Religimyth...

[Royal_Tour 0]

Your argument is, "Religion is ridiculous and for stupid people." You call it simplification, I call it a gross exaggeration, as well as patently false.

hmm. nope. not my argument, but i like what you did there.

[speedz99 145]

hmm. nope. not my argument, but i like what you did there.

If ten people tell you that your hair is on fire, it might be time to go look in a mirror.

[Royal_Tour 0]

If ten people tell you that your hair is on fire, it might be time to go look in a mirror.

the problem is, i'm not sure if those ten people also believe in a burning talking bush. majority of the people who came into my thread have offered zero stance on anything. Merely straddling the fence. and now i'm supposed to act like their opinions matter? Not likely.

[Royal_Tour 0]

We speak to BG like an adult because he is one, and the majority of us respect his opinion, even if it's exasperating to watch him continuously refuse to concede even very basic points of fact by changing the subject or shifting the burdon of proof towards Spaghetti Monsterism.

Maybe its because you came into this thread at a later point... but its difficult to continue an intellectual discussion when things like this reflect his position...

And because I don't have to go to work for a half hour:Let's say I took you all back in time in a Delorean.Now I don't tell you when I am taking you back, just back in time and I just trick you with candy and a promise of a Free Willy dvd and you all climb in like the fools inquisitive folks that you are.Here's the funny part: I am taking you back to day 8 of creation, the 2nd day of the complete universe. I do this on day 8 and not day 7 because I respect God's wish to show us the right way to live is to take a day of rest and reflection in our week.Now we all get out, and I ask you all "How old is the earth right now?"Crow of course goes first because he knows everything and has this section of the forum hard wired into his cortex and can not help but talk first about any subject.crow says 'well i see this fully grown man here with some broad ( you should show more respect crow and quit looking at her naked body, you've seen magazines before ) and we know it takes a minimum of 20 years to reach the fully mature state that their bodies are in so the earth has to be at least 20 years old, but I suspect it is older'Royal Tour gets distracted by a butterfly and I let him go because the truth is that stepping on a butterfly will not really have any effect on the future unless you are in HollywoodJJJ says "Well I don't know why I am here and don't really care about what this is proving but I do like Free Willy. But I see a tree over there, if we cut it down we could count the rings but it's height and girth are pretty large and this we know means the tree is probably 40-60 years old which I can bracket and get a consensus if I had my laptop"crow says 'i knew that'Tim Wakefield says " Over here I see a small river with 3' tall banks cut into the rock, at known erosion rates this amount of water would take at least 8,500 years to erode through the rock face and create this deep of a bank"I had no idea Tim had such a grasp of erosion rates of water over many different types of rocks, but he surprises me often.crow says 'i knew that''Spademan would begin getting upset that the topic has not once turned towards him so he would begin talking about himselfcrow says "hey look what i can do"JmKiser would make an unexpected visit and point to a mountain and say "Mountains like that rise from plate shifting at a rate of about 1-2 inches per year, so from the estimated height of that mountain using basic trig and the shadows cast from the sun which I have paced off I can say that that mountain must be at least 40,000 years old"crow says 'i knew that'Slink points to a dinosaur and says "Look a Brontosaurus."I correct him and say that it's and Apatosaurus and that there never was any Brontosaurus, they put the wrong head on the wrong body as those crazy paleontologist are prone to do.Then Slink points into the water at a Coelacanth and says "Look an ancient fish in the process of growing legs which shows it as a transitional creature which places the earth around 3 million years old"crow says 'uhhh, would ya look at that butterfly'LLY says "I can see the faint outline of the moon in the day sky which from its position and the current season tells me we are standing in the middle of Europe somewhere (near where future me is trying to destroy this planet in order to understand it) and that the time it would take for a planetary body such as the moon to form from floating dust and rocks using inertia and gravity and reach a synchronous orbit around our planet is about 4.5 million years, so the earth has to be a minimum of 4.5 million years but I suspect it is much older.crow says 'i knew that'VB says " I am suspecting Balloon guy is up to something so my first instinct is to look for early pot plants to try to improve the current strain by pollination methods, but I can see the stars in the sky, and the naked eye can see stars that are 100 million light years away, which means that the light from those stars left those stars 100 million light years ago and is just now arriving to this planet."Then I laugh at you and you all begin telling me why your reasoning was based on sound science and crow of course goes on some rant about all scholars know this or that and slowly becomes excluded.Royal Tour is brought back by the sound of the car starting up and we leave. We stop at In-n-Out for you to eat and we trick crow into buying.The next day on the forum you all begin telling me why my lack of understanding of darwinian evolution jargon is why I am wrong about my worldview.I laugh at you some more, sell the Delorean for a profit, tithe from the profit and buy cigars

