Comments by "Philip Rayment" (@PJRayment) on "PragerU"
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"[Cars] allow us to go whereever we want, whenever we want, with whomever we want. Think about it. With trains, planes, and buses the routes are planned, and the schedule is timed. Only cars allow you to be spontaneous."
True. Up to a point. As long as you are talking about someone who is not too young or too old, too disabled, or otherwise not able to have a driver's licence, or too poor to own a car. Public transport allows almost all of those people to get around. A blind person cannot drive a car, but they can use public transport.
The video looks at the advantages of cars and the disadvantages of public transport, but not the other way around. Both have their limitations and their benefits.
Further, too much emphasis on cars means that public transport is poor, which limits opportunities for those who can't drive.
The video also talks about the money that governments spend on public transport to get people out of their cars, but igores the money that governments spend on roads for those cars. Think of it this way: You have trains built and maintained by private companies running on tracks built and maintained by those same (or other) private companies, and you have cars running on roads, including expensive freeways, paid for by the government/taxpayers. So despite calling for the free market to operate, the video is actually calling for government support for the motorist, often at the expense of the private (railway) companies.
"Personal car ownership is part of America's fabric. It brings people together and makes this big country seem a little smaller, and more free."
Actually, the railways did that first. And people travelling together on public transport seems to do a better job of "bringing people together" than having them all isolated in their own separate vehicles.
Having said all that, I'm not defending the push for electric cars, attempts to ban cars, etc. Both cars and public transport have their place, and yes, ideally the market should operate freely, but government support for cars by building roads undermines that.
(This comment written in Australian English.)
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@unionpepe7864
"because in America you have the freedom to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't effect the liberty of another."
In theory.
"If you rape, beat, or kill that is hurting the liberty other another America."
And if you disagree with the left's narrative on LGBT+, or disagree with their stand on climate change, or many other things, then you are hurting the people on the left, and putting society in danger. According to the left, at least.
"This same logic applies to free speech, you have the right to say whatever you want as long as you aren't attempting to harm or threatening to harm another person."
But, to the left, if it hurts their feelings, you are attempting just that.
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@jaydenroberts2615
"because the means by which we perform those actions are due to conveniences afforded to us by technology we’ve created."
Which doesn't mean that we weren't created to do that. That technology doesn't come by chance; it needs to be designed. Humans are so much more complex and yet we are supposed to have just come by chance! That is inconsistent.
"And there’s no proof we were designed in a particular way. The leading theory (because it’s been proven) is that we evolved randomly to suit the selection pressures in the environment at the time."
On the contrary, there's no proof that we evolved. But there is very strong evidence that we were designed and created, and yes, in a particular way, because the Creator left us a description.
The argument for evolution is actually circular, because it's based on a particular scientific method called methodological naturalism which a priori excludes supernatural explanations before even looking at the evidence. In other words, the naturalistic explanation (evolution) assumes that the explanation must be a natural one to start with, hence it's a circular argument.
Further, your claim makes little sense. Evolution does not involve changing "randomly to suit the selection pressures", i.e. changing to achieve a particular goal (of suiting selection pressures). It involves random changes, when are then selected by the environment. But those random changes are not goal-oriented.
"This isn’t an atheist creation myth, this is a fact"
No, it's not a fact. The scientific method involves observation, measurement, testing, and repetition. Goo-to-you evolution cannot be observed (it's in the past), measured, tested, nor repeated. It's a hypothesis that goes against the available evidence (the claimed mechanism, mutations, destroy genetic information rather than generating it, the origin of life is contrary to the laws of physics, etc. etc.).
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@user-ov9m54hj1b "...all I was saying is that restricting people’s access to cars is not giving them more transport options."
True. But restricting people's access to public transport is also not giving them more transport options either. And with limited government funds to go around, a choice has to be made on where to spend those funds.
This video argues that these things should be decided by the free market, a principle I completely support. But although it says that should be the case, what it's actually arguing is that government funds should be spent on supporting motorists, by providing roads.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that it shouldn't provide roads, but you can't argue that is should be the free market deciding and want government support at the same time. If you want government support (roads), you have to accept that the government might choose to spend some of its limited funds on alternatives, i.e. public transport, which, after all, does a better job of providing options in some circumstances.
As such, your first claim that "it's not about cars vs public transport" is wrong. You can't have both to an unlimited extent. There needs to be a balance, and if you're wanting government funds, well, you need to accept that there is only so much pie to go around.
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@unionpepe7864 "no? I read the source material "Irreversible Damage: ..."
How is simply describing the contents of a book any sort of rebuttal to my point? Unless you've already decided (but don't show) that the book is wrong?
"what about the green new deal is socialist? It involves revamping our aging electrical grid into the 21st century while providing skilled jobs for millions of Americans."
It's more than that, and it's how they do that. Rather than leave it to market forces, they plan on imposing things on society. The left-leaning Wikipedia lists some points of the plan, including the following: "Guaranteeing a job ... Providing all people of the United States with – (i) high-quality health care; (ii) affordable, safe, and adequate housing; (iii) economic security ..." etc. Nothing wrong with having safe housing, etc., but providing those things as government schemes is socialism.
"Again democrats aren't trying to remove conservatives freedom of speech."
Except that they are. No, removing free speech is not their goal. Stopping conservatives from spreading their ideas is, however, their goal, which is a denial of free speech.
"Democrats aren't passing any laws that restrict conservatives voices."
There are ways to do it without passing laws, although even that is being done in some places (e.g. Canada, so not the Democratic Party as such). But so-called hate speech laws fit the bill, when they are worded and applied as broadly as they often are.
"Companies are simply banning extremist on their platform right or left that comment threats or try to rally people to a violent cause because then they can be held legally responsible."
Simply not true (that that's all that they are doing). I, personally, have been told by my employer that I cannot share my ideas with my work colleagues. I was not threatening anyone, or rallying anyone. This was not to do with being held legally responsible, but due to simply disagreeing with their internal ideological policies.
"Corporations aren't under any legal obligation to give you freedom of speech only the government is."
Actually, under the law (here in Australia) my political and religious speech is protected. When I was asked if I disagreed with my employer's policies, I told them that I disagreed with my employer's religious and political views. They changed the subject.
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@vidyanandbapat8032 Your theology and history are poor.
Of course the Judeo-Christian tradition didn't have a free press—the press hadn't been invented then! But the Judeo-Christian worldview did give rise to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and so on. It limited the government. When a Roman emperor massacred innocent people in angry revenge for an uprising, Bishop Ambrose told him off and forced him to introduce a new law that would not allow any executions without a cooling-off period. The Magna Carta was predicated on the principle that even the king was subject to God's law, a principle recorded over two millennia earlier when the God's man Samuel confronted King David over arranging the death of the husband of a woman he wanted.
Once the press was invented, Christians started newspapers in various places around the world, giving a voice to the people. They helped spread democracy partly because they involved people in running organisations, and the skills they gained helped them to organise politically. See The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy by Robert Woodberry.
No, God was not the God of a few Jewish tribes. He is the creator of the world and humanity. He is everybody's God (there being only one).
The Roman Empire adopted Christianity after it had spread widely in the empire.
The "archaic Jewish traditions" were part of the Mosaic Law (if not add-ons to that) that were never applicable to Christians, and which became redundant with Jesus. The most obvious example is the requirement to sacrifice animals for sin was no longer necessary once Jesus became the ultimate sacrifice, fulfilling that requirement for all time.
Paul was not a Roman, but a very religious Jew with inherited Roman citizenship.
The question is not which law emanated from the Judeo-Christian worldview, but which didn't? Common law was based on the Bible. See the three-volume work Christian Foundations of the Common Law by Augusto Zimmerman
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@jimothygreen8879
"There have been countless studies done and puberty blockers do not have any permanent side affects. anyone saying there are side affects are either lying or misinformed. pretty simple."
Or maybe the people claiming that there are countless studies showing no permanent side effects are lying or misinformed.
"It isnt a delusion, its rejecting the gender identity you were assigned at birth."
You are not assigned a gender identity at birth. That is pure fiction. If you are male and think you're female, you're deluded. That's basic logic.
"Gender dysphoria is a recognized medical health condition with clear treatment options that are documented and proven to work effectively."
Yeah, pull the other one. First, the video points out that there is disagreement with that by professionals who have been cancelled for not going along with the political correctness. Second, here's what one of the academics in this movement wrote:
"The problem is: I was wrong. Or, to be a bit more accurate, I got things partly right. But then, for the rest, I basically just made it up. ... Everyone was (and is) making it up. That’s how the gender-studies field works."
"A doctor cannot refuse treatment to a patient with gender dysphoria who wants it because of this. its like refusing to give medicine for a disease."
I neve said that they shouldn't give treatment. But the problem is not their body, but their mind. So why treat their body?
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@backup3142
"my rebuttal is you are comparing science to sociology,"
No, I'm comparing facts with facts. One is a fact of science and the other is a fact of design and history. It's your opinion that one is merely societal.
"... citing a source which has a very clear bias..."
Everyone has a bias. It doesn't make it wrong, and you haven't shown it to be wrong.
"... do not understand how arguing and questioning are both attempting to understand topics better, "
I never said that they didn't have anything in common. But clearly they are not synonymous.
"Also you typed that slavery was not a consensus and said I did believe that,..."
I said that you did believe that it wasn't, or that it was? I said that slavery was not a consensus, and you claimed that it was a consensus. I'm missing something somewhere. Or you are.
"...and then literally quoted me saying that i thought it wasn't."
Are you referring to your comment that "Obviously, not everybody will always be in consensus..."? 'Consensus' means that there is general agreement, but not unanimous agreement. Saying that "not everybody will be in consensus" is either A) a redundancy, as there will be a few who don't agree (which means that there IS consensus) or B) saying that there is no consensus after all. Given that you'd already claimed that there was consensus, I took that to be A, a redundancy, as a few hold-outs doesn't deny that there was consensus. My point was that there was no consensus in the first place. That is, there was no general agreement but with a few exceptions, but considerable disagreement.
"Just because apes can speak, it does not make them intelligent, same goes for you and typing"
A poor analogy, given that apes can't speak in the sense of forming sentences or even words, and it does take intelligence to type, as opposed to simply hitting random keys.
"P.S. I am resorting to insults because I genuinely think that you are more thick skulled than a Neanderthal and need to be insulted for anything to remotely penetrate your veil of ignorance"
Then please disabuse yourself of that notion that I'm that thick. A bit pedantic at times, but not thick.
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@jaydenroberts2615
"I don’t appeal to the bible so I don’t care how we’re hypothesised to be designed."
You don't care how we were designed? But that is a critical point. (Yes, I know you said "hypothesised", but my comment was based on history and science, not a baseless hypothesis.)
"Fact of the matter is we do things which contradict our biology all the time so to say it’s unnatural, in order to not be a hypocrite, you better be ready to forage for food, walk around naked and never cut your hair. That’s the natural state of human beings"
What makes you think that that's the natural state? How do you know were weren't designed to cut our hair, farm, wear clothes, etc.? Because of your (presumed) evolutionary beliefs? Sorry, I don't appeal to atheist creation myths.
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@unionpepe7864
"...the market itself had corporations prove that global warming existed and rather then tell the world they covered up the information research how Exxon discovered global warming."
I don't believe that Exxon "discovered" global warming.
"now I'm not sure what you do for a living but I'm an industrial electrician and we call these things turn overs where we will work for 3 months and be given all those things. so i would expect them to do that if were gonna be doing turn overs all over the country"
I don't really follow that sentence, but who "gives" you those things? The companies you are working for, or the government (taxpayers)?
"you just restated this point without evidence"
You asked what freedom of speech they are trying to take away. I gave examples (i.e. evidence). You simply asserted, without evidence, that they are not. So I restated my point without further evidence, because I'd already supplied some that you had ignored.
"hate speech laws are very cut and dry..."
So?
"...if you attempt to spew hateful rhetoric in public places you are fined, do it 30 times and youre probley going to jail. dont call people racial slurs or advocate to remove their rights"
But what constitutes "hateful rhetoric"? My point is that the left call almost anything they disagree with, "hate". It's not just racial slurs; what about calling someone "homophobic" simply for disagreeing with homosexuality? Why isn't that a (non-racial) slur? The left do that all the time. But if conservatives do something equivalent, it's now "hate".
