Many Christians do accept that there are mountains of scientific evidence supporting evolution, and they don’t bother with quibbles about “chance” and “small micro evolution.” Even the Catholic Church got on board with it some time ago. So you are again falsely asserting that all Christians agree with you when they definitely do not. Your views represent a minority of Biblical literalists, not “Christians.”
In any case you asserted this in another thread and still haven’t gotten around to backing it up with any citation other than the Bible. You did demonstrate a very flawed understanding of what evolution actually is.
Yes, “debatable:” on the one hand, we have geology and cosmology and hard, peer-reviewed evidence, and on the other we have people taking a literal interpretation of a story written down thousands of years ago by Middle Easterners. That’s some debate.
You know what you might consider doing, GEEPERS? Starting a thread where you ask atheists what they think and why they think it. Perhaps if you asked questions and read carefully, you would end up understanding something about what atheists think.
I can mention Geroge Washington and the Cherry Tree, or Captain Ahab, or the Raid on the Death Star to illustrate a lesson without specifically mentioning that they are fictional. I presume a greater Teacher than I could use the same rhetorical tools.
Why is this even a matter of debate? You want to claim that this board has tons of Christians, yet the FACT is the vast majority of replies have been pro-atheist. That’s reality.
Let me guess, you don’t believe Jesus existed huh? You know, we have not one, but four written accounts about the life of Jesus, each are distinct writing styles and tell the story from completely realistic eyewitness testimony. No two witnesses report the event in the exact same way. I believe was done on purpose so people wouldn’t question the validity. But of course, there is no satisfying the hardcore skeptics.
I guess it got buried under the two dozen other replies I never got around to answering.
So you’re saying I’m wrong? That if advancement in science could one day prove that there existed a higher sentient consciosness that you still wouldn’t accept it? Sorry to speak for you there. I shouldn’t suggest what I don’t know. Maybe you would stick your head in the sand and deny it to the very end? I don’t know. My apologies. Sometime close-mindedness exists on both sides of the aisle, is what I can conclude for your indignation.
Saint Augustine had some reserves about the literalness of Genesis, are you suggesting he wasn’t a Christian?
This is the thing, all you seem to be doing is asserting that this is true. When we offer up evidence in contrary, you either ignore it or hand wave it away because of our ‘atheistic bias’.
I’m sorry, but where did you get your Phd in psychology? How long have you been treating Marley? This is essentially an ad hom against Marley. Marley presents evidence and your response is to say that he desperately needs it to be false, as though you have access to the inner recesses of Marley’s mind.
It’s absurd.
I’ve provided cites and counter arguments. What is your explanation for ignoring those?
I was not aware that the anonymous author of Matthew was, in fact, Christ.
Mike Licona has stated that he feels that the saints jumping out of there graves could be a literary embellishment - that it didn’t actually happen. Is he not a Christian because he finds one portion of the Gospels unreliable?
Adam and Eve.
This is almost indecipherable - you say that ‘christians’ have no problem believing in micro evolution and then you seem to imply that the naturalistic theory is that the human body ‘just arrived by chance’ through billions of years of natural selection.
From this bit alone I can tell that you have an insufficient understanding of what the theory of evolution actually entails. In any event, are you aware that millions of Christians actually have no problem with modern science? They accept common descent and Christianity?
Only to those who reject science.
Don’t you find it a bit hypocritical to use the fruits of the scientific method to argue about how unreliable the scientific method is?
Because you keep saying things that aren’t true. The board has its share of Christians. What it doesn’t have is a lot of Biblical literalists.
I think he probably did. There’s enough reason to think the character in the Bible is based on a real person. Can we get back to any of the original thread topics, please? People were asking for evidence for your beliefs, but it seems like you’re determined to find reasons not to provide that evidence.
You found plenty of time to respond to comments that were not even addressed to you and to take other remarks out of context, so I don’t find this persuasive. So what do you think?
You were talking to Marley, but I do think Jesus existed - that said, I think a mythicist could easily counter you.
The ‘four written accounts’ are actually all after the fact and not by eye witnesses. The bulk of them reside from the Gospel of Mark.
This is what scholarship has revealed to us. Are you completely unaware of modern scholarship in this area? You seem to be.
Let’s stick with this for a bit though, what makes the Gospels reliable, IYO?
Is it because the miracles are attested to in more than one source? Is it because they are only a few decades out from the supposed events?
Are these your two criteria for authenticity? Do you have any more (if so, what are they?)?
GEEPERS, would you be interested in a thread where atheists explain their general position (why they are atheists, how they approach science and religion) and related topics? I don’t think I have time to compose an OP, but maybe you could do it or someone else can do it. In a thread like that, your assertions about atheists could be addressed and your constant demands on atheists wouldn’t be off-topic. Meanwhile maybe you can post that evidence for your deity.
I agree with Terr. Admittedly, Jewish survival is weak evidence but it’s something.
It was and still is difficult for a tribe to survive after having been dispossessed of its land. It’s a miracle (in a statistical sense) that Jews were defeated repeatedly but able to regroup and reclaim the ancient Jewish homeland after a two thousand year break.
