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...Do you see my point yet? You're still defining ancient slavery by the same terms as recent slavery. You are also not paying any attention to our answers. By the way, you do understand how children come to be, right? You are completely misunderstanding the context of pretty much the entire case. For one, and this is true even to this day, Jews live in a very tightly-knit community. Everyone knows who is married to whom, so it stands to reason that things like who raped whom and who had sex with whom aren't exactly things one can hide. I stand by what I said earlier. You don't get to impose your own morality on the One who created it to begin with, no matter what you may think of Him. |
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I disagree. The first definition of the word "religion" given by the link I posted (to dictionary.com no less) is "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe." Atheists believe the universe's purpose, if any, is to be, that it was caused by random chance, and that it evolves slowly over trillions of years. I am not misusing the word at all, and the fact that atheism is built on blind faith in a dead man who stayed dead merely proves my point further. Quote:
I guess, from my own point of view, it would be better if we all remembered our place. |
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I'm not trying to attack your beliefs, I'm just defending mine. |
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Journals equivocally support evolution, not deny it. Whilst I don't think linking specific journals and articles would help, here's some quick stats I could come up with using my own scholar.google.co.uk searches. > "Evidence for Evolution" - 9,050 hits > "Evidence against Evolution" - 251 hits (<3%) This covers both scientific and non-scientific journals (philosophical journals, for instance). I'm afraid if you haven't found this yourself, you perhaps haven't looked in the right places, but from this the numbers are fairly clear. |
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If that sounds ridiculous to you, that's because it is. All that can possibly result from such an experiment is rubble, potentially dust if we waited long enough. If we add design to the equation, however, presto! Life! Thank science for the addition of information! Except that for design, you require a Designer, which is an idea you and every other secularist seems to hate. Oh well. By the way, since when does the majority dictate what is true? If a society as a whole unanimously decided that 1+1=892365892375892738947293857892345789023748923798523, would that make it true? Of course not. I think here I can refer back to the reference to Galileo in the thread about homosexuality. Furthermore, as a biology teacher, how do you explain the existence of animals such as the beaver or giraffe from an evolutionary standpoint? The way I see it, they would have had to have been created as they are today in order to survive at all. Evolution claims small changes happened over time, but if that's true, these animals couldn't have survived at all. Anyone who supports evolution either does so blindly or hasn't looked at the ridiculous assumptions made by the theory itself. I do not state this as an insult, but as a fact, no more or less charged than "1+1=2." |
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I see you imply that your god is where logic comes from. That a vast number of people live and have lived their lives according to it without ever having heard of your god is evidence enough that the two are unrelated. Naturalistic atheism? What does that mean? Just so we are clear, atheism means without a god. Nothing more. To draw a parable, let's say Christians watch The Amazing Race on television. Catholics watch Real Housewives of Atlanta. Jews watch House of Cards. Atheism is the equivalent of turning the television off. |
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I'm Jewish, and I only believe in God because I like the feeling of someone higher than me keeping me in check. That doesn't mean I'm a diehard believer, nor does it mean I'm gonna shove god up your throat. I like the feeling that I'm not any center of power, but someone else might be. HOWEVER, I don't beleive in Jesus. I never really did. Maybe this is a bit perplexing or something, I don't know, but I just never believed that someone like that existed. I believe in God in that one sense, and one sense only--that someone with some sort of power is watching over me. But only the power, not all that other stuff in the bible, etc, just that one thought.