[speedz99 145]

the problem is, i'm not sure if those ten people also believe in a burning talking bush. majority of the people who came into my thread have offered zero stance on anything. Merely straddling the fence. and now i'm supposed to act like their opinions matter? Not likely.

vbnautilus, crowtrobot, joeyjojo, timwakefield, randyreed, and myself...that's just from my recollection of the thread. That's six people who very clearly agree with your stance that christianity is based in mythology (actually, now I'm not sure about JJJ, but whatever). All have offered much more content than "we need to state simple arguments that even a small child could understand so stop being pretentious". I'm not sure what fence you think we were straddling, unless you think our questioning your logic is anything but an attempt to get you to clear up your thoughts so someone on our side of the argument isn't the equivalent of a ranting preacher.speedz99: attempting to raise the level of debate since 2009.

[speedz99 145]

Maybe its because you came into this thread at a later point... but its difficult to continue an intellectual discussion when things like this reflect his position...

I hear you, though I think you might not yet know that BG is very capable of being tongue-in-cheek about his own beliefs. He was making fun of himself just as much as everyone else in that post.

[speedz99 145]

Maybe I'm overrating the negative response to your posts, Royal...I don't really remember how we started talking about this.

[vbnautilus 48]

the problem is, i'm not sure if those ten people also believe in a burning talking bush. majority of the people who came into my thread have offered zero stance on anything. Merely straddling the fence. and now i'm supposed to act like their opinions matter? Not likely.

I'm curious who you think is fence straddling. I straddle no fence when it comes to religion. If you think I do, you haven't read or understood much in here.

Maybe its because you came into this thread at a later point... but its difficult to continue an intellectual discussion when things like this reflect his position...

He was entertaining us with that post, which is what he does best. You should try and read it as such, it was very funny.

[Royal_Tour 0]

vbnautilus, crowtrobot, joeyjojo, timwakefield, randyreed, and myself...that's just from my recollection of the thread. That's six people who very clearly agree with your stance that christianity is based in mythology (actually, now I'm not sure about JJJ, but whatever). All have offered much more content than "we need to state simple arguments that even a small child could understand so stop being pretentious". I'm not sure what fence you think we were straddling, unless you think our questioning your logic is anything but an attempt to get you to clear up your thoughts so someone on our side of the argument isn't the equivalent of a ranting preacher.speedz99: attempting to raise the level of debate since 2009.

I'm not sure i'm following what you're trying to get at. i haven't seen anything from you or JJJ that would stand as strong support for a side in this debate. ie: you've managed to receive and counter the opposition with something that represents your stance.also - I thinkk vbnautilus is the only one out of that list that has quoted me saying he doesnt understand my point. To which i said, we're presenting a very similar stance, yet I thought his path was pretentious, and doesnt need to be.

[Royal_Tour 0]

I'm curious who you think is fence straddling. I straddle no fence when it comes to religion. If you think I do, you haven't read or understood much in here. He was entertaining us with that post, which is what he does best. You should try and read it as such, it was very funny.

Of course you're not fence straddling.as for the bold - I did read it. I would take it as a whimsical post in an otherwise endless debate if it wasnt for the fact that It directly reflects him and his views on the subject.I mean, its funny because its so fictional, but so is the bible. and thats my point...lol this thread is like torture.

[speedz99 145]

I'm not sure i'm following what you're trying to get at. i haven't seen anything from you or JJJ that would stand as strong support for a side in this debate. ie: you've managed to receive and counter the opposition with something that represents your stance.

Yeah, that's why I gave the qualifyer for JJJ. As for me, you're not really reading my posts if you think that I don't have a strong opinion. Maybe my openness to actual discussion instead of just trying to make the other side look stupid is confusing you, which is understandable in a debate such as this.

also - I thinkk vbnautilus is the only one out of that list that has quoted me saying he doesnt understand my point. To which i said, we're presenting a very similar stance, yet I thought his path was pretentious, and doesnt need to be.

Obviously I'm on that list as well now. And so is JJJ, because even if he is straddling the fence he was just poking holes in logic, not really presenting an argument for the opposition, per se. I can't remember if anyone else chimed in.It was your comment about his path being pretentious that really got me. I don't like the implication that we need to dumb down our arguments.

