A cult?

[Antigen]

Well I'll be switched! Jesus Christ is a real man and he's suing the government of West Virginia!

Man Has Documents From U.S., Other Governments

POSTED: 10:28 am EDT May 11, 2005

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- What would Jesus do -- if he couldn't get a driver's license in West Virginia?

Mr. Jesus Christ has hired a lawyer.

Peter Robert Phillips Jr. has been using the name Jesus Christ for about 15 years. But he never got court approval for a legal name change.

He already has a U.S. passport, Social Security card and Washington, D.C., driver's license bearing the name Jesus Christ.

Christ moved to West Virginia, where officials have refused to issue a license or vehicle title with his adopted name. A judge in Washington refused his request for a legal name change, saying some people might be offended.

Now, Christ has won a victory in an appeals court, which has ordered a lower court to hold more hearings on the name change request.
http://www.clickondetroit.com/automotiv ... etail.html

 :rofl:

By the year 2000, we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.
--Gloria Steinam, women's rights activist

[GregFL]

:grin:

[Timoclea]

They do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

If I were the judge, that's what I'd quote and grant the change.

Timoclea

Speak gently! 't is a little thing Dropp'd in the heart's deep well; The good, the joy, that it may bring Eternity shall tell.
-- G. W. Langford: Speak gently.

[BuzzKill]

Hi Greg.

I know what the term "apologetic" refers to - And I  understand it isn't exactly the proper term for your skeptic's editorializing - But I also feel one could argue he is doing the same for his unbelief as the apologist is doing for their belief - So I used the word.

I did explain why I feel your skeptic's argument is faulty - I think more than once - tho not in that post.

I've read the links I posted and I do think they support the historical accuracy of the scriptures in a sound and scholarly manner. You seem hung up on "written long ago" - I think we are just defining long ago differently - and if you are saying these writers support your ascertain that it was a generation after the fact, then you didn't read them.

I think you are to ready to nit pic my deficiencies, and I think it is so you can avoid asking yourself, if despite the deficiencies, there might be something to what I say.

I'm sure you'll want to proclaim what a ridiculous notion that is; So I'll save you the trouble - Of corse, its a ridiculous notion!

[Anonymous]

finally.......



WE AGREE!


 :grin:

[GregFL]

In conclusion, I submit my position.

There is a lack of evidence to support a historical Jesus.

There are similar pagan myths predating the supposed life of Jesus.

Christianity appears to be an amalgamation of early Pagan and Hebrew myths.

The bible is contradictory on key points of Jesus' supposed life.

No evidence has been presented to support the supernatural, and Jesus is proclaimed to be a supernatural being with supernatural powers.

Given this, I have  A LACK OF BELIEF in a historical Jesus.  I do not proclaim it as fact but merely that an examination of the evidence tends to lead away from Jesus as an actual person and to Jesus as an almagamation of pagan myths, including Krisna, Mythra, and Horas of Egypt, as particularly damning pre-Jesus myths with extreme similarities to the Jesus story.

For these and other well thought out reasons, I am atheistic towards christianity.  This means one thing and one thing only, I HAVE A LACK OF BELIEF. It is a strong position, meaning I can back  up why I feel that way with strong logical arguments.  

What we have witnessed in this thread is a weak intellectual defense of christianity.  When a christian says "I believe because I feel it" or I believe because of faith", the argument is over. No one can argue with that and it leads to a handshake of mutual disagreement.

When a christian comes out an argues from a gnostic position, they get slavered, creamed and lambasted on the facts. This is because arguing a supernatural being without evidence is next to impossible. Fabricated evidence, dishonest changing of the meanings of words, and essays that omit and twist information are available for the unsuspecting christian, and they innocently link to them and further get deeper and deeper into the arena of credulous nonsense.

Now, like science, my atheism is subject to modification with new evidence. In other words, it is not dogma. If someone can present anything other than a weak argument (im sorry Buzzkill, you couldn't) I will examine said evidence and modify my position.

Thank you kind people for enduring this thread. I hope in some way at the very least, someone understands atheism a little more and drops the fear and hate of people that lack belief in a supernatural superman in the sky.

[GregFL]

Damn Buzzkill, you have gone back and made major changes in your responses, rendering some of what I posted appear to be erroneous. That is blantantly unfair. This is much different than editing for typos,you have changed the very content of some of your posts.

I don't even know where to start on the blantant misrepresentations contained in the NEW Text from cut and pastes you went back and added to your old posts.


This is done...so sayeth the atheist...

[Timoclea]

Buzz, you can give your rule-of-thumb personal observation any name that isn't already taken, but if you call it the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics you are simply wrong.

The phrase "The Second Law of Thermodynamics" already means something, and it's not that.

When certain Christians say evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, basically they're lying to try to make their argument sound good.

Lying may make people who don't know any better think the person making the argument is wise and intelligent and learned and making a really good case, but it's not a good way to persuade people who aren't stupid.

