>> ^messenger:
Someone who believes in something despite evidence against it is not using sense, reason and intellect. The Bible contradicts itself internally (contradictory lists of the "begats" is the clearest example I can think of), so cannot be accurate. If you believe the Bible is infallible, that isn't a reasonable belief. Some people "believing in a personal god" doesn't equate to "believing in Yahweh", which is your contention, so it doesn't matter if they're true or not. There's nothing unscientific about spirituality, and identifying some aspect of your spiritual experience a personal god. There's plenty unscientific about declaring the Bible to be infallible. Again with not understanding science.


If you're referring to the geneology of Jesus, it is presenting one geneology through David's son Solomon, which is the royal line, and one geneology through David's son Nathan, which is the non royal line. The lineage in Matthew is Josephs line, and the lineage in Luke is Marys line. There is no actual contradiction there, or anywhere else in the bible. What skeptics call contradictions are usually things they simply do not understand.

In any case, it would not be unreasonable to believe the bible, even if there were contradictions. This is simply a fallacious argument.

>> ^messenger:
The absence of circumstantial evidence where you might expect to find it is circumstantial evidence of absence. If the Bible were true, we would should expect, for example, that miracles would continue to occur, because why not? They should be even more commonly documented because of our massively increased population and information technology. But they appear to happen less! This is absence of circumstantial evidence. Amazing discoveries in science aren't evidence for God. God is one theory that explains them, but it doesn't work the other way -- you can't start with an amazing fact, and declare that it suggests all other theories are wrong. No matter what the universe looks like, it will still conform with the theory of God creating it, so amazing discoveries are not evidence -- they're just things we can't explain yet, like retrograde motion was once considered "amazing" and attributed to gods.)


Your contention is false for a few reasons; first, that miracles do not occur, and second, that we should expect to find an abundance of miracles. Not only have I seen miracles occur, I have been a party to them. As far as the number of miracles, we shouldn't expect to know how many miracles occur. God isn't performing for the general public. Even the post-resurrection appearances were only for a limited number of people.

We do have circumstantial evidence for Gods existence, such as the information in DNA and the evidence of fine-tuning. The theory of God has explanatory power, and is a better explanation for these phenomena. We should never ignore a theory which better explains the evidence.

>> ^messenger:
This where I start picturing you with your hands over your ears going LALALALALALA! Nothing rules out God's agency. Nothing rules out God period. He cannot be ruled out because there's nothing verifiable about his existence whatsoever. Nobody ever makes this claim, ever, ever, ever. It's like you wish we were saying this, but we're not. Really, we're not. BUT, if someone claims that their god has a chariot that moves the sun across the sky, I call bullshit because we have actually seen with our eyes that the Earth is spherical and rotates on its axis, which causes the apparent motion of the sun. If someone says the Earth is only a few thousand years old, I say bullshit and refer you to archaeology and to every branch of science that demonstrates the Earth to be much older.


It is the persistant claim of atheists that science has sufficiently described the Universe and is regulating God to a smaller and smaller corner. It's called the "god of the gaps" and you hear this all the time. You hear it from eminient scientists like Dr Krauss. So I don't wish it is being said, it is being said all the time.

As far as the age of the Earth goes, there are more evidences for a young earth than an old one. Since you don't know much about macro evolution, you probably don't know much about the theory of deep time either. Paleontology and archaelogy are historical sciences. The age of the earth is assumed, and the evidence is interpreted through that assumption. The assumption itself is never challenged.

>> ^messenger:
This is the least scientific thing you have ever said.


Messenger, you seem like a thoughtful person, so step outside of your box for a moment and think about this. The statement that "If God exists, the entire Universe is evidence of His existence" is a scientific statement of absolute fact. If it isn't, explain why not.

>> ^messenger:
You and I agreed before, no solipsism.


I engaged in no solipsism, as you will see, and I also thought we weren't going to be doing cherry picking either. I noticed you avoided these questions:

The question I would put to you is, how would you tell the difference? How would you know you're looking at a Universe God didn't create? What would you expect that to look like?

