Intro:

This archive kicks off where the last one left off (link) and has been taken from Pychen's site (link).  Pychen and I were discussing whether it was theologically consistent for Jesus to deliberately mislead humanity about hell just like God apparently mislead Abraham in telling him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, but didn't really mean it.  Pychen maintains that the lying to Abraham didn't count because God meant that Isaac would be spiritually sacrificed and I maintain that a spiritual reality doesn't negate a lie in the physical world.  Further I maintain that if God is allowed to lie to Abraham, then there's no reason he can't lie about other things, especially when it seems he probably should be lying about the doctrine of hell.  The possibility is at least open.  Naturally I realize most Christians don't want to go there, but I see nothing to stop them based on the Abraham incident and many good reasons to if they don't mind thinking outside the box.  This conversation with Pychen continues through some troubled waters and into justifying how exactly it is that an atheist can suppose things like the doctrine of hell (link) are evil.   Click on the thumbnail to the right to see the argument map of this conversation.

Note, I started highlighting Pychen's questions that I had mostly ignored in order to establish common ground, so that they would be easy to return to when the foundation for answering them was in place. 

Intro:

It appears I left this series dangling half way done back in September of 2006 (link) and possibly Russ, Adrian, Traci, and Krisko recall the endeavor.  Basically what I set out to do then was review case by case each evidence brought up by evolutionist Dr. Douglas Theobald (DT) and the convenient review by young earth creationist (YEC) Ashby Camp (AC) and call it like I saw it at the time [1]. 

I've always wanted to come back to this series and incidentally I recently noticed that the cheesy Christian apologist, Ray Comfort, on his blog has issued a challenge to evolutionists (link) to explain in 100 words or less what convinced them that evolution was true.  I won't be doing that here, but I think this is very interesting.  I can imagine that most of the responses he will get won't really be very convincing in and of themselves (if you weren't already convinced and knew what they meant) and will be rather easy fodder for even someone of banana man's caliber [2] to pick apart and demonstrate why your average non-believer is just as credulous as anyone else.  I've often complained about the shallowness of most presentations of evolution to the public that are charged with scientific authority, storytelling, vague allusions to evidence "suggesting" this and that, as well as sloppy and uninformed responses to creationism that are almost as bad as the reasoning for the creationist claims themselves.  There's a lot of BS to go around and substance is hard to come by.  Unless you go to college and study the topic in depth or unless you just really want to self-educate in your free time, you aren't going to accidentally figure out why evolution is true in a hands-on kind of way from basic media outlets that may speak on the topic often enough [3]. 

So anyway, I thought I might sell this series of posts as a nifty way to help take some steps towards depth on how scientists tell us we know what we know.  Douglas Theobald has assembled what he believes are 29 good reasons to justify believing in macroevolution [4] and his is one of the best articles online that I've found so far to directly address the issue in a thorough and lay-friendly way.  If you'd like to take this journey with me, I'm sure it will be educational.  I hope this could be helpful to experts who want some feedback on how well they are communicating to intelligent laity.  I hope creationists might appreciate the times where I don't always side against their criticisms. 

The scale of judging each of these 29 evidences will be A-F oriented towards evolution (since that's the nature of the case). "A" would be evidence that seems only explicable in terms of macroevolution, "B" would be merely evidence in favor of macroevolution, "C" would be evidence that is relatively neutral and can be explained easily enough either way, "D" would be evidence that leans in favor of some version of creationism, and "F" would be evidence that would seem only explicable in terms of some version of creationism.  Obviously this is my own lay scale for my personal information and I won't be applying anything like Bayes' theorem (link) to try to resolve the matter with a greater degree of mathematical certainty.  I wouldn't mind someone else doing that though since so often just one piece of evidence can't be expected to make or break a theory.    We can only add up a slew of more or less likely based on what we think we know.  I will tally up the overall score as I see it when the series is done and encourage others to do the same just for fun.  Ultimately though, we're relying on DT for what he thinks is the best evidence, and it may very well require more science education to fully grasp the significance of some of his points.  So there are plenty of subjective filters there to take into account.

I would appreciate any feedback from Krisko (godlessliberal) especially since he is actually going to school for this stuff.

AC puts it this way: 

"Presumably, the alleged prediction and fulfillment are:

1. If universal common ancestry is true, then some species will have biological molecules that perform the same function performed by different biological molecules in other species.

2. Some species have biological molecules that perform the same function performed by different biological molecules in other species."  Continue reading →

Intro:

Over on GodlessLiberal's xanga (link), atheist lalalandsucks4ever and Christian theist ElijahDH were having  a discussion on a number of issues.  The lack of convincing evidence for Christianity naturally came up. 

Seriously though, the Bible actually addresses the very issue of why there isn't more "evidence" to support the scripture.  In the story Jesus tells about a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus (not the same guy who was raised from the dead, just the same name), who die and end up in different places.  When the rich man wanted to go back to warn all his other rich friends who still have a chance to repent, here's how that conversation played out with Abraham: 

"I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' 29 But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.' 30 And he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' 31 He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'""

The name "Moses" in there is referring to their Bible at the time, since he wrote the first five books of the bible, it was common to refer to their scripture as Moses.  The Prophets would literally mean prophets- the people preaching God's will.  In the end, Scripture and scriptural preaching is all the evidence that is needed.  (On a side note, I should point out that this is the only story Jesus ever told where he named the people involved, which is strong evidence that it wasn't merely a parable, but an account of what actually happened.)

Also, you can make fun of the word "irrelevant" as much as you like.  If you continue to pose irrelevant comments and questions (like making fun of the word "irrelevant"), then I'll continue to point it out for what it is.