"Freedom of speech isnt freedom from consequences."
Sorry, no. Freedom of speech IS freedom from consequences when those consequences are punishing someone for freely speaking. You might as well say that you have a right to drive over the speed limit, but should expect a fine or jail if you do so.
"You can say what you want as long as its not threating anothers liberty ..."
And yet I gave you an example—the very thing that you are replying to—that shows that to be utterly false.
"but you still face consequences such as ... losing your job, etc".
The only reason you lose your job is because they say that you are NOT free to say things!
"...again freedom of speech means the government cant arrest you."
What you're trying to say is that freedom of speech simply means that there is no legal penalties, but there could still be other penalties (not just incidental "consequences"). That is a valid point to make, but then I gave that example in response to your claim that "Companies are simply banning extremist[s]...". I showed that that was not the case, so you moved the goal posts.
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@backup3142
"first off, arguing is questioning."
They are not synonyms. Sure, you might do some arguing as part of questioning, but that doesn't make them the same thing.
"Second, how are you going to say "as educated people, they should already know why it's correct"?"
I'm not going to say it. I already said it. I said it by a process of thinking and typing. Not hard at all. But of course that is not what you're asking. There are some things that are common knowledge. If you claim to be educated and don't know those things, then it's fair to say that they should know.
"Blindly accepting things without arguing or questioning them is the opposite of intelligence; you are a clear example of that."
I never mentioned blind acceptance. I was talking about knowing why something is the case. Do you blindly accept that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius? Or do you question that by arguing against that? Sure, make sure you understand why that is believed to be the case (the opposite of blind acceptance), but questioning it as though it's open to question, when you don't actually understand the reasons, is not a valid position to take.
"Third, the overall consensus on slavery was it was good because they did not view slaves as people."
That would have been the rationale of the people who accepted it, but my point was that there was not consensus; there was always opposition.
"Obviously, not everybody will always be in consensus, but for the most part, people in the west did think that slavery was good."
Simply not true. Christianity taught that it was wrong, and even well before Christians—who argued against it precisely because the slaves were people, made in the image of God—got it abolished in the 19th Century, popes had decreed against it, as early as around the fourth century, from memory (which fits with the quote below). One researcher (Jeremiah H. Johnston in Unimaginable ) wrote:
"... starting in the fourth century, widespread racism ended for hundreds of years. Why was this?
"That's when the Christian movement emerged as a dominant cultural force in the Roman Empire, and the bold socio-theological statement 'There is neither Jew nor Greek' took hold. Unfortunately, racist ideology, and with it justification for slavery in the West, reemerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The influential voices that spouted this new racist ideology—all of them European—were atheists who explicitly rejected the notion that humanity had been created in the image of God. Humanity is not special. Human beings are not equal. Humanity is not one, but is made up of various races or subspecies, some of which are inferior to White Europeans. It was this post-Christian thinking that the ugly racism of antiquity made its comeback..."
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I've often heard Americans claim that America is a republic, not a democracy, but with one exception, none of those people could justify the claim, and that one exception essentially said that the claim is really referring to it not being a pure democracy.
Much of this comes down to definitions, it seems to me. Even after watching this video, I think it's fair to say that America is a democracy, but a particular type of democracy. More precisely, it's a representative democracy, and even a particular type of representative democracy.
It's interesting to compare this to Australia, which is similar in some ways but also different in some. Like America, Australia is a federation of what were British colonies, but unlike America, it became independent peaceably, with the consent of the British government. Australia's constitution was originally an act of the British parliament. However, it seems to me that Australia's constitution was influenced by the American one. Just comparing the references to no religious test, etc. you'll find very similar wording. Like Britain and America, it has a bicameral government. Like America, representatives of the lower house are proportional to the population of the states. Like America, the states all have equal representation in the upper house (also called the Senate).
However, unlike America, we do not have an elected president. That non-political role is fulfilled by the Governor General, representing Australia's Queen, Queen Elizabeth. (The GG is appointed by the queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister). Therefore there is no equivalent of the Electoral College.
One common way of describing Australia's system is a representative democracy. It's also described as a constitutional monarchy. There are some who would like to make it a 'republic', i.e. to replace the queen's representative with an president, although there is no agreement on how that person would be elected.
So in some ways Australia's system is very much like America's, but it's never called a republic, despite this video indicating that some of the things that make America a republic are also things found in the Australian system.
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@aidenaune7008
"except that it shouldn't be, because God created the universe explicitly to not have any proof of his existence so as to ensure our free will,"
What do you mean by "proof"? In logic, 'proof' depends on the correctness of the premises. In maths, proof is basically logical proof, I think. In a criminal court case, proof is evidence that is sufficient to convince the judge or jury beyond reasonable doubt. In a civil court case, it is considered proved if it's more likely than not. In science, there is no such thing as proof.
So when you say that God didn't want to supply "proof", are you claiming that he didn't want evidence enough for us to be convinced? Because plenty of people have been convinced on the basis of the evidence, which for them means that God has been proved.
And why is that the requirement for free will anyway? God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden. They had "proof" that God existed, but still had free will, and they used it to disobey Him. So proof is not a blockage to having free will.
"the universe with or without God, will look exactly the same, "
Without God, there would be no universe, and no universe looks somewhat different to a universe!
"we know that God created the world in 7 days ..."
Six, actually, plus a day of rest.
"although it might have been a metaphor and not true history like most of the bible"
Nope. It is written as narrative, and the top experts in the language agree that it was written to be taken as actual history. Also, Jesus referred to it in ways that He accepted it as actual history.
"but the universe is identical to one that was not, so we should treat it as if it were one that was not when it comes to science."
Oh, so many things wrong with this comment!
1) False premises typically lead to false conclusions, as in this case.
2) The 'science' is not merely investigating the universe to see how it operates; it is declaring that it came about without God.
3) Even IF the universe looked identical when the origin was either A or B, why should science treat the origin as A rather than as B? Surely that's being quite arbitrary.
4) Even IF the universe looked identical when the origin was either A or B, why not treat the origin as irrelevant, rather than treat it as one or the other?
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@mikeyhinojosa3837
"over 200 civilians have died, and over 50 of them were kids. That doesn’t seem to be taking extra precautions,"
There's that unexplained word "extra" again. I asked what it was supposed to be "extra" to, yet you didn't explain.
I also asked what they could do more. You didn't answer that. So presumably you can't even think of what more they could be doing. And yet you criticise.
And your response is illogical. That X number died doesn't mean that more would not have died if they hadn't taken those "extra" precautions.
"...if they really cared about the innocent people they wouldn’t keep them trapped in Gaza and the West Bank."
Given that neither place has borders with only Israel, how does Israel prevent them from leaving?
"Hamas are definitely doing horrible things but let’s not act like Israel is innocent."
On the contrary, let's not pretend that people are claiming that Israel couldn't improve when what they are really saying is to put the blame where it really belongs, with the terrorists.
Have you heard the recording of the Israeli military calling a person in Gaza telling him that they should evacuate because the place is going to be bombed, and he declines because he'd rather the deaths as a propaganda weapon? And the military person telling him to think of the kids, and the Palestinian saying that if the kids die, it will look bad for the Israelis?
Again, what could the Israelis do "extra"? Answer that or your criticism has no credibility.
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@redblaze8700 "There’s no evidence that the 2020 election was rigged. "
Nonsense. There is plenty of evidence.
"Even Trumps own people couldn’t find evidence for such,..."
Except that they did.
"...even Trump-appointed judges ruled against the ridiculous claims from his legal team."
First, for the most party, they never investigated the evidence, so didn't rule against the claim; they declined to take on the cases.
Second, much of the other evidence of rigging was of things that a court would not take on because it wasn't illegal, like the mainstream media's fake news, the social media censoring pro-Trump information like Hunter Biden's laptop, etc.
However, it has not even been disputed that some election officials violated their own state government's legislation to help rig the election, such as telling vote counters to accept signatures of mail-in ballots without properly checking them.
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@JustapErson
"Leave religion out of it,..."
Perhaps you should take your own advice. A religion is a type of worldview. Some other worldviews are atheistic ones, and in fact the semantic range of the word "religion" can encompass atheistic views. Secular Humanism, for example, when founded, described itself as a "secular religion".
So what you're actually doing is bringing your own worldview/religion into this conversation, in asking the OP to leave his out of it!
Further, he didn't actually mention a religion. He mentioned God and God's revelation to us. Yes, there are religions based on God and His revelation, but those religions are the product of God and His revelation. To put it another way, try answering this question: Is God the product of religion, or is Christianity the product of God? And if you think that it's the former, what's your evidence?
"...it just makes the right look like a bunch of nutcases."
Only to atheists who think that they know better. In fact it was people who believed the Bible and its revelations about God that founded public hospitals, many charities, universal education, the university system, and modern science, and who spread democracy, twice abolished slavery, raised the status of women, and who made Western Civilisation the enormous success that it has been by spreading biblical views and Godly standards.
Does that really sound like the fruit of "a bunch of nutcases"?
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@ScottBub
"That is called a special pleading fallacy. Basically you are saying that an infinite regress is impossible, but you put a god in there and a god is infinite."
An infinite and an infinite regress are two different things.
"If god can be infinite then the universe can be infinite."
The universe cannot be infinite, as the laws of thermodynamics don't allow it to be infinite. But the Laws only apply to the physical, not the spiritual (supernatural), so God can be eternal. This makes sense in another way, as time is part of the space-matter-time creation. That is, time is something God created, not something He is subject to. God is therefore outside of time. So it's not that He's been around for an infinite amount of time, but that He simply exists, with no beginning or end (both of which imply time).
"There’s no need to add magic."
Nobody is adding magic. Except perhaps the naturalistic people who propose a beginning from nothing, whereas nothing can't create anything.
"Btw, the second law of thermodynamics only applies to closed systems."
Which the universe is. And the Law was discovered and shown to be correct on Earth, a not-entirely-closed system.
"But you shouldn’t cry foul on science and then use it in your argument for magic."
Nobody's making an argument for magic. And nobody's crying foul on science. What we are crying foul on is naturalism, which mainstream scientists believe in, at least when it comes to past events.
"Do you accept science and if you do then why complain when it’s applied and also use it incorrectly?"
Creationists founded science. They do not complain when it's applied properly, and they don't use it incorrectly. Proper science does not assume that all explanations have to be natural ones.
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"Its not a university, it is not a school. It is a freaking Youtube Channel"
In the sense that it doesn't offer courses and degrees, you're correct. But see their video about how they got started. They wanted to offer an alternative to the lunacy of the established universities that are now teaching nonsense, and universities now also teach online, so they decided to reach a much wider audience with an online presence rather than a bricks-and-mortar university.
"There is no decent paying job ANYWHERE that would hire anyone with a non-degree from PragerU. Go find one. Just try."
That is a sound-bite with no substance. A non-degree isn't a thing. I already have a job with a non-degree from PragerU. That is, I got a job without having a degree from PragerU. Really, that's all your comment is claiming.
"Yes this video was made to portray the idea that this Youtube Channel is not only just as good, but better than an accredited university…"
Which it is, in the sense of not agreeing with the idea of safe spaces and not hearing alternative views. I doesn't claim—as you seem to be implying—more than that, such as being better in offering degrees or etc. in other words, it's claim is correct as far as it goes, which is not as all-encompassing as you're pretending.
"…judging by the comments, their idiot followers agree. Those are the dense ones."
Given that you're presenting a straw-man version of the claim, no, others are not the idiots.
"So accredited universities are bad because they teach facts that make you uncomfortable?"
That is a total distortion of what he says, which means that your argument is nonsense.
"The point of college is to prepare you for the work world."
And PragerU helps with that, by being realistic instead of woke.
"Everything I have said has been completely factual."
Incorrect, as I have shown.
"Gender studies requires students to read and analyze challenging texts just as an English class would."
Funny man. Gender studies promotes unscientific ideas. Here's what one gender studies 'researcher' (Christopher Dummitt) said "The problem is: I was wrong. Or, to be a bit more accurate, I got things partly right. But then, for the rest, I basically just made it up. … Everyone was (and is) making it up. That’s how the gender-studies field works."
