Tomndebb you are a hypocritical pussy.

The BBQ Pit
561

Not even that; all you need to is posit the possibility of miracles.

It is this, more than any other single thing, that has virtually destroyed intelligent religious debate in GD. The “new breed” of atheist posits dogmatically that miracles are impossible. It’s not a scientifically derived conclusion, nor even a philosophical inference from propositions (except insofar as presuming no God provides that inference), but a matter of their doctrine. Whatever someone claims might be a miracle is ipso facto false, rather than being capable of being subject to skeptical scrutiny in the proper manner of any claim of evidence.

Like all the “impossibility” conundra – the rock too heavy to lift, the unstoppable force and the immovable object – it’s in a matter of definitions.

“A miracle is an event contrary to the physical laws that govern all actual events.” Well, then, yes, of course there’s no such thing as a miracle. A crabnasst doesn’t exist either – because the definition of a crabnasst is something that doesn’t exist.

How about “a miracle, if one exists, is a divinely caused singularity – a point at which a quantum leap from one state to another occurs.” This definition could cover everything from raising of dead bodies to water-into-wine – abrupt transitions not amenable to ordinary-process physical/biological “laws.” (Note that the use of “law” here means “explanation for why things normally occur as they do” – the “law” that says one chemical element does not transmute into another is discussing terrestrial-surface phenomena, not stellar cores where it is a common occurrence.)

But at rock bottom, I do not engage badchad and his compeers for the simple reason that I believe that a discussion on this board is engaged in by people who belong here for enjoyment and ability to continue learning. I derive no pleasure from being browbeaten, and I owe nothing to badchad which would warrant my personal expectation to participate despite lack of enjoyment. And his presuppositions about the Bible are not ones which I agree with, and have no interest in arguing on his terms. Whatever else he may have accomplished in this world, he has made a place I derived great pleasure in repartee from for over six years into a place I tend not to spend much time in. I hope that accords with his goals in life.

562

Ahhh! A simple case of a lack of reading comprehension (again). I apologize, I confused your inabilty to read with a deliberate failure to read.

I did not indiacte that I was too mature to discuss religion with him. I indicated that his “attacks” on me were childish and ineffective. I do not discuss belief with anyone on any message board (a point badchad constantly and oddly attempts to twist to a matter of “fear”). Your desire to conflate all the separate issues flowing through this thread may explain some of your other odd claims, as well.

563

Is there any particular place where you can quote me saying the stuff you made up out of whole cloth and attributed to me in this post?

Or is it simply more of your unconsidered ranting based on a lack of reading comprehension?

564

pseudotriton ruber ruber:

I am not a Christian, so the beliefs of Christians are not my thing. (Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead? Gee, I hear Vladimir Dracula and others of his ilk were alleged to have done the same thing. Oddly, it wasn’t taken as a manifestation of Holiness when the pointy-toothed ones…oh, fiction? Umm. Whatever. Any way you cut it, I don’t see the impact on my life, unless corpsefolk start doing it en masse and precipitate food shortages and problems in the housing market. Well, I suppose there’s that whole Night of the Living Dead scenario to worry about…)

I can ridicule Christian beliefs, and because they are mainstream and ubiquitous, and have a large supply of phenomenally butt-headed stupid adherents preaching the Word all over the fucking place, I do so with a bit of snarky enjoyment from time to time. (Christianity? God, who is omnipotent, created the world including people, who rebelled and misbehaved, thus causing the all-powerful God to Lose His Temper and flood the earth and kill most of what he’d created so as to put the Fear of God in the remaining few, who more or less thumbed their noses at Him anyhow and still didn’t do as they should. It all started with Original Sin, you see — the first time people did wrong, that got them all bound up with Original Sin, which is Bad News, lemme tell you. So God the Almighty, in order to get rid of this Original Sin in the world He hath Created, had to come to earth to be Jesus (presumably because He required that of Himself) in order to get Hisself killt in order to cause Himself to forgive the people, and having done so He arose and sitteth at his Own Right Hand and now things are cool or at least they are as long as the Witnesses to the Resurrection can successfully get all the other people to Accept Our Lord Jesus Christ into their Hearts as their Personal Lord and Savior, outside of which God is still pretty much fucked and the world and the people he created are still frustrating the Holy Shit out of Him…)

Big deal. Trout in a barrel and all that. The fact is, I don’t know what Polycarp or Tomndebb or any other person who identifies as Christian believes until they tell me what they believe. Sure, i can make some generalized guesses, but why bother guessing?

I would assume that they have some reason for choosing that word, Christian. They may be interpreting the tenets and belief-systems of Christianity in a very different way from how the subway haranguers do, and they may feel that some important and relevant historical Christians perceived and understood matters as they do, not as the silly people with their cartoon-caricature 2-dimensional theology tend to. Or maybe not, but first I have to listen.

Not being Christian, I have no use for a handful of theological concepts and the phrases that express them; and by “have no use” I ultimately mean “I don’t use them”. Since I don’t use them, I don’t get to define them. They do.

