Religimyth...

[Balloon guy 158]

Royal Tour, an omission of a truth by the bible is not an argument against it's veracity. It doesn't claim to contain everything that is true. Well I'm sure it's been changed many times through re-writing and translation, but I was mostly referring to the huge value shifts from the Old Testament to the New Testament.

We will leave the first part for another time when I feel the need to smack you around like the hippy freak you are.The change from the Old to the New is an interesting subject. I've heard it described as God got saved in the New Testament.But in a nutshell, the OT spoke to how the nation of Israel was to act, conduct itself and dealt with issues for a nation.The NT speaks to how we are to act, conduct ourselves and deal with issues as an individual.The OT create the problem of sin and how can it be dealt with.The NT dealt with the problem of sin and showed us how to receive God's grace.The OT promised the coming of MessiahThe NT tells of His coming and what it means now.The OT also told the history of the JewsThe NT tells the early history of the Christians

[slink 1]

OK, but what of the dinosaurs? If the earth is only 6000 years old, where do the dinosaurs fit into all this? Did they occupy the Earth for year 1 (of the Earth) to year 3000? And then the Human experience took over? I'm asking because I want someone to explain the timeline from 0 to 6000 in Earth years.

[Balloon guy 158]

OK, but what of the dinosaurs? If the earth is only 6000 years old, where do the dinosaurs fit into all this? Did they occupy the Earth for year 1 (of the Earth) to year 3000? And then the Human experience took over? I'm asking because I want someone to explain the timeline from 0 to 6000 in Earth years.

Dinosuars are a tough subject for Christians.Which is why many Christians go with the gap theory, the belief that there was huge gaps of time between the 7 days of creation allowing for an old earth.Others postulate that God might have put the fossils in the earth to allow people to make a choice to not believe in Him, I think this is a really bad argument.I hold that dinosaurs existed before the flood, as described in Job when he describes a 'whatever the dinosaur that we used to know as the brontosaurus before we found out there were no brontosauruses', with the reference to the beast having a tail like the trunk of a tree.I have stated before that the fossils are the best argument for an old earth in my opinion. Luckily people ignore this and instead try to argue from areas that I think they are weak on.I do know that I am not required to 'know' everything, and as such I am willing to find out about these things when I get to heaven.It stills boils down to I am comfortable knowing that I am trying to understand things with a very limited amount of information, and as such to expect that I would have all the answers would be arrogance on my part. You do not see this same willingness to admit not knowing everything on the other side of the argument, they are invested in pretending to know everything

[crowTrobot 2]

I do know that I am not required to 'know' everything, and as such I am willing to find out about these things when I get to heaven.It stills boils down to I am comfortable knowing that I am trying to understand things with a very limited amount of information, and as such to expect that I would have all the answers would be arrogance on my part.

then why do you pretend to confidently know exactly what god intended the author of genesis 1 to mean when the majority of the world's christians don't agree with you?

You do not see this same willingness to admit not knowing everything on the other side of the argument, they are invested in pretending to know everything

obviously false, as well as yet another veiled attempt to hide behind shifting burden of proof. you're the one making an empirical claim disputed by the world's entire scientific community, not us.

[Royal_Tour 0]

Dinosuars are a tough subject for Christians.

Why admit anything as a tough subject? You believe stories in a book as reality, you chose to Not accept the idea of earth being over 6000 years old. It should be pretty simple for you to pretend dinosaurs never existed. Don't you find it kinda silly that its easier for you to accept and explain a man who walks on water, another who parts a sea, and another who lives inside a whale, but dinosaurs is a "tough subject"

[Balloon guy 158]

then why do you pretend to confidently know exactly what god intended the author of genesis 1 to mean when the majority of the world's christians don't agree with you?

I forgot, you know what most of the Christians in the world think also....Man you must read a lot of blogs

obviously false, as well as yet another veiled attempt to hide behind shifting burden of proof. you're the one making an empirical claim disputed by the world's entire scientific community, not us.

No, in fact I am saying I disagree with their conclusions, you are trying to say my disagreement is somehow making the world a worse place.

[Balloon guy 158]

Why admit anything as a tough subject? You believe stories in a book as reality, you chose to Not accept the idea of earth being over 6000 years old. It should be pretty simple for you to pretend dinosaurs never existed. Don't you find it kinda silly that its easier for you to accept and explain a man who walks on water, another who parts a sea, and another who lives inside a whale, but dinosaurs is a "tough subject"