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@MMaximuSS1975
"Religion is definitely in conflict with science."
Christianity is not in conflict with true science. But one big problems atheists have is lumping all religions—except their own—in together, as though they are all alike. Nothing could be further from the truth.
"The only reason why science would need religion is as a case study for why humans are so prone to magical thinking."
What magical thinking? Things like the universe popped into existence out of nothing? Oh wait, that's an atheist view.
Scholars disagree. For example, Paul Davies said "In the ensuing three hundred years, the theological dimension of science has faded. People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature- the laws of physics - are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they come from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is rational basis to physical existence manifested as lawlike order in nature that is at least part comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological world view."
"no it doesn't."
Yes, it does. Rodney Stark, for example, talking about Christianity said "Without a theology committed to reason, progress, and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800: A world with many astrologers and alchemists but no scientists."
"Christianity has always embraced gullibility, guilt, and ignorance."
Evidence?
"Every time I get into a discussion and people find out I'm an atheist they shut down any kind of legitimate inquiry."
Maybe because you have no idea what you are talking about.
"more evidence for God and the Bible? No there isn't."
What's your evidence that there isn't?
"You have absolutely zero evidence for God. None. Absolutely none."
Again, what's your evidence that he has none?
"As for the Bible archeology has destroyed the book."
Completely false. It's vindicated it on numerous occasions, including finding evidence of the Hittites, to give one well-known example.
"It's mostly fiction from cover to cover."
Archaeologists and historians disagree with you.
"Current consensus is the Exodus never happened."
Partly because they are looking in the wrong time.
"We know Genesis is pure nonsense plagiarized from other previously existing pagan mythology."
No, we don't know that. The evidence actually points the other way, of Genesis being the original.
"As for the New Testament Jesus was a MYTH even if someone existed or not."
And yet historians are almost unanimous that he existed. See the YouTube video "Atheist Refuted by Agnostic Historian (Bart Ehrman) on the Existence of Jesus."
"The Gospels are a more fiction fabricated by the early church. There was no crucifixion story. There was no resurrection. There was no Jesus who died for any sins or was the son of any God."
What's your evidence? These ridiculous claims, that go against the scholarship, is likely what causes Christians to not want to debate with you.
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@JDG-hq8gy
"Give the sailors, soldiers, etc. pay for a few months until they can find a new job."
This is leftist economics for you. Just act as if money can be got out of thin air. What are you going to pay them with if you're removing the funding? Also, your suggestion was to stop the funding for a week, and now you're talking about sacking them!
"The sailors and soldiers losing their job is good because then they'll have to get a new one that actually makes them productive members of society, not another cog in the imperialist machine. "
So you're not interested in defending the country from enemies? Okay, got that. Maybe you're part of the Chinese government?
"Get the homeless people all the medical and psychological help they'll need to end their addictions."
Good idea (which the video touched on too), but although I pointed out that drugs could be a problem, I never said that it was the entire problem. What about the attitude that led them into using drugs in the first place? What do you do about that? What is needed (in many cases; acknowledging that every circumstance is different) is a change in attitude or even worldview. If you think that the world owes you a living and you don't get it, you might turn to drugs or other ways of coping. If you realise that you need to put in your own effort to support yourself, you would probably stay off drugs. So not rejecting that help getting off drugs is a good idea, but in many cases it wouldn't be enough by itself.
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@p.chuckmoralesesquire3965
"the sum of your insight was that they are different types of terms."
No, that was not my point. My point is that if you have two different explanations, A and B, to explain X, you can't say that A must be true because it explains X. The fact that there is another explanation (B) means that you haven't shown that A is the correct explanation. You were saying that the reason there are two different words is A, and I was saying no, there is also B. Therefore you've not provided evidence that A is the reason that there are two different word. My point was one of logic.
"You could have explained that sex and gender are a spectrum, they are bimodal, not binary."
I could have, except that I do my best to avoid telling untruths. There are two sexes, male and female. No more. So where's this supposed spectrum? And how does the existence of both 'female' and 'woman' show that?
"We all exist on a point between 2 extremes male and female."
Simply false. We are all either male or female. Period.
"You could have offered something but you went full scale smugnorant and looked silly."
No, I was making a point of logic that showed that your claim (that they had different meanings) was not the only conclusion that could be drawn from your evidence (that they are two different words). As such, your conclusion was apparently baseless.
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@AbeerKDas
"bias means misinformation and handpicked data."
No, it does not. The Collins dictionary says that it's "a tendency to prefer one person or thing to another, and to favour that person or thing." It also often means that that tendency is unfair, but that's not a necessary part of the meaning of the word.
And yes, bias can often be wrong (when it's applied unfairly, when it results in people cherry-picking, when they allow misinformation to creep in), but it's not necessarily wrong. Which is why I referred to having the right bias. I'm biased towards wanting facts and evidence, for example.
"i just said NO ONE is ur friend"
Which is wrong too. I have friends, and perhaps more to the point, I have people, groups, and organisations that I can trust.
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"I eventually came to realise that integrating science and religion is impossible."
The first problem is the term "religion". What does that mean? That can cover anything from Christianity (which founded science, as pointed out in the video) and other monotheistic religions to polytheistic and pantheistic religions to atheistic religions such as Marxism, Confucianism, Zen Buddhism, Secular Humanism, and Scientology. The term is just too broad and all-encompassing to make sense in a comment like that.
So integrating science and Christianity is not impossible, given that science is based on Christianity.
"Religion goes against reason, fact, and reality."
Most religions might, but Christianity doesn't.
"It is an idea based on faith and mysticism."
Christianity is not based on mysticism. And in Christianity, 'faith' does not mean what it means to atheists; it means trust based on evidence. That is, we have evidence that what God says and that we can check is true, so we trust Him (have faith in Him) when He tells us about things we can't check, such as what happens when we die.
"I'm happy to see the slow decline of Christianity in the west."
The West is based on Christianity. A slow decline in Christianity in the West will result in a slow decline in the West.
"The world will be a better place without religion."
Especially without atheist religions. But not without Christianity, which has done an enormous amount of good, founding public hospitals and many charities, starting science, spreading democracy, abolishing slavery, raising the status of women, introducing universal education, and more.
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@tobak952
"Universities had been a thing since ancient Greece, and was reinvented in the 13th century, "'
Even if true, that doesn't affect my argument.
"...there were people who dedicated their life to science throughout the entire medieval period."
Only if you have a very broad definition of science. Many scholars agree that science was a product of Christianity, as mentioned in this video.
"Capitalism was the result of democrathy,..."
Democrathy??
"... wich was the result of, among other things, secularization. cough cough French revolution cough first amendment cough Seperation of church and state *cough*.
Capitalism had its foundings in northern Italy around the 12th(?) century. Well before the events that you mentioned.
"Christianity is a main reason the enlightenment didn't hit sooner,..."
Just as well. The so-called enlightenment wasn't particularly enlightening.
"...the requirements for the enlightenment: Scepticism, religious freedom, democrathy was forbidden by medieval christianity and often explicitly in the bible"
That is false insofar as the Bible is concerned at least. In the Bible, the Bereans were commended for being sceptical of what Paul (the apostle) taught. Neither is there a ban on democracy, which was helped by the church (although more so after Catholicism loosened its grip).
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@pope9187
As I said, it's not my standard.
We've already discussed an example: the snowflake. It's shape is not designed; it's determined by the laws of physics (although the laws of physics were "designed").
Things that are not designed are things that are random in arrangement. The parts of a machine, for example, need to fit together in a specific arrangement for the machine to work, but a pile of machine parts sent to the tip and tipped out of a rubbish truck has the parts in random positions. The parts of a living thing also need to fit together in a specific arrangement to work.
Nuts hold onto bolts according to the laws of physics, but the laws of physics would never create a bolt with a consistent thread, let alone a matching nut (that is designed ) to fit the bolt.
When you build a house, you arrange the parts (bricks, wall timbers, roof tiles, benchwork, cupboards, windows, doors, etc.) in specific places that 'work' well (there's no point in having a window in the floor, or benchwork on the ceiling, or cupboards with the doors facing the wall). But leave the house without maintenance, and eventually it will decay and collapse into an undesigned heap of rubble.
Going beyond your question...
Design is something than an intelligence does (such as plan a house), while the opposite—randomness—is what nature does, as the result of entropy (things 'run down'). But to fend off an objection, yes, nature does create complex things, such as trees (and all living things), but only because trees contain (a) a plan (DNA), (b) molecular machinery to implement that plan, along with (c) mechanisms to obtain energy from the environment (e.g. sunlight) to power that machinery. However, nature can't make those plans in the first place, so cannot explain the origin of these self-replicating systems. Even IF it could make the plans, it wouldn't have the molecular machinery to implement those plans. Yes, the molecular machinery is also built according to plans, but you need something to build the molecular machinery! Living things inherit the molecular machinery from their parents (and with that can make more molecular machinery). So you need more than the DNA; you also need the cell that has the machinery to turn the DNA into a new living thing. That cell came from the parent living thing. But where did the first cell come from? Nature has no ability to design cells (or anything) from scratch. The entire process must be started by an intelligence. So we are talking about an intelligence that must exist before we had (physical) living things.
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@pope9187
Some scientists, in espousing the idea of a multiverse, have suggested that other universes could have different laws of physics. So possibly yes, they could have been otherwise, if being otherwise doesn't defy logic.
We could say that God designed evolution except for two things. 1) God told us otherwise. 2) For God-designed evolution to work, the mutations would have to be non-random. In fact some mutations aren't completely random, in that there are some mutations that are more likely than others, or that occur in specific places more than in other places. But other mutations are completely random, and randomness is the opposite of design.
I guess then next option is ones like Dawkins' Weasel computer program, where random changes (mutations) are non-randomly (intelligently) selected. However, there are two problems with this also. One is that there is no evidence of an effective non-random selection mechanism, i.e. no evidence that evolution has an end goal, and the second is that as things work now, any selection of "good" mutations would be swamped by the bad mutations. To illustrate, geneticists have discovered that each new generation of humans has around 100 additional mutations on top of the ones inherited from the previous generation. Virtually all of those mutations are negative ones (albeit most are almost-neutral). Natural selection selects entire organisms, not individual mutations. So there is no way to select the very rare slightly-"good" mutations without also selecting all the new bad mutations.
"Seems like ID could cut out a lot of this nonsense about irreducible complexity and specified complexity ... but at least it isn’t using God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge."
ID doesn't use God as a stop-gap. ID says that there is evidence of design, but doesn't try and identify the designer. Meyer in this video is going beyond the science of ID and saying that God is the best explanation of that design.
And, as you will see if you watch the video carefully, God is a rational conclusion, not a claim merely from lack of an alternative.
I don't accept your claim that we know from experience that minds are only associated with physical brains. We have long known about the immaterial God (the idea was not invented to explain the origin of information) and have plenty of evidence for Him. Intelligence, like information, is something immaterial, even if with humans it is tied to a physical object.
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@pope9187 God told us otherwise in Genesis.
"And why would you need genetic mutations to be non-random?"
Because, as I said, "randomness is the opposite of design." Random mutations destroy, not create.
"I mean, presumably theists believe that God personally made them,..."
No, I believe that I came about by a process that God designed. God could have intervened directly or indirectly in that process, but I don't know whether He did.
"...that specific sperm cell was no more “designed” to fertilize that oocyte any more than the millions of other sperm cells that didn’t get there in time were."
Yes, God built in a system that may be random, but which operates within designed limits. I'd say that it's analogous to a computer game that has a random component in the designed game. That is, randomness might control which adversary appears next, but only limited aspects like that. The system is not just designed for randomness, though; it's also designed for fitness, with the fastest sperm being the winner.
"... the selection process isn’t, it’s based on adaptability and that trait aiding in survival."
True, natural selection is not random, in principle. However, natural selection is a weak process. The deer that is killed by the lion may be the weakest, but it might also be the unluckiest, such as the nearest one. Further, the environment is random, in the sense that the environment could have been open grassland, forest, lake, or whatever.
"...you’re just plainly wrong to say there is no evidence of an effective non-random selection mechanism."