565

Well, it would be hypocritical to blast the ‘Last Thursdayists’ for claiming God faked the fossil record to dupe the overly rational while simultaneously holding a belief in the resurrection. Since that doesn’t seem to be what you’re doing I think the hypocrisy charge fails in this instance.

I would, however, be interested in your honest assessment of the beliefs of the ‘Last Thursdayists’. In your opinion, does belief in the resurrection preclude you from casting doubt on their beliefs?

566

I for one hope you decide to stick around and still participate. Without folks like you **Voyager ** and a few others debates on spiritual topics might not seem worth the time. Like you I come here to have the thought process stimulated and my beliefs challenged so that I might learn something and even clarify my beliefs to myself.
While I understand the concept of debate for the sake of “winning” an argument that never made much sense in GD. There are no judges to declare a winner and declaring yourself one seems like childish bullshit. It seemed a great place for a sincere exchange of ideas and to gather a better understanding of opposing viewpoints. For that I am grateful.
My suggestion and hope is that we can engage those we choose to and simply ignore those who we have no interest in. I attempted once or twice to engage Der Trihs and that was enough. Now I simply ignore his posts for the most part. It’s not that he offers no content. It’s just that I know where every discussion will end. Crash!! Head first into a wall with nothing gained by either party, so why bother.
Now I’ve made an attempt to have a discussion with badchad and learned what I need to from him and about him I have similar feelings.
Friend Poly I encourage you to stick around and participate with those whom you enjoy and who appreciate your input {me for instance} Perhaps learning to overlook certain posts without being overly offended or annoyed will in itself be a worthwhile exercise in discipline. Maybe!! Could happen! couldn’t it? Aw fuck, I don’t know

567

What Cosmodan said. I want to communicate with other people holding a variety of perspectives on the whole religious/theology thang. Definitely including atheists, definitely including believers (christian, muslim, jewish, etc), definitely including folks still sorting the sand and not ready to declare a conclusion, definitely including other folks who have but whose beliefs are esoteric…

I want to communicate with other people who are excited about their own understandings but who are not contemptuous of folks who do not perceive things just as they do.

And this board has been a very good place for that.

568

Well put and seconded

569

Truthfully, I wouldn’t mind debating the validity of religion. Sadly, Badchad is not someone who I want in the discussion, even on my side. Thus, I have avoided the entire discussion, excepting only commentary on his dishonest and varying debating tactics. Poly, I’m sorry that this jerk… yes, I said it. He’s a jerk. I’m sorry this jerk is hounding you away.

Stay cool. Stay calm. Stay collected. He’ll vanish in time.

570

I haven’t spent a lot of time considering how my beliefs cast doubt on (or reinforce) the beliefs of others. Clearly, there are points on which I agree or disagree with people who hold beliefs that differ from mine (or who hold no belief on a topic), but while I will occasionally discuss the matter with a person to see where they may shed light on my beliefs, I do not recall actually criticizing anyone else’s beliefs, even in person.

At any rate, my position regarding posting on a message board remains one of not discussiong beliefs, mine or others.

571

You’re pathetic.

572

I don’t think there are discussions to be had with badchad. He just tries to piss on his opponents. He has even said that his purpose is to squelch discussion. I think that goes against the spirit of these boards more than anything else.
I’m hardly an intellectual heavyweight, but I don’t find his arguments challenging or even thought-provoking. Maybe it’s because he weilds them so clumsily, like the arguing itself is more important than the content of the arguments. This scorched-earth style of debate may be impressive looking to some, but that doesn’t mean it’s good.

573

There were clearly visible events associated with these events in the Bible (like Saints rising from their graves and earthquakes) that did not happen. None of the reasonably literate people who were supposedly exposed to this event saw fit to write it down. This clear evidence that Jesus was correct in his teachings did not see any reason to adopt the new religion. The Biblical verses about the resurrection were written relatively lately. Dio has posted many times that the trials described showed no understanding of Jewish law at the time.

The problem I have with Tom’s position is that he righly rejects creationism, while accepting the resurrection with not a lot more evidence than the creationists have. I’m assuming he rejects both scientific creationism and non-scientific creationism - the latter is a better analogy.

574

I would have to write far longer a post than I care to do at this (wee small) hour to justify why I accept the Resurrection, with caveats, as an even that “really happened.” (See I Corinthians 15 for some background into my thinking.)

But let me observe one thing: YEC doctrine needs to be taken as a unit. It’s not separable to say that, yes, the events of the Fourth Day did occur in one 24-hour period but the other five days took millions of years. Not if you have any coherence to your belief structure whatsoever.

On the other hand, the “fact” of the Resurrection is separable from the “signs and wonders” that supposedly accompanied it – most of which are either derived from Matthew or are pious fables derived loosely from the Bible accounts. It’s very well known that Matthew loaded his gospel with almost certainly fictitious events that served to “prove Old Testament prophecies of Christ.”