The only thing I can conclude is that the Christians pushing anti-evolution are intentionally lying for the purpose of preying on the stupid.

Timoclea

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

[BuzzKill]

Damn Buzzkill, you have gone back and made major changes in your responses, rendering some of what I posted appear to be erroneous. That is blantantly unfair. This is much different than editing for typos,you have changed the very content of some of your posts.

I don't even know where to start on the blantant misrepresentations contained in the NEW Text from cut and pastes you went back and added to your old posts.


This is done...so sayeth the atheist...
///////////////////

I have altered nothing. Not one jot or dot.
I can't think why you'd say that - unless maybe you did as I have on occasion, and simply missed a post or two - But I have changed nothing.


Timocela - I'll take your word for what the second law is. It was a physics professor who I first heard discuss the problem of the second law and evolution - and he seemed to think it presented a problem - but if you say it doesn't, OK - it doesn't.  
Weather it does or not - I find the hopeful monster version of evolution pretty far fetched - much more so than intelligent design.
As I have said - I know creatures do evolve - but I don't think there is any evidence that one kind of creature evolved into another.
The various (and very few) examples of transition have all turned out to be faked, or still living creatures, or clearly one kind of creature or another, despite having features of more than one - not unlike today's platypus or penguin.

[Anonymous]

Its possible I missed something, I apologize if that is the case. But, It appears text was added.

Whatever, Heres one for you...


[[[[[[[[KISS]]]]]]]]]

By the way, your statement on evoution is another creationist mistatement. There have been damn few  frauds in palentology, and care to figure out who discovered these frauds?

Creationists?

Nope!  It was other scientists.


I think evolution is a whole nother topic, but Timoclea, you are spot on with your assessment.

Ginger, care to start a couple new Forums?

How about  

Religion and atheism

&

Science and alternative theories



GregFL

[Nihilanthic]

Taken from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law ... second_law :

Evolution, creationism and the second law

Creationists often claim that biological evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics, citing that the law states that entropy spontaneously increases. Evolutionary biologists point out that the second law of thermodynamics applies only to a closed system, which the Earth is not since it receives megajoules per second of energy from the Sun. Nevertheless, it has been pointed out that the universe may be considered an isolated system, so that its total disorder should be constantly increasing.

Some creationists claim that entropy never decreases, but this cannot be true as it would preclude any decrease in entropy, including things like the formation of a snowflake.

Now, as a thought experiment.. putting together a car, or the formation of a snowflake, or learning something and ordering the disordered neurons in your head, or writing data to a chaotic hard disk, is 'decreasing entrophy'.

But yeah, we have an energy source, its called the sun. And also, the second law really has more to do with something like.... mix salt with water. You wont have salt and water spontaneously seperate. Or if metal rusts, it wont spontaneously unrust and give off oxygen. Increased chaos could be as simple as the heat your head gives off when you learn something (hah, there is more disorder from the heat your melon gives off than the order gained by reading this right now!) or the bodyheat from metabolism, etc.

It has absolutely nothing to do with evolution! And even then, as creatures powered externally by food (or the sun for plants) it wont apply to them anyway.

So, now, I'm gonna stop violating the second law of thermodynamics by organizing area on Ginger's hard drives with my words, and go do my thing. Later
  :wave:

Where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.
http://laissezfairebooks.com/product.cfm?op=view&pid=FF7485&aid=10247' target='_new'>Thomas Jefferson: Kentucky Resolutions, 1798

[GregFL]

Yes, exactly Nilthlantic. But here is the thing...you can repeat this until you are blue in the face, and guess what, at the end of your thesis some christian will come along and go..."but I still don't believe in Evolution because it violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics".

Never mind they are clueless not only about this, but all other law of thermodynamics.

Or, as per example the tirade above, you can profer that there is no evidence for a historical Jesus saying  that there are no contemporaneous historical writings during his life as one piece of evidence of this. You can qualify this by telling people not to cite Author's that existed after his death.

The next ploy...here come Pliny and Josephus and the others that wrote these things (if they were indeed written by them..there is scholary debate) MANY years after his death. They were not first hand accounts, none of them. No matter how many times you point this out you are ignored, the conversation shifts, and bang...here they come again.

As a bonus You also get the watchmaker's argument which basically rests on this "the universe exists and  all things that exist must have a creator. Therefore God Exists".

Next, it is pointed out that GOD EXISTS, therfore he must have a creator. This argument sets up an illogical conclusion that goes on for infinity.

So what do the creationists do? They say...Ah, but God always existed.

Excuse me? This violates your own argument Mr. Christian. Christian response.."no it doesn't, the rule doesn't apply to god"... ::bangin::

Using this argument we can observe that the universe exists. God we don't see.

So we know that the universe exists. We apply this rule to god....

Either God does not exist, or God was created by something else, meaning he really isn't god.

But you cannot make the point with these people. They will shift the subject, and later in the conversation, they will say, "well, the universe must have a creator therefore God exists".