Of course, unlikely things happen all the time so I would not consider Jewish history to be conclusive or even strong evidence in favor of a Jewish deity, but it’s not nothing either.
Problem is the audience would clearly know that such illustrations are works of fiction. Herman Melville and George Lucas never presented their works as anything other than fiction from their imagination. Your analogy doesn’t hold up.
I agree that it falls somewhat in the “evidence” category…although it is much like saying that the winner in a marathon might have been helped along by God, even though the race was going to have a winner whether God helped or not.
The difference in reaction to my contributions to this thread and to yours indicates that the problem is with you and not with them.
This is moving the goalposts from what the original post asked for. The OP asked for “evidence” in general, not scientific evidence, or court-of-law evidence. That you require evidence of a specific sort to be convinced is your prerogative, and not a failing of those giving the evidence.
You are not the only Christian here. A little bit of advice from one Christian to another: your approach has received little defense from others because it is counterproductive.
Remember the greatest commandment? “Love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” Do not forget the “mind” part. Science is the study of God’s creation and to deny it is to deny God and the greatest commandment. If your interpretation of God does not match what we know about God’s creation, then your interpretation is wrong.
This may not be easy, but we were not promised an easy path.
And, GEEPERS, this is exactly why your approach will not work. Belief in God is a matter of faith. Objective evidence cannot lead to God, because with evidence, faith is unneeded.
I apologize for harping on you, but I’m hoping that you can improve your understanding.
The Bible is not the “Word of God”. The Bible itself explains so: read the first chapter of the Gospel of John.
The Bible is also not historical fact. Some parts are laws, some parts are histories, some parts are parables, some parts are personal stories. All of it is true and divinely inspired and useful for understanding God. But if you do not try to understand which parts are which, you are denying the greatest commandment.
Quite possibility. Catholics hold to a lot of beliefs that are simply not in the Bible and married in paganism.
Where did you get your PHd in geology, archaeology and science? Funny how atheists come off like they are infallible and experts in all forms of knowledge
Too much weak sauce to dip my carrot stick in.
Only God knows the condition of a man’s heart. He could simply be a misguided Christian.
I’m also aware that are many millions who call themselves Mormons and believe in a completely different Bible, yet call themselves Christians. I guess they missed that bit in Revelation 22:18.
And once again we’ve come to the point in the thread where you stop making arguments at all. This is becoming a problem, GEEPERS, because it is happening over and over. This is a debate forum. If you don’t want to respond to questions, don’t want to support assertions and arguments you have made, and don’t want to take debate questions and ideas seriously, this is not the forum for you. You are expected to do those things here. What you’ve done instead is attack others, change the topic every time you are contradicted, and generally ignored the subject of any thread you participate in. I’ve given you a lot of lattitude with this because I’m often engaging in these discussions with you, but I can see it’s not working. If you don’t want to discuss the actual subject, you shouldn’t patricipate in the thread.
So here is what I am going to do: all these other hijacks of the thread are over. They can be taken to another thread or dropped, but that’s it. This thread is about evidence for deities, not the opinions of atheists or anything else. If you believe in a deity, you can post evidence and that evidence can be discussed.
Or deluded in the same way everyone else was at that time. While parts of the Bible are true (there really were Romans, swords, fig trees, etc) other parts are fantastic events that we not only have no evidence for, but flatly contradict known and tested laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Pretty much all of Jesus’ miracles are like this. There are many events mentioned in the Bible that are not mentioned anywhere else in history, that we have no evidence for, and that we do have contradictory evidence. This would include the Roman census that required everyone to return to their birthplace, the dead getting up and walking around for some time after Jesus’ death on the cross, and the existence at that time of a town called Nazareth. The Bible is roughly as realistic as a Spiderman comic. Both contain references to real things or events, and both contain references to things or events that are wholly fantastic for which no objective evidence is had.
This is simply not true. Many attempts have been made to verify events in the Bible, but there are just too many that should have been there but aren’t to make this claim. No objective evidence has been found for the Jewish Exodus, for the town of Nazareth, the global flood, etc.
A clear lack of evidence, while not proof by itself, is an indicator that a claim might be wrong. For centuries people have tried to find evidence of the things that I mentioned, but nothing has been found. Of course you can keep looking, but eventually you just have to accept that reality has shown that description of the event to be wrong.
Besides, the burden of proof is not on the negative side of a claim, but on the positive. The claim has been made that the Jewish Exodus was a real event, that happened just like the Bible describes it. The burden of proof is on those who made the claim. Until actual evidence is produced, the default is that the claim is false, or at best, unverifiable. If there is no evidence to support a claim, and the negative has produced evidence contrary to the claim, then the negative has made a more believable case.
And before this continues, a) no, I’m not an atheist, b) The posts I make do have links to the experts, and I guess you have to see them to finally realize that we are not imagining those experts.
Penn and Teller for example interviewed the experts to report once again on the bullshit parts of the bible:
I appreciate your response and perspective, but please note that I never claimed that I’m the only Christian here. I said the majority of responds are pro-atheist, and I can’t answer everyone’s questions all at once.
I do agree that parts of the Bible are not meant to be taken literally. Revelations certainly. However, I just don’t buy that Genesis is a myth story. Jesus doesn’t refer to it as myth.