Don't dictate beliefs

[KJV]

Thinking wrote:

<quoted text>Hoyle was wrong.

Bottom line I agree.

[KJV]

It aint necessarily so wrote:

<quoted text>Correct. What would you prefer in the absence of a god? A dictator dictating moral law? Obeying an ancient book?

Yes as I pointed out that killing humans and eating them is not wrong in some cultures with out God.

Obeying Gods morals is not as bad as you think. And mans morals with out God can get pretty rough.

[Sambrotherofneph i]

derek4 wrote:

How School Science Lies:
http://www.google.com/url...
[Too much there to post, lol. Click the link yourselves, and read it, or scroll on by like all the others you say you scroll past and then specifically try to dispute parts you've obviously read, lol. Don't care what you do, peabrains.....]

Okay, maybe we didn't have everything explained to us crystal clear because we were trying to cover a large breadth of information. I still think I benefited from learning how to think scientifically.
Though, I don't think the concepts of evolution and creation are incompatible either. Personally, I don't know EXACTLY how God created the earth and all its inhabitants and I don't think there is anyone on this earth that knows exactly how it was done. I'm not ruling out anything...perhaps in fear of denying the beautiful harmonies observed in nature that are discovered by science, but created by God.

I see science as a pursuit of knowledge, truth, and intellectual enlightenment. However, in my opinion, truth and knowledge can not be truly appreciated until it is illuminated by the fire of faith from within.

Yes, "science" has had some mistakes, but so has organized religion, simply because as long as fallible men are involved, so will the organization be fallible. <= That is why we need to follow our own faith experiments and discovery to confirm what we are taught with revelation and confirmation from God.

[KJV]

It aint necessarily so wrote:

<quoted text>We don't care who calls themselves an atheist. Nor agnostic, freethinker, skeptic, irreligious, secularist, or humanist - just as long as they are not thralls for the church. We don't want people voting according to what they think Jesus wants, or hating whomever they believe Jesus hates.

And satanists are theists.

Yes they are! Yet a few pages back some atheist was trying to claim a person that hated God was an atheist.
Hence my post. Hating God means you're a Theist not an atheist.

[KJV]

It aint necessarily so wrote:

<quoted text>Of course he lied. He was one that claimed that Dawkins said those words, not Mathias.

Even so, Dim is responsible for the content that he introduces. Absent any disclaimer, his endorsement of it is implied.

Furthermore, he reposted the material several more times after being told that he was lying. He doesn't give a crap.

KJV wrote, "I've seen no proof from you or anyone that Dawkins did not say those things.
"

You see what you want to see.

The words he attributed to Dawkins didn't appear anywhere that Dawkins' words are normally found. This is my exposure of Dim's lying, one of several : http://www.topix.com/forum/religion/atheism/T...

In it is a link to a Google search of the words that Dim dishonestly attributed to Dawkins. At the time, it got only one hit - Mathias' page. Now, it has two - Mathias' page and this thread.

What was the proof that Jefferson did not write the words on the billboard attributed to him? Nothing more than that there was no record of the words where they ought to have been found had they been Jefferson's. That is the same argument being levied against Dim's deception as well.

Well I'm backing out of this because I do not wish to invest the time to find out if Dawkins said those words or not. I do see the article and that Mathias was the one that appeared to make those statements.

[KJV]

Richardfs wrote:

<quoted text>And we know how reliable Conservapedia is.

Ok how about Encyclopedia Britannica?

"Encyclopedia Britannica stated that 2.3% of the world's population consists of individuals who profess "atheism, skepticism, disbelief, or irreligion"

Or how about Wikipedia?

"According to one estimate, atheists make up about 2.3% of the world's population"

Or Pew?

"Pew Forum survey found that the atheist population in the United States was 1.6% of the American population."

[Thinking]

Well he did end up a believer after studying the carbon cycle, so he died a tw*t.

KJV wrote:

<quoted text>
Bottom line I agree.

[KJV]

It aint necessarily so wrote:

<quoted text>Dream on. This is exactly backwards.

Most theists are gnostic theists. They tell us that they know for an ironclad fact that their god exists.

They see him everywhere they look, and offer the world as evidence to the rest of us that they are correct. They say that their god has spoken to them.

And they say that we can see their god too, but that we hate him and are trying to avoid accountability with him.

Contrarily, most atheists simply reject these claims without making any positive assertion about gods being impossible or nonexistent. I posted exactly that yesterday with reference to intelligent design:

God Himself wrote: "Why couldn't natural intelligence cause the formation of the universe by intelligently designing; even by evolution in as much as it is a process that can be used to create intelligently?"

IANS replied: "I can't say that it couldn't have, and I don't."
http://www.topix.com/forum/topstories/TOCO8TE...

"most atheists simply reject these claims without making any positive assertion about gods being impossible or nonexistent"

This wrong.

Merriam - Webster.
athe·ist\ˈā-thē-ist\
noun
: one who believes that there is no deity

One who believes is a positive assertion

[Aerobatty]

Sambrotherofnephi wrote:

<quoted text>Yup, you got it. There are lots of prophets out there....true ones, false ones, ones who say they have seen God, and ones who simply have a testimony of Christ. It all depends on how you define a "prophet."

Money left after overhead and expenses.

[KJV]

It aint necessarily so wrote:

<quoted text>Then how about a god? What are the odds of the pieces of a god finding one another without having even the help of a wind? How much time would that require?

