Evidence for God - SPLIT STOPIC

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

My point from the start was that it WAS (past tense) used in that way by scientists and public alike and I have stated that the inferences from biological hypotheses strongly lead in that direction even today, but that for reasons of religion, political correctness and others those kinds of conclusions are excluded from academia now.

By that logic right there, Christianity is a Racist, Enslaving, Genocidal, cult-generating anti-science dogma that's out to conquer the world.
If we judged something by the worst atrocities that people justified it for, then the Bible itself is worse than anything Darwin could have scripted out if he said "I like eating babies with ketchup."

The Bible was inspiration for some of the most horrific and terrifying events known to mankind - if you want a body count you'd need to start from the very conception of the assembly of the Bible and the start of the Catholic Church and all the subsequent nonsense about the Crusades and the radical Christian take-offs that halted the very fabric of scientific progress itself.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

What is Inferno responding to? I do not see those posts from dotoree on this thread. I do see dotoree edited his second to last message five times before I read it. Did dotoree remove those sections before I read it?

I know in that infamous thread, dotoree edited whole posts out of it, which is why AronRa wanted his responses to be in the debate thread. That way he would not be able to change them after being shown wrong.

Sorry, but you know nothing about the truth in the above. It's flagrant falsehood on your part. FLAGRANT. I removed ONE post there at the beginning and that was because of the advice of another person on color/formatting of the text, etc. (I believe I posted a dark color the 1st time and was told to change it to yellow and somehow posted twice and so deleted one of the double posts..and that's supposed to prove dishonesty??? Your allegations that that is dishonesty prove that you do not have much interest or concern for honesty or rationality) and I did another one here too because I posted the same thing twice by mistake and still don't see the option to delete a post. And yet many people spout rivers of falsehoods about this showing that they don't have even a slightly open mind, but are looking for even the most trivial things to justify false attacks.

In the last post, I saw some things that I wanted to emphasize with colors, underlining that I wanted to stand out more, esp. for those who don't have time to read a lot. That's the entire reason for the edits (oh and also saw one quote that I had included twice by mistake in different sections).

I edit when I see typos or things I need to clarify as all writers do, even CNN, etc. Could you be more dishonest??? I NEVER and I repeat NEVER EVER change things to hide what I have said. NEVER ONCE have I done that here. NEVER. Your intentional lying only harms you.

Alright, than what post is Inferno responding to? I cannot find the quotes he is attributing to you.

One last thing, in that infamous thread you posted this:

I don't expect you to agree with this, but from my decades of study and reading the best minds on both sides as I have time, Christianity is ~70-80% evidence and ~20-30% faith. Atheism (in its traditional and modern form) is ~95%+ faith. When spontaneous generation was accepted, atheism had a LOT more "scientific" proof. Now it has much less than at most times in history. Evolution may be ~20-30% evidence and 70-80% faith. It's hard to prove those numbers of course, but basically, Christianity is based mostly on evidence and a little faith. Atheism is based almost entirely on faith and and dislike of Christianity (often misrepresentations of the Bible). Evolution is quite a bit better than atheism with some evidence (esp. certain testable predictions), but much more faith. Again, none of you will agree on this at present.

I quoted that, and luckily, I did, because I cannot seem to find that original post as well. Seems like you removed it for some reason. The weird thing about that post is that you seem to be using the word "faith" as we all accept it and not the way you have redefined it. I wonder what the change was from the original posting of that quote and now.

EDIT:

I have ALREADY found strong proof of that in Darwin's own predictions about civilized races exterminating the weak as part of his ideas on universal common descent...and the very title of his book "preservation of FAVORED" races.

You are going to hold onto this belief after everything you have seen to disprove that in this thread? Very telling.

EDIT 2:

My point from the start was that it WAS (past tense) used in that way by scientists and public alike and I have stated that the inferences from biological hypotheses strongly lead in that direction even today, but that for reasons of religion, political correctness and others those kinds of conclusions are excluded from academia now.

This is just flat out wrong. You keep confusing eugenics with evolutionary theory. Biology teaches us that race is a cultural construct. There is more difference within an ethic group than between ethic groups. Religion and political correctness had nothing to do with that. Cold hard data about genetics did.

 

[tuxbox]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

But, it's fairly certain that Darwin was strongly influenced by the Christian movement to abolish slavery in the early 1800s which culminated in the 1st ever laws making slavery illegal in the world that I'm aware of in England in 1833.

Several countries made slavery illegal before 1833. Here in the States, Providence Plantation made slavery illegal in 1652, followed by Vermont in 1777.

 

[Anachronous Rex]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

My point from the start was that it WAS (past tense) used in that way by scientists and public alike and I have stated that the inferences from biological hypotheses strongly lead in that direction even today, but that for reasons of religion, political correctness and others those kinds of conclusions are excluded from academia now.

By that logic right there, Christianity is a Racist, Enslaving, Genocidal, cult-generating anti-science dogma that's out to conquer the world.
If we judged something by the worst atrocities that people justified it for, then the Bible itself is worse than anything Darwin could have scripted out if he said "I like eating babies with ketchup."