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But then we could talk about how Scientists are working to replicate such a thing. They have already found that cell membranes can form spontaneously from their component molecules to form spherical 'bubbles' in the correct conditions. We also know that DNA can operate on an incredibly simple level. I won't go as far to say science can "prove" how life started, but we're slowly connecting together the dots. You're suggesting that rock (not what kind of rock, but lets say calcium carbonate in general) is going to spontaneously gain atoms, deconstruct its molecules and recombine to form a rabbit. You have some huge misconceptions about what Scientists put forth as the beginning of the life - they start incredibly small. Quote:
I have a degree in Biology, I teach it, I still study further in my own time. How can I possibly be looking at this 'blindly' when you're refuting Science that the vast majority of Scientists agree on. In the UK knowledge of Evolution and Creationism are both covered by the curriculum. I believe I've been dealt a fairly balanced hand when it comes to information. Interestingly, I don't know any Christians IRL who outright deny Evolution or believe in Creationism as in The Bible. |
maybe this will help:
We Were Once Gods By Leo We were once Gods, living high in the mountain tops Free of order, roaming the free land, The day was young, but it had yet to grow, Giving time the opening to run aimlessly But then the day grew old, Time limited itself, order became my captor holding me with its bare hands as time marks my new boundaries, I now sit on a flat land with no ups and downs Restricted to travel a day's worth abroad my new land, Never again are we to reach our beloved land The mountains were high And the Greenland was low, Never again we were to access our beloved land, Foreign to us as we now know it, But still strong in our roots To only serve as a reminder to what kind of life we once lived, As our only option we helped these new Gods grow, Nurturing the Gods because they remind us of what was once ours, For we too were once in their land, As we had fallen from the mountain tops, They will do accordingly, Side by side in the land where time age, No longer in the Mountains where youth persist For this is the life of us Gods |
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Also, I agree that they should have a religious studies class. But you do realize that would cause more people to become Atheists, right? I was a Christian until I actually started reading the bible and realized it was complete nonsense. I was a Christian cause I was raised to be one, then I became my own person and started actually thinking critically about things. Disregarding that, religion has no place in a science class. Science is our understanding of the world through facts, logic, and comprehension. Religion is based on faith, not facts. |
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Actually, no it's not. If the Bible is true, then it's also a fact that Adam and Eve were the first human beings. They'd teach all of their children about God and morality and why it's based on Him and everything else, and that would continue all the way down until about Noah's time. Then the flood happens, and Noah's family repeats the lessons until we get to Exodus, and you can just read the Bible to see the rest. Atheism is just another example of watching the TV rather than going outside, actually. Quote:
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So, because evolution is wrong, why do we exist? We have that answered in Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Quote:
I would say it would be more likely people would become Christians, actually. It's simply too easy to poke holes in any other worldview. You claim to have come to atheism through reason, but in fact you've misled yourself. |
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Just in case readers don't know what I mean by "worldview" here, it's a set of presuppositions that are necessary to be. At any rate, because the Christian worldview better explains the abstract, because the empirical evidence confirms the Bible is accurate, and because I refuse to accept assumptions that are contradicted by the empirical evidence, I am a Christian and a creationist. Earlier, you said you didn't have a reason to believe God exists. I'll refer again to Pascal's wager as a reason you do have: it's the safer bet. |
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I believe this is referred to as the "embarrassment principle." The church simply couldn't survive if the Resurrection could be proven to be an error. Paul even points that out in the Bible itself. And yet, Christianity survives. The only logical answer for that is the Bible is correct, and if that's true, that changes everything. Suddenly it's no longer a question whether homosexuality is or is not natural, to use the topic's example. Consider Pascal's wager a starting point. I'm sure someone with a mind as inquiring as yours (and that's a good thing) would find plenty of additional reasons. Also, thank you very much for being as courteous throughout all of this as I should have been. I apologize for my rudeness earlier. Hopefully there will be no hard feelings, whether from those who posted or from the person deleting posts with comments like "let's not stoop to his level." |
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Being an atheist only means you dont believe in any gods. It doesn't matter what else you believe but that. How has god proven himself, by the way? What are the facts that prove Christianity is real? Almost everything in the bible has been proven to be wrong or impossible in one way or another. No lol. We're not living in the 14th century anymore. We are entering a new age of enlightenment. Atheism is rising in numbers. Because people have more access to information and realize that religion is a load of bull. Religion can't be used to control people as much anymore. If you teach someone about the similarities between Christianity and the older Greek religions, they'll realize that they are all fairy tales. With as much access to information, more people are becoming rational thinkers especially when exposed to people who come up with irrefutable arguments like Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins. |
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Your evaluation of the Bible demonstrates that you haven't really done any research on it at all. I have posted on this thread and/or the homosexuality thread about prophesies that were fulfilled, how science confirms what the Bible says happened, and so forth. We're living in the 21st century, and yet we still hold to things like "murder is wrong" and "do to others as you'd have them treat you," which are concepts from much farther back than the 14th century. Just because we understand more of God's creation doesn't mean we don't need God anymore, and your claim of the opposite flies in the face of all human progress in terms of both science and morality. Quote:
No, that's not too much to ask. However, I've been going over logical examinations of the Bible versus several other worldviews, so I'd say you should read those over again and think about it. |
So, I'm just going to share my views a bit. I identify myself as an agnostic theist. Basically what this means is that I believe there is a higher power beyond our comprehension, I believe in the soul and I believe that there's a higher plane of existence after death. I also acknowledge that these are beliefs. I fully admit that I cannot prove the existence of God and I acknowledge that, like all beliefs, my belief in a higher power may be false.
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I simply think that if you are spiritually inclined, you will find something to assuage your fears and give you understanding, release or control, depending on what you are looking for. There is nothing wrong with that. I prefer to analyse the world without a spiritual viewpoint and I think that works fine for me. I accept the possibility of being wrong or not seeing wonders other might, but I just have little interest in things I cannot measure. I leave the evaluation of miracles to those more qualified to understand the subject - there may be a heavenly reason why statues of the Virgin Mary cry/bleed, there might not be. I'm not particularly interested beyond simple curiosity.
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Let's discuss this. Do you believe hell really exists, or is this just a concept created with the purpose of striking fear into non-believers or something? |
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