Let's cut to the chase. Do you have any evidence?

[no evidence no belief]

I feel like we've been beating around the bush for... 6000 years!

Can you please either provide some evidence for your supernatural beliefs, or admit that you have no evidence?

If you believe there once was a talking donkey (Numbers 22) could you please provide evidence?

If you believe there once was a zombie invasion in Jerusalem (Mat 27) could you please provide evidence?

If you believe in the flying horse (Islam) could you please provide evidence?

Walking on water, virgin births, radioactive spiders who give you superpowers, turning water into wine, turning iron into gold, demons, goblins, ghosts, hobbits, elves, angels, unicorns and Santa.

Can you PLEASE provide evidence?

[no evidence no belief]

Tired of the Nonsense wrote;

I have a suggestion. Instead of becoming bogged down in the dreary verbiage of Christian theology, why don't we simply turn to the very core of Christian belief. That would be the story of the resurrection of Jesus. If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be demonstrated to have occurred to even a reasonable degree of probability, then the musings of Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas and other Christian theologians are nothing more then baseless assumptions grounded in hot air which is founded on little more then grade A 100% bull droppings. Means the whole thing is abject nonsense. It is overwhelmingly apparent that an empty grave and a missing corpse, ANY empty grave and missing corpse, are VASTLY more likely to have been a result of actions taken by the living, as opposed to actions taken by the corpse. Wouldn't you agree? And so if it is possible to discern, even within the pages of the NT, that the story of the resurrection can easily be attributed to actions taken by the living, then the possibility that the corpse came back to life and flew away has no realistic standing at all. Which serves to render all the rest of your argument pointless.

I find this quote interesting given our debate on the separate forum pertaining to the resurrection. I think your comments are much to sweeping. The Resurrection is grounded in history and has historical evidence supporting it in both the gospels, the letters and the early church life. To sweep it away as baseless or without any historical grounds is for the mouse to stand on its hind legs, place its paws on its hips and begin to give the elephant before it a good dressing down. Your simple psuedo-solutions do not answer the historical voice of the sources. Explain, if you can, in a structured manner the reasons to judge the resurrection narratives as unhistorical and inventory. [/url]

Hi Hmallen.

Here is the reason why one should not believe that the resurrection actually happened:

There is overwhelmingly strong empirical medical, biological, chemical and physical evidence that it did NOT happen, and only extremely weak circumstantial unreliable evidence that it DID happen.

It doesn't matter if you deem the historical evidence for the resurrection to be strong or weak. At best, the historical evidence constitutes a half dozen guys thinking they saw a corpse come back to life and fly into the air, and at worse it constitutes somebody telling somebody telling somebody telling somebody telling somebody that somebody saw a corpse come back to life and fly into the air.

Somebody claiming that they saw a flying corpse is NOT sufficient to dismantle everything we know about medicine (brain death is irreversible), biology (clotted blood cannot unclot), chemistry (the denaturing of enzymes is irreversible) and physics (CORPSES DON'T FLY).

Either the story of the flying corpse is made up, or everything we know about medicine, biology, chemistry and physics is completely wrong. Of course, if everything we know about medicine, biology, chemistry and physics is wrong, how do you explain that heart transplants work? That antibiotics work? That vaccines work? That iPhones work? That airplanes work? That unmanned machines that travel to and land on Mars work?

On a separate note: Whatever level of reliability you want to assign to the historical evidence for the resurrection, there are dozens of claims that we can assign a higher level of reliability to. For example, let's say we are 90% sure that the apostles claim they saw Jesus raise from the dead and fly into the sky. 90% sure - an extraordinarily generous estimate by my book, but whatever. That means there is a 10% chance that the apostles never made that claim, but rather it was a later fabrication. Compare that with Heaven's Gate. We are 100% certain that people were willing to die for their belief that by committing suicide they would teleport to the alien spaceship hidden behind a comet. The historical evidence of the Heaven's Gate claims is 100% reliable. We know for SURE that that belief was held by people willing to die for it.

So why do you believe in the flying corpse but not in the spaceship behind the comet? The evidence against both claims is equally strong, but the evidence for Heaven's Gate is stronger than for the Resurrection. Hey, Heaven's Gate was on CNN!

[dianaiad]

I agree it is complete and utter nonsense to suggest experts in their respected fields are no different than anyone else. That is exactly what YOU did. I have given you a list of many scientists that believed in a young earth and you just dismissed them because it contradicted your ideal of science. I find that rather arrogant and ignorant of you to do. Then you appealed to the popularity consensus....as if popularity is the key to scientific facts. I believe you are the one who understands very little about science.

