Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Being wrong about abiogenesis is not irrelevant. It calls into question your ability to critically assess information. You also have "100% confidence" that the God of the Bible does not exist. How can you be sure you're not wrong about that, too?
I can’t be sure, and I don’t need to be sure. Because the God of the Bible does a 100% perfect impression of a God that doesn’t exist. Therefore acting as if he doesn’t exist will not differ from my behavior if he really does not exist.
And although I am 100% confident that he doesn’t exist, I am open to change my mind should credible evidence appear to demonstrate that I was wrong. That’s the good thing about atheism. We say when we don’t know, and we’re always open to new information to change our position. We are locked into demonstrable reality, not stifled into stupidity by fossilized doctrine.
Plus, I am convinced that I am saved even if he does exist. Because if he does exist he gave me a particular type of mind, designed its programming, knows exactly what I am saying and why, and loves me as much as he loves those who profess belief. How do I know all that? I take it on faith. It makes perfect sense to me. I have the best of both worlds, and that makes me happy.
Which is concordant with my view that christian conversion is a form of nervous breakdown. It’s an emotional collapse fueled by desperation and wanting to totally give up in order to gain some kind of control through capitulation to a perceived external life coach.
When you talk to born agains, it’s like they are in a trance. And they so cling to the “savior” narrative that it is immediately obvious that these are broken people who have gone through personal hell and resorted to a coping mechanism to take the pain away and surrender their personal autonomy to other people who guide them to this comforting fairy tale. Where they are ”saved” and “loved”, even though there is no real entity to save or love them. It’s a psychological analgesic and it enables a tremendous degree of distraction from one’s self-perceived character faults.
The true shame? It’s just another form of escapism from reality. And unfortunately there is no escape, it’s an illusion and it allows for wasting time and focus. Instead of embracing reality and making good, and often difficult, decisions to attack one’s personal failings.
You tell me. Did you have a tremendously difficult personal situation? That is the pattern I have observed, and I have a really large sample size of conversations with born agains and JWs.
You tell me. Did you have a tremendously difficult personal situation? That is the pattern I have observed, and I have a really large sample size of conversations with born agains and JWs.
Do I seem broken and in a trance? Unable to think critically?
Do I seem broken and in a trance? Unable to think critically?
You are able to think critically in all areas, except this one little itsy bitsy compartment of insanity. In that area, you are in a trance. We all have these areas. Like doctors standing outside the hospital lobby smoking cigarettes....
Video description: "I'm David Wood. Lots of people have been asking me how I became a Christian, because I sometimes mention that I'm a former atheist. This video discusses my conversion and explains why I left atheism and became convinced that Jesus is Lord and that he died on the cross for sins and rose from the dead (just as the Bible declares)."
AH! The obligatory...'I used to be an atheist until....'. Almost as important to apologists as... 'The Atheist Professor.'
You repeatedly reference that list of sources as though they are validating the abiogenesis hypothesis.
No I do not. Your mythomania is amusing. I repeatedly reference those papers that use actual evidence because they counter your one video you repeatedly reference that ignores the evidence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iwasmadenew
You can’t provide just one of the 50 that asserts abiogenesis is a scientific fact?? Put up or shut up.
You can’t provide just one rational argument that your impossible god is a fact?? Put up or shut up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iwasmadenew
Again...
No again when you refuse to answer our questions we repeatedly ask you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iwasmadenew
Originally Posted by Iwasmadenew
3. Harry Diogenes: "I have given you a list of over 50 science papers looking at the origin of life"
***Provide just one of those papers that asserts abiogenesis is a scientific fact.***
Why are you asking for a scientific fact? It seems like you have a desperate hope that your god does exist, and must do everything to avoid the evidence we have, but you do not.
OK pneuma (not to be confused with "OK boomer!").... I will take a stab at this. As a reminder, you gave me credit the last time I was here, many pages ago now, for working to understand what you were actually saying https://www.city-data.com/forum/57320899-post2426.html. So I will start there...
My understanding is that you see the Christian worldview as logical and rational WITHIN ITSELF, providing answers (which may or may not be "the" answers) WITHIN ITSELF. You use that phrasing many times. There might be others here who would question that internal consistency, but let's accept your stance at face value, for the sake of argument.
The problem with that, from my point of view (and the answer to your question above) is that your worldview DOES NOT STAND BY ITSELF. Unless you are going to hide yourself away in a mountaintop monastery, in short order you will come in contact with... the world. There your worldview will intersect with other worldviews and, more importantly, with reality. At that point, there are going to be aspects of the Christian worldview (and perhaps any worldview) that do not comport with reality, and need to be questioned and re-examined. Many of us once held Christian worldviews, but reached the point where they could no longer be sustained in the face of reality. There are just too many holes in the story, and too little (or no) evidence in support. All the evidence points to Christianity (and religions in general) being man-made constructs to answer questions for which we did not (yet) have answers, give us comfort, control behavior, etc, etc. Bottom line, there comes a tipping point where you see that there is no evidence in support, and much evidence against, and it becomes illogical to stay with that worldview. The house of cards collapses.
It may work "WITHIN ITSELF," but that's an artificial inward-looking point of reference, and it doesn't work nearly as well when you take it into the world outside itself.
Thank Heela for at least understanding my point and being civil in the reply.
But that still leaves open God even in your worldview imo because as I have pointed out to Harry there is something more behind the laws that naturalism can't explain. And when things like that are pointed out the reply I most often see goes something like this, science will eventually figure it out. That's scientism and is no better then the christian saying God did it.
Thus it would seem my choice comes down to God or scientism. Scientism is not the logical choice imo because I am leaving an known for a unknown.
He does not seem to realize the materialism/naturalism is the default position. As I stated in one of my post - can theist deny the material/natural world exists. Nope they can't and won't yet somehow we are bonkers and irrational in not being satisfied with 'God dun it' as an answer. They have denied natural forces ever since God/s were invented to explain things they, shall I dare say, don't understand or know - from lighting to diseases, the sun rising and the fetus growing in the womb. But the hard questions they have the answers to and still cling to rejecting out right any possible natural explanation.
Just wanted to point out I have not called atheists bonkers or irrational and have even pointed out within your worldview it is logical.
And I understand that natural laws, like the law of gravity, which tells us how gravity works but cannot explain what gravity is. You guys seem to think an explanation of how something works is the same as understanding what something is.
Last edited by pneuma; 02-15-2020 at 02:32 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