The Bible was inspiration for some of the most horrific and terrifying events known to mankind - if you want a body count you'd need to start from the very conception of the assembly of the Bible and the start of the Catholic Church and all the subsequent nonsense about the Crusades and the radical Christian take-offs that halted the very fabric of scientific progress itself.

This. Perfect.

 

[tuxbox]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

I'm just going to come out about this whole nonsense:
In my honest opinion, I can honestly make the conjecture that dotree himself is in an extreme crisis of faith. This crisis of faith is so extreme that he's forced to rationalize to himself the nature of God's existence. However, he is too rational to believe anything he can think over or spit out.

Oh dear, what to do now? Well it's obvious -
instead of abandoning his beliefs, he changes the definitions, lies, and alters rules actively in order for them to try and be coherent... If THESE principles are true, then his belief in Yahweh and the Bible is justified.
But, once again, not even he believes the bullshit he's typed - so much so that he ends up scripting pages upon pages of this same jumble of words and phrases, them not even making sense to him.

OH DEAR WHAT NOW?!
It's simple. If dotree can convince atheists/rationalists that his reasoning is logical (or, better yet, STUMP THEM WITH HIS HOLY-DRIVEN LOGIC) then he can curl up on his pillow at night and go to bed with a sound mind, assured in the fact that God is Real and he was right.

This would explain why he intentionally lies, distorts data, changes definitions, and drowns it all in piles and piles of incoherent and dancing-around-the-point posts. It's not because he's trying to prove something to us - The reason he's here is because he can't provide any evidence, and he knows it. He's trying to prove God to himself.

MY suggestion? Go let him wave his hands and swelter in his own misery elsewhere. The seriousness attitudes of this topic have long since withered away to humoring and musing, the court of Reason conversing in jest with a jester. I would say that dotree is just as atheist as Prolescum here - but at least Prole doesn't lie to himself so he can sleep well at night without the thoughts of a possible invisible sky daddy suckerpunching him.

 

[TruthisLife7]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

In my honest opinion, I can honestly make the conjecture that dotree himself is in an extreme crisis of faith.

ROFL, ROFL. I literally almost fell out of my chair laughing. Thanks for the laughs. I've had a stressful day. You are very skillful at inventing fiction I must say as well as knowing absolutely NOTHING about linguistics and how even words in the same nation have different meanings in different places (in the midwest USA, "dinner" means lunch to many people, but on the east cost it means the evening meal). You're just exposing your total ignorance about how linguistics works. I don't think I've even defined ONE thing yet in recent months from my own ideas. I just read people in context and how they intended their words to be meant. It's VERY simple linguistics and has absolutely nothing to do with ANY of your fictional fantasies. You are a good joker and doing me a favor by demonstrating your complete incompetence at linguistics (not really your fault though since you obviously have no training in that area). ROFL. Next post in the debate will have a peer reviewed paper on the meaning of faith in cultures of Bible times, OUTSIDE Israel. Already you're being intentionally deceitful..but if that doesn't convince you, then it's clear that your sole and only intent is deception and there's no point talking to you since you obviously care nothing for facts of any kind.

My sleep is not affected at all by anything you fantasize about at all. I do have other concerns unrelated to this debate that make me concerned (court cases and the horrendous affect of irreligious people causing serious financial problems and damaging my wife a lot).

I have several objectives for being here and have made a lot of progress already on some of them, but others are only just starting, esp. presenting the evidence.Next post in the debate should be the end of the pragmatic evidence I think, then we'll move into Inferno's field, historical evidence...where I hope I will learn some things, since that's his field (this is one of the big reasons I do debates and discussions with people who differ from me...to learn something or at least increase motivation to do research and learn something .
Bryan

 

[TruthisLife7]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

By that logic right there, Christianity is a Racist, Enslaving, Genocidal, cult-generating anti-science dogma that's out to conquer the world.
If we judged something by the worst atrocities that people justified it for, then the Bible itself is worse than anything Darwin could have scripted out if he said "I like eating babies with ketchup."

Sorry, but you could not be more wrong. The Bible explicitly and many times forbids oppression of other races, explicitly states that all are equal and has laws enshrining that equality that were literally millenia ahead of it's time. While racism can justified directly from universal common descent, you have to invent ideas and explicitly violate many Bible principles to justify racism (which I don't deny has been done). There's a WORLD of difference there.

The Bible was inspiration for some of the most horrific and terrifying events known to mankind

Categorically and indisputably false unless you want to destroy all the foundations of science by using the same principle. This will be made explicitly clear in my next post in the debate tonight or tomorrow...the fact is that officially atheist states have killed 30 times more people in just a couple centuries than ALL religions in ALL history, including even ALL the false ones. Even atheist researchers and secular research centers agree with this.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MEGA.HTM http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atrocities.html

You should read this link by an atheist in comparison to the above. VERY informative to help cure you from some of the common atheist fallacies on body counts:
http://the-classic-liberal.com/atheist-defense-christianity/

And note that most of the people the Catholics killed were people who just wanted to read their Bibles and follow the Bible's principles instead of man made traditions...in this area atheism and Catholicism are sisters in killing people who just wanted to follow the Bible. And no, it's NOT a no true scotsman fallacy, unless you want to destroy most of science the same way (see my next debate post).