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[no evidence no belief]

I find this quote interesting given our debate on the separate forum pertaining to the resurrection. I think your comments are much to sweeping. The Resurrection is grounded in history and has historical evidence supporting it in both the gospels, the letters and the early church life. To sweep it away as baseless or without any historical grounds is for the mouse to stand on its hind legs, place its paws on its hips and begin to give the elephant before it a good dressing down. Your simple psuedo-solutions do not answer the historical voice of the sources. Explain, if you can, in a structured manner the reasons to judge the resurrection narratives as unhistorical and inventory. [/url]

"Inventory?" I'm having trouble understanding what you mean by this. At any rate this subtopic and others address your question fairly thoroughly. The question isn't whether or not the resurrection is mentioned in ancient documents. The question is, 'How reliable and accurate are those documents, given that they were not recorded contemporaneously, have anonymous authors, were written to support an argument, and contain stories that require the suspension of natural laws.

They were not written contemporaneously but probably within about 30 years from the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is not necessarily a good basis to reject them on.

The reason to reject the story of the flying corpse in the Bible is the same as for rejecting the story of the flying reindeer in Santa mythology: These fairy tales are directly contradicted by everything we know about medicine, biology, chemistry, physics.

Actually the author of the gospels are known...they are named after each author.

Factually incorrect.

Written to support an argument?? That is your opinion.

It's a very valid opinion based on empirical evidenc and scholarly consensus.

Now stories that require the suspension of natural laws is your best one...you need to go with it even though I think that what you refer to as natural laws may only apply to our 3 dimensional view of things. Doesn't physics allow for the existence of more than our 3 dimensions? Maybe there are things that go on in these dimensions that we can't understand? I know that I can't understand some of the miracles of Jesus but I recognize that I am a finite imperfect creature with limitations....and so are you.

Argument from ignorance. You are saying "I do not know for sure that X is impossible, therefore I believe that X happened".

That argument is a disgracefully bad argument no matter what claim you apply it to.

"I don't know for sure that resurrections are impossible, therefore I believe the resurrection happened"

"I do not know for sure that Mohammed's ascension into heaven on a winged horse is impossible, therefore I believe in Mohammed's ascension"

"I do not know for sure that Santa bringing presents to every home in one night is impossible, therefore I believe in Santa"

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 2509 by iamtaka]

This "uncreated intelligent designer who is almost infinitely more complicated than an RNA molecule" is not the god of Christianity. Christian theism adheres to a doctrine of divine simplicity.

I am sorry, but "divine simplicity" is just a fancy way of declaring that God is logically impossible.

If you wish to assert that an entity capable of creating the universe in all its trillions of stars is not complex, then you have a lot of explaining and justifying to do.

Seriously.

The God of the Bible, if it existed, would be capable at any instant to monitor and alter at will the random movement of any of the trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions (continue writing "of trillions" about a trillion trillion times) of atoms in the universe. The computational power necessary to accomplish such a feat is so beyond the complexity of anything we could possibly imagine to exist in the universe, that to call such an entity "simple" is so beyond preposterous, so beyond ridiculous, so beyond absurd, that only the desensitization to basic common sense that comes with dogmatic faith could make it possible for it to gain any traction whatsoever.

Yet the odds of life just randomly occurring by blind chance is one in trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions...

Please demonstrate what you based your calculations on. Show your work.
BTW, neither evolution, nor abiogenesis rely on 'random blind chance.'
There are definite principles involved that have been shown to act, greatly increasing the likelihood of life forming under early Earthlike conditions.*

Plus, there are billions of separate places where abiogenesis could have occurred.
...[T]here could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldilocks_planet
And there may be 500 additional galaxies in the universe.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... y-way.html

_________________________
*Miller/Urey Experiment

By the 1950s, scientists were in hot pursuit of the origin of life. Around the world, the scientific community was examining what kind of environment would be needed to allow life to begin. In 1953, Stanley L. Miller and Harold C. Urey, working at the University of Chicago, conducted an experiment which would change the approach of scientific investigation into the origin of life.
Miller took molecules which were believed to represent the major components of the early Earth's atmosphere and put them into a closed system

The gases they used were methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen (H2), and water (H2O). Next, he ran a continuous electric current through the system, to simulate lightning storms believed to be common on the early earth. Analysis of the experiment was done by chromotography. At the end of one week, Miller observed that as much as 10-15% of the carbon was now in the form of organic compounds. Two percent of the carbon had formed some of the amino acids which are used to make proteins. Perhaps most importantly, Miller's experiment showed that organic compounds such as amino acids, which are essential to cellular life, could be made easily under the conditions that scientists believed to be present on the early earth. This enormous finding inspired a multitude of further experiments.
http://people.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise ... iller.html

[Star]

Did you also argue that microwave ovens, cell phones, and Wi-fi were fictional magic when they first came out?

