (I think I was still posting on here, although I can't really remember). I still have the occasional breakdown these 3-4 years later, but I'm certainly a lot better than I was. At those points in my life my belief was that true love did exist, and that I had ruined it.


Today, I don't really believe that there is such a thing as true, platonic love, due to further contemplation on the matter and a little public exposure to actual people and relationships. However, this realization does not settle well with me, so you might say that I'm suffering that reboot I was speaking of.

However, I'm not really sure I'd be able to deal with giving up the emotions I felt, which you might say are my "evidence" of a platonic love.  But I'm realistic about the matter; I doubt anybody shares the same feelings as I do, and since I could never settle for a lesser love I've taken personal vows of celibacy.
----------------

When it comes to True Love, I am of the Witness Philosophy.

Hey I have seen David Blaine perform and he really does do those tricks.

Ironically I have also had an abduction experience which i know for a fact didn't actually happen, but it still messes with me in some ways because it feels real even knowing it is not, at least on a physical level, real. On a mystic/psychological level it is apparently all too real.

And that final point is where we woudl begin to get into what I believe and why I believe it, except that i'm not going to actually go there except to say that it is personal and it doesn't share the same level of 'belief' or 'reality' as do scientific principles and testable facts.

And there are some things between A and B as well.

The mouseover text for the original image says, "Statistics suggest that there should be tons of alien encounter stories, and in practice there are tons of alien encounter stories. This is known as Fermi's Lack-of-a-Paradox."

I suspect that CsubR is actually much higher and some of the later numbers lower *because* like I said from my own experience, it seems to be  avery real *psychological* experience, and I, like most other 'abductees' appear to be sane in every other way, or at least every other way that relates (I do have attention deficit disorder, but I think the influence of that can be disregarded). From my experience I would guess that alien abduction phenominon is frequently a way that the subconcious mind deal with uncertainty and anxiety when unexplained changes are occuring within the body- puberty and middle age seem to be when most of teh experiences occur and many seem to also center, time wise, on previously undiagnosed illnesses. Combine that with the common experience that teh aliens invade or alter teh persons body and I think what may be manifesting is a sort of 'early warning' of bodily changes that the person is anxious about.

I'm still affraid of needles though.