Note that we're talking at the system level here, NOT the individual level. Morality is influenced by many factors and I know some admirably moral atheists, Inferno has seemed to be quite moral for the most part (except his straw manning and quote mining of Pascal). So, distinguish between those. The above facts from the university of Hawaii do NOT, NOT, NOT mean all atheists individuals are immoral, etc.

Bryan

 

[TruthisLife7]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

One last thing, in that infamous thread you posted this:

I don't expect you to agree with this, but from my decades of study and reading the best minds on both sides as I have time, Christianity is ~70-80% evidence and ~20-30% faith. Atheism (in its traditional and modern form) is ~95%+ faith. When spontaneous generation was accepted, atheism had a LOT more "scientific" proof. Now it has much less than at most times in history. Evolution may be ~20-30% evidence and 70-80% faith. It's hard to prove those numbers of course, but basically, Christianity is based mostly on evidence and a little faith. Atheism is based almost entirely on faith and and dislike of Christianity (often misrepresentations of the Bible). Evolution is quite a bit better than atheism with some evidence (esp. certain testable predictions), but much more faith. Again, none of you will agree on this at present.

I quoted that, and luckily, I did, because I cannot seem to find that original post as well. Seems like you removed it for some reason. The weird thing about that post is that you seem to be using the word "faith" as we all accept it and not the way you have redefined it. I wonder what the change was from the original posting of that quote and now.
--
The post is infamous and many arguments here will be infamous for them being exposed for the fallacies they nearly all were and are in the debate with Inferno and a couple in the next post.

I never removed the post with the ~70-80% claim intentionally and I will restate it again as something that from my calculations and the evidence I'm aware of is pretty close to reality. I have never even needed to hide that, PERIOD.

I used "faith" in that situation in the way that modern people use it, in the same way that I use words differently depending on culture and places I'm living. I used words a little differently in Singapore, South Africa, Korea, etc. because of the local culture, etc. to facilitate understanding. But, when we're talking about what the Bible considers faith to be and the Greeks and ancient cultures, it's a crime against linguistics to use it in the sense of not having linguistics since that is almost diametrically opposed to how they used it.
---
EDIT:

I have ALREADY found strong proof of that in Darwin's own predictions about civilized races exterminating the weak as part of his ideas on universal common descent...and the very title of his book "preservation of FAVORED" races.

You are going to hold onto this belief after everything you have seen to disprove that in this thread? Very telling.
---
This is not my view. Even leading evolutionists have agreed, as well as a couple here, that Darwin was racist (and you have for emotional reasons decided that you will not be honest about this). Darwin said PRESERVATION of the FAVORED RACES and he said that being free of a native population was an ADVANTAGE!! Do I need to break this down to kindergarten level? Preservation means staying alive, surviving..and the fittest, the most superior, advanced whatever races, would be the ones to be preserved, survive while others died out. The science itself does not instruct us to be racist, of course. Science doesn't instruct us on moral choices. I never claimed it did. But, the hypothesis of universal common descent has indisputably been used as a justification for many racist programs since iIt is very rational for people hearing this to think that maybe they could help the process go faster by killing off some of the inferior races, which is precisely what Hitler and many did, applying evolution to human society. Again, the science does NOT tell us to do what Hitler did, but it is not hard to make a connection between the science and racism and use the science to try to justify racism. I'm waiting for you to challenge me on the Hitler thing (just a friendly warning ).

No, I'm not confusing eugenics, evolution theory, natural selection, universal common descent or anything else...I've studied and read more about them than probably many of you have (recently completed "Your Inner Fish" and have read several books and countless articles and videos from leading Darwinists and atheists like that). I could have been clear in a couple posts (have been VERY rushed), but there's no misunderstanding of them going on on my side. For every hour most of you've studied Christianity or creation science, I've studied a minimum of 10 hours of atheists and evolutionists at the top level. I'm not infallible by any means and some for sure know more than I do, but I am not uninformed at all about what I am criticizing. The fact that most of you don't even know that ancient people viewed faith as having a strong connection with evidence shows that you and those you know don't know very much at all about the Bible and are not in a rational position of being able to judge it in any way.

 

[Inferno]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

What is Inferno responding to? I do not see those posts from dotoree on this thread. I do see dotoree edited his second to last message five times before I read it. Did dotoree remove those sections before I read it?

I know in that infamous thread, dotoree edited whole posts out of it, which is why AronRa wanted his responses to be in the debate thread. That way he would not be able to change them after being shown wrong.

They are from this post, this post as well as this post, in chronological order.
All of the quotes can be found in full, I haven't seen any evidence of tampering.

 

[Inferno]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

Now, to write a response...

My point from the start was that it WAS (past tense) used in that way by scientists and public alike and I have stated that the inferences from biological hypotheses strongly lead in that direction even today, but that for reasons of religion, political correctness and others those kinds of conclusions are excluded from academia now.