Because unlike you I do not assume to have knowledge of everything in the universe?What's silly is that your entire reasoning behind denying the Biblical accounts of miracles is that you know all there is to know about matter and existence and therefore know that these things could not have happened.And you base this on the same thinking patterns that have had almost every single person in this thread trying to get you to see how badly thought out all of your arguments have been.1. You are trying to claim that the Bible can't be true because it doesn't explain things like other planets2. That a single fragment of a parchment that contains a couple verses from the book of John proves that the Bible was written over 100 years after the resurrection of Christ. ( because you KNOW this is not a copy of an earlier text)3. That my belief that the earth was made fully mature when God made it somehow means that the universe was already in existence and God came along and took credit for it?The only reason I am continuing to discuss these things with you is because, like crow, you are so blindly foolish that you amuse me in your foolishness and I am getting a perverse pleasure in having these softball notions thrown at me as opposed to real thought provoking arguments that I get from vb, LLY, and a few others around here who actually have thought about the subject beyond their reading of a couple badly thought out books by noted atheist ( who are not really atheist because that definition must be changed or else we Christians will somehow shift the burden of proof on them and make them explain how they can make a definitive statement about the existence of every Being in the entire universe from the perspective of a small carbon based life form with a short life on a distant planet with no warp technology )

[Balloon guy 158]

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

[crowTrobot 2]

I forgot, you know what most of the Christians in the world think also....Man you must read a lot of blogs

no, polls.

No, in fact I am saying I disagree with their conclusions, you are trying to say my disagreement is somehow making the world a worse place.

yes, actually.

[Royal_Tour 0]

Because unlike you I do not assume to have knowledge of everything in the universe?What's silly is that your entire reasoning behind denying the Biblical accounts of miracles is that you know all there is to know about matter and existence and therefore know that these things could not have happened.And you base this on the same thinking patterns that have had almost every single person in this thread trying to get you to see how badly thought out all of your arguments have been.1. You are trying to claim that the Bible can't be true because it doesn't explain things like other planets2. That a single fragment of a parchment that contains a couple verses from the book of John proves that the Bible was written over 100 years after the resurrection of Christ. ( because you KNOW this is not a copy of an earlier text)3. That my belief that the earth was made fully mature when God made it somehow means that the universe was already in existence and God came along and took credit for it?The only reason I am continuing to discuss these things with you is because, like crow, you are so blindly foolish that you amuse me in your foolishness and I am getting a perverse pleasure in having these softball notions thrown at me as opposed to real thought provoking arguments that I get from vb, LLY, and a few others around here who actually have thought about the subject beyond their reading of a couple badly thought out books by noted atheist ( who are not really atheist because that definition must be changed or else we Christians will somehow shift the burden of proof on them and make them explain how they can make a definitive statement about the existence of every Being in the entire universe from the perspective of a small carbon based life form with a short life on a distant planet with no warp technology )

again, you fell off your rocker.I've never claimed to know everything about matter, the universe or our existance. I've never claimed the scientific community knows everything about how our world works.You're trying to make my side of this debate look as obtuse as your side. This is simply not true.I think you're slightly misinformed on "my thinking patterns", as you see, my thought process never skewed from my initial comments. I group Christianity, and any other form of religion as myth. Stories created a long long time ago to help humans understand and explain the tangible issues that surround them. These stories predate scientific thinking and logical thought. I use examples and findings of today's scientific community to help solidify the notion that the stories expressed in the bible are fallacy.misconceptions resulting from incorrect reasoning.I attempted to use a structure that could help you reason at a more comfortable level, as to not shatter your delicate mind. It was my mistake, however because in doing so, I allowed you to comment on my examples and completely avoid the questions i posed. You see, this is not a debate on proving or disproving the bible and its contents or science for that matter. But rather, Its a discussion on rational thought and logic. I'll leave you with that, as any more attempts to provide examples, pose questions or pick apart discrepancies in your posts will result in more of your "its the way it is cuz it is" attitude.

[crowTrobot 2]

again, you fell off your rocker.I've never claimed to know everything about matter, the universe or our existance. I've never claimed the scientific community knows everything about how our world works.You're trying to make my side of this debate look as obtuse as your side. This is simply not true.

that's all BG does here these days (as you can see in the 2 posts above) - lie about and mischaracterize everything the "other side" says so he can so he can attack straw men in hopesof distracting from the fact that he can't intellectually support his own positions.

[Balloon guy 158]

You see, this is not a debate on proving or disproving the bible and its contents or science for that matter. But rather, Its a discussion on rational thought and logic.

Then you have failed completely, and your failure is for the whole world to see.And you are not even aware of how badly you have failed.

[Balloon guy 158]

that's all BG does here these days (as you can see in the 2 posts above) - lie about and mischaracterize everything the "other side" says so he can so he can attack straw men in hopesof distracting from the fact that he can't intellectually support his own positions.

You're just mad cause we made you sit bitch

[crowTrobot 2]

Then you have failed completely, and your failure is for the whole world to see.And you are not even aware of how badly you have failed.

You're just mad cause we made you sit bitch

no content. not responses - just more attempts to distract from your inability to intellectuallysupport your positions.

[Balloon guy 158]

no content. not responses - just more attempts to distract from your inability to intellectuallysupport your positions.