By parallel, it is quite possible to believe that someone known as Arthur rallied the Britons against the Saxons in the last years of the Fifth and first of the Sixth Centuries, without therefore having to buy into the Quest of the Holy Grail, the anachronistic chivalrous code, Lancelot, Galahad, and all the other trappings that have accumulated around the Arthur legend. Likewise, it’s plausible that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead (providing there is sufficient evidence to support it, and that one puts the right construction on what “rise from the dead” actually means), without the Jerusalem Zombie Marching and Brain Salad Chowder Society, earthquakes, the rending of the veil, darkness at noon, and all the other dramatic paraphenalia supposed to have accompanied it.

575

FWIW, I’m particularly proud of this one:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=2967937&postcount=193

Thanks to Red Fury citing it on another thread.

576

It is entirely possible to criticize Christians for accepting the odd and implausible story of the resurrection without anything resembling historical evidence. I have noted that point throughout.

It is an error of logic to equate the resurrection, for which there is no evidence beyond a few letters written twenty-odd years after the supposed event and some stories written even later, to the story of Creation, for which we have only borrowed stories with clear antecedents as well as a huge amount of physical and historical evidence that contradicts that story. To take that logical error and make it the basis of a false claim of hypocrisy is not only an error of logic, but an indication that one is perfectly willing to make false claims to promote one’s arguments.

I have seen no evidence that you are behaving in the less honest manner, Voyager, and I have no problem with you looking at Christian belief and shaking your head and wondering why anyone would hold such an irrational belief–as long as you do not use the logical error proposed by badchad to then falsely lay a charge of hypocrisy on “liberal Christians.” A judgement that “liberal Christians” are odd, irrational, or even deluded is fine, based on the apparent evidence. I only object to a person behaving irrationally to falsely condemn a group for behaving irrationally.

(BTW, all the earthquakes and zombies are not associated with the resurrection, but with the crucifixion. The stories of the dead wandering around and the curtain in the Temple being torn asunder could easily be simply stage effects for the narrative of the crucifixion without actually affecting the (implausible) truth of the resurrection, itself.)

577

Thanks. Hmmmm.

578

I think the important point is not that the evidence regarding the two events is not identical, but that each event is equally unlikely.

Sure, it’s easy for you if you disregard the unfalsifiable part of the claim you believe false. But with the resurrection, where you should also disregard the unfalsifiable part, you don’t, and more than that you trumpet the unfalsifiable aspect of the resurrection up as a strength. BTW, you never answered whether you held the held the supernatural powers of Achilles up with that of the resurrection of Christ. Both are equally unfalsifiable.

It’s not the rejecting or accepting of various supernatural claims that make nominal Christians hypocrites. Accepting any supernatural claim just makes them irrational. What makes nominal Christians hypocrites is when they denigrate the beliefs of fundamentalist Christians just because they accept a different set of supernatural beliefs that are no less rational than those held by you nominal Christians.

I think that’s a little callous of you. Jesus taught that his followers should spread the word to all people. You might argue that you can shake the dust from your feet with a few hardened atheists like myself but what about everyone else? How can you not care that others will suffer in hell or be deprived of heaven? What would Jesus say about this?

Or not.

579

I don’t know if that is completely true. I’ve seen Princhester make some of the same arguments I have made and be completely ignored. Say what you want about my methods being good or bad but it’s undeniable that I get attention. As for being affected myself, I really do not wish for any of my opponents irrationality to rub off on me.

I could make an effort to be more polite for a trial period and see what happens but I don’t agree in the slightest that I fail to listen to or understand my opponents. I think I understand their every point quite well, and literally could argue their points for them. Also, I don’t think it would serve anybody if I ceased looking for weaknesses in an argument. First I should point out that don’t really look for weaknesses, they literally pop out at me; call it a gift. Second, what would it do for the fight of ignorance if I chose to ignore said weaknesses?

Just as I know when I have seen a weakness, I know when I have my opponent where I want them. If others are going to claim I’m losing a debate, or can’t win, I have no problem in responding to them and saying “the hell I am.”

But this board is about “fighting ignorance” it is not about the “mutual understanding and sharing of ignorance.” Biblical literalists and nominal Christians both hold views that are very ignorant. As you yourself agree:

And while were on the topic, it’s not as if nominal Christians are particularly tolerant of their more fundamentalist brothers. Look how they treated poor His4ever (aka Lynn73):

580

Your inference is either wholly wrong or you are simply trying to bait me, (or, I suppose, both). There is nothing about “not worrying” about a point of theology on a message board that equates to “not caring” whether or not someone suffers in hell.

Actually, I would tend to agree that a Christian who denigrated the belief of others, (Christian or otherwise), is sinning. I suppose that there could be an element of hypocrisy among this vaguely described group of “nominal Christians” to which you keep alluding. Of course, your blanket condemnation of a group that you do not even bother to define is simply a way to engage in name calling, rather than actually carrying on a discussion.