Kevin Cross

[Kevin Cross]

Hello

I am a new member here and glad to join all of you. Since I have joined I have mainly been looking over the site end familiarizing myself with the site and I look forward to meeting new opponents.

To tell you a little about myself, I am a Christian, but I want to defend my faith in a way that I hope people will come to respect. It is not my job to force anyone to believe the way I do. I can only tell others what I believe, hopefully supporting my opinions, but then leaving it to others to decide for themselves whether they would like to believe in a similar way. Truth be told, I, like other Christians, do not do a good job at this task. I agree that Christians can be arrogant and that is one of our great sins.

By vocation, I am trained in mental health counseling but I do not have my license -- something I have been working on for many years. I have a difficult time fulfilling the clinical hours. Anyway, I work when I can and I am basically an author trying to finish my first book about camping and life-change.

From birth, I have had cerebral palsy and I am a quadriplegic with movement disorders and I have trouble speaking. I type with a head pointer, which is slow because I hunt and peck key by key. I'm 49 years old and live in Massachusetts.

I am looking forward to debating. My interests are in psychology (and general behavioral science) neuroscience, philosophy especially ethics and logic and philosophy of mind, disability issues, and apologetics and the integration of such subjects. I look forward to taking people on head-to-head in one-on-one matches. I am open to negotiation as far as format and subject. If I get a number interested opponents, please be patient. I will take everybody on sometimes but not all at once. I probably will not be able to start until next year but the more time in between would be desirable for the negotiation and study leading up to the debate. For those interested, please write a PM to me and we will correspond. In the meantime, I plan to make myself known in some group debates as well.

Look forward to meeting new people, having fun and engaging many opponents in civil but intense arguments while learning about new subjects. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Kevin

[Kevin Cross]

[Replying to post 10 by Divine Insight]

Hi DI

thank you for that kind comment in taking my time to respond to you. I return the sentiment I’m a very busy guy myself so don’t feel rushed.

Like your suggestion and I am interested in going against you in that. I don’t want to sound like we’re definite yet until we go through a negotiation about format and rules etc. in the weeks and perhaps months to come. I do agree, however, we should begin to face each other on some forums. I won’t feel stocked or trolled if you don’t.

I’ll tell you what! I will draw up an outline of how we proceed. Once you agree, we’ll go for with negotiation. I would like to continue this over PM, but I have to post a little more before I can use it. Sound like a plan? Good night.
Kevin

[Divine Insight]

I’ll tell you what! I will draw up an outline of how we proceed. Once you agree, we’ll go for with negotiation. I would like to continue this over PM, but I have to post a little more before I can use it. Sound like a plan? Good night.
Kevin

I totally agree that we should discuss format, rules, and subject matter before agreeing on the the formal debate. I too am open to this taking place weeks or months down the road. No rush here.

Let's do try to not attempt to have the actual debate in PM's though. I have no desire to debate or discuss religious views in private. My only interest in posting on these forms is to give publicly available feedback to the readers of the forum. I have absolutely no desire to convince you personally of anything.

In fact, in my "real life" (as they say) I almost never discuss religion with anyone. Save for the Jehovah's witnesses who actually come knocking at my door. And they do so fairly regularly around here.

But it's not my intention to try to change any individual's opinion on anything. I post here mainly for the sake of people who are asking questions themselves and read forums like these to see these types of debates.

In fact, this is something I hope you realize in any actual debates we might have on these forums. My responses aren't aimed at you. They are aimed at the subject matter.

So yeah, send me an outline and plan for how you would like to proceed, and I'll reply with my thoughts as well. I'm sure we can organize a great debate.

[Kevin Cross]

[Replying to Divine Insight]

Hi DI

I agree. I only want to do the negotiation by PM -- Not the actual debate. No religion. The only arguing we may do is over the format but I hope we will agree or compromise most times without disagreeing too much. Be with you soon with the outline.

Kevin

[Kevin Cross]

[Replying to post 8 by Bust Nak]

Thank you for the invite and I will join the forum. Although I have submitted written testimony to the Massachusetts legislature on physician-assisted suicide, I do not have any clinical experience with the issue of PAS or euthanasia. I'll try to answer your questions in the forum and try to give a perspective from the mental health community. I'll try to post something this week. Thanks

Kevin

[ivysunday]

[Replying to post 2 by Divine Insight]

I wonder why so many people insisted on that Jesus is the Greatest Creator.

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 2 by Divine Insight]

I wonder why so many people insisted on that Jesus is the Greatest Creator.

I would imagine that it's for exactly the same reason why so many people insist that Allah is the Greatest Creator.

Religions tend to be a form of political tribalism actually. In fact, if you pay attention to the Old Testament you'll see that the original Hebrew authors were pretty much bragging about being "God's Chosen People" and using their God as an excuse to commit genocide on neighboring cultures that believed in other Gods.

So the Biblical "Jealous-God Religion" has political tribalism built-in from the very beginning. Even right up to this very day these Abrahamic religions have been extremely tribal in both their theology and in the mentality they instill in their followers.

Just look at Christianity as a prime example. Of all the Abrahamic factions, Christianity is the most tribal of all. It started out as a very monarchical political machine used by Kings (i.e. dictators) to control their subjects and to have divine excuses for killing their enemies.

But then later when things started becoming a little more democratic (thanks to the influence of Greek philosophers) people began to rebel against the monarchy of the Catholic Church. This gave rise to the Protestantisms. But look what happened with those. They continually broke up into countless disagreeing factions that basically renounce each other in the name of their "Jealous God" which in Christianity has become idolized as Jesus.

So now we have Christians hating on each other in Jesus' name. Each renouncing the faith of the opposing demoninations and factions. It's tribalism on steroids.

Today Christians pretend that they are just having a collective war against atheists, and "non-believers". But in truth they don't agree with each other. If the whole world was converted to "Christianity", only then would the hatred between Christians become extremely apparent.

Of course it's already apparent today for anyone who's actually paying attention. If Christians think that their hatred of each other is going unnoticed they are only kidding themselves.

So yes, everyone who is involved in some faction of these "Jealous-God Religions", is naturally going to proclaim that their faction of "God" is the "Greatest Creator".

But keep in mind, that every faction has their own personally-created "Jesus".

The Jehovah's Witnesses renounce the "Jesus" of the Catholic Church and so on.

All these opposing factions of "Christianity" renounce each other's "Jesus".

So what happens when we ask, "Will the real Greatest Creator please stand up"?

Which Jesus is going to stand?

Or will it not be Jesus at all? Perhaps instead it will be some faction of Allah from one of the Islamic factions. Or perhaps, all of this will be wrong and the Jews will be vindicated when YHWH stands tall and renounces all the offshoot non-Jewish factions as being the fake Gods.

Or maybe the whole shebang will be wrong and the God Buddha knew will be the true God. A God who never even claimed to be "jealous" in the first place.

Or maybe there is no God and humans just like to hate on each other in the name of invisible jealous Gods. Who knows?

Only the Shadow knows.