>> ^messenger:
You realize that you are using logic to prove that logic isn't real? "If-then" statements and implied questions come from logic. If logic doesn't stand on its own, then you can't use it to prove that it doesn't stand on its own. If you want to know where the rules of formal logic come from, you can look it up. If you don't accept them as valid, you've descended into solipsism, at which point I don't even accept that anything exists but my own mind. If you accept the definitions and rules of logic as valid on their face, then we don't require anything to explain where they came from. Logic is definitions, like equality. a=a. How do I know this? It's the definition of equality. If you disagree, then words have no definition, and thus no meaning, and we also agreed that "words have meaning".


I am not using logic to disprove logic, I am using logic to show you that you don't have a foundation for your own rationality. You live your life as if logic is a transcendent and absolute law, the same way as you do right and wrong, but you can't account for it in your worldview. It's a bit like sitting in Gods lap to slap His face. If logic doesn't have the same value independent of human belief, then you have no basis for your own rationality. Words do have meaning, which is why I am pointing out you have some intellectual sinkholes in your worldview that you just accept without thinking about it.

>> ^messenger:
Also, as your argument goes, if you assert that logic is a creation, and that God created logic, this entails that God exists outside of logic. Interesting prediction.


I didn't say God created logic, I said He is a rational being. Since we are made in His image, we are also rational beings.

>> ^messenger:
No, I wouldn't, necessarily. That's one field of science that I know very little about. If you've read a single book about it, you know more than me. That' doesn't mean you understand better than me how science works in general.


It doesn't mean that, no, but it does mean that you spoke authoritatively and condescendingly about something that I actually know more about than you do, jumping to conclusions based on your misunderstanding of what I said, that on a lack of knowledge about the theory itself. I would say this is positive evidence in my favor, and negative evidence against you.

>> ^messenger:
But since you bring it up, the theory of macro evolution may or may not be weak, I don't know, but outdated quotes from Darwin and about Darwin about the impossibility of macro evolution don't convince me any more than outdated quotes from Newton about the impossibility of the Solar System holding together. Do you know what Newton concluded? He concluded it must be God holding it together. Einstein figured out why it really doesn't fly apart, and it wasn't because of God.


They aren't outdated quotes, they are predictions that were made about what we should expect to find if the theory is true. Darwin made a great discovery, that changes can occur within a species. From there, he made an unjustified extrapolation that all species had a common ancestor. He expected to find evidence for this theory in the fossil record, but what he found was evidence against his theory. He blamed this on the relative poverty of the fossil record. 120 years later, we know it isn't the poverty of the fossil record; there simply is no fossil evidence to confirm macro evolution.

Do you know what a gluon is? It is a theoretical sub-atomic particle that binds quarks together. It has never been observed; it is simply a fudge factor, and without it, atoms would fly apart. Scripture says God is upholding them.

>> ^messenger:
Likewise, the problem of the lack of fossil records has been resolved since Darwin's time. The fossil evidence of intermediary links isn't a problem with the fossil evidence: it's a problem with Darwin's model. Darwin believed all evolution happened gradually, as he had observed. But there's no reason to believe it must all be slow. If one species had some tiny mutation that happened to give it a massive advantage over other species, its descendants would naturally spread into all sorts of new niches and tons of evolution would take place, both for it and other animals in its environment. Again, these changes were very rapid, so rapid, that they may not have left fossil evidence. Sometimes they did and other times they didn't, or we haven't found it yet. Check this video out: It's mostly a rebuttal to the "God is not a blind watchmaker" argument for Intelligent Design, but you can skip to 1:33 and still understand the premise. If you watch until 8:42, you'll see the reason why we wouldn't expect to find fossils of intermediary links, and why this isn't an argument against macro evolution anymore.


You're talking about the theory of punctuated equillibrium, or the modern "hopeful monster" theory. This is one of my favorite quotes:

In fact, most published commentary on punctuated equilibria has been favorable. We are especially pleased that several paleontologists now state with pride and biological confidence a conclusion that had been previously been simply embarrassing; 'all these years of work and I haven't found any evolution.'