I did require evidence before I believed in those things as well. By nature, I am very skeptical as you may have noticed.

Did you also advertise your incredulity by accusing microwaves of being "science fiction" even though evidence indicated otherwise? Be careful not to conflate "skepticism" with "ignorance".

If you say that Quantum computers will exist and they will solve problems, then I will say that I will believe it when I see it.
But if you say that Quantum computers do exist and they will solve problems, then I will say Quantum computers do exist and they do not solve problems, therefore my skepticism is justified.

You're outright declaring that quantum computers do not exist despite the fact that I have posted irrefutable evidence showing they do. Your approach is incredulous and asinine, not just skeptical. The Star Trek jokes are embarrassing.

And why is my code irrelevant to quantum computing? It is a problem that conventional computers can't solve in realistic time frames, it is exactly the type of problem that Quantum computers are intended to solve.

I already answered your question "how would you program this?" The answer is, in a high-level programming language, it would be mostly the same, regardless of how it's processed, or how fast it's done.

In the first sentence, starting with "If it could be demonstrated...," he's saying, if it could be shown that organs could NOT have been formed by evolution, his theory would break down. Second sentence, he's saying he can find no such case of any organ which could NOT, which implies that his theory does NOT break down. Evolution is numerous successive, slight modifications. So Darwin's basically saying, his theory of evolution by natural selection withstands this particular test, because there are no cases he can find of an organ with irreducible complexity. Every organ can be explained by numerous successive, slight modifications. This remains true to this day.

False, this all changed when it was discovered that heredity was passed by digital information. A whole zoo of things that can't evolve by "numerous, successive, slight modifications" was introduced.

If it changed, somebody forgot to tell nearly every working biologist in the world. Do non-experts lacking credentials have a special place where only they can publish and not practice their field of non-study? It "all" changed in this special place, maybe.

[Sir Hamilton]

[Replying to post 2509 by iamtaka]

This "uncreated intelligent designer who is almost infinitely more complicated than an RNA molecule" is not the god of Christianity. Christian theism adheres to a doctrine of divine simplicity.

I am sorry, but "divine simplicity" is just a fancy way of declaring that God is logically impossible.

If you wish to assert that an entity capable of creating the universe in all its trillions of stars is not complex, then you have a lot of explaining and justifying to do.

Seriously.

The God of the Bible, if it existed, would be capable at any instant to monitor and alter at will the random movement of any of the trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions (continue writing "of trillions" about a trillion trillion times) of atoms in the universe. The computational power necessary to accomplish such a feat is so beyond the complexity of anything we could possibly imagine to exist in the universe, that to call such an entity "simple" is so beyond preposterous, so beyond ridiculous, so beyond absurd, that only the desensitization to basic common sense that comes with dogmatic faith could make it possible for it to gain any traction whatsoever.

Yet the odds of life just randomly occurring by blind chance is one in trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions...

Please demonstrate what you based your calculations on. Show your work.
BTW, neither evolution, nor abiogenesis rely on 'random blind chance.'
There are definite principles involved that have been shown to act, greatly increasing the likelihood of life forming under early Earthlike conditions.*

Plus, there are billions of separate places where abiogenesis could have occurred.
...[T]here could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldilocks_planet
And there may be 500 additional galaxies in the universe.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... y-way.html

_________________________
*Miller/Urey Experiment

By the 1950s, scientists were in hot pursuit of the origin of life. Around the world, the scientific community was examining what kind of environment would be needed to allow life to begin. In 1953, Stanley L. Miller and Harold C. Urey, working at the University of Chicago, conducted an experiment which would change the approach of scientific investigation into the origin of life.
Miller took molecules which were believed to represent the major components of the early Earth's atmosphere and put them into a closed system

The gases they used were methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen (H2), and water (H2O). Next, he ran a continuous electric current through the system, to simulate lightning storms believed to be common on the early earth. Analysis of the experiment was done by chromotography. At the end of one week, Miller observed that as much as 10-15% of the carbon was now in the form of organic compounds. Two percent of the carbon had formed some of the amino acids which are used to make proteins. Perhaps most importantly, Miller's experiment showed that organic compounds such as amino acids, which are essential to cellular life, could be made easily under the conditions that scientists believed to be present on the early earth. This enormous finding inspired a multitude of further experiments.
http://people.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise ... iller.html