[Royal_Tour 0]

Maybe I'm overrating the negative response to your posts, Royal...I don't really remember how we started talking about this.

I dont take any of this personal, so dont worry.I'm catholic and took many classes on religion throughout my schooling, when i debate something like the prophecies of Isaiah and have to explain what i mean to JJJ, its frustrating.Its like you dont even need to know anything about religion to debate its side.

[Royal_Tour 0]

Yeah, that's why I gave the qualifyer for JJJ. As for me, you're not really reading my posts if you think that I don't have a strong opinion. Maybe my openness to actual discussion instead of just trying to make the other side look stupid is confusing you, which is understandable in a debate such as this.Obviously I'm on that list as well now. And so is JJJ, because even if he is straddling the fence he was just poking holes in logic, not really presenting an argument for the opposition, per se. I can't remember if anyone else chimed in.It was your comment about his path being pretentious that really got me. I don't like the implication that we need to dumb down our arguments.

Glad we agree on the above. I didnt say pretentious to mean we should dumb it down. I meant there is no need to overstate obvious points.Like when i said the prophecies of isaiah are not rocket science. They were written as part of the OT.. and then the writtings of the new testament happened after that fact.. Its not rocket science to just simply assume "well couldnt they have read the prophecies and then just wrote about jesus?"p.s. I'm also waiting on a reply from BG about it. maybe he has a good rebuttal.

[JoeyJoJo 18]

I'm catholic and took many classes on religion throughout my schooling, when i debate something like the prophecies of Isaiah and have to explain what i mean to JJJ, its frustrating.

lol

[speedz99 145]

I didnt say pretentious to mean we should dumb it down. I meant there is no need to overstate obvious points.

Maybe we just have different views on the meaning of the word. I thought you agreed with my definition of "pretentious" based on this post:"just because i'm simplifying my side so that a child can understand it...Its kinda funny that you're trying to be pretentious in a religion debate."I think you absolutely did mean that we should dumb it down, but I guess we can move past it since you won't be able to convince me otherwise.

Like when i said the prophecies of isaiah are not rocket science. They were written... and then the writtings of the new testament happened after that fact.. Its not rocket science to just simply assume "well couldnt they have read the prophecies and then just wrote about jesus?"

Yes, a child could raise that question. BG has no trouble understanding that it's a physical possibility. The discussion is about why he doesn't think that's the case, and we do.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

If ten people tell you that your hair is on fire, it might be time to go look in a mirror.

Yay! I love this statement so much, I quoted it (and attributed it to FCP) in my book.As for the actual debate here, sigh. I'm reminded why I gave up coming in here.I'm not a scientist. I am a historian. Believers and non-believers alike would be well served by knowing the history of exactly how the collection of writings we now know as the bible came about. Two good places to start are the companion books Lost Christianites and Lost Scriptures by Bart D. Ehrman. Or Karen Armstrong's The Bible, another history.

[Royal_Tour 0]

As for the actual debate here, sigh. I'm reminded why I gave up coming in here.

is it because you're a strong follower of buddhism and these forums mainly discuss christianity/science.. which you'd rather have no part of i'm sure.p.s.I like the practices of Buddhism... I have taken to mindfullness (if thats a word?)

[Randy Reed 0]

I hear you, though I think you might not yet know that BG is very capable of being tongue-in-cheek about his own beliefs. He was making fun of himself just as much as everyone else in that post.

Hmm, I always thought BG was crow and whoever that person actually is just loves to debate this stuff and didn't haveanyone to do it with. I usually feel bad they run out of gas occasionally and stop by to throw out some stuff in my lame attempt to keep it going since I do enjoy reading it when i'm bored.And Royal, I understand how easy it is to get frustrated but ease off and sit back and you'll find BG occasionally can make a pretty good argument. What you are asking him to defend isn't very easy so there is no factual evidence that he can throw out and say "AHA!" I mean, I wouldn't go to my mom or most older people and bust my nuts trying to ruin a belief they've held their entire lives. To alot of people religon is a path to community and inner reflection and many other things that alot of people could use in their lives. I just wish we could educate the young so as to one day help them understand that they can have these same things without all the problems that religon brings.

[vbnautilus 48]

I didnt say pretentious to mean we should dumb it down. I meant there is no need to overstate obvious points.