In other words, when you introduce reason and logic into a dogmatic conversation, the religious get real "creative" with their arguments.  I have been debating religion for years and have listened to the very best minds in the world..Massimo Pilgiucci and ex preacher Dan Barker to use two examples, debate creationists and fundies. No point of logic ever sticks and the same arguments are rehased over and over. It is frustrating to say the least because the christian debators are intellectually dishonest not just to their opponent but to themselves as well.

[BuzzKill]

My problem with evolution (as I have stated) has to do with the lack of transitional creatures in the fossil record.
IF traditional evolution were true - there would be millions of not billions of transitional fossils - Hundreds between each major change. From fish to lizard to bird would involved many hundreds of transitional animals.
Its reasonable to assume at least some few of the hundreds would make it into the fossil record.
There are none.
SO, evolutionist now argue that evolution is the result of the genetic mutations I have mentioned.
A fish rather suddenly became a lizard. Then the lizard suddenly mutated into a bird - and so on.
I find that extremely implausible.
If such a thing is responsible for the diversity of life on Earth, we could reasonably expect to see it happen on occasion still. But we don't.
Yes, mutations happen all the time - but they do not result in a new kind of animal; rather they tend to make the animal they happen to much less likely to live long and prosper.
So, I find it ill-logical to believe that evolution in the traditional since took place; or that random chance mutations are responsible, for the wonderful diversity of life on the planet.
So, how did it get here?
God.
And God has always been.
THAT is one of the mysteries beyond man kind's understanding.

[Nihilanthic]

Karen, God must be intellectual bondo.

Because all it does is fill in the gaps in reasoning and evidence.

A fish did not suddenly become a lizard!

Go study evolution for a change, will you? Its fish-amphibian-reptiles (fork) to mammals on one side, and on the other dinosaurs and then to birds on the other. Ever seen a Coelacanth? How frogs have tadpoles? That even HUMAN EMBRYOS go through the previous stages of evolution that all mammals went through? We had tails and gills in the womb before they dissolved away, Karen.

Ever seen a birds legs? Awful scaley, huh? Or, rather, ever compared reptiles and dinosaurs to birds? Funny, innit? Or how about other homologous structures throughout the reptile-and-higher vertebrates. We all roughly have the same skeletal structure!

A skull, backbones, one upper and two lower arm/leg bones, same kind of hip and shoulder setup *though there are modifications, like how cats have no collar bones*... and whatnot. And if you cant see the similarity between humans and primates you really must be trying really hard to not see it. I have seen PLENTY of hairy old men that look just like apes! Oh, and socially, we act remarkably like apes, too. Go study some chimps or mountain gorillas sometime. Oh, and Koko can talk with sign language. Shes the gorilla with a cat.

Now, anyway... yeah, there are gaps in the fossil record. Playing the numbers digging for bones in the rock strata means youre more than likely not going to find all you want to.

There isnt a whole lot of transitional fossils, but guess what? There is plenty of evidence for the transitions that are currently theorized, proof in terms of DNA and resulting protein structures (DNA just tells a body how to arrange cells, and how to put amino acids together to make proteins that make the cells and do all the little things in bodies that living things do, proteins are literally natural nanomachines if you know that term) and in just analysis of their skeletal and body structures.

Wanna try a tasty experiment? go eat something reptilian and then eat some chicken. Do they taste similar? Are their proteins similar? Yep, your tongue and genetic analysis will agree.

Edit: Talk Origins on vertebrate fossils:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html
I'm gonna go to bed now, had trouble keeping a good sleep schedule throwing my paper route lately.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there;  lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid.  She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again---and that is well;  but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search?tag=circlofmiamithem&keyword=mark+twain&mode=books' target='_new'> Mark Twain

[ This Message was edited by: Nihilanthic on 2005-05-16 10:14 ]

[GregFL]

The fossil and strata evidence overwhelmingly  support each other thereby supporting the only existing valid explanation for the complexity of life....evolution.

Now, many people believe in evolution and God. This is not surprising because these people emotionally want to believe in god but intellectually see the absolutely overwhelming evidence for natural selection and evolution.  So, they appease both sides of their brain.

Then there are the Fundies like our kind sweet lady Buzzkill. they desperately want to validate the bible and so they go searching for red herrings like the missing link and previous frauds in Paleontology, and try to draw absurdities out like "where is the link between monkeys and Men?

The answer is there is no link, we share a common ancestor, we are not derived from Chimpanzees. Look at this page and click the skulls of starting at chimp and ending at modern man.  Notice the transitory differences between the brain cavities, the brow and the jaw bones. I recommend reading each page

http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/homofs.html

...it is fascinating.Where are the mention of all these different types of ape-men in the bible?  Why don't "creation scientists" acknowledge the existence of these transitory types but instead try to shine the lights on the handfull of fraudulent skulls that science has eradicated out of the record years and years ago?

Just like the christians before them, modern day christians  refuse to allow the scientific method its due, but instead choose to promote their superstitous book and have it trump science and reason.

It won't work in the long run.