The point is though, no matter how hard someone spins a theory (I'm talking about "scientists and public alike now") it's not the theory itself that is inherently racist but the people using an incorrect version of said theory. Now you'll probably tell me that I'm falling victim to a "no true scotsman" here but no, that's not the case. In the case of science, we can show what is actually going on. As such, we know that "race" is not a biologically valid term. We can show that Evolution is not racist in any way, that you need to twist it to make it racist. (The same is not true for holy books, where almost anything can be believed)

I have ALREADY found strong proof of that in Darwin's own predictions about civilized races exterminating the weak as part of his ideas on universal common descent...and the very title of his book "preservation of FAVORED" races. This has never been about only peer reviewed resources. NEVER. But, they can be found just like I showed the accusation about Pascal's wager to be a straw man, I can do the same here from historical sources.

And I have already shown that you are wrong on every count. What he showed about "civilized races exterminating the weak" was not a predicament of his theory, it was the reality he observed years before he thought of his theory. The title of the book means something completely different to what you understand it to mean: I've already shown that in his time, "races" meant "biological races" aka sub-species. Favoured is a matter of "favoured by whom"? Remember when Hytegia said this?

)O( Hytegia )O([/url]"]

The Debacle Discussion
Inferno and dotree
were scribbling a storm -
a discussion of God,
the posts both long and worn.
The fight against nonsense
had grown forlorn.

So Inferno sat down
and typed out quite simply
"Am I less than a fish
or a fish less than me?
A dip in the ocean
and we shall see."

But dotree dashed it off
and failed to answer it,
for his reasoning showed
he didn't care one bit.
That's the thing about him -
he just writes shit.​

The End.

He was paraphrasing me here:

Wrong. As I've already explained, a poor understanding of evolution does indeed give that impression. However, if you go past book titles or quote-mines such as the above, you realize that scientists actually say the exact opposite. An in depth study shows that "things in the past" are always adapted to a specific environment, so when they go into a different environment they will always be "inferior to things" that evolved in the "different environment". (Note that "inferior" the way I use it means "not as likely to produce as many offspring".)
Am I inferior to a fish or is a fish inferior to me? Put me in the ocean and we'll see. On the other hand, put a shark on land and the odds are reversed.
In the same way, am I inferior to a trilobite or is a trilobite inferior to me? Trilobites first appeared around 526mya and disappeared 260mya. Humans have existed for a maximum of 200,000 years.

Do you see the problem? If not, I'll spell it out to you: Species are always more successful in the environment they adapted to. A comparison of two species is pointless if they don't exist in the same environment. Racism from a purely biological point of view is stupid.

In short, evolution is not racist.

And note that most of the people the Catholics killed were people who just wanted to read their Bibles and follow the Bible's principles instead of man made traditions...in this area atheism and Catholicism are sisters in killing people who just wanted to follow the Bible. And no, it's NOT a no true scotsman fallacy, unless you want to destroy most of science the same way (see my next debate post).

Au contraire, mon frà¨re! It's the very definition of the no-true-scotsman fallacy!

This is not my view. Even leading evolutionists have agreed, as well as a couple here, that Darwin was racist (and you have for emotional reasons decided that you will not be honest about this).

As already shown, you're lying through your teeth. Darwin was racist when compared to today's times, but if you compare him to his times he was if anything quite advanced.

Darwin said PRESERVATION of the FAVORED RACES and he said that being free of a native population was an ADVANTAGE!! Do I need to break this down to kindergarten level? Preservation means staying alive, surviving..and the fittest, the most superior, advanced whatever races, would be the ones to be preserved, survive while others died out.

Answer my challenge above, because this is pure baloney as I've shown.

Science doesn't instruct us on moral choices.

Except of course when it does anyway...

But, the hypothesis of universal common descent has indisputably been used as a justification for many racist programs since iIt is very rational for people hearing this to think that maybe they could help the process go faster by killing off some of the inferior races, which is precisely what Hitler and many did, applying evolution to human society.

As I've already shown, an incorrect understanding of evolution will indeed give the impression that it promotes racism. There is no "process [to] go faster" and you'd know that if you had actually any understanding of evolution. You don't.
As I've also shown, there are no "inferior races", because there are neither "races" nor "inferior".
I've also shown that Hitler never used evolution but was instead a Christian creationist, Stalin used an incorrect version (Lamarckian evolution) and so did anyone else who ever promoted racism by using science.
You are a liar, a liar and a triple-damn liar.

Again, the science does NOT tell us to do what Hitler did, but it is not hard to make a connection between the science and racism and use the science to try to justify racism. I'm waiting for you to challenge me on the Hitler thing (just a friendly warning ).

Think you can scare me? I already have challenged you on this, multiple times. It is extremely hard to make a connection between "the science" (by which you mean evolution) and racism because I have already shown that a cursory understanding (reading the book titles) will indeed give the false impression that it is racist, while you only need to read one book on it to understand that that's completely wrong. (This is the fallacy Ray Comfort so often falls victim to.)

No, I'm not confusing eugenics, evolution theory, natural selection, universal common descent or anything else...

Actually, you have, as shown above.