Intro:

Christian apologist, William Lane Craig gave his misguided apologetic impressions on his Reasonable Faith audio commentary (link).  I posted my comment there as well.

Surprisingly WLC has some nice things to say about Obama's speech but equivocates Obama addressing the mainstay of Islam as a moderate culture (as Obama clearly means) and Islam as an ideology based on the Koran (as WLC would like to point out for apologetic reasons). WLC would have Obama give up on common ground. In my opinion, that's ridiculous and irresponsible even if Obama fails to establish it for the very reasons WLC points out.  When people don't allow you to have common ground as a rule, you presuppose it anyway, because you *have to.*  Difficult communication situations require sometimes that you put *their* best foot forward to invite them to stand on it.  It's pandering to the middle and I think that's *exactly* what Obama should be doing.  As we all know, most religious moderates and liberals honestly believe their version of their religion is *the* version of their religion.  It doesn't matter if we disagree.  I'm sure Obama is well aware of the parts of the Koran as well as the Bible that can be used to justify inhumane activities.  He would be foolish to bring that up and impose that on his moderate audience when they don't see things that way.  I'm so glad WLC is not president since his message would apparently be, "Stop being Muslim."  How ironically "new atheist" of him.   

Ben

Intro:

Recently I commented on Pychen's post that describes how unbiblical he believes universalism is.  Universalism is the idea that everyone will be saved from hell.  I actually agree that the Bible does not teach  universalism and that's one of the many reasons to reject it for the sake of personal moral integrity.  However, I'm not against more humane interpretations of Scripture if they actually work.  It seems to me that the world might be a better place if some Christians lighten up about some of their unfortunate doctrines. 

You can click on the graphic to the right and see how the argument unfolds.  Red represents the Christian arguments.  Blue represents my arguments.   Orange represents premises that have been taken for granted.  Yellow represents arguments that were never made that should have been made or defended.  Green is for conclusions.  To follow along properly, if you agree with a box, take a green arrow away and if you disagree with a box take a red arrow away.  Please let me know if there are any spelling mistakes or any corrections to the argument path that would be more fair.

Intro:

This is a reposting of my comments on JT's (zerowing21) blog (link) and Bryan Harris' (oeshpdog2) blogger (link).  Their debate has concluded as has our discussion about it. 

Note, I am Ben, tkovrtwrld, and WAR_ON_ERROR.

Hello! I don't really understand where JT (zerowing21) is coming from by calling the gospel writers liars. He doesn't seem to substantiate the claim and I certainly don't see that it is necessary from a skeptical perspective to think of whoever wrote the gospels that way.

I do think you are blowing JT's comment out of proportion about targeting audience readers. I've seen Christians who have the same mentality and I don't see what the problem with it is. Anyone that has experience in online debates knows that the probability of converting someone to their perspective is rather low and that a more fruitful goal is be mindful of fence sitters in the audience. You seem to jump the gun and associate JT with Satan? Really? Is that necessary?

I think what skeptics don't understand is how believers can take everything the gospels say at face value as though gospel authors could not possibly have biases, agendas, or be making gross assumptions (or using unreliable mystical methods to validate those assumptions) about what they think they know. You point out the 30 pieces of silver as though that is a specific prediction, but what if the actual number of silver pieces was unknown? Did someone count? Who knows, but even assuming we can trust the gospels to even the ballpark of that particular claim, why should we trust that the gospels authors wouldn't have assumed they knew how many pieces of silver it was based on their reading of scripture? The expression of betrayal has stood for 2,000 years and the saying of "here's your thirty pieces of silver" is now a common enough metaphor. No one cares about the amount or whether it is even that kind of currency. Of course there are cultural differences to take into account between now and then, but that actually doesn't do the gospel authors any favors. The NT has the disciples overtly searching the scriptures for the meaning of the events in question and it would be only natural for them to assume. We certainly can't assume they didn't or be confident they knew directly without begging the question.

Ben  Continue reading →

Intro:

I recall way back when I was startled that Christian apologist William Lane Craig (WLC) advocated that an actual infinity was impossible even though he believed in a god with infinite attributes (link).  Little did I know, they make some weird distinction that I don't think holds up to scrutiny.   You can tell me though.  Gabe lays out WLC's basic argument in the first section below.

Let's say that I had an infinite number of marbles and I wanted to give you an infinite number of marbles.  I could just go ahead and give you all my marbles.  Then I'd have zero marbles.  Another way I could do it is to give you all of my odd-numbered marbles.  Then I'd have all the evens, you'd have all the odds, and we'd both have an infinite number of marbles.  I still have the same number of marbles I had before I divided them up!  I could also give you all of the marbles numbered from four and higher.  Then you'd have an infinity number of marbles and I'd have three left.  So here are our equations...

We have subtracted an identical number from an identical number and ended up with three different results.  Doing math with infinity presents some contradictions.  That's because the idea of an actual infinity is only conceptual.  It only exists in our minds.  Mathematicians can deal with infinite quantities and infinite numbers in the conceptual realm, but it can't happen in the real world.  We do not have an infinite past in a physical universe.  It's impossible.

So why is it okay to believe in an infinite God if according to logic infinity doesn't work?  Because this logic is only prescribed within the bounds of time and physics where our universe exists.  God does not exist in time.  God exists outside of the laws of time and matter.  There is universe that has yet to exist after this moment, but God exists beyond this moment.  He was, He is, and He is to come.  God is the nonphysical infinite entity who brought our physical universe into existence.  It is the only way to explain how we came to be.  The most logical conclusion -- between believing in an infinite universe or an infinite God -- is to believe in the infinite God.

Intro:

This question was originally addressed to In_Reason_I_Trust (link), but I thought I would give a concise answer that I think is easy to understand.