When I was a little boy, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised, the Lord, in his wisdom, doesn't work that way. So I just stole one and asked Him to forgive me.

How about that...Mel Gibson is a member of our forum. Whod'a thunk it?

Two men claim they're Jesus.  One of them must be wrong...

yorolpal
How about that...Mel Gibson is a member of our forum. Whod'a thunk it?

I thought he owned the forum now.
 
And Cakewalk
 
And I'm still waiting for my free Les Paul

Not if they both hail from Mexico.

Hey Straummy...I just picked up the Evil Robot profile from the AmpFactory. PM me ifn ya don't have it already and I'll send it your way. It's loverly!


Sorry fellers...you too Mel...CARRY ON!

BigBen


The utter incompatibility of Darwinian evolution and Sacred Scripture must be recognized. If belief in Adam and Eve is destroyed, then the entire Catholic Faith falls to pieces.
 
Because, if evolution is true then Adam and Eve did not even exist.
If Adam and Eve did not exist, then there is no such thing as original sin.
If there's no such thing as original sin, there is no need to be redeemed from original sin.
If there is no need for a redeemer, then there is no need for the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity to become Man and die on the Cross for our sins.
If there is no such thing as the Sacrifice of the Cross then there is no such thing as the sacrifice of the Mass, etc., etc., etc.

To be honest with you Ben, I just about agree with everything you have written in this particular passage.
 
And mostly for the exact same reasons you outline.
 
It's just that we come to a completely different conclusion based on those statements.
 
 

BigBen
 
Evolution: Critical for the Atheist Agenda
 
 

 
It's important, but not critical.
 
It's important because it destroys the concept that human beings (and all other forms of life) were created spontaneously as opposed to having evolved from earlier forms of life. It also destroys the belief that organisms are unchanging (and therefore "perfect").
 
Evolution also goes a long way in showing why 98% of all species that have ever existed have become extinct; I've never heard a cogent argument from a creationist to explain why god would allow the vast majority of his "perfect" organic creations to die out.
 
Care to try?
 
Plus, crucially, evolution does not explain how life began on Earth, so your argument that it is critical is a little over-egging the pudding. As an atheist, I don't believe in the divine creation of life, or of the universe for that matter. But that doesn't mean I do know how either began. It's likely that one day we will know the answers to these questions, and it's probably that the mechanics of these events will prove to be much more amazing, awe-inspiring and beautiful than simply saying "god did it".
 
 
 

BigBen
 
Why is evolution kept alive? Why are we not told that Darwinism is dead? That there is devastating evidence against the theory of evolution? Because ^___ if evolution is taken away, practically every major world view of our modern day will have nothing to support it and will come crashing to the ground. Modernism. Communism. Secular Humanism. Eugenics. The New Age Movement and even the atheistic United Nations ^___ are all based upon the theory of evolution and could not survive without it. Take evolution away, and it would destroy the entire godless superstructure of our modern world in which all these erroneous ideas and institutions reign supreme.
 
The only explanation for the endless propagation of this unscientific theory, is that evolution is actually a pre-scientific prejudice serving not as a scientific end, but rather, a religious end ^___ the uprooting of the Christian belief in Creation and the moral order based on it. Evolution is not an affirmation of scientific fact, it is a declaration of war against Christ, His Church and Christian civilization.

 
This comes down to selective acceptance by believers.
 
You wouldn't disagree, I'm sure, that the earth is a sphere and not flat? And that the moon orbits the earth? And that the earth and the other planets in our solar system orbit the sun? Now, I'd ask you why you believe that?
 
I may be wrong of course, but I'm guessing you haven't personally compiled the relevant data from observing the night sky and entered said data into Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion?
 
But you still believe these facts to be true, don't you?
 
And to put it bluntly, you probably believe them because 'some scientists' said so?
 
Do you not wonder why there isn't a conspiracy to hide these facts from us?
 
Selective acceptance means that most devout believers and religious fundamentalists choose to accept and believe a whole raft of scientific findings and theories - except those that disagree with their holy books. Books that were written before knowledge of these facts could have been known. Further to which, I contend that these books were written by normal, mortal human beings, which perfectly explains why this (unknown) knowledge was not included. It also explains why these books do include information that is complete scientific gibberish, and are the product of nothing greater than stone age conjecture and explanation.
 
I would imagine there is a graph out there that shows a pretty close relationship between how literally one interprets one's holy book and the number of scientific principles and laws one refuses to accept.
 