Gould & Eldredge
Paleobiology v.3 p.136


It's the theory to explain why there is no evidence for evolution. How convenient. Do you realize that this makes macro evolution unfalsifiable? It also makes macro evolution a metaphysical theory, like abiogenesis, which you must take on faith. The video you referenced is not an accurate demonstration of macro evolution, either, since nothing is being added to the genome. A reconfiguration of the same genetic material is not traversing above the species level and is therefore micro evolution.

Since you're never read a book on macro evolution, try this one and challenge yourself:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0890510628/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

Thanks

40 to go.

In reply to this comment by UsesProzac:
*promote the street music!

Your video, Joseph McCarthy: Too Moderate for 2012 GOP, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I think Joseph McCarthy would be too moderate for FOX News, let alone the GOP.

Then you have good'ol Mitt in the video @NetRunner linked above with the title, "Memories to Last a Lifetime", (it's in the top 30 right now) were Romney I think gives us one of his best quotes of all-time were he says that while he was the Massachusetts Governor he was in fact a, "...severely conservative Governor...".

I mean, does it get better than that? I might as well say from now on, "I'm the definite intensely extreme extraordinaire waffle maker, just for my house. My neighbors say I'm a Nazi."...

according to interview they CGI'd Joseph's face with key features of Bruce Willis, so Bruce would pass for a future version of Joseph. Since they play the same character.

Also

from the screenplay to explain the premise a tiny bit more.

After a Looper kills himself, he becomes retired, but he won't know when of course. He would then get to live out his life with the money he's made until the point where he's sent back in time to be killed, therefore closing the loop.

>> ^beekinder:

>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^beekinder:
According to Palm Beach Post today Republican Congressman Allen West warned constituents at a Tuesday town hall event that he's "heard" that dozens of his Democratic colleagues in the House are members of the Communist Party.
We haven't left Joe McCarthy very far behind it would seem.

You mean this, right?
http://videosift.com/video/Allen-West-78-81-Democrats-are-in-Commu
nist-Party

I mean that Allen West is an idiot. I can't stand this kind of idiotic garbage that passes for patriotism. Good luck to this country if he is the kind of politician getting elected.


Yes that is the video where he calls some 80 democrats in congress members of the communist party.

Mitt is not even close to being conservative. He is a Turn Coat but he is no Conservative. No Conservative would allow Romney Care. He should appeal to Democrats who strayed from OBAMA for being too radical. >> ^lantern53:

You mean like hard right-winger conservative Nazi Mitt Romney?
lol

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^beekinder:
According to Palm Beach Post today Republican Congressman Allen West warned constituents at a Tuesday town hall event that he's "heard" that dozens of his Democratic colleagues in the House are members of the Communist Party.
We haven't left Joe McCarthy very far behind it would seem.

You mean this, right?
http://videosift.com/video/Allen-West-78-81-Democrats-are-in-Commu
nist-Party


I mean that Allen West is an idiot. I can't stand this kind of idiotic garbage that passes for patriotism. Good luck to this country if he is the kind of politician getting elected.

>> ^beekinder:

According to Palm Beach Post today Republican Congressman Allen West warned constituents at a Tuesday town hall event that he's "heard" that dozens of his Democratic colleagues in the House are members of the Communist Party.
We haven't left Joe McCarthy very far behind it would seem.


You mean this, right?

http://videosift.com/video/Allen-West-78-81-Democrats-are-in-Communist-Party

Right, because he's sooooooo liberal. Right?

The fact hat he's lambasted by the right for being "too liberal" is what's really sickening.

>> ^lantern53:

You mean like hard right-winger conservative Nazi Mitt Romney?
lol

>> ^shuac:
One question for you, Sarzy. You say this film is a milestone. I'm sure you're right. Can you tell me why this film is a milestone?


Because the fight choreography and direction are peerless; the film's fight scenes easily rival anything that I've ever seen, and I've seen my share of action movies.

Because the critical consensus is that it's an instant classic.

Because it's breaking through into the mainstream more than any martial arts film I can think of since Ong Bak.

Because it is awesome.