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

I think ye doth protest too much, dotree. You've done nothing but lie, distort definitions, and intentionally misrepresent all opposition to your ideals. If your discussions had any actual merit they would present themselves beyond you making them up.
Jesus should be able to stand up for himself without you having to lie for him.

And, no - dotree, you claim that the document "The Origin of the Species" is corrupt because a few (you could probably count them on you hands and toes) people had used it to justify heinous acts. Ever since the Bible's CONCEPTION it has been used to promote the most heinous acts known to mankind - a third grader could tell you about the Holocaust and the Crusades. I can pick any number of millions of atrocities that, even today, are justified with the Bible (regardless of it's content).

That's not how this game is played. If you claim that one set of documents carry the weight of all the bad that has been done in the name of it, the Bible has more blood on it's cover than Darwin could ever hope to achieve. It's been used, actively, to justify everything from Genocide, Homicide, Slavery, Rape, Cults, Arson, and I could make a list of all the things and events that the Bible has been used to inspire - EVEN TODAY with modern-day witch burnings in Africa to the mass homicide in Sweeden (Utoya and Oslo) by a right-wing Christian extremist.

You may offhandedly try the genetic fallacy and claim that the Bible is the reason modern science exists, but the Bible is also the reason that the Dark Ages existed and was used to set human progress back several thousand years until it was brought back via trade with the Middle East (who had preserved the sciences and work of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Egyptians that the Church, through justification of the Bible, had tried to wipe away from history).
If anything, we have the Muslims who preserved and forewarded the sciences in the place of the Dark Ages (that was justified by the Bible). The only reason the Renessance and the Age of Enlightenment occured was because trading books and ideas with our not-so-evil-as-the-people-who-held-the-Bible-claimed neighbors. They brought us astronomical ideas, Greek poetry, charts of numerical tables, Arts, sciences, and philosophy back with them.

 

[Inferno]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

It reminds me a lot of Ray Comfort's argument... "Have you ever stolen? Then you are a thief." Completely ignoring however that 99.9% of the time one has been a decent person, helped to feed the homeless, saved lives, etc.

 

[Anachronous Rex]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

By that logic right there, Christianity is a Racist, Enslaving, Genocidal, cult-generating anti-science dogma that's out to conquer the world.
If we judged something by the worst atrocities that people justified it for, then the Bible itself is worse than anything Darwin could have scripted out if he said "I like eating babies with ketchup."

Sorry, but you could not be more wrong. The Bible explicitly and many times forbids oppression of other races, explicitly states that all are equal and has laws enshrining that equality that were literally millenia ahead of it's time. While racism can justified directly from universal common descent, you have to invent ideas and explicitly violate many Bible principles to justify racism (which I don't deny has been done). There's a WORLD of difference there.

I didn't write this.



That said, blood libel? Tis not a sin to kill an Egyptian, or an Amalekite, or frankly anyone who gets in your way if you're a member of gods chosen race. Oh, and you can have slaves but they have to be from other countries.

What Bible are you reading?

The Bible was inspiration for some of the most horrific and terrifying events known to mankind

Categorically and indisputably false unless you want to destroy all the foundations of science by using the same principle. This will be made explicitly clear in my next post in the debate tonight or tomorrow...the fact is that officially atheist states have killed 30 times more people in just a couple centuries than ALL religions in ALL history, including even ALL the false ones. Even atheist researchers and secular research centers agree with this.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MEGA.HTM http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atrocities.html

You should read this link by an atheist in comparison to the above. VERY informative to help cure you from some of the common atheist fallacies on body counts:
http://the-classic-liberal.com/atheist-defense-christianity/

And note that most of the people the Catholics killed were people who just wanted to read their Bibles and follow the Bible's principles instead of man made traditions...in this area atheism and Catholicism are sisters in killing people who just wanted to follow the Bible. And no, it's NOT a no true scotsman fallacy, unless you want to destroy most of science the same way (see my next debate post).

Note that we're talking at the system level here, NOT the individual level. Morality is influenced by many factors and I know some admirably moral atheists, Inferno has seemed to be quite moral for the most part (except his straw manning and quote mining of Pascal). So, distinguish between those. The above facts from the university of Hawaii do NOT, NOT, NOT mean all atheists individuals are immoral, etc.

Bryan

Notice how even in your rebuttal you do not dispute the claim? You say it is categorically and indisputably false then proceed to provide no evidence against it; instead railing against the morality of atheists. It's fascinating to me that your only defense consistently is, "oh yeah, well you're worse!" If it were me I'd want to say a little bit more about myself than that.


Now by point of example, one of the early Christian fathers, a guy by the name of Cyril of Alexandria, was inspired by the Blood Libel, Revelation 2:20, and by the doctrine that a woman "should be in silence" (1 Timothy 2:12). This inspiration caused him to massacre and expel the city's Jews and Novatianists, before finally having a female philosopher by the name of Hypatia striped and stoned, her corpse paraded around the city. This was after, by the way, the city's Christians had been inspired to erase the pagan writings of the old world, and thus sacked and destroyed the city's library for the greater glory of god.

Now even if that were the wicked thing that Christianity had ever inspired, it would at the very least prove you wrong. To say the most, it proves just how hypocritical you are that the moment your own logic (and I use the term loosely) used against Darwin is turned against you, you flee to hollow excuses and double-talk. You bring your faith very low Dotoree.