The problem here is that it's nothing new. As science has progressively pushed aside the mists of ignorance, the fewer the explanations of natural phenomena found in sacred texts remain relevant. The 'god of the gaps' is finding less and less of that mist to hide in.
 
===================================
 
As an aside, I'm sure that you've read that evolution, generally speaking, is a very slow process. This is why the state of certain organisms appears to remain unchanged, even after very long periods of study.
 
Anyway, I'm assuming by your rhetoric that you are a creationist (if I'm wrong, I apologise for wrongly typecasting you thus), and would ask you to consider, and maybe explain, the following observations.
 
It's a well-known and accepted fact that certain species of bacteria often become immune or resistant to the effects of certain antibiotics. In the case of some organisms, this transition, from a state where an antibiotic has the effect of killing or rendering harmless almost 100% of a species, to a state where the antibiotic has no effect on nearly 100% of the species can happen in just a matter of years, or even months, in some cases.
 
Scientific scrutiny reveals that in such cases, the ability to become immune to a certain antibiotic is down to a change in the fundamental physiology of the bacteria, which in turn is evidenced by a change in the genetic makeup of the organism's DNA.
 
Bacteria don't 'decide' to become immune on an organism by organism basis - it happens through a completely understandable and explicable process.
 
Evolution explains this process perfectly.
 
So how would you, as a creationist (who dismisses evolution) explain what is going on here?
 
And please don't tell me that you don't know - remember it's you, and your bible, that, in your opinion, has all the answers.

Hitchens knew all religious texts back to front. Dawkins has never read the Koran.
 
Hitchens should be commended for "knowing thine enemy", Dawkins wshould be commended for not wasting his time I suppose.
 
Jesus Christ is a New Testament character BTW. 
 
Much social structure came from the bible- like it or not, you were raised on Christian ethics guys....

 
Hi Tim, and sorry for my delay in replying to your post until now.
 
 

Starise
 I'm really upset. I thought there were fairies. The flying kind *ahem*. I guess that might depend on what you call a fairy...never mind...                        
  
 OK I want to comment but still keep it not unfunny. That's probably not possible under the current circumstances. Strummy I'm sure we could have some real humdinger discussions here with me being an apologist and all that. I do think that the current trend in Atheism tends toward a movement that sure looks like a religion from the outside looking in. With Hitchens, Dawkins and a few others being the leaders. Like Darwin influenced contemporary scientific thought on origins so do the likes of Hitchens and Dawkins influence moral thought or the lack therof. Mind you I'm not an Atheist and I'm looking from the outside in and it sure looks a lot like a religion to me.JMO.  A movement with leaders that are determining the general moral direction of an unsaid number of people.
  

 
Tim, I don’t particularly enjoy participating in this kind of discussion by simply quoting others, but I hope you’ll forgive me on this occasion if I post the exact words of A.C. Grayling, whose use of the ‘stamp-collecting’ analogy, I believe, answers your argument perfectly.
 
It’s not exactly how I’d put it myself, but it does convey the sentiment more eloquently that ever I could.
 
Anyway, here it is, taken directly from his excellent book “The God Argument”:
 
Theistic claims that supernatural agency exists in the universe derive from ancient traditions of belief. The word 'atheist' is a theist's term for a person who does not share such beliefs. Theists think that atheists have a belief or set of beliefs, just as theists do but in the opposite sense, about theism-related questions. This is a mistake; atheists certainly have beliefs about many things, but they are not 'theistic-subject-matter-related beliefs' in any but a single negative sense. For atheism is the absence of 'theistic-subject-matter-related' belief. Although it is true that 'absence of belief in supernatural agency' is functionally equivalent to 'belief in the absence of supernatural agency', theists concentrate on the latter formulation in order to make atheism a positive as opposed to a privative thesis with regard to theistic-subject-matter-related matters. This is what makes theists think they are in a kind of belief football match, with opposing sets of beliefs vying for our allegiance. What is happening is that the theists are rushing about the park kicking the ball, but the atheists are not playing. They are not even on the field; they are in the stands, arguing that this particular game should not be taking place at all.
 