Then it's just as well that I didn't say that! As I've already alluded to, there are three mechanisms for why things are the way they are. 1) Design, 2) randomness, 3) laws of nature. Natural selection falls in the last category.
But I'm not sure what your concern is. Natural selection selects, it doesn't create. In order for natural selection to help evolution along, there has to be improved creatures to select from. There is no mechanism for making such improved creatures.
"…I don’t think there is any empirical evidence as of yet to support an immaterial mind independent of a physical brain."
Not directly, no. But plenty of indirect evidence that God exists.
"…issues like the Interaction Problem…"
Why is that even a problem? To paraphrase someone, I don't think that there is any empirical evidence as of yet to support that the immaterial can't interact with the material.
"…what exactly does ID think about evolution?"
I'm not an ID expert. But as I understand it, the ID adherents generally accept common descent. Whether or not that's a formal part of ID I don't know.
"I mean, from what I’ve heard from Meyer, it’s kinda just like “something, something, Cambrian explosion..? blah, blah, must be designed”…"
Again, I'm not sure, but my understanding is that it's (formally) nothing more than "there is evidence of design". How that design was incorporated into living things I think is an open question for ID (even if not for some of its adherents). But as there is formally no conclusion that God is the designer, then it can't be a god of the gaps argument.
"Like if I asked Meyer how homo sapiens came about, what would he tell me, that they were created from the dust in one spontaneous instant absent any genetic precursors?"
I don't know his personal beliefs in that regard, but I assume not.
"Because I’m pretty sure there’s no scientific evidence that would support that…"
It depends on what sort of scientific evidence you are talking about. There scientific evidence that humans didn't evolve from an ape-like creature. There are too many differences between chimp DNA and human DNA to have come about in the supposed time available. To go from the first living thing to humans is genetically impossible. Having ruled out that naturalistic view, the only alternative, special creation, is thereby supported scientifically.
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@elzoog
It may not be possible in every single case, but we have a pretty good idea of what nature can and can't do. For example, Paul Davies said that the laws of physics can't create information: "biological information is not encoded in the laws of physics and chemistry … (and it) cannot come into existence spontaneously. … There is no known law of physics able to create information from nothing."
Some things are just so unlikely that their odds are effectively zero. "[Fred Hoyle] calculated the odds against a simple functioning protein molecule originating by chance in some primordial soup as being the same as if you filled the whole solar system shoulder-to-shoulder with blind men and their Rubik’s cubes, then expected them all to get the right solution at the same time."
Entropy is also a useful guide. It tells us that things break down, or go from complex to simple. An old example is that of gas in a two-chambered container. Put gas in one compartment, and it will spread to the other (connected) compartment. Why? Simply because that's the most likely outcome. In theory, there is no reason why you couldn't put the gas in both compartments and then observe it concentrating itself all in one of the compartments, as the movements are random. But the odds of that happening are so vanishingly small that we don't even consider it a possibility. The only way it can happen is with a mechanism (e.g. a pump and valve) that makes it go that way. But that requires design.
Another example is a lottery. The winner is the result of a chance process. But if the same person kept winning week after week, we'd know that it wasn't chance, but design (i.e. somebody causing it to happen that way). The authorities, even without knowing who was rigging it, would suspend it until the cause was found, because they would be so certain that it couldn't happen by chance, i.e. naturally.
Another point is that we already do this. The lottery was one example, but another, and one touching on my first comment that it may not be possible in every single case, is that of stone tools. Archaeologists often have to determine whether the shape of the stone they found is natural or was man-made (i.e. a tool). They don't throw up their arms in horror and say "We have no way of determining if this was created (shaped) by an intelligence". No, typically, they can tell.
Yet another example of this is the SETI program. It was designed (!) to search for radio signals from an intelligent species. But how would we know if the signal came from an intelligent species? Because a random signal or noise can be explained by nature, as can a repetitive signal, such as a beep every 3.6 seconds. But a non-random, not repetitive signal must be from an intelligence. Do you know what a non-random, non-repetitive signal looks like? Well, your reading one! The letters in these sentences are not random, but neither are they repetitive.
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@pope9187
"…it’s a collection of stories from an ancient Hebrew culture from thousands of years ago before science was even an established study."
What does science have to do with it? It is (in large part) a historical record. You don't need to do science in order to accurately record things you see and hear.
"why would we take the Book of Genesis to be a reputable source of human origins though…"
Because it claims to be, is accepted by millions to be, and shows evidence of being, the testimony of God Himself. And He would know.
"…why can’t you just say the same thing about evolution, a process which is also predicated on the fittest surviving."
Because evolution has no mechanism for producing the enormous amount of new information required. You're referring to natural selection rather than evolution. Yes, natural selection (in principle) causes the fittest to survive. But where did the fittest come from? There is nothing in evolution to create ever more fitter and fitter creatures.
"And this is kinda why ID isn’t taken seriously in the scientific community, because it’s literally pseudoscience,…"
No, it's not pseudoscience, and it's not taken seriously by a large part of the scientific community (not all of it) because it points to a designer, which atheists can't stand the thought of. Not that all those scientists are atheists, but the atheists lead the charge on this, and many others follow like sheep.
"…whenever you try to pin down details of when or how a supposed intelligent designer tinkered with things and what that consisted of and how precisely humans fit into that, then it’s just this wishy washy “well, i dont really know… but like, Darwinian evolution is impossible.."
So you're arguing that because ID doesn't have all the answers, it's pseudoscience? Then I guess all of science is pseudoscience also.
"It literally adds nothing to the discourse other than to claim design,…"
Which is not a case of adding nothing! That's a very significant step. If, for example, scientists thought that living things were designed, they would not have proposed a list of over 100 (I believe) vestigial organs, i.e. evolutionary leftovers with no remaining purpose. This thinking led to doctors removing things like wisdom teeth and tonsils far too readily, until it was discovered that they weren't useless leftovers after all. (Of course there is still a case for removing them if they are causing problems.) It also wouldn't have led to the idea of 'junk DNA' (effectively another 'vestigial' component), holding back discovery of what that DNA is for, for years.
Professor John Mattick said that "the failure to recognise the implications of the non-coding DNA will go down as the biggest mistake in the history of molecular biology". A mistake that likely would not have been made if scientists didn't assume no-design.
"If you disagree, name for me one thing that would potentially disprove ID."
Showing that design is not required for the origin of living things or parts thereof.
"We can do this for evolution,…"
Pull the other one.
"…even as far back in Darwin’s day you had J.B.S. Haldane ..."
Not that it changes the argument, but Haldane was born a decade after Darwin died.
"...suggesting that if anybody could find a fossil of a rabbit in the pre-Cambrian layer, evolution would be thoroughly disproven outright,…"
He also said that we would not find wheels or magnets in living things, but we have found both, and yet evolutionists still hold to their beliefs. And, we've also found pollen in the Precambrian, but that somehow hasn't caused evolution to be discarded. No, evolution is such a flexible hypothesis that it can be changed to accommodate any finding, which means that it's NOT falsifiable.
"…evolution by natural selection is still the best scientific model for explaining the data…"
Yes, that's what the true believers in evolution believe, but the evidence says otherwise.
"I mean after all, Meyer never actually cared about the science, his entire objective is just pushing Christian conservatism into the culture,…"
The Wedge Strategy said that Meyer doesn't care about the science, does it? Where?
"Who knows if he actually even believes half of the stuff that he promotes."
Who knows if you believe half the stuff you're saying? I mean, a question like that is designed to cast doubt without a scintilla of evidence or argument.
"evolutionary theory and big bang cosmology actually have predictive capabilities which accord with data."
ID and creationism both have those as well. But evolution has often been shown to be wrong, and is just modified to fit anyway. As I said, it's unfalsifiable.
"We’ve mapped various genomic structures, which have demonstrated common ancestry in the manner which has been suspected, even prior to our knowledge of a genetic code."
Actually, genomic information has contradicted various evolutionary claims previously made.
"…as of right now it appears that our sciences must operate on methodological naturalism…"
Why? Why a priori rule out a supernatural explanation? That is a case of deliberately introducing bias, and science is surely supposed be about coming up with correct explanations, not natural explanations.
"…this isn’t to say there is no supernatural realm or no God or any of that,…"
Technically, that's correct. But having started with the assumption that the explanations must be natural, when that 'science' is used (as many people do) so say that the Bible got it wrong, they are simply making a circular argument—concluding with the premise they started with. Plus, those natural explanations never come with a caveat pointing out that they presuppose naturalism, so they are deceptive.
"…those suppositions have literally had no explanatory effect on any scientific theory or discovery."
Not true. See the article "Does Intelligent Design Help Science Generate New Knowledge?" by Casey Luskin which explains how ID can and does and has helped science.
On the other hand, how has evolution helped? Evolutionist Philip Skell wrote "Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming’s discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin’s theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No. … I found that Darwin’s theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss. …"
A.S. Wilkins wrote "The subject of evolution occupies a special, and paradoxical, place within biology as a whole. While the great majority [of] biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky's dictum that ‘nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution’, most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas. ‘Evolution’ would appear to be the indispensible unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one."
"As Stephen J. Gould suggested, science and questions of religion should be considered as non-overlapping magisteria,…"
He did. The problem is that they both make claims about some of the same things. So they do overlap.
"…whereas we do have models and theories which accord with the scientific data for such things as cosmology…"
Hmmm, yes, cosmology. James Gunn, co-founder of the Sloan survey, said "Cosmology may look like a science, but it isn’t a science. … A basic tenet of science is that you can do repeatable experiments, and you can’t do that in cosmology."
But of course cosmology is an "approved" science, so we don't need to be too strict about that, whereas ID is an "unapproved" science, so we have to find every shortcoming with it that we can.
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"If you believe the bible, then you don't believe the earth is spherical because the bible says so."
No, it doesn't say that it's not spherical. In fact it says that when Jesus returns there will be some in bed and some working in the field, which implies darkness on one side and light on the other. And the church never believed that it was flat. That was an atheist invention.
"I like the way he cherry picks his scientist examples to show that they were religious."
He didn't need to cherry-pick. Virtually all of the early founders of science (including Galileo) where Christians.
"But religion wasn't so nice to Galileo. They imprisoned him."
Actually, he was only placed under house arrest, and that was to do with him being offensive to the pope, not because of his ideas, which, although debated (he didn't actually supply good evidence), were taught in the (church-run) universities.
"Religion also did not recognize that the earth wasn't the center of the universe until the 20th century."
And yet there is evidence that the Milky Way IS near the centre of the universe. But atheists are out of date on that information, it seems.
"Explain the compatibility of religion and astronomy as we know it today."
Christianity provides the philosophical underpinning of science, including astronomy. That's why science was started by Christians.
"Bottom line, if you can believe in a god that you have never seen, heard and that contradicts his own principles and teachings, then of course you can believe in science as far as it agrees with your religious paradigm."
Have you ever seen electricity? Dinosaurs turning into birds? Planets forming? I'm sure that there are a lot of things you believe in that you've never seen. Yes, because (you believe) you have good evidence for them. The same applies to belief in God. There is good evidence for Him, even though I've never seen Him.
What contradictions of his own principles and teachings? I know of none.
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@ExistenceUniversity
"The universe is everything that exists."
Evidence? Yeah, you're sort of right, but really, the universe is the entire physical existence. Further, I said that " in one sense, God is outside the universe." But He is also everywhere, so is also within the universe. Not to mention that He became man and inhabited this planet for a while as a physical being. So no, you can't prove God's non-existence that way.
"You must resort to god being outside of reality in order to justify your believe in him."
I guess that depends on how you define 'reality'. I don't limit it to physical reality, so no, God is not outside reality.
So where is your demonstration that God being eternal is counter to reality, that you promised?
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@SuperSushidog
If your argument that happiness is derived from being unconditionally selfless,..."
But it doesn't, and the opening post didn't say that. It said that selflessness was an example of where joy comes from, and didn't mention it being unconditional. So your comment was based on something not said, and therefore, as I said, your comment has no relevance.
"Or perhaps happiness comes not from being selfless, but from being selfish."
I hope you're not suggesting that they are the only two options, because they are not.
"So it seems that God is selfish,..."
If you mean by that that God wants what He is entitled to (which is everything, as He created everything), then sure. But we would not normally call someone selfish for simply wanting what they are entitled to.
