inconsistent Creationists

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again i must speak out and say that that very same confirmation bias is neccesary for belief, just in the opposite direction.

to invoke one as an argument in this context would then be hippocritical.

I too am critical of hippos you can't trust them

I know exactly what it means.

You have chosen to believe that goD exists without evidence and then you attempt to justify your chosen belief.

exactly correct

of the grammar he himself put forth,

On page 10 of this thread AngelRho said:

That must be where I thought AngelRho said something about God wiping the slate clean or however I paraphrased it. If I recalled incorrectly or misunderstood AngelRho's meaning, I apologize. It looks to me (and still does) that AngelRho is saying it makes sense for God to make it look like the flood never happened. That does not make sense to me though.

And regarding populations evolving: no I am not being inconsistent, AngelRho. You just don't understand basic biology. Breeding populations undergo shifts in the relative frequencies of the alleles in their genes. Mutations creep in. Sometimes a population can split into two or more groups where one group stays more or less the same if it is adapted to the environment it is in, while another group may become a different species adapting to a different environment at the edge of where the original species could thrive.

Many creationist errors about evolution come from their thinking that individual organisms evolve instead of populations evolving. And no, that does NOT mean that different species do not share common ancestry. They do share common ancestry. The genetic record and the fossil record show this. Also if one species evolves from another, that does not necessarily mean that it replaces or outcompetes the original species. They might be in different environments, or adapted for different niches in the same environment. Some creationists seem to think that evolution means an ancestral species has to die out for a new species to arise. While extinction is the norm for most species that have ever existed, sometimes we have "living fossils." When one understands how speciation occurs, then one understands why that is NOT evidence against evolution as some misinformed people seem to believe.

I am not saying the Bible is false. What I do say is the evidence of the world, ALL the evidence we can observe and measure, shows that a literal interpretation of Genesis is falsified by that evidence. This is not confirmation bias by any means. I would LIKE to believe in the God of the Bible and that Jesus died for my sins. Please tell me though how can I reconcile those beliefs with the observable FACTS that contradict what the Bible says about Adam and Eve and Noah's flood? And please explain too why all the evidence contradicts those facts if the God of the Bible is the same God that made everyone and everything? Why would God try to trick us when we could burn in hell forever just because we are honest seekers of TRUTH?

Except I'm agnostic. Slightly inclined towards theism, perhaps (and if there is a god then it is not the Christian God, problem of evil), but I am aware that there is no logical reason to believe in a god over a godless universe.

The cosmological and teleological arguments are rubbish because they don't prove anything. They are right that the existence of the universe and the fact that conditions exist that can support complex life are evidence for God, but it is really weak evidence and it is not remotely proof, because the various scientific theories explain things better, and the Christian creation story is no better than dozens of other creation stories.

This is the problem with these debates- so frequently the atheists are sure they are right, but aren't sure about why they think they are right. The result is that they don't properly rebut the claims of the theists, so the theist doesn't learn an appropriate response, and the atheist doesn't learn how to respond to that. You end up with two sides not understanding each other and feeling very frustrated, or one challenging the other to prove they are right.

^this

Amen, brother!! !!

The existence of God is Non-falsifiable. I don't mean to sound condescending but I sincerely hope you know what falsifiable means and what it implies. But creationism vs evolution isn't just about the existence of God, it's about the veracity of a BOOK

I'm so bloody f*cking sick of having to repeat this over and over again.....

I agree.
The fervently religous and the militantly atheist should book another room to continue their smackdown over whether or not there is a God.

Here we are discussing the litereal truth/nontruth of the book of Genisis which is a quite different question.

Which claims? Claims regarding the physical universe? Sure. But what does that have to do with the spiritual world?


You know Newton believed in God, right?


That God doesn't "smite" people (which is debatable) just shows God's immense patience. Further, whoever gets "smitten" is going to depend on whether one is actually a child of God and needs the discipline or whether an entire culture is so far removed from God that they are virtually irredeemable.


Heh...

Well, if God did not exist, why would it be necessary to create Him? Why not just do without?


Well, ok, this implies an informal fallacy. I'm not sure which one--maybe some kind of appeal to authority? I dunno...the idea that "thousands and thousands of books can't be wrong..." If you could show something to be wrong, then relying on a bunch of books fails on logical grounds, as it does here. What, if anything, has physical science discovered about the non-physical world?


Name two such places.


Well, ok, but most versions of the Bible that I'm aware of are translated directly from ancient sources. I personally favor the HCSB, but I don't find the NKJV offensive. The ESV according to some ranks higher than the HCSB, and I have no problem with it, either. At one point in time, I actually liked the NIV, but I think they've made too many compromises in favor of modern cultural norms in language usage, and there's no excuse for risking changing the meaning of the text in a translation. Even "The Message" is supposedly directly translated from the same source material as the other translations, I just think the translator should have been a lot more careful in how he handled it (it reads more like a paraphrase, and the style is dramatically homiletic). The trouble is if you write a translation to reflect a distinctive preaching style, you run the risk of actually changing the meaning, and I'm afraid "The Message" may unintentionally do this. The NWT is an example of a translation that does this systematically for the purpose of promoting a distinct anti-Trinitarian theology, so I hesitate to even legitimize it by calling it a translation. People who adhere to the so-called "KJV-only" tend to reject the NKJV and other translation because Tudor English employed word forms no longer in current use that served to make the meaning of the text much more clear than modern translations tend to. They mean well, but how many people do you know who are fluent in Tudor-era English? This is also why, even if you use, say, the HCSB, you need to pay attention to the footnotes that list alternative phrases from different manuscripts or give the literal phrase used in the original sources. It also helps to be familiar with different sources, like the Syriac, the Masoretic (MOST of the source material for modern translations come from the Leningrad Codex, aka Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia), and the Septuagint. I can't remember all the others, but the main point here is that the modern Bible is not the result of a retranslation of a retranslation of a paraphrase of the KJV. The cool thing about the LXX is, while itself is a translation to Greek from Hebrew, it provides a couple of important pieces of information about the Bible. First, it reflects the traditions of Hebrew scholars at the time of its writing, how THEY understood their own ancient scriptures. Second, it has been postulated that the source texts for the LXX might actually predate the MT sources. So in terms of whether a translation is accurate, you do have to examine the motives of the translators, but by far the translations we have in our hands today are mostly true to the sources.


Well, I think the meta-narrative of the Bible is pretty impressive, but it doesn't go out of its way to make it epic or mythic. I mean, Luke is the more stylized of the gospels in my opinion, but even Luke doesn't really distort the facts in the same way that, say, an Arthurian storyteller might.

here are the first hundred logical inconsitencies in the bible,

with the statement and the contradicting verses right beside eachother.

[img][600:800]http://cafewitteveen.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/biblecontradictions-reasonproject.png[/img]

link for full non stretched image
[Mod. edit: fixed that distortion - but the full-sized image is much more readable anyway]

Forgive me if the thought and insight of my thesis on the matter is not adhering to your schedule.

It doesnt interfer with my schedule. It just doesnt make sense.

Why does it necessarily follow that if something happened that evidence MUST be left behind?

If it is really true that God left NO EVIDENCE, it just proves that He is thorough in carrying out His will.


So there are NOT common ancestors. That would lend credence to the idea that everything was created--some species became extinct, other better-suited species were able to survive where others did not.


So which is it??? Make up your mind!! !


No?





But...but...I thought you said...



Now you're just being mealy-mouthed. You DON'T want to believe any of those things you said you'd like to believe. You are telling LIES, TBG. I thought you didn't like LIES.