Sir Fred Hoyle a mathematician and astronomer calculated that the probability of one simple enzyme forming by chance is 10 to the power of 20 (one with twenty zeros behind it), to 1. Hence for one cell to form, about 2000 enzymes are needed, which makes the probability of the first self replicating cell forming by random movement of atoms as 10 to the power of 40000 to 1. One bitter critic of Hoyle begrudgingly says that that this figure is 'probably not overly exaggerated'.

It has been said that this is as likely as a cyclone going through a junkyard and producing a fully functional jumbo jet.

People do say that if you allow enough time, anything can happen. However, at best we have about 4.6 billion years to work with. If Sir Fred Hoyle's calculated probability was for a cell to form in say the next second then the probability of a cell forming in 4.6 billion years is still about 10 to the power of 39982 to 1. If it was for a microsecond, the probability would be 10 to the power of 39976 to 1. If it was for a picosecond, the probability would be 10 to the power of 39970 to 1.

There are approximately 10 to the power of 80 atoms in this universe.

It is also claimed that life came from another planet. Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick recognised the problem of the extremely low probability that life could come from non-life on earth. He concluded that the earth was not old enough, and postulated that life may have come from another planet. Hence in order for us then to have a 1000 to 1 chance of life forming by itself, (and lets assume that an asteroid will definitely take the life to earth) there would need to be roughly 10 to the power of 38970 planets out there (fairly close to us) capable of supporting life.

[Sir Hamilton]

I find this quote interesting given our debate on the separate forum pertaining to the resurrection. I think your comments are much to sweeping. The Resurrection is grounded in history and has historical evidence supporting it in both the gospels, the letters and the early church life. To sweep it away as baseless or without any historical grounds is for the mouse to stand on its hind legs, place its paws on its hips and begin to give the elephant before it a good dressing down. Your simple psuedo-solutions do not answer the historical voice of the sources. Explain, if you can, in a structured manner the reasons to judge the resurrection narratives as unhistorical and inventory. [/url]

"Inventory?" I'm having trouble understanding what you mean by this. At any rate this subtopic and others address your question fairly thoroughly. The question isn't whether or not the resurrection is mentioned in ancient documents. The question is, 'How reliable and accurate are those documents, given that they were not recorded contemporaneously, have anonymous authors, were written to support an argument, and contain stories that require the suspension of natural laws.

They were not written contemporaneously but probably within about 30 years from the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is not necessarily a good basis to reject them on.

The reason to reject the story of the flying corpse in the Bible is the same as for rejecting the story of the flying reindeer in Santa mythology: These fairy tales are directly contradicted by everything we know about medicine, biology, chemistry, physics.

Actually the author of the gospels are known...they are named after each author.

Factually incorrect.

Written to support an argument?? That is your opinion.

It's a very valid opinion based on empirical evidenc and scholarly consensus.

Now stories that require the suspension of natural laws is your best one...you need to go with it even though I think that what you refer to as natural laws may only apply to our 3 dimensional view of things. Doesn't physics allow for the existence of more than our 3 dimensions? Maybe there are things that go on in these dimensions that we can't understand? I know that I can't understand some of the miracles of Jesus but I recognize that I am a finite imperfect creature with limitations....and so are you.

Argument from ignorance. You are saying "I do not know for sure that X is impossible, therefore I believe that X happened".

That argument is a disgracefully bad argument no matter what claim you apply it to.

"I don't know for sure that resurrections are impossible, therefore I believe the resurrection happened"

"I do not know for sure that Mohammed's ascension into heaven on a winged horse is impossible, therefore I believe in Mohammed's ascension"

"I do not know for sure that Santa bringing presents to every home in one night is impossible, therefore I believe in Santa"

Wow you really are behind times aren't you? Like I said I have moved on...I got an idea why don't you reply to my recent posts? just saying....

[Goat]

[Replying to post 2509 by iamtaka]

This "uncreated intelligent designer who is almost infinitely more complicated than an RNA molecule" is not the god of Christianity. Christian theism adheres to a doctrine of divine simplicity.

I am sorry, but "divine simplicity" is just a fancy way of declaring that God is logically impossible.

If you wish to assert that an entity capable of creating the universe in all its trillions of stars is not complex, then you have a lot of explaining and justifying to do.

Seriously.