"Jesus said to "Love your neighbor as yourself," but He didn't say more than yourself, did He. Who is your neighbor? Why help a neighbor and not a foreign enemy..."
Jesus explained that your neighbour is anyone who you encounter. He also said to love your enemies, so your question assumes something that is not the case. But loving anyone does not mean that you give them whatever they want, if what they want is not good for them. Which also answers your point about giving everything to people who would abuse your generosity—that's not good for them.
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"It did its best to avoid the unsolved light speed problem facing Young Earth Creationists."
That might be because Meyer is not a biblical creationist (YEC).
Further, there are a number of possible solutions to that question. True, it's unsolved in that we don't yet know which is the correct solution, but then a lot of things in science are unsolved, so that's not a show-stopper.
Further, you failed to mention the Horizon Problem of the long-agers. That's like correcting someone's spelling while making a spelling mistake of your own.
"And totally failed to mention that none of those scientists were YECs."
Kepler, Boyle, and Newton were all biblical creationists.
"Yes, even Lemaître, not just a Belgian physicist but also a Catholic priest, knew full well that the universe was a lot older than 6,000 years old."
I reject that you can "know" something that is not true. Rather, you (wrongly) "believe" it.
"And if anybody wants to suggest that the speed of light has changed since the creation of the universe, Stephen Meyer explains to you why that is impossible..."
That's debatable, but then some secular scientists have claimed that. A 2002 article said "Headlines in several newspapers around the world have publicized a paper in Nature by a team of scientists (including the famous physicist Paul Davies) who (according to these reports) claim that ‘light has been slowing down since the creation of the universe’." Apparently it was only a bad idea when creationists in the past suggested that. It's okay for mainstream science.
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@archive2500
"Yours is a claim either. "Christianity hasn't." "
You're right that I also made a claim. However, I challenged your first on your prior claim.
"Alright. I can back it up."
Good. But we'll see how well you do.
"There is no evidence of creation and flood mythology."
Hang on! Your evidence is a claim of a lack of evidence? Sorry, by itself at least, that's not evidence. Just because you don't know of any evidence doesn't mean that Christianity claimed nonsense.
Further, what do you even mean? That there is no evidence of creation and the flood? Or that there is no evidence of the mythology? Surely you're not claiming the latter, and yet if you're not, that word is completely superfluous. And if you're claiming no evidence of the things themselves, what's your evidence that there is no evidence? Because I know of plenty.
"Snakes aslo can not talk,..."
Christianity doesn't claim that they can.
"It is also impossible for a couple to reproduce up to arouns 8 billion today, there is a thing called inbreeding depression."
Not so. Do you know what the actual problem with inbreeding is? We all have two copies of our genes. When parents have children, each child gets one copy from each parent. If one of the genes is defective (thanks to a mutation), then typically the other gene can be used instead. The problem with inbreeding is that there is a much higher chance of getting the same defective gene from both parents, which means that the child has a problem. However, if both parents had no defects to start with, there is no problem! Adam and Eve were created without defects, so they were quite able to have been the progenitors of all the people around today.
"There is no evidence that humans came from dirt as well. "
Again you're citing a lack of evidence instead of actual evidence.
"It is impossible for all animals to survive after shoving each pair of them inside a single ... boat."
Why? For the same inbreeding reason? Because that has the same answer.
"These are all non-sense stories."
A claim that you have yet to demonstrate. Wrong claims and your claims of lack of evidence do not support your claim.
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@videogamers100 Yeah, how dare people in the richest country in the world expect...the government to give them homes, wages without having to work, luxury cars, and three cruises a year?
My point? Just because a country is the richest in the world (even assuming that's accurate) doesn't mean that it's people should expect X, where X could be anything you choose it to be. Rather, you have to make a case that X is a reasonable thing to expect. Further, it's rich because of the freedom to do your own thing; socialism suppresses that, and socialist countries are poor. No, I'm not saying that socialism is the same as a safety net, nor that safety nets are necessarily a bad thing, but that too-readily-given government handounts are socialist in nature. More discriminate safety nets may not be, however.
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@beldiman5870
"It is part of the definition itself."
Where? You defined as society as an environment where people help each other, not as an environment where they have a right to be helped. That is, people help each other voluntarily out of love and care, not out of duty, which would be the case if the recipients can demand it as a right.
"So yes, I believe that in a modern, rich society, everyone deserves help and respect"
They deserve the respect of being people created in God's image. Beyond that respect is earned. And if you don't pull your weight, then you don't deserve help. A good society is where people help others a) voluntarily, not because it's a right to be helped, and b) where they don't deserve it.
This is one of the problems of the left. They turn gifts into required payments. Christianity started a trend of helping people simply because those needed help. They founded hospitals, charities, schools, etc. But then those roles were handed over to governments and they became a right that people then felt that they could demand rather than request or hope for.
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@romany8125
"False? Just watch what the douche in the video says. Anyone who knows anything about physics would call him out on his bs."
And yet, although not a trained physicist (like you?), I know something about physics, and am not calling him out on anything related to physics. So clearly your comment is false.
"The argument of this kind: we don't know, therefore God - is a logical fallacy of the simplest kind, works only on children and, well, theists."
I know many theists that it doesn't work well on, and given that he's not using that argument, your side-tracking.
"Non-carbon based lifeforms are just unknown to us at this moment, not unlikely or improbable, so stop making things up."
I'm not making things up. I admittedly probably can't find anything readily on that at the moment, but I've seen articles explaining why non-carbon-based lifeforms are unlikely and improbably. By contrast, it appears you are simply speculating about things you don't know. You can imagine anything when you're not familiar with the limitations.
"And to talk about odds you would need to put aside the fairy tales book ..."
I'm not consulting a fairy-tales book. I've already mentioned that, but you ignore me.
"Than you would know that if the chances of life on the planet are one to a trillion (very debatable)..."
Definitely debatable. The chances are actually far lower. Sir Fred Hoyle, for example, calculated that the odds of a single functional protein coming together in a primordial soup are equivalent to the solar system being filled shoulder-to-shoulder with blind men with Rubik's cubes all coming to the solution at the same time. And that was just for a protein, not life.
In fact, the chances are zero, because nature is incapable of creating genetic information (or any such information, as would be needed for any form of life). According to Paul Davies, it's actually contrary to the laws of physics: "There is no known law of physics able to create information from nothing."
"...and the amount of planets is estimated as 70 quintillion"
Which includes inhospitable planets like Mercury and Jupiter. The vast majority of planets discovered so far are nothing like Earth.
"Put that in your pipe and smoke it..."
I don't smoke, and your claims are wrong.
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"Yes if you are religious it just means you don't know enough science ..."
And yet, as pointed out in the video, it was Christians who founded modern science.
"or are to stubborn to acknowledge that there is no proof of a god."
As opposed to the atheists who claim that there is no proof or evidence, but who cannot provide evidence of their claim? What's the evidence for this claim of yours that there is no proof of a god?
"Many people are too afraid to confront the truth because they are used to believing in a god and don't want to disappoint family and friends as well as feel like they wasted their life preaching."
Many people are too afraid to confront the truth because they are used to believing in no god and don't want to disappoint family and friends as well as feel like they wasted their life not believing in God.
"If something came to me to tell me that they are god and did something to prove it so grand, I would still deny them as god ..."
So you'd reject evidence for God. Not surprising for an atheist. Their faith is stronger than the evidence.
"because by the logic of having a god, would mean that something made that god too"
You're assuming that God had a beginning. That is a faulty assumption, and therefore removes the basis of your conclusion.
"This can go on forever since the idea of god is a catch 22 and makes no sense to believe such small thinking stuff..."
Does this "small thinking" including assuming that God had a beginning, when the Bible and Christians don't teach that? Maybe it would be a good idea to actually understand the idea that you criticise before showing your ignorance of the topic.
"...people are not using logic to question why out of all the billions of galaxies, why did god only make Earth the only one with life ..."
Why do you think that's a valid question? We already know that God's purpose was to create man, and the Earth and the universe are simply a place for man to exist.
"why would people believe in stuff we proved to not have merit such as "the Earth is flat and the center of the universe"."
The church never believed in a flat earth. That was simply an atheist invention. And, it turns out, there is evidence that the Milky Way is close to the centre of the universe. Not that being the "centre" has to mean the physical centre as opposed to the centre of attention, but there you go.
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@sam7559 That sounds good, and I'm quite tempted to agree, but I think I stand by my previous reply above:
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If they truly are questions from people wanting to learn, and not arguments to the contrary. There is nothing wrong with a child asking his parents why fathers are necessary. But when a journalist does it in the media, they are not doing it to learn; they are arguing for a contrary view, or at the very least arguing that a contrary view has merit, when, as educated people, they should already know why it's correct.
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In other words, it depends on their motive. Are they genuinely questioning, are they genuinely challenging to be certain that we're not just assuming, or are they trying to reshape society. Or, to put it another way, is this coming from a genuine desire to know, or from a worldview that rejects most of what is good?
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@blackriver2531
"transphobia isn't having an irrational fear of transgender people at all so you look pretty stupid there, "
What's your evidence for that, given that a "phobia" means having an irrational fear? I'm not wrong, nor do I look stupid, just because you say so.
"you can't treat trans kids horribly and then say you don't hate trans kids."
But I'm not treating them horribly. I'm simply disagreeing with something. Disagreeing does not equate to being horrible. You're disagreeing with me. So you must be treating me horribly (including saying that I look pretty stupid). So I guess that means that you hate me? Or do different rules apply to you?
"At the very least you hate happy children..."
More utter and offensive nonsense.
"Factually speaking bulimia and being transgender have NOTHING in common."
Factually speaking, that is complete nonsense. And given that I've already pointed out one thing that they have in common, that you have not refuted, then you are simply repeating an already-debunked claim by simply asserting an opinion. That's not an argument, and shows a lack of logic.
"So you don't understand words, definitions, or logic. That sucks."
No, that does not follow from what you said. So is more evidence of treating me horribly, so more evidence (by your logic) that you hate me.
"also try googling..."
No. The person making the claim is the one that has the onus to back it up. It's not my job to find evidence supporting your claims.
"There is no study that shows transition harms people."
If the transition involves surgery, which means removing healthy body parts, I would call that harm.
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"Evolution and creation is a silly debate, since evolution explains how not why."
Creation also explains how (God spoke it into existence), so you have a fail right there.
"They are not mutually exclusive, you can believe in both to an extent ..."
They are not mutually exclusive only if you have versions of each that are compatible. But evolution as understood by most scientists is necessarily naturalistic, without design, whereas creation is necessarily by design. Also, creation as described in the Bible (in six days, the earth before the sun, fruit trees before land animals, and much more) is absolutely incompatible with evolution.
"(majority of religious people believe in micro evolution for a start)."
Which is not actually evolution (the entire 'family tree' from the first organism to all that exist today), but just small changes without creating entirely new forms.
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@ur__ghost
"You are definitely speaking with privilege."
What privilege is that? And what's your evidence that she is?
"Unlike you, people have weaker immune systems and do not have someone else to rely on."
Are you saying that she is not a person?
"There's men, women, and non binary people. Just bc you disagree with it doesn't make them disappear"
True (the second sentence). But just because you claim that doesn't make it true. And the first sentence is false. Both the creator and modern science agree that there are two sexes.
"People vary so much you can't just define them in those 2 categories."
You can choose to classify people in as many categories as you like. You can divide them by age, nationality, number of children, what jobs they do, how much they earn, or whatever. But if you categorise them by sex, there are only two categories.
"there's male and female in sex but not gender."
There is not male and female in gender??
"Gender is related to mentality and how you feel,..."
Yes, it's a matter of opinion. So why are others forced to accept those subjective opinions?
"...people differ so much there's bound to be someone who wants to be something that's not binary or opposite from their body."
What they want and what they actually are may therefore be two different things.
"He and she (and they sometimes) basically ment how you looked, because if you had long hair you were assumed to be a "she" and vice versa, so it basically was never used in the definitive context."
This is false. What you're really saying is that because long hair caused people to assume you were female, then in cases that they were actually males with long hair those people were mistaken. It doesn't mean that those males with long hair were actually female. Males remain males and females remain females, something that has it's physical basis in their DNA, and which cannot be changed.