The correct characterisation of the opposition between theism and atheism is therefore this: the theist has existential beliefs, metaphysical beliefs, of a certain distinctive kind; and the atheist does not share them, and therefore does not even begin to enter the domain of discourse in which these beliefs have their life and content. Rather — to use a by now familiar simile, but it exactly captures the point - atheism is to theism as not collecting stamps is to stamp-collecting. Not collecting stamps is not a hobby. It says nothing about the non-stamp-collector's other hobbies or interests. It denotes only the open-ended and negative state of not-collecting-stamps. To think of non-stamp-collectors as theists think of atheists, stamp-collectors would have to think that non-stamp-collectors have stamp interests of (so to speak) a positively negative kind; that they share their own obsessions and interests about stamps but in reverse, for example in the form of hating stamps, deliberately doing stamp-related non-stamp-collecting things, and the like.
 
The incoherence of the stamp-collector's attitude to the non-stamp-collector as thus described shows why 'atheism' is a misleading term, and why a fortiori expressions like 'militant atheist' and 'fundamentalist atheist' so miss the point. How could someone be a militant non-stamp-collector? Since atheists are equally dismissive of claims to the effect that fairies and goblins exist and have an influence on human affairs, why not call them afairyists or agoblinists instead? From the atheist's point of view, talk of goblins has an exact parity with talk of gods and goddesses.
 
The accusations of militancy — which at least some religious people take pride in for themselves: think of 'onward Christian soldiers' and 'the church militant' and the like — does however apply to secularism. Some secularists are decidedly robust in their argument that religion should be kept out of government and education, as indeed the constitutions of such states as the United States and Turkey require. The militancy applies to the vigour with which the principle of secularism is asserted, not the principle itself.
 
The standard secularist position is this: that religions and religious attitudes (however much one disagrees with them and thinks them mistaken, retrogressive, oppressive and sometimes downright dangerous) are entitled to exist and be expressed in the public square, but with no greater privilege than any other voice in the public square. This means that religious organisations should see themselves for what they are, namely, civil society organisations of the interest-group variety, existing to put their point of view and trying to persuade others to accept it. Political parties and trade unions and other NGOs are in the business of doing this, and religious bodies are the same kind of thing as these organisations. They should therefore take their turn in the queue alongside them, and like them rely on the actual support they can muster from individuals and their donations. But they try — and for historical and institutional reasons very often succeed in this effort — to get to the front of the queue by claiming special privileges such as charitable status, state funding, traditional seats at the high table of society and state, and the 'respect due to faith' (this is a claim of very dubious respectability, since it asks us to admire views that disdain the rigorous tests of verifiability or falsifiability that we ask of claims in every other domain of enquiry). In some countries religious organisations have official state sanction for their privileging above other NGOs. This is what secularists oppose, and now that religion is reasserting itself as a problem in the world, some oppose it vigorously. Hence 'militant secularism'.
 
 

Starise
 
 The Agnositc says there is something, The Atheist says there is nothing, the Theist knows there's something but doesn't know what it is. The Christians need to get organized and trained. What a mess...Mooch look what you started here:)
  

 
To be honest, I’ve never come across the opinion that “The Agnostic says there is something” before. I always assumed that the position of the Agnostic was of indecision, awaiting proof one way or the other.
 
My personal feeling is that this ‘sitting on the fence’ is a pretty much an indefensible intellectual position to adopt. It suggests either laziness or apathy to me, and an abrogation or failure to dig deep enough to form an opinion of one’s own.
 
I would also suggest that most agnostics are actually hedging their bets a little; in much the same way as one might willingly accept Pascal’s Wager.
 
Furthermore, I would suggest that agnostics generally believe that the probability of there being a god (or gods) boils down to a simple either/or argument, and hence a 50/50 chance of either being correct. I disagree, depending on what the agnostic would accept as ‘proof’ (or a convincing argument) for deciding whether to become a theist or an atheist. I would argue that if an agnostic could only be persuaded by ‘facts’ and empirical proof, then he is likely to have already (subconsciously maybe) decided that he is already 99% along the journey to be an atheist. Conversely, if he considers that his mind can be made up by arguments of collaborative evidence and ‘faith’, then he isn’t actually an agnostic at all.
 
 
 
 

Starise
 
 Let me offer a small attack on us the Christians. Why do we think we know exactly how old the earth is? Where do you read that exactly? Many of us hypothesize and adopt a favorite theory. Theories are usually ok as long as we know they are theories.Don't take said theory use it as a fact and use it as ammo against your opponent. Truth be told it's all mostly theories.Some of the theories are developed pretty well. Data backs up some parts and doesn't other parts. Strummy might argue that he knows within a few million years or not.
 