I mean, we're beating a dead horse here, but this is kinda what is frustrating about your recent posts. Seems to me what is needed is exactly to overstate obvious points. For example, obviously some guy didn't come back to life after being physically dead for three days. But we are going through the exercise of being as precise as possible about describing why not, since for some reason this isn't obvious to some people. Anyways, let's get back to telling BG how silly he is for living his life according to the rules of some ancient nomads.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

is it because you're a strong follower of buddhism and these forums mainly discuss christianity/science.. which you'd rather have no part of i'm sure.p.s.I like the practices of Buddhism... I have taken to mindfullness (if thats a word?)

Mindfulness sure is a word. I am a strong Buddhist, but I'm interested in Christianity and science as well. I have a shelf of books on each. I am particularly interested in the early history of Christianity -- the five hundred years or so in which the religion went from a dozen Jews following a young revolutionary around to becoming the official faith of the collapsing Roman Empire. That period, along with the Reformation, tells us a great deal about how we ended up where we are today.For instance, there were large and influential Christian groups within a century of Jesus who believed that the God of the Old Testament was evil and Jesus came to save us from him. There were groups who believed he was fully divine and only appeared to die and groups who believed he was fully human and only possessed for thirty years with the holy spirit, which left him as he was dying. There were groups who believed that to follow a faith rooted in Judaism they had to keep kosher and follow Jewish laws themselves (they were a particularly powerful group and Paul is most vitriolic about them; they required a good bit of suppression from early church authorities).There were dozens more books considered "holy scripture" than the 27 that became what we call the New Testament. Some bibles from the first three centuries do not contain the Old Testament at all, some contain only the first five books, some contain nothing by Paul, some contain additional books like the gospels of Thomas, Mary, and Philip or 2 Clement. Some books were actively suppressed, some lasted for a few centuries before being discarcded. There were hundreds of forgeries floating around -- letter claiming to be from one apostle or another that were not written by him. Several of those forgeries wound up in the bible we have today. The consensus of all except hardcore literalist conservatives is that Peter didn't write 2 Peter, Matthew didn't write Matthew, John didn't write John, and that Paul is certain to have written only seven of the thirteen letters in his name. [The literalists have no evidence on their side arguing that those authorial attributions are correct -- they simply have the ideological position that if it's in the bible it has to be true. They believe --incorrectly -- that all attributions made in the first three or four hundred years must be accurate because they were closer to the source, and I'd like to see them explain the "evil god/good god" idea based on the logic that people close in time to the events couldn't have gotten them wrong.]I gave up coming in here because it's the same round-n-round, all the time, about "prove this" and "prove that" and not everybody (to be polite) recognizing that not all scholarship is equal. Dwight D. Moody Bible Institute does not equal Oxford. It's largely pointless to have a debate in which the two sides have absolutely no historical context for the historical document they are discussing and cannot even agree on the definition of basic terms like "reality," "truth," and "proof," much less "evidence" and "scholarship."

[Southern Buddhist 1]

Anyways, let's get back to telling BG how silly he is for living his life according to the rules of some ancient nomads.

Oops, I missed the memo. Sorry.

[speedz99 145]

I am particularly interested in the early history of Christianity -- the five hundred years or so in which the religion went from a dozen Jews following a young revolutionary around to becoming the official faith of the collapsing Roman Empire.

It's too bad you don't post here, I learned more from this post than I have from maybe the last few hundred around here combined. Which is impressive considering the fact that my current school schedule typically doesn't permit me to learn anything non-veterinary science related.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

It's too bad you don't post here, I learned more from this post than I have from maybe the last few hundred around here combined. Which is impressive considering the fact that my current school schedule typically doesn't permit me to learn anything non-veterinary science related.

Alas, but the reason it's a pity I don't post is the very reason why I don't post. I want threads to teach me things and make me think, and although I think the world of FCP and the level of intelligence here, these threads usually do neither.

[speedz99 145]

Alas, but the reason it's a pity I don't post is the very reason why I don't post. I want threads to teach me things and make me think, and although I think the world of FCP and the level of intelligence here, these threads usually do neither.

You don't enjoy teaching?

[vbnautilus 48]

Alas, but the reason it's a pity I don't post is the very reason why I don't post. I want threads to teach me things and make me think, and although I think the world of FCP and the level of intelligence here, these threads usually do neither.

Well, then it's on us to make a thread that makes you think. I'll see what I can come up with.edit: see, I think your "Introspection" thread belongs in here.