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@ur__ghost Numbering your points is a good idea that I should think to use more often myself.
1. I don't consider that to have been said in a judgmental and clueless manner, and don't see what that has to do with privilege.
2. You're right. I didn't really think that you didn't consider her a person. But the comment didn't make much sense anway, and/or presumes too much. But I wasn't really wanting to comment on her comment about covid; it's not something that I would have said.
3a. Yes, some people identify as being 'black' when they are not, or being older or younger than they really are. In all those cases the identification is wrong, so I'm not sure of your point.
3b. Yes, God is, by definition, the creator. But I'm not pushing anything onto you; I'm making a comment. I'm not trying to sell you on God; I'm simply using history and design as a basis for my comments. And if you're expecting me to leave God out of it, then you're 'pushing' your atheism onto me. So why the double standard?
3c. So you're saying that there are vast number of kinds of a particular made-up concept? What relevance does that have to the real world?
4. Numbering is good, as long as one can tell what it refers to. I don't know what you're referring to here. And I never said that you could define men and women on the basis of their job; I've always said that it's on the basis of their biology.
5. Again, you're right; I didn't think you meant that. It was, however, what you said, and that being the case, it was not clear what you did mean.
6a. You didn't call them opinions, but that's what they are.
6b. "No one's forcing anyone to accept anything..." That is so blatantly false I have to wonder how you could possibly believe that to be the case. Jordan Peterson came to prominence because he refused to accept his university employer requiring him to use the wrong pronouns. A father in Canada was last week jailed for not using the biologically-correct pronouns of his child. My employer requires me to use a trans person's preferred pronouns or fact the sack. They are just a few examples off the top of my head.
6c. What's the evidence of hate?
6d. "...or limit someone..." Like I am limited by my employer in what I can say? Again, why does this only work one way?
6e. "...people are going to get angry and DEFEND themselves." Like I am going to defend my right to use biologically-correct pronouns and argue the case that there are only two sexes (and that genders is a meaningless invention to get around that). So why is it okay for them to defend themselves but people who disagree with the trans agenda are criticised for it?
6f. I can identify as a four-year-old Asian girl, but it doesn't change the fact that I am an adult Australian man.
7. Being born a man or woman does define them as a man or a woman. Sure, it doesn't determine what jobs they will have, what clothes they will wear, what preferences they will have, but it does define them as being a man or a woman. Otherwise biological facts become meaningless.
8a. "Pronouns are based on personal preference" On the contrary, they are based on what sex you are. He, him, and his are used of males, and She, her and hers are used of females. Your claim is just factually wrong.
8b. But even if it was correct, my personal preference is to use biologically-correct pronouns when referring to people. So why is my preference not allowed? Again, double standards.
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@ur__ghost
3a: You're correct, and as such have to fall back on gender being different to sex, which is an invention (in the worst sense of the word) that is meaningless.
3b: I didn't consider it rude; I'm used to comments like that. Apology accepted. Rather, I consider it useful to point out inconsistencies in people's arguments, which that was.
"that some people don't believe in god so the reasoning is meaningless to them". You're absolutely right. But part of my point is that what one believes about God will affect views on other things, such as transgenderism. In other words, it's an attempt to get the conversation away from superficial considerations and down to root causes.
4a. "I was referring to what стѣйшій Патріархъ керіллъ previously said". That would be in your comment before your previous comment, but in your previous comment, where you said "I don't know what you mean by this", you were referring to me; I didn't know which part of my comments you were referring to.
4b. "However I meant you cannot define women as the dishwasher and men the lumberjack" and "...previously said, "Men are masculine, strong and work, [snipped]"
I understand what you are getting at now. But to be fair, he didn't say that was a definition. He said " behaviours typically go hand in hand in every culture. Men are masculine...[snipped]"
6b. "Using the correct pronouns is easy..." I don't think so. For me to go against decades of correct use is not easy.
"and shows respect.". Being truthful with them shows respect.
"If a teacher (or other) does not respect a student (or person)..." The issue is not about whether one should be respectful (one should), but about what constitutes showing respect.
"It's harassment." No, it's being truthful, which can be done respectfully. Calling it harassment is merely an attempt to justify imposing a particular lie on people.
6e (new number). "Plus, teenagers with no income are left homeless because their parent refuses their identity (lgbt+)." First, one bad response (treating someone badly) does not justify another (forcing people to use incorrect pronouns). Second, while a child is living with their parents, their parents have a right to expect the child to follow their standards. The parents, not the children, are in charge.
6c. I know, you said "skipped some cuz idk how to respond". So you have no evidence of the hate you claimed. So why use the insulting term if you have no reason for using it?
6d. Doesn't change anything. The law in some places limits what critics of transgenderism can say. That my example was a (lawful) company policy doesn't change my point.
"Many countries it's legal to murder someone just for liking the same gender as themselves, or (not sure about this>) wanting to be a different gender."
Many? Yes, there are a few (probably not for "liking" but at least for acting on that desire). But if you're just talking about those sorts of countries, then that doesn't explain the anger from the transgender activists in the West, which I would have thought is what we were talking about.
8a. If he really is a guy, and is not deformed or had his testicles removed surgically, then yes, I AM sure. Why wouldn't I be? They are, of course, part of what being a man is.
"if someone dislikes the pronouns you refer to them as, they should be allowed to politely correct you"
But if I dislike the pronouns that they want me to refer to them by, why doesn't my preference count for my language? And if they want me to use pronouns that are incorrect, why shouldn't I be allowed to politely correct them? Yet again, this is an argument that is only used one way. And why should they be allowed to "correct" me when I'm not, in fact, incorrect?
8b. "Your "preference" hurts people." If you're talking about physical hurt, that's nonsense. If you're talking about hurt feelings, then they should learn to accept that not everyone agrees with them. And if you don't like that answer, then why don't you argue that their preference hurts me? Again, the argument is only used one way. That's hypocrisy.
"When someone refuses to see someone as something they are, they feel stuck and it hurts."
We're not talking about refusing to see someone as they are. We are talking about refusing to see someone as they are not. To put that completely differently, your statement is loaded, in that it assumes something (that a male can legitimately consider himself a female) that is the very point being contested. You (rightly) said that an argument based on God existing won't have any meaning for someone who doesn't believe in God, yet you are making an argument based on the idea that transgenderism is legitimate to someone who doesn't believe that.
"It's not that hard to ask "what're your pronouns?" "
It's pointless, if I can already tell what they are. And even the question is nonsensical. They are (in this case) pronouns that belong to the English language, not to that person. They are not "their" pronouns, but English pronouns. If we understand English, we know what the correct pronouns are. The question itself is pandering to nonsense.
I guess the numbering is not going too well.
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@kiwi7872 So you're quoting three left-leaning sources as that is supposed to be definitive? Why?
"Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed."
That is, made-up.
"This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy,..."
Associated by who, and correctly or otherwise? The word "norms" kind of gives the game away. Sure, there are some characteristics that are more common in females than males, and some that are more common in males than females. But they are not definitive. So while some girls might like things that we typically associate with boys and vice versa, they don't mean that those persons are actually the other sex/gender. Because they are just norms, not infallible indicators.
"there are more than 2 genders (this one is from joshuakennon)"
Who is he that makes him an authority on this topic?
And I notice that in your quote of him, he doesn't name what those other genders are. Instead, he equivocates by switching to talking about chromosome abnormalities.
And that last point is the problem with SciAm too. They seem to think that genetic copying mistakes are definitive, rather than recognise them as the copying mistakes that they are.
The fact is that God created man (i.e. the man kind, or mankind ) male and female (Genesis 1:27). That's two sexes. But thanks to our rejection of Him, things have deteriorated since, so we are riddled with genetic copying mistakes (geneticists have counted about 100 or more being added for each generation), some of which involve additional chromosomes. But of course the religious views of SciAm and others (such as the view that we weren't created by God) colour their thinking.
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@kiwi7872
"There is no such thing as left leaning sources..."
Yes, that is a known phenomenon where people of the left fail to realise their own bias, thinking that only other people have bias. As such, the claim is complete bunkum.
"...you say they are left leaning because it doen't fit your narrative..."
Not so. There are other claims that don't "fit my narrative" that I would not label as left-leaning.
"...if you will source some 'right leaning' sources, I'l be happy to debunk those)"
Of course. Because the left-leaning ones that you don't recognise as such reflect reality and everyone else is wrong. Not because of evidence, but because the left cannot be wrong.
"I have stated quotes from the literal world health organisation"
Yes, I saw that. That's why I dismissed that quote as being from a left-leaning organisation.
"...there is no such thing as chromosome abnormality..."
Because you say so? Or do you have some objective reason?
"...people who are intersex or androgynouse are not abnormal."
False in two respects. First, "abnormal" can simply mean different to normal, and it is simply a statistical fact that they are in a small minority, hence not "normal". Second, and if you want to use the word differently, their chromosomes are, as I mentioned, the result of a copying mistake. (And, I remind you, we all have copying mistakes, just not all the same copying mistakes).
"also don't use religion as a source for this (religion has biased sentiments)"
I wasn't using "religion" (depending on how you define that). I was using history and design. I was referring to how humans were designed, as related by historical records. But if you want to label that "religious", then your rejection of that can also be labelled "religious", which means that you're basing your rejection of my argument on your own "religious" views (that God did not create us that way, presumably).
"religion has biased sentiments"
We all have biases, including scientists. One common one in science is the bias that supernatural explanations must be rejected even if true.
"Give me sources that show there are only 2 genders..."
I already gave a source for there being only two genders. But your religious views caused you to dismiss that out of hand.
"...and that gender and sex are the same thing."
It's pretty obvious that it amounts to the same thing, when (a) we are expected to use sex-based pronouns as gender-based pronouns, and (b) we are expected to use "gender" to determine which sex-based team a sports person can play in or which sex-based toilets a person can use. It is blatantly obvious that "gender" is a replacement for "sex", with an invented, meaningless, distinction. I'm sure that I could find a source saying as much, but then you'd dismiss it as 'right-leaning' (which it no doubt would be), so I might as well just give you the logical argument above.
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@kiwi7872 The source I mentioned is Genesis 1:27
From your previous comments I expected you to be atheist to some degree, so that's no surprise.
Most government bureaucracies are left-leaning, probably because the left, unlike conservatives, usually believes in big government, so left-leaning people go for government jobs. But in this case we are talking about the organisation that covered up the covid actions of communist China.
I don't follow what you're getting at with your comment about liberal views, and what distinction you might be trying to draw between liberalism and neo-liberalism.
Yes, I gathered that you don't think that people with more extra chromosomes (we all have more than two; the normal number (yes that word 'normal' is quite appropriate) is 46 (23 pairs)) are not abnormal, but that doesn't make it true. I meant no slur by the use of the word (they can't help how many chromosomes they have), but the simple fact is that 46 is normal in the sense of most common, but it's also the case that 46 is obviously how we were designed, and any more (or less) is not how we were designed. That could be analogous to a car that somehow (i.e. by accident) has an extra spare tyre (no much of a problem) or that somehow has square wheels (that is a problem). Things work best when they are as designed; when something has extra bits or missing bits (not by design), it typically causes problems.
I'm a Christian, and in line with that I'd be roughly Conservative politically, but I wouldn't consider myself fitting exactly with any particular political designation.
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@ur__ghost "I said "all" things they're doing, like only looking at biased arguments that support themselves"
I'm not only looking at biased arguments that support my views. I also look at opposing views, to see what they have to say.
"(btw most of pro-trans that talk about real trans experience that I've seen look at both sides, and debunk your points, unlike anti-trans people who just seem baseless) "
Which is the complete opposite of my experience. Including in discussions with you.
"I say you have a superiority complex because I assume you feel you don't have the need to explain yourself when your response it just "you're wrong" or "that's false" or "that's made up" because you think your answer is right without knowing why"
I tend to only make those sort of comments without evidence or reason in response to someone else making assertions without evidence or reason. If they provide evidence or reason, I will in return. If they think it's okay to make bald claims, then why can't I do likewise?
"And I do not think I'm right, as I've stated I was never 100% sure about what I said..."