And how could such a thing be a first cause? Assorted laws or forces must have existed for that to happen, and to maintain the god intact.

Let me guess: no rules or reason applies to your god. It simply transcends these problems because you need it to and say so.

God exist in a dimension you can't imagine. So it would be impossible to guess how God who is outside of time always existed. You can't even grasp what outside of time would be like even though we pretty much know it exist.

[Sambrotherofneph i]

Aerobatty wrote:

<quoted text>
Money left after overhead and expenses.

You speak my language!

Though I wouldn't say that's a cut and dry definition depending on the timing, contracts, current obligations and contingent liabilities. It depends on the instance. For example if you are using cost recovery you can't recognize a gain or profit until cash is collected in excess of the costs. In the instance of an installment sale don't recognize a gain or profit until cash is collected, in which case you recognize the cash collected minus the interest expense and apply an amount of the remaining cash to differed gain in a manner proportionate to your gross profit percentage. And don't get me started on the percent of completion method of recognizing revenue (profit). In some cases, depending on engineer estimates in the percent of completion method, one year you might have a "profit" on the project but the next year you have to recognize a loss in excess of your profit from the prior year...which makes you wonder if you really had a profit anyway because your assumptions were wrong.

[KJV]

Adam wrote:

<quoted text>Another thought for KJV. An aeroplane is not assembled by one super powerful person, but a team of people. Who is to say the universe was not created by a collection of lesser gods. Bet he hadnt considered that possibility ;)

The 747 thing has to do with the possibility of randomness given enough time. So given enough time it is mathematically possible for a tornado to fly though a junk yard and create a perfect 747.

As far as a God or many gods I find my faith in the bible with all its fulfilled prophets and proven recorded history.

[KJV]

Adam wrote:

<quoted text>Another thought for KJV. An aeroplane is not assembled by one super powerful person, but a team of people. Who is to say the universe was not created by a collection of lesser gods. Bet he hadnt considered that possibility ;)

Along those lines let me ask you this:
If is possible to alway cut the distance between your hand and a ball. then is it possible to ever actually touch that ball?

[Thinking]

Define, in this context, "touch".

KJV wrote:

<quoted text>
Along those lines let me ask you this:
If is possible to alway cut the distance between your hand and a ball. then is it possible to ever actually touch that ball?

[KJV]

Adam wrote:

Survey of religious belief in the UK
http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/644941...

One interesting finding "only 54% of the population say they are Christian, and of these, only 35% could correctly identify the first book of the New Testament."

What is clear is that most people wh call themselves Christian are not Christians, because they do not believe in the teachings of Christianity.

The CIA World Factbook gives the world population as 7,021,836,029 (July 2012 est.) and the distribution of religions as

Christian 33.35%(of which Roman Catholic 16.83%, Protestant 6.08%, Orthodox 4.03%, Anglican 1.26%), Muslim 22.43%,
Hindu 13.78%,
Buddhist 7.13%,
Sikh 0.36%,
Jewish 0.21%,
Baha'i 0.11%,
other religions 11.17%,
non-religious 9.42%,
atheists 2.04%.

Please note that Non-religions is a separate category then atheist. Why?
Because they are not interchangeable!

[KJV]

It aint necessarily so wrote:

<quoted text>KJV wrote, "Ah I see you are unfamiliar with the tornado / 747 argument or maybe discussion would be a better word for it.
You see it's basically goes like this. For the odds of nature to have created everything from more or less nothing would be far lower than a tornado going though a junk yard and leaving behind a perfectly built 747."

If he were unfamiliar with that fallacy, he wouldn't have mentioned Fred Hoyle in his post:

"Hoyle's Fallacy, sometimes called the junkyard tornado, is a term for Fred Hoyle's statistical analysis applied to evolutionary origins, in which he compares the probability of cellular life evolving to the chance of a tornado "sweeping through a junkyard" and assembling a functional aeroplane."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoyle%27s_fallac...

Knowing something is not the same as understanding it that's why.

He did say this:
"Thinking wrote:
Why would it? A jet is designed"

[Thinking]

Don't you know any non-religious people that believe in something spiritual?

KJV wrote:

<quoted text>
Please note that Non-religions is a separate category then atheist. Why?
Because they are not interchangeable!

[KJV]

It aint necessarily so wrote:

Actually, your argument is easily debunked with a reductio ad absurdum argument which seeks to demonstrate that a statement is ... false by showing that a false, untenable, or absurd result follows from its acceptance.

In this case, you are arguing for the existence of a god based on the unlikeliness of a 747 (or a cell) existing undesigned, and offering this as evidence that an infinitely more complex entity must exist to account for it.

This is usually rebutted by some form of special pleading that basically says, "You can't use my argument because [insert irrelevant reason and unsupported claim here]"

I'm arguing that all there is. Look out into space as far as man can and look at life on earth all of it. How could it all have been created by a roll of the dice billions and billions of times. I don't think so and you do.

[Thinking]

And?

You won't get a cigarette paper between my logic and IANS'

KJV wrote:

<quoted text>
Knowing something is not the same as understanding it that's why.
He did say this:
"Thinking wrote:
Why would it? A jet is designed"

[Thinking]

So why the issue with life without a god?

KJV wrote:

<quoted text>
The 747 thing has to do with the possibility of randomness given enough time. So given enough time it is mathematically possible for a tornado to fly though a junk yard and create a perfect 747.