Was it the gear knob that got you in such a cranky mood this thanksgiving morn?Or is it the underlying truth of the reason for Thanksgiving as a day to thank God for all His provisions that is making you so moody?I mean I'm sure they will come up with an atheist holidayBesides April 1st I mean

[looshle 6]

Was it the gear knob that got you in such a cranky mood this thanksgiving morn?Or is it the underlying truth of the reason for Thanksgiving as a day to thank God for all His provisions that is making you so moody?I mean I'm sure they will come up with an atheist holidayBesides April 1st I mean

I understand defending your religion but to act like people are fools for not believing something that has little to no proof and states some clearly debatable points, (i.e. walking on water and eroding mountains being around on day 8) might be the most close-minded thing i have ever read.

[vbnautilus 48]

But in a nutshell, the OT spoke to how the nation of Israel was to act, conduct itself and dealt with issues for a nation.The NT speaks to how we are to act, conduct ourselves and deal with issues as an individual.The OT create the problem of sin and how can it be dealt with.The NT dealt with the problem of sin and showed us how to receive God's grace.The OT promised the coming of MessiahThe NT tells of His coming and what it means now.The OT also told the history of the JewsThe NT tells the early history of the Christians

Seems to me that the values Jesus taught were in strict contradiction to the values of the old testament. I think brvheart has confirmed this, but maybe you disagree with him. Going from "an eye for an eye" to "turn the other cheek" is a big change. And, in the words of one balloon man, "In fact if it did change, it would prove it was false".

[vbnautilus 48]

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."

Man, I am so smart!!

[Balloon guy 158]

Seems to me that the values Jesus taught were in strict contradiction to the values of the old testament. I think brvheart has confirmed this, but maybe you disagree with him. Going from "an eye for an eye" to "turn the other cheek" is a big change. And, in the words of one balloon man, "In fact if it did change, it would prove it was false".

If God commands the nation Israel to hold guilt parties to their guilt and inflict punishment on them, then tells me as a single person to forgive someone for wronging me, is that truly a 'change'?Or just a perspective change?I can vote to put thieves in jail, while forgiving a man who steals from me and be consistent with my beliefs

[Balloon guy 158]

I understand defending your religion but to act like people are fools for not believing something that has little to no proof and states some clearly debatable points, (i.e. walking on water and eroding mountains being around on day 8) might be the most close-minded thing i have ever read.

Then you haven't read any of Royal Tour's and crow's posts

[BaseJester 1]

First, it looked like for a second that things were going toward an honest discussion and then quickly veered back into arguing past each other.

1. You are trying to claim that the Bible can't be true because it doesn't explain things like other planets

I don't think that's what he's claiming, and it brings us back to the same spot we've seen before. RT is not looking for proof the bible is false; he's looking for a reason to belief the bible is true. A document written by an omniscient God could have lots of information (some of it testable) beyond the knowledge of the people of the time and place. If one found out that the bible was right about some things we know (but the writers didn't), we might say, "This God person is pretty smart. What else does he say?" Edited November 28, 2009 by BaseJester

[vbnautilus 48]

If God commands the nation Israel to hold guilt parties to their guilt and inflict punishment on them, then tells me as a single person to forgive someone for wronging me, is that truly a 'change'?

"Nation of Israel"? Come on, it was just a tribe of Israelites made up of single people. It was truly a change.

I can vote to put thieves in jail, while forgiving a man who steals from me and be consistent with my beliefs

Maybe, but you can't give him the death penalty and still follow "thou shalt not kill".

[looshle 6]

"Nation of Israel"? Come on, it was just a tribe of Israelites made up of single people. It was truly a change. Maybe, but you can't give him the death penalty and still follow "thou shalt not kill".

unless it's the crusades obv

[Balloon guy 158]

"Nation of Israel"? Come on, it was just a tribe of Israelites made up of single people. It was truly a change. Maybe, but you can't give him the death penalty and still follow "thou shalt not kill".

So you feel that telling people though shalt not kill, then placing provisions for the ruling power structure to punish people for killing is a contradiction?And that a person can't have a conviction to not kill, but in a time of war be able to kill the enemy at the command of his military leaders?Sounds like you want to find any excuse to make your case.

[Balloon guy 158]

First, it looked like for a second that things were going toward an honest discussion and then quickly veered back into arguing past each other. I don't think that's what he's claiming, and it brings us back to the same spot we've seen before. RT is looking for proof the bible is false; he's looking for a reason to belief the bible is true. A document written by an omniscient God could have lots of information (some of it testable) beyond the knowledge of the people of the time and place. If one found out that the bible was right about some things we know (but the writers didn't), we might say, "This God person is pretty smart. What else does he say?"

If you think RT was making an honest declaration that he was looking for a reason to believe than you see things that I missed.Looks to me he read a book, and knows what all Christians believe and wants to tear down their house of cards, not realizing that he not only doesn't have a remote grasp of what Christians believe, he also is completely fooled in his lack of understanding of how bad his 'facts' are that Christianity is wrong.His cute little fishing expedition trying to get me to mention Genesis then 'pouncing' with his inane logic that since the Bible doesn't get into the science behind the construction of the universe that it is an obviously not accurate on it's declaration of God's desire to save mankind.Of course he would never make the same requirement of a science book to explain the nature of forgiveness in order to qualify itself.