I never meant it in the sense of thinking I'm infallible. Rather, I sure enough I'm right to say what I say, which I presume is what you're doing too. If you're simply not that sure, then why make statements as though they are fact?
"however there's more evidence on the left side (that I can comprehend/take in) ..."
Well, that's what the left likes to think, but I beg to differ.
"so for now unless your side comes up with a convincing argument that's not exaggerated and doesn't dehumanize people, I'd rather be a left" "
In other words, unless my side does what your side often won't do, then you won't listen? It's the left that call us names, like transphobics, and worse, and tries to silence people on the other side rather than listen to them. That's why we have the term "cancel culture", because the left do this as a matter of routine.
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@CliffBurton-py2jc Further, it's also based on a fallacy. Men and women typically or on average differ from each other (in ways other than the purely physical). But those differences are not defining ones, and there is a lot of overlap, with both men and women sharing the same characteristics to at lest some extent. Yet the trans activists treat them as defining. So if women typically take on more caring roles, for example, then a man that likes caring for others thinks that makes him a woman. (Yes, that's a gross simplification, but I'm illustrating the principle.) But caring for others is only typically done by women, not exclusively so. So a man that cares is not evidence at all of that man actually being a woman.
In fact, I'd like to know how to reconcile these two arguments, both put to me by the same person: a) Apart from some physical differences, there is no difference between men and women; b) a trans woman (for example) is a man who considers that he is really a woman in a man's body. But how can b) be true if a) is true? The two ideas are incompatible.
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@redblaze8700
"ID is religious based,"
Of course. Science is religious-based, as pointed out in the video.
"...all advocates for it are religious."
As are opponents, even if they hold to an atheist religion.
"It was proven to be so in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case in 2005..."
Proven in the sense that the judge sided with that view. Not on the basis of the evidence, though.
"Also: if ID is correct, and biological evolution is false,..."
ID proponents are not biblical creationists. They tend to accept evolution, except for the naturalistic aspect of it.
"...then how can the vast majority of scientists support evolution?"
Easily. Some are atheists, and those have convinced the scientific establishment that creationism is unscientific (even though it's not) and have deceptively associated ID with creationism. Most scientists only get to hear one side of the story, and also, anyone who does start to accept creationism or ID is instantly ostracised if not actually actively discriminated against. So peer pressure is one very big factor.
"Even most scientists who identifies as religious accept evolution as a fact, which it is."
It's not a fact, and science is based on evidence, not popularity.
"This who subscribes to creationism/ID are a minority, ..."
A significant minority, nevertheless.
"... haven’t done any experiments or tests to prove it,"
Completely false. Many tests and experiments have been done. But the mainstream science community censors such research, so you don't get to hear much about it. However, it can be found if you look for it in the right places.
"most of those scientists are in field unrelated to evolution,"
As are most of the scientists you cite as being "the vast majority [who] support evolution". So your point is...? But then there are also those who are or have been in fields related to evolution.
"...including Meyer here who has PhD in philosophy of science,..."
Which seems a very appropriate field to be the presenter in this video.
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@redblaze8700
1. I pointed out that the video says otherwise, and you haven't shown that to be wrong. You've simply asserted your belief.
Christianity is also about facts, and is supported by the evidence.
2. The evidence says otherwise.
3. Simply reasserting your belief does not make it so. ID does not accept a 'young' earth, nor the special creation of all kinds of living things. It is similar to biblical creationism only in the detail that there is evidence of design, but it is like mainstream science in it's acceptance of deep time and evolution.
"4. Science is not about popularity contests.
As I said.
"The reason why most scientists accepts evolution and reject creationism/design is because evolution follows the scientific method were you make an hypothesis and test it to see if the evidence supports it or not."
That's the claim, but in fact it rejects or explains away evidence that doesn't fit. For example, fossil pollen in the Precambrian, intact tissue and DNA from dinosaurs, and so on.
"ID/creationism doesn’t do that, because it is literally designed to be untestable."
What's your hard evidence of that claim. Because I completely reject the claim.
"If a scientist could disprove evolution and prove design/creation, then they would change science as we know it, and even be guaranteed a Nobel Prize."
Yes, it would change a lot of science if it was accepted, but ideology prevents it being accepted. And the Nobel Prize committee have already shown their bias against the creationary view, when they refused to award a prize to the inventor of MRI.
"And no, it’s not because of peer pressure. That’s just some conspiracy promoted by creationists because that’s all they have when they’re unable to prove their mythology."
No, it's well-documented fact. See, just for example, the book Slaughter of the Dissidents.
"And it’s not due to atheist-influence, because most people, including most scientists who accepts evolution as fact are still religious."
Yes, most are, but that doesn't mean that it's not due to atheist influence. A small groups of people can be quite influential despite their numbers.
"Even Charles Darwin remained a lifelong Christian."
Not more than nominally. He came to reject God, and his Christianity was probably only nominal in the first place.
5. See the Journal of Creation for example.
"6. Nearly 95 % of all scientists supports evolution as a fact."
Where does that figure come from? And the other 5% in America amounts to about 100,000 scientists. That's not a trivial number.
"But if you only count those in relevant field, like biologists, geologists, and paleontologist, you’ll get an impressive 99,85 %."
Again, where does that figure come from? Because I don't believe that there is any evidence for that.
"If someone disproved evolution then those numbers would be much lower."
Perhaps they are much lower. I don't believe your 99.85% figure has any basis.
"So I wouldn’t call creation/design-scientists a “a significant minority”."
If they amount to 5%, then it is a significant minority. And I believe that figure is actually significantly higher.
7. Philosophy of science can deal with how and why science is done, which is partly what this video is about, including that it is based on principles derived from Christianity. And you've shown no cherry-picking. Nor have you shown his arguments to be incorrect.
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You're right that a god could have used evolution, but, as you say, the real question is did God use evolution.
Copernicus and Galileo challenged geocentricity, but I think Kepler (contemporary with Galileo) rejected geocentricity, and Newton came later, after geocentricity had been discarded.
Yes, people found bits in the Bible that appeared to be consistent with geocentricity, but the idea was actually an ancient Greek one and didn't come from the Bible. That God created in six days is from the Bible and is explicit, repeated, and emphasised, so it's a very different case than reading geocentricity into the Bible.
Yes, Darwin may be Copernicus 2.0, but probably not in the way you mean.
Unlike Copernicus and Galileo, Darwin set out to reject the biblical account, and his observations did not refute the biblical account, but—again—an ancient Greek idea known as 'fixity of species', which said that God created all the different species in the different parts of the world where they are found today. That is what Darwin found evidence against. The Bible, on the other hand, says that the animals spread out from the ark (so not created where they are today) and (although it's not as obvious) indicates that creatures adapted into different varieties (even species, to use scientific terminology and classifications) since then. Darwin didn't find evidence against that.
"Science is to follow what's happening in nature and figure out the order of nature, patterns in nature."
True enough, but science involves observations, measurements, tests, and repeatability, which cannot be done on past events, so although it's great for discovering how things work, it's not great in determining how things came to be. Further, much of what scientists do in that area is done on the basis of methodological naturalism, a philosophical position which says that their explanations must be natural ones (i.e. exclude God as an explanation) even where the evidence supports God. As such, it is biased, and any conclusions that people draw that God didn't create are actually circular arguments.
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@tTtt-ho3tq
"Science did not show the Bible was wrong."
I agree. But many scientists and others will claim that it does, often indirectly by claiming that a competing view (e.g. evolution) is correct.
"But we may interpret it wrong. We're only humans. We make mistakes. We misinterprete. We misunderstand."
Yes! But we can also be willingly ignorant of the evidence consistent with the biblical account. In other words, we can interpret the evidence wrong, not just the Bible.
"So science may not correct him but may show some of misinterpretations of his words in the Bible..."
Or it may contradict it, as it does with the naturalistic view of the age of the world, etc.
"Danger is we tend to think his words are always correct..."
Because they are. So that's not a danger.
"...but what we mean is our interpretations of his word is always correct..."
That may be true in some cases, but not always.
"Then it becomes you're not criticizing what you interpreted but you're criticizing God ... himself."
My point is that what you appear to be saying is that if scientific claims disagree with the Bible, then they actually disagree with our interpretation of the Bible, not with God Himself. Yes, that can be true. But the problem is that you're claiming that if the scientific claims disagree with the Bible, we should re-examine our understanding of the Bible because the science is not wrong. Why not also re-examine our understanding of the science? After all, the Bible is not wrong.
"You're also right that science is consensus."
Not consensus.
"What do you mean by macro evolution?"
You used the term. I didn't. I said that there is no observed evidence of one thing evolving into something else. Such as a dinosaur into a bird. I wasn't talking about something giving birth to something else.
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@tTtt-ho3tq You're not nobody. You're a person created in the image of God, and loved by that very same God, the creator of the universe.
"Having said so ... So what confirms what?"
That's the question, isn't it? Or, more accurately, which is the one to judge the other by? Do we judge the word of the infallible, omniscient, God by the ideas of fallen man, or vice versa? Yes, we have to be sure our interpretations or understandings are correct, but that applies in both cases.
"What makes you think the we the earth goes around the sun?"
Scientific observation.
"When his words say he stopped the sun in the middle of the sky for a whole day?"
Motion is relative to the observer. I've often been on a stationary train with another stationary train next to it. Then I see the other train starting to move. Except that I then realise that it's my train that's moving, not the other one. From the perspective of a person on Earth, the sun did stop. The moon also stopped. That's supports that it was actually the earth that stopped, not both the sun and the moon.
"When he says in his own words the earth is fixed and immovable?"
That passage uses the same words as other passages saying things like a righteous man is immovable, meaning that his righteousness is immovable, not that he physically cannot move. The Earth is fixed in its orbit.
"Science is consensus of interpretations of what's happening in nature."
Science is supposed to be about evidence, not consensus. But I'll ignore that for now.
"Consensus on our interpretations of what's happening in nature..."
The emphasis there needs to be on the (contracted) "IS". What IS happening in nature. Science involves observation, measurement, testing, and repeatability. You can do that on things in the present, but not things in the past.
"How old do you think the universe is? I'm sure you'd say it's 13.8 billion years old, right?"
No.
"So it's not you but how come there're so many Christians here in the US who believe it's less than 10,000 years old?"
Because the Bible shows that it's actually about 6,000 years old. That claim has been examined closely and there is no way to interpret it any differently without doing violence to the text. The top Hebrew scholars agree on that.
This gets back to what I just said about science. Science cannot observe, test, measure, nor repeat the past. "Age" is not a property that can be measured. Age determinations are made indirectly and (like all 'science' about the past) on the basis of methodological naturalism, as I pointed out in my first response to you. I'll give you a concrete example related to dating things. I don't know how well you know how carbon dating works, so I'll explain. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide, which of course is composed of carbon and oxygen. That carbon can be normal carbon (C12) or it can be C14, which is formed by nitrogen (N14) having been hit with a neutron. But over time, C14 decays back to N14. That decay rate has been measured.
C14 exists in the atmosphere in a known proportion, and so living things have that same proportion (plants pass it onto to animals and humans). When the living thing dies, the C14 to N14 decay continues, but no new C14 is being acquired, so the ratio of C14 to C12 changes. By measuring that ratio in a once-living thing, one can determine how long it is since it died. However, that determination relies on knowing what the original ratio was, and that is known to change over time. Thanks to the industrial revolution, for example, the ratio changed. So scientists have to draw up tables of what the ratio was at times in the past. This is done by finding something that was once living that we know independently when it died. An example is a piece of wood from a building that history tells us was built in, say, 1600.
If Noah's flood occurred, that would also have changed the C12:C14 ratio. So do those scientists drawing up that table account for that? Well, no. Because they don't believe it happened, they don't account for that change. But if it did happen, that would mean that all carbon dates from around and before that period would be wrong. So when a scientist says that carbon dating shows something to be 6,000 years old (and therefore older than the flood), that date is based on the assumption that the flood never happened. To then use such dates to show that the flood never happened becomes a circular argument, as I pointed out in my first reply.
I'll just make another point before I finish. When you are driving and come to an intersection with a stop sign, do you debate what that sign really means? No. You know, unequivocally, that it means that you have to stop your car. Yes, some writing can be ambiguous or vague, but other writing can be quite clear and explicit. You can't dismiss all apparent contradictions between the Bible and the claims of scientists as cases of interpreting the Bible wrong.