 Don't approach a cosmologist and attempt to tell him much he doesn't know. Who knows? God could have used the big bang if it happened that way. Things blew up and started to move apart. Lots of these things can hold hands and we don't even realize it IMO. From my perspective which I think is shared by others, the Bible isn't primarily a book of science. It may support science but it doesn't explain it. On the contrary. It is partly a book of the supernatural which by its very nature functions outside known laws and sometimes requires the use of this much misunderstood thing we call faith. Hitchens faith isn't the same faith Christians have.
  

 
Firstly, you bandy around the word “theory” a lot. I might be wrong here, but I get the distinct feeling, that like a lot of believers, you’re not really aware of the correct definition of a “scientific theory” (I’ve added the word ‘scientific’ to clarify my point, but from the context in which you use the word ‘theory’ above, I’m pretty sure that’s what you meant?) – either that or it’s a deliberate (and often used) ploy to suggest that a theory is little more than an ‘idea’ or ‘hunch’.
 
A scientific theory is much more than that, and I’ll once again beg your forgiveness if I allow someone else to express it better than I ever could (from Wikipedia):
 
A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on knowledge that has been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experimentation. Scientists create scientific theories from hypotheses that have been corroborated through the scientific method, then gather evidence to test their accuracy. As with all forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are inductive in nature and aim for predictive and explanatory force.
 
 
 
 

Starise
 
 Now for a small attack on Atheists ( Strummy this won't hurt a bit, if it does I didn't intend it to). The general message you will hear in any atheist circles, that the Bible is totally contradictory and inaccurate. I would say that if you only read the answers as they give them you might be inclined to believe that pitch. Yeah the copyists made a few boo boos in some of the translations.Same with the idea that God is a mean calloused cruel murderer. You will hear plenty of that. This is where I could write a small book in defense of God and how good He is. It is precisely the fact that the Atheist concentrates all his energy on proving the cruelty of this God  and the supposed inaccuracy of the Bible that he totally misses all of those parts about how He loves all of us and wants the best.Why not read the whole book? Take it all into consideration? Strummy we could get deep into why I think the way I do and it would bore at least half the CH. And you likely don't want to hear it. 
 
 As I understand it you want to make your own calls. I totally understand that. We should all be able to choose for ourselves.After all choice is a freedom I think is God given. I don't want to make anyone feel like that. I'm glad I never felt as if something were being shoved down my throat.
 
 In these days my perception is that those people who seem to be Christians are backward in sharing anything. Maybe I live in the wrong part of the country to be objective about that. I only walk in my own shoes. I have maybe had Jehovahs Witnesses stop by the house once or twice in 10 years. I'm pretty strong willed and they don't usually hang around my place for very long. I consider that to be a cult. I had the local Mennonites stop by to offer their Bible school if I had kids. That doesn't bother me. Most Christian people I know wouldn't dream of forcing anything. Some are prone to share if the person wants to be shared with. So unless you are offended by seeing a church on the corner or seeing Judeo Christian concepts written into laws I'm not quite grasping the concept of being force fed, but as I say, I haven't been everywhere and seen everything.
 
 Ol Pal I think science has gotten us a long ways. I agree that it will continue to move us forward. I guess I would kindly part with you on thinking that it alone is the answer to all of our ills. It might eventually unravel a ton of the worlds problems. Since science is the effort of humans though I doubt that it will ascend us to godhood. I had better stop now my little pea brain is starting to smoke.
 
 
 
 

 
Come off it Tim, I’ve studied the bible a fair bit, and no rational or intelligent person could possibly argue that it doesn’t contain innumerable contradictions and factual errors; or argue that is doesn’t describes the god of the Old Testament (and indeed a fair bit of the New Testament) as a bloodthirsty, jealous, misogynistic, despotic, bullying ogre.
 
That’s exactly what the words of those texts describe.
 
And to excuse away the fact that we arrive at these impressions because “the copyists made a few boo boos in some of the translations” is missing the point completely. If that were the case, I would argue that you should actually disregard everything it says, and throw the whole useless and irrelevant tome in the bin.
 
Incidentally, as an atheist I certainly don’t “concentrate all (my) energy on proving the cruelty of this God  and the supposed inaccuracy of the Bible”.
 
I don’t believe he exists, so what point would there be in discussing his attributes, except of course, to point out the abject hypocrisy and illogicality of believers who selectively pick and choose which parts of the bible are convenient for them to subscribe to, and which are either too embarrassing or too uncomfortable to acknowledge.
 
Either this book is the perfect word of god, or it isn’t, and was written by men.

More government funding is wasted on crap science than religion I believe. I believe this can be scientifically proven.