Some quotes from reviews:

David Fear -- Time Out: And in terms of beautifully coordinated film violence—the kind involving flying fists and feet, whizzing blades and ballistic superbattles—Gareth Evans’s insta-classic Indonesian crime flick is leagues above every kinetic bullet-ballet and martial arts epic of the past decade. Whether this 31-year-old Welsh director will eventually be mentioned in the same breath as legendary chaos orchestrators like Sam Peckinpah or John Woo remains to be seen. For now, Evans can take pride in the fact that he’s set the bar for cinemayhem impossibly high.

Andrew O'Hehir -- Salon: “The Raid” is a witty, pulse-pounding instant midnight classic, an immediate sensation at the Sundance and Toronto festivals that should appeal to cinema buffs, action freaks and a pretty large mainstream audience besides. It offers some of the best Asian martial-arts choreography of recent years and an electric, claustrophobic puzzle-palace atmosphere that’ll leave you wrung out and buzzed.

Ty Burr -- Boston Globe: Not yet 30, Evans is a master of visceral tension and release. “The Raid’’ repeatedly slows down, gathers force, and rushes forward using all the elements of filmmaking at a director’s disposal: editing’s ability to expand and contract time; the camera’s gift for revealing information through motion and light; a good musical score (by Joseph Trapanese and Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda) that can cue audiences to respond or just play with their heads. At times, “The Raid’’ feels like pure cinema.

Nordling -- Ain't it Cool: Then, there are the action sequences, which are so exquisitely orchestrated that they build like a symphonic suite of pain and kickassocity. This movie builds and builds, each fight even bigger than the one before it. I can't imagine an audience that won't be on their feet for some of them - and the action choreography is damn near perfect, with cinematography to match. Sure, there's some shakycam, but it's only to build the intensity because Uwais and director Gareth Evans have planned each fight so well that it's never confusing, not once. The geography is flawless. The film wisely lays out the building early on, so that you unconsciously understand where everyone is in the building and even in the same room. I haven't seen such confident action direction since John Woo unleashed the doves in THE KILLER and, yeah, HARD BOILED.

Disease rates

"During the past two decades, an explosive growth in both the prevalence and types of sexually transmitted diseases has occurred. Up to 55 percent of homosexual men with anorectal complaints have gonorrhea; 80 percent of the patients with syphilis are homosexuals. Chlamydia is found in 15 percent of asymptomatic homosexual men, and up to one third of homosexuals have active anorectal herpes simplex virus"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrezDb=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=2242700&ordinalpos=4&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_Resul
tsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Higher rates of AIDS - 63 percent of new cases

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a2.htm


Drug use

Among homosexual men, ages 18 to 25: 79.2 percent have used marijuana; 75 percent have used psychotherapeutics for nonmedical reasons; 65.2 percent have used stimulants such as dexedrine and benzedrine; 62.5 percent have used inhalants such as amyl or butyl nitrate; and 50.2 percent have used hallucinogens such as LSD. Rates among lesbians: marijuana, 82 percent; psychotherapeutics, 58.8 percent; stimulants, 52.9 percent; inhalants, 41.2 percent; and hallucinogens, 41.2 percent. Comparing current usage to national usage, homosexuals were found to use drugs with greater frequency: "Among adults aged 18-25, 16.5 percent of men and 9.1 percent of women have used marijuana in the past month, compared with 37.5 per-cent of gay men and 23.5 percent of lesbians."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1615476/

20 times higher rate of meth use (quoted from LA Times article)

http://www.narth.com/docs/methuse.html

Domestic violence

"Rates of battering victimization among urban MSM are substantially higher than among heterosexual men and possibly heterosexual women. Public health efforts directed toward addressing intimate partner battering among these men are needed."