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

Here's my problem right now -
Dotree claims that Darwin's writings were promoting racism.
We have catagorically provided clear evidence that dotree was dishonestly pulling quotes from their direct context in order to make it appear as if the Origin of the Species is a racist book.

Dotree claims that regardless of the content, the book was used to promote racist agendas.
To which I agreed, but then made the posit:

The Bible, regardless of the content it may or may not have, was used to promote some of the worst events in human history from blood-strewn streets of Jerusalem to mass hangings and book burnings. And more throughout the years.
To which dotree responded "No" without making a counter to the claim's historic demonstrability and instead chose to say "Darwin's Origin of the Species" was racist again, even after being catagorically shown that he was taking the quote directly out of context... Again.


Once again, I would like to ask if Dotree's an atheist. I directly quoted him saying that he was an atheist earlier! Why does he not address this clear quote of his own admission?!

=================

It reminds me a lot of Ray Comfort's argument... "Have you ever stolen? Then you are a thief." Completely ignoring however that 99.9% of the time one has been a decent person, helped to feed the homeless, saved lives, etc.

The answer to this is a counter-question that I developed in a discussion with another Christian friend of mine:
"Remember that time I ran for high school president?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, does that make me a career politician?"

Of course it bloody well doesn't.

You have permission to use it in shorthand as:
"If I run for class president in 9th grade, does that make me a life-long politician?"

I would like to call it the Hytegia Perpetual-Politician Dillema.

 

[devilsadvocate]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

I've got a shorter one, don't remember where I picked it up: "Have you ever baked bread? Then you're a baker."

 

[Inferno]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

I got it from somewhere (QualiaSoup?) but basically the argument is "Have you ever stolen?" "Yes" "then you're a bad person" "But I've also saved lives" "Then you're also a good person" >brainmelt<

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

What is Inferno responding to? I do not see those posts from dotoree on this thread. I do see dotoree edited his second to last message five times before I read it. Did dotoree remove those sections before I read it?

I know in that infamous thread, dotoree edited whole posts out of it, which is why AronRa wanted his responses to be in the debate thread. That way he would not be able to change them after being shown wrong.

They are from this post, this post as well as this post, in chronological order.
All of the quotes can be found in full, I haven't seen any evidence of tampering.

Thanks Inferno. I guess I did not go back far enough with my ctrl-F search of the thread. This does make me wonder why dotoree could not have done the same thing and shown that I was wrong.

I never removed the post with the ~70-80% claim intentionally and I will restate it again as something that from my calculations and the evidence I'm aware of is pretty close to reality. I have never even needed to hide that, PERIOD.

If you never removed it, than where is it? Inferno already showed that I was wrong the first time I accused you of removing posts. I wonder if you can show that I am wrong for a second time.

I used "faith" in that situation in the way that modern people use it, in the same way that I use words differently depending on culture and places I'm living. I used words a little differently in Singapore, South Africa, Korea, etc. because of the local culture, etc. to facilitate understanding. But, when we're talking about what the Bible considers faith to be and the Greeks and ancient cultures, it's a crime against linguistics to use it in the sense of not having linguistics since that is almost diametrically opposed to how they used it.

Gnug215[/url]"]I think we can all establish that you're employing a different understanding (or definition, whatever) of the term "faith" than the rest of us.

Having established that, is there any need to argue the point?

If you use the term "faith" differently than everyone here, how about you use another term or a sentence instead to explain what you mean when you want to use the term "faith", and we'll do the same?
Clearly, you do not mean "confidence or trust in a person or thing", or "belief that is not based on proof" when you say "faith", so I suggest we all stop using the term instead of arguing over it. Then we can perhaps actually get to the core points of this argument, instead of waffling around in superficial and pointless word-squabbles.

Sound good?

This is not my view. Even leading evolutionists have agreed, as well as a couple here, that Darwin was racist (and you have for emotional reasons decided that you will not be honest about this). Darwin said PRESERVATION of the FAVORED RACES and he said that being free of a native population was an ADVANTAGE!! Do I need to break this down to kindergarten level? Preservation means staying alive, surviving..and the fittest, the most superior, advanced whatever races, would be the ones to be preserved, survive while others died out. The science itself does not instruct us to be racist, of course. Science doesn't instruct us on moral choices. I never claimed it did. But, the hypothesis of universal common descent has indisputably been used as a justification for many racist programs since iIt is very rational for people hearing this to think that maybe they could help the process go faster by killing off some of the inferior races, which is precisely what Hitler and many did, applying evolution to human society. Again, the science does NOT tell us to do what Hitler did, but it is not hard to make a connection between the science and racism and use the science to try to justify racism. I'm waiting for you to challenge me on the Hitler thing (just a friendly warning ).

Inferno[/url]"]As well as the original quote from "The Voyage of the Beagle":

All the aborigines have been removed to an island in Bass's Straits, so that Van Diemen's Land enjoys the great advantage of being free from a native population. This most cruel step seems to have been quite unavoidable, as the only means of stopping a fearful succession of robberies, burnings, and murders, committed by the blacks; and which sooner or later would have ended in their utter destruction. I fear there is no doubt, that this train of evil and its consequences, originated in the infamous conduct of some of our countrymen.