It's not a case of simply determining whether we have misunderstood clear statements in the Bible. It's a case of the supposed science being done on past events that cannot be observed, measured, tested, nor repeated, and done on the basis of a philosophical view that a priori rejects the Bible's claims. It is therefore not valid to judge our understanding of the Bible on the basis of such naturalistic science.
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@tTtt-ho3tq
"Judge? We're talking about physical world. Physical things in nature. Nobody judging nobody here."
I'm not talking about moral judgment, but about judging the accuracy of something.
"Because your interpretation of the Bible is 6,000 years."
"There's on other way to interpret his words. Even the top Hebrew scholars agree on that."
No other way that has withstood scrutiny.
"And there's no physicist, no geologist, no chemist. no nuclear scientist."
What qualifications do they have to determine a correct understanding of the biblical text?
"Yet, the age of the universe or the earth there's no scientist or scientific data or observation."
Yes, because, as I said, there is no "age" attribute to observe or measure. It is simply not possible to observe or measure age.
"There's no need for them."
No, I didn't say that there is no need. I said that it's not possible.
"Just like that Islamic cleric in the video of kid's TV show. Because Allah told us."
Yes, except that God is reliable; Allah is fiction.
"Meaning I interpreted it so, thus God told us so."
No, the interpretation does not come first. God told us so, and we read what he wrote. Like the stop sign, it's quite clear.
"Wouldn't it be better to see what he created the way he did it, though? Isn't science to figure out that?"
First, science can't really do that, because, as I've pointed out, science can't observe, measure, test, nor repeat the past. Second, if you are going to use science to assist with that, you must not do it by first assuming that God didn't do it! Okay?
"It's not just carbon. There're other elements, too."
Yes, there are other decay chains that they use. Carbon dating was just an example of how naturalistic presuppositions affect the results.
"Noah's flood wouldn't affect nuclear half-life decay ..."
First, I wasn't talking about decay rates, but other assumptions, like starting values. These sorts of assumptions apply to all dating methods.
Second, what makes you think that? In fact there is good evidence of accelerated nuclear decay, likely associated with the flood. When Uranium decays into lead (one of the dating measure that is used), a byproduct is helium. Helium is such a small atom that it readily escapes the rock the uranium is in. So the more the uranium has decayed toward lead, the more helium has been produced, but the helium doesn't stay in the rock, so that cannot be measured. EXCEPT. They have measured it, and the amount of helium still there indicates that the rock is nowhere near as old as the uranium:lead ratio would suggest. When the results were plotted on a graph, it showed that the data lined up very well with a prediction of the rocks being 6000 years old, and vastly different to a prediction based on them being 1.5 billion years old. See the graph in the article "Helium evidence for a young world continues to confound critics".
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@tTtt-ho3tq
"Did I say I'm not smart enough to read, comprehend and interpret his word properly."
You obviously understand English. So you can read and comprehend it well enough. And you don't need to interpret it. The meaning is obvious.
"I meant that amongst Muslims, there're some who say Allah designed and created nature with evolution by natural selection ..."
Okay. There are plenty of Christians who say the same thing, although to do so they are rejecting what the Bible clearly states. Some even admit that the Bible teaches six days but they don't believe that because of the supposed science. That is, they don't claim that the Bible can be interpreted to mean evolution and deep time; they simply say that it is wrong or not meant to be understood as what it's actually saying, or some other rationalisation.
"Then you said you don't need science when it comes to the age of the universe."
No, I did not say that you don't need science. I said that science cannot provide the answer.
"Because you sounded you know for sure just by reading the Bible."
I also pointed out that there are differences between the texts. If I said to you "the sun rises in the east and sets in the west" and "the earth moves relative to the sun", is that a contradiction? Well, superficially it appears to be. But we know that rising and setting is a reference to appearance whereas the earth moving relative to the sun is not a reference to appearance but is a truth claim. That is, the first is phenomenological language, while the latter is literal language. Language can be poetic, narrative, literal, metaphoric, euphemistic, etc. We generally understand the style of language used in any particular situation.
"We misinterprete. We're only humans. How can you be so sure. I don't understand you."
Let me put it this way. The Bible appears to say that the sun moves around the earth. But observation tells us that the earth goes around the sun, and the earth rotates on its axis. Can we reasonably conclude that we've misunderstood the Bible, and that it could allow for what observation tells us? Yes, because the reference to the sun standing still can be understood as the language of appearance, and the reference to the earth being immovable can be understood as not deviating from the way it was designed (to orbit the sun).
The Bible also appears to say that God created the world in six days. But 'science' (not observation) tells us that the world is much older and that life evolved from a universal common ancestor. So can we reasonably conclude that we've misunderstood the Bible, and that the world could be much older, and that life evolved? Well no, because we would then face the following insurmountable problems:
* The days are actually defined as being normal days (comprising an evening and a morning).
* The week is based on that creation week (Exodus 20:11); That basis is destroyed if we haven't understood it correctly.
* Jesus said that man was made at the beginning of creation, whereas in the mainstream view man came right near the end.
* God created Eve from Adam and Adam from the dust, not from an ape-like creature.
* God created plants before the sun and before land animals, contrary to the evolutionary view.
* God created man and the animals to be vegetarian.
* There was no death before Adam sinned. That is not only contrary to evolution, but a vital part of the gospel message.
* God created living things to reproduce 'after their kind', which is contrary to evolution which says that one kind can become another.
* God created the earth before the sun and the other stars.
* God created birds before land animals.
So unlike the 'fixed' earth that can reasonably be understood in a different way, the creation account cannot be reasonably understood in a different way. Trying to fit the creation account to the mainstream view creates a whole stack of problems.
Further, as I pointed out, a rotating, heliocentric earth is known from observation. The age of the earth and evolution have never been observed. They are beliefs based (in part) on a naturalistic view, which means that you can't use them to alter our understanding of the Bible without invoking some circular reasoning.
"The science on the age of the universe is huge."
And biased by methodological naturalism.
"Almost nobody in science community would disagree with with it."
What do you mean by "almost nobody"? 100 scientists? 500? what?
"Of course, they could be wrong and you might be right, though."
Rather, they might be wrong and God might be right. I'd take God's word over man's any day.
"But you're talking his words and they're talking empirical evidence."
No, I'm talking God's infallible words, and they're talking a philosophical position that was intended to replace the biblical view. That is, they started with that position and went looking for evidence to support it.
"Nuclear half-life decay is nuclear physics reactions, not chemical reactions."
Yes. So?
"They can't chemically process it."
If you mean that they can't alter the decay rate, that is incorrect. It has been altered, albeit by small amounts in limited circumstances.
"Oh, and I'm not smart enough to claim anything."
I'm not trying to be rude, but to partly agree with you, you're not smart enough to realise that saying that you're not smart enough to claim anything is a claim. So your comment contradicts itself.
"I've got a lots of questions, though."
Fair enough. So perhaps you should ask rather than argue.
"In Islam, they say in order to read the Quran and comprehend properly you must read it in its original ancient Arabic. ... So I heard."
Yes, I've heard that too. Christians believe that in order to understand the Bible to the fullest extent possible, you should understand the original languages (mainly Hebrew and Greek), but that you can still understand it quite well in whatever language it is translated into.
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@tTtt-ho3tq
"That's what I mean. It may be obvious to you because you're much smarter than me."
No, it's obvious because the words have obvious meanings. Just like the stop sign I mentioned. (But see further comment below.)
"Especially I've no idea when it's literal or when it's not."
Do you have that same problem with everything you read, or just the creation account? Or just the Bible?
"I know what you mean by itself but in practice in reading the Bible that's when it comes hard."
Why? How is the Bible different to other writing?
"So I can't imagine how people could have read the Bible that God paused the sun in the middle of the sky not literally. It's not obvious."
I understand what you're getting at, but you're not doing the text justice. Is that mention of the sun standing still trying to tell about relative motions, or is it trying to tell us how the Israelites won a battle? Of course it's the latter. The reference is not a euphemism, nor a metaphor, nor any other figure of speech. It literally did stand still, from the perspective of the people who saw it. That doesn't mean that it stood still relative to the galaxy or anything else. To put it another way, phenomenological language is not non-literal language. It's literal, from a particular viewpoint.
"But still it's so obvious of his word that the age of the universe is young 6,000 years old."
In one sense you're correct, in that the Bible doesn't give a total with that (or similar) figure. However, it's obvious, if you read carefully, that it does give figures which anyone can add up to find out how long before, say, Abraham that creation occurred. In that sense it's obvious.
"Which would mean there's no ice ages to you."
Only if ice ages and the time between them was too long to fit in the available time. But then I've already pointed out that one can't measure age.
In fact, there is good physical evidence of an ice age. But only one. And in fact the flood helps explain it. If the earth cools, there is less evaporation and therefore precipitation and therefore ice on the land. If the earth heats, there is more evaporation and more precipitation on land, but it doesn't freeze. However, if you have a cool atmosphere (such as with lots of dust or ash in the atmosphere) and a warm ocean (from lots of volcanism), then you have a lot of evaporation and precipitation, which forms ice on the land. The flood provides just those conditions, which would produce an ice ages lasting about 500 years from soon after the flood.
"There wEre no cavemen either?"
There have always been people who live in caves. In Coober Pedy in South Australia, many of the homes are in man-made caves today. But those people who lived in caves were not primitive men, but simply people who, for whatever purpose, lived in caves either short term or long term.
"Did Adam & Eve lived in a cave first when they're thrown out of the Garden?"
Possibly, until they had time to build something.
"How did Adam know how to hunt for food?"
He was a vegetarian.
"Was it a stone age when they were out or bronze age?"
There was no such thing as a stone age or a bronze age. People were making tools and instruments from iron and bronze before the flood, but much of the technological knowhow of the time would have been lost in the flood. After God dispersed the people from Babel, whatever knowhow they might have regained since the flood would be largely lost again. They would have needed immediate shelter and food, so caves would be a good option for the shelter, and they'd need tools quickly, so would have made what they could out of sticks and stones. But after they'd had time to settle and establish themselves, they would have built homes, found ore deposits, and reinvented the technology required. This may have taken from years to generations, and it would have varied according to how long they were travelling away from Babel (around the world in some cases) and where they ended up. So they would have a period when they were living in caves, and a period when they were making tools of stone and later tools of bronze, etc. but they were just phases until they reestablished the knowledge and skills; not "ages" lasting thousands or hundreds of years as they slowly evolved.
"Many many questions when read it literally."
Where does the Bible mention a bronze age or an iron age? Many of your questions come not from reading it literally, but from trying to marry it to the secular view that you've learnt. Try and remember this: The biblical account and the secular view are competing stories about the past. They do not fit together. Read the Bible on its own merits, not by trying to fit it into the secular view of history.
"Maybe obvious to you but not easily obvious to me."
Because you're reading it through secular glasses.
"Is there free will in Heaven"
I think there'd have to be.
"How could we not to sin for ever with free will?"
I don't know the answer to that one, but I'm sure God could do it somehow. Perhaps (this is speculative) just being full time in God's presence makes it so that we have no desire to sin, even though we still could, in principle? I don't know.
"This is not what my saying so but God's saying so."
I'm not sure what you're asking, but the principle is that whatever God says is correct. I might be wrong how I understand God, but some things are quite clear (e.g. the stop sign) while other parts can be harder to follow.
"Im not well articulate either."
Is English not your first language?
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@tTtt-ho3tq
"You've got the answer for almost everything."
It might seem like it, but no, I don't. However, this topic is one that I've been studying for much of my life.
"However, I'm interested in science, especially physics, so what they say is usually supported by facts in nature."
Yes, it is, as long as they are talking about things in the present that they can observe, measure, test, and repeat.
"But the way I understand it and what I see in nature usually agree with each other."
But again, you're seeing things in the present, not in the past. And it's the past where virtually all the disagreement is.
"I'm not sure if that's what secular means or through secular glasses, though."
I'm using the word 'secular' as a synonym for the way the world generally (as opposed to people who believe the Bible) sees things. But in particular, I'm referring to the scientists who