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.92.12.1964

http://www.springerlink.com/content/r130ql0471892435/

Depression, suicide, mental health

LGB people are at higher risk of mental disorder, suicidal ideation, substance misuse, and deliberate self harm than heterosexual people

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18706118

Findings support recent evidence suggesting that gay, lesbian, and bisexual young people are at increased risk of mental health problems, with these associations being particularly evident for measures of suicidal behavior and multiple disorder.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10530626

Life expectancy of homosexuals

"In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871"

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/3/657.abstract

Statistics on Amsterdam

According to a study in the Netherlands where homosexuality has been accepted and mainstreamed for years, homosexual behavior significantly increases the likelihood of psychiatric, mental and emotional disorders, negating the mindset that society’s lack of tolerance of homosexual behavior and lifestyle produces these psychoses Youth are four times as likely to suffer major depression, almost three times as likely to suffer generalized anxiety disorder, nearly four times as likely to experience conduct disorder, four times as likely to commit suicide, five times as likely to have nicotine dependence, six times as likely to suffer multiple disorders, and more than six times as likely to have attempted suicide.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11146762

That covers all of my claims. I think you'll find all of the evidence I have provided is from unbiased sources. This refutes the claim that homosexuality does not harm anyone. It clearly harms the individual, the community and society at large.

Here are some more statistics that I don't have direct links to. .

An Amsterdam study found that the average homosexual relationship lasts only 18 months and that "men in homosexual relationships, on average, have eight partners a year outside those relationships." By comparison, more than two-thirds of heterosexual marriages in America last longer than ten years. Maria Xiridou et al.,

"The Contribution of Steady and Casual Partnerships to the Incidence of HIV Infection Among Homosexual Men in Amsterdam,"
AIDS 17, 7 (2003): 1029-1038.

Ricky Behaviors:

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco found that thirty-six percent of homosexuals engaging in unprotected oral, anal, or vaginal sex failed to disclose that they were HIV positive to casual sex partners.

"Some With HIV Aren't Disclosing Before Sex; UCSF Researcher's 1,397-person Study Presented During aids Conference," The San Francisco Examiner (July 15, 2000)"

A CDC report revealed that, in 1997, 45 percent of homosexuals reporting having had unprotected anal intercourse during the previous six months did not know the HIV serostatus of all their sex partners. Even more alarming, among those who reported having had unprotected anal intercourse and multiple partners, 68 percent did not know the HIV serostatus of their partners

Gay and Bi Men Less Likely to Disclose They Have HIV," GayHealth News (July 18, 2000).

Promiscuity

A.P. Bell and M.S. Weinberg, in their classic study of male and female homosexuality, found that 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with 500 or more partners, with 28 percent having 1,000 or more sex partners.

A. P. Bell and M. S. Weinberg, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 308, 9; see alsoBell, Weinberg and Hammersmith, Sexual Preference (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981)

Paul Van de Ven et al., "A Comparative Demographic and Sexual Profile of Older Homosexually Active Men," Journal of Sex Research 34 (1997): 354. Dr. Paul Van de Ven reiterated these results in a private conversation with Dr. Robert Gagnon on September 7, 2000

In their study of the sexual profiles of 2,583 older homosexuals published in Journal of Sex Research, Paul Van de Ven et al., found that only 2.7 percent claimed to have had sex with one partner only. The most common response, given by 21.6 percent of the respondents, was of having a hundred-one to five hundred lifetime sex partners.

Survey Finds 40 percent of Gay Men Have Had More Than 40 Sex Partners," Lambda Report, January/February 1998, p. 20.

A survey conducted by the homosexual magazine Genre found that 24 percent of the respondents said they had had more than a hundred sexual partners in their lifetime. The magazine noted that several respondents suggested including a category of those who had more than a thousand sexual partners.[11]

M. Pollak, "Male Homosexuality," in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, edited by P. Aries and A. Bejin, pp. 40-61, cited by Joseph Nicolosi in Reparative therapy of Male Homosexuality (Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc., 1991),

In his study of male homosexuality in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, M. Pollak found that "few homosexual relationships last longer than two years, with many men reporting hundreds of lifetime partners."

David P. McWhirter and Andrew M. Mattison, The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1984), pp. 252, 3.

>> ^curiousity:

Thanks for the promote
In reply to this comment by RedSky:
*promote

as much as I hate this Kony crap... it has gotten me to totally support Joseph Kony 100%.. I saw Kony for president!

so tired of this corporate meme, that I'll even donate to Kony himself if it will shut them up.

I'm becoming more of a Joseph Gordon Levitt fan all the time. And TAPOAC day is a great idea. I'm in. August 4th.
Edit: Apparently this already exists, and it's September 1st!