The God of the Bible, if it existed, would be capable at any instant to monitor and alter at will the random movement of any of the trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions (continue writing "of trillions" about a trillion trillion times) of atoms in the universe. The computational power necessary to accomplish such a feat is so beyond the complexity of anything we could possibly imagine to exist in the universe, that to call such an entity "simple" is so beyond preposterous, so beyond ridiculous, so beyond absurd, that only the desensitization to basic common sense that comes with dogmatic faith could make it possible for it to gain any traction whatsoever.

Yet the odds of life just randomly occurring by blind chance is one in trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions...

Several points.

Where do you get that number??

And, who said that , even without an 'intelligent designer', that life occuring is 'random' and 'blind chance'?? There is this little thing known as 'how chemical reactions work' that come into play.

[Sir Hamilton]

[Replying to post 2509 by iamtaka]

This "uncreated intelligent designer who is almost infinitely more complicated than an RNA molecule" is not the god of Christianity. Christian theism adheres to a doctrine of divine simplicity.

I am sorry, but "divine simplicity" is just a fancy way of declaring that God is logically impossible.

If you wish to assert that an entity capable of creating the universe in all its trillions of stars is not complex, then you have a lot of explaining and justifying to do.

Seriously.

The God of the Bible, if it existed, would be capable at any instant to monitor and alter at will the random movement of any of the trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions (continue writing "of trillions" about a trillion trillion times) of atoms in the universe. The computational power necessary to accomplish such a feat is so beyond the complexity of anything we could possibly imagine to exist in the universe, that to call such an entity "simple" is so beyond preposterous, so beyond ridiculous, so beyond absurd, that only the desensitization to basic common sense that comes with dogmatic faith could make it possible for it to gain any traction whatsoever.

Yet the odds of life just randomly occurring by blind chance is one in trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions...

Several points.

Where do you get that number??

And, who said that , even without an 'intelligent designer', that life occuring is 'random' and 'blind chance'?? There is this little thing known as 'how chemical reactions work' that come into play.

Ahh so these chemical reactions just happen to work by becoming more and more complex? These chemicals just kind of build themselves into more advanced chemicals until one day voila! we have a living cell. First of all why should I even believe that nonsense? Because you read it on the internet and declare it to be truth? Because some scientists says so? Please. And secondly if this is even true how does this prove that is how life began on earth? So no thanks I will continue to believe in ID. The idea that the complexity of design of the human brain much less the rest of the body as occurring by chemical reactions just occurring is ridiculous. With your logic I suppose if I stumble across some kind of unknown complex piece of machinery I should assume it assembled itself...right?

[Goat]

[Replying to post 2509 by iamtaka]

This "uncreated intelligent designer who is almost infinitely more complicated than an RNA molecule" is not the god of Christianity. Christian theism adheres to a doctrine of divine simplicity.

I am sorry, but "divine simplicity" is just a fancy way of declaring that God is logically impossible.

If you wish to assert that an entity capable of creating the universe in all its trillions of stars is not complex, then you have a lot of explaining and justifying to do.

Seriously.

The God of the Bible, if it existed, would be capable at any instant to monitor and alter at will the random movement of any of the trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions (continue writing "of trillions" about a trillion trillion times) of atoms in the universe. The computational power necessary to accomplish such a feat is so beyond the complexity of anything we could possibly imagine to exist in the universe, that to call such an entity "simple" is so beyond preposterous, so beyond ridiculous, so beyond absurd, that only the desensitization to basic common sense that comes with dogmatic faith could make it possible for it to gain any traction whatsoever.

Yet the odds of life just randomly occurring by blind chance is one in trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions...

Several points.

Where do you get that number??

And, who said that , even without an 'intelligent designer', that life occuring is 'random' and 'blind chance'?? There is this little thing known as 'how chemical reactions work' that come into play.

Ahh so these chemical reactions just happen to work by becoming more and more complex? These chemicals just kind of build themselves into more advanced chemicals until one day voila! we have a living cell. First of all why should I even believe that nonsense? Because you read it on the internet and declare it to be truth? Because some scientists says so? Please. And secondly if this is even true how does this prove that is how life began on earth? So no thanks I will continue to believe in ID. The idea that the complexity of design of the human brain much less the rest of the body as occurring by chemical reactions just occurring is ridiculous. With your logic I suppose if I stumble across some kind of unknown complex piece of machinery I should assume it assembled itself...right?

Why yes, yes they do. And, when you get a self replicating molecule link amazing things can potentially happen.