You quote-miner!

I've read that Darwin strongly disliked the abuse of minorities he saw at times and above called it cruel. Yet, his claim that a country being free of its native population is an advantage is something that is purely racist and shows that he considered them to be greatly inferior.

Wrong. It shows that you've got your sources from someone who is intent on deceiving. Take the damn book and READ IT, how about that? Then you'd know that all of what you quote is quoted out of context and distorted to the highest degree.

he_who_is_nobody[/url]"]It is clear, if you took the time to read his book, that Darwin is not using the word race as we would use it today. It seems to mean anything from breed to race (as we would think of it today) to species depending on the context.

The doctrine of the origin of our several domestic races from several aboriginal stocks, has been carried to an absurd extreme by some authors. They believe that every race which breeds true, let the distinctive characters be ever so slight, has had its wild prototype

With respect to horses, from reasons which I cannot give here, I am doubtfully inclined to believe, in opposition to several authors, that all the races have descended from one wild stock.

Great as the differences are between the breeds of pigeons, I am fully convinced that the common opinion of naturalists is correct, namely, that all have descended from the rock-pigeon (Columba livia), including under this term several geographical races or sub-species, which differ from each other in the most trifling respects.

Let us now briefly consider the steps by which domestic races have been produced, either from one or from several allied species.

Inferno[/url]"]

Talk Origins - Darwin Race Quotes[/url]"]
Claims based on either of these quotes that Darwin and by extension modern evolutionary theory was or is "racist" or that the theory leads to racism, are less than honest. As John Wilkins noted in a "Feedback" article:
"Throughout the Descent, when Darwin refers to "civilised races" he almost always is referring to cultures in Europe. I think Darwin was simply confused at that time about the difference between biological races and cultural races in humans. This is not surprising at this time - almost nobody made the distinction but Alfred Russel Wallace.

. . . At this time it was common for Europeans (based on an older notion of a "chain of being from lowest to highest") to think that Africans ("negroes") were all of one subspecific form, and were less developed than "Caucasians" or "Asians", based on a typology in around 1800 by the German Johann Friedrich Blumenach. In short, Darwin is falling prey to the same error almost everyone else was . . . So far as I can tell, he was not hoping for the extermination of these "races", though. ... Throughout his life, Darwin argued against slavery and for the freedom and dignity of native populations under European slavery.

Darwin was not perfect. But he was no racist."

In short, there is nothing in Darwin's words to support (and much in his life to contradict) any claim that Darwin wanted the "lower" or "savage races" to be exterminated. He was merely noting what appeared to him to be factual, based in no small part on the evidence of a European binge of imperialism and colonial conquest during his lifetime. And if Wilkins is correct (and I think he is) about Darwin confusing biology and culture in this instance, Darwin was not entirely wrong. Certainly we can still see more technologically and militarily "advanced" cultures either destroying or, perhaps worse and more lasting, co-opting and replacing the less "advanced" ones.

Inferno[/url]"]This is the most terrible lie of them all. Hitler was undoubtedly a Christian Creationist. Also see here, here and of course in Hitler's work Mein Kampf. Not once in nearly 800 pages does he mention evolution or Darwin. On the other hand, he uses "God/Gott" 70 times, talks about "the Lord" a few times, specifically about what the Lord has told him to do. Hitler also specifically talks about his idea of Creationism. Compare these two quotes and tell me who wrote which:

Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable forms in which the life-urge of Nature manifests itself are subject to a fundamental law - one may call it an iron law of Nature - which compels the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life-forms when propagating and multiplying their kind. Each animal mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stork with the stork, the field-mouse with the field-mouse, the house-mouse with the house-mouse, the wolf with the she-wolf, etc.

As an example, dogs can easily breed with one another, whether wolves, dingoes, coyotes, or domestic dogs. When dogs breed together, you get dogs; so there is a dog kind. It works the same with chickens. There are several breeds of chickens, but chickens breed with each other and you still get chickens. So, there is a chicken kind. The concept is fairly easy to understand.

No, I'm not confusing eugenics, evolution theory, natural selection, universal common descent or anything else...I've studied and read more about them than probably many of you have (recently completed "Your Inner Fish" and have read several books and countless articles and videos from leading Darwinists and atheists like that).

I find this very hard to believe when you confuse universal common descent with evolutionary theory.

I could have been clear in a couple posts (have been VERY rushed), but there's no misunderstanding of them going on on my side. For every hour most of you've studied Christianity or creation science, I've studied a minimum of 10 hours of atheists and evolutionists at the top level.

I doubt this again since you seem to still be holding on to your ideas of evolution being intrinsically racist, even though everyone (it seems) on this thread has pointed out how that is wrong. In addition, your redefining of terms points to doing very little research.

I'm not infallible by any means and some for sure know more than I do, but I am not uninformed at all about what I am criticizing. The fact that most of you don't even know that ancient people viewed faith as having a strong connection with evidence shows that you and those you know don't know very much at all about the Bible and are not in a rational position of being able to judge it in any way.

)O( Hytegia )O([/url]"]Also, could you define the term "Faith" once more - and especially that evil Bible Concordances that specifically state that Faith is

- In the belief of those things which we do not see. ... He has confidence in these, and in kindred truths, and he acts as if they were real.

For we walk by faith, and not by sight. Faith is a grace which answers many useful purposes; it is the eye of the soul, by which it looks to Christ for righteousness, peace, pardon, life, and salvation; the hand by which it receives him, and the foot by which it goes to him, and walks in him as it has received him; which denotes not a single act of faith, but a continued course of believing; and is expressive, not of a weak, but of a strong steady faith of glory and happiness, and of interest in it: and it is opposed to "sight": by which is meant, not sensible communion, but the celestial vision: there is something of sight in faith; that is a seeing of the Son; and it is an evidence of things not seen, of the invisible glories of the other world; faith looks at, and has a glimpse of things not seen, which are eternal; but it is but seeing as through a glass darkly; it is not that full sight, face to face, which will be had hereafter, when faith is turned into vision.

-of those things which we hope for, not having God presently in our physical view.

For we cannot clearly see him in this life, wherein we walk by faith only: an evidence, indeed, that necessarily implies a kind of seeing him who is invisible; yet as far beneath what we shall have in eternity, as it is above that of bare, unassisted reason.

(In reference to "We walk by Faith, not by sight" ; 2 Corinthians 5:7)

Can I go on, or are the Biblical Scholars, whom you claim all use this definition, not actually Christians by your definition?

Faith: Belief in things not seen and walking in the knowing that God is there, actively, above non-Christian reasoning.

I went to Sunday School when I was a kid, too.

 

[Gnug215]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

In my honest opinion, I can honestly make the conjecture that dotree himself is in an extreme crisis of faith.

ROFL, ROFL. I literally almost fell out of my chair laughing. Thanks for the laughs. I've had a stressful day. You are very skillful at inventing fiction I must say as well as knowing absolutely NOTHING about linguistics and how even words in the same nation have different meanings in different places (in the midwest USA, "dinner" means lunch to many people, but on the east cost it means the evening meal). You're just exposing your total ignorance about how linguistics works. I don't think I've even defined ONE thing yet in recent months from my own ideas. I just read people in context and how they intended their words to be meant. It's VERY simple linguistics and has absolutely nothing to do with ANY of your fictional fantasies. You are a good joker and doing me a favor by demonstrating your complete incompetence at linguistics (not really your fault though since you obviously have no training in that area). ROFL. Next post in the debate will have a peer reviewed paper on the meaning of faith in cultures of Bible times, OUTSIDE Israel. Already you're being intentionally deceitful..but if that doesn't convince you, then it's clear that your sole and only intent is deception and there's no point talking to you since you obviously care nothing for facts of any kind.

My sleep is not affected at all by anything you fantasize about at all. I do have other concerns unrelated to this debate that make me concerned (court cases and the horrendous affect of irreligious people causing serious financial problems and damaging my wife a lot).

Bryan, are you alright?

Seriously.

This kind of reaction makes me wonder if you are about to have a mental breakdown or something. It seems desperately exaggerated. Frantically demonstrative. Way over-the-top emotive.
I know that you have a lot going on in your life (after you've told us numerous times), and this kind of outrageous outburst seems indicative of someone who is stressed out to the breaking point.
If you really don't have time for your family or whatever, then you really shouldn't prioritize this forum. Especially since, as I will talk about below, your presence here is really not helping anything (other than entertaining and busying a few people here).

I have several objectives for being here and have made a lot of progress already on some of them, but others are only just starting, esp. presenting the evidence.Next post in the debate should be the end of the pragmatic evidence I think, then we'll move into Inferno's field, historical evidence...where I hope I will learn some things, since that's his field (this is one of the big reasons I do debates and discussions with people who differ from me...to learn something or at least increase motivation to do research and learn something .
Bryan

Would you be so kind as to share a little about what your objectives are, and where you think you have made progress?

When gauging the reactions to your posts, and talking with some of the users in the chat or elsewhere, the only thing you seem to making progress in is causing annoyance and head-shaking.

You haven't convinced anyone here of anything, perhaps other than the fact that to be a creationist, you have to seriously stretch and misrepresent reality in order to be able to alleviate the massive cognitive dissonance ringing in your mind.


On a more practical note...

This thread is about what EVIDENCE one would accept God (or gods). Let us try to stick to that, shall we?

With that in mind, let me put it clearly to you:

Whether or not Darwin was racist is in NO WAY evidence against the theory of evolution!

I really can't stress this enough - and that is the maximum font size in here. I even threw in underlining.

So please, if you want to do more waffling around with this topic, could you be so kind as to make a new thread apart from this one, which is about evidence?
If you honestly think racism is evidence against the theory of evolution, then you're too far gone, and you won't just need a new thread, but a whole new forum.

 

[Prolescum]

Re: What evidence would you accept?

It's probably time to throw in the towel when you're confronted by...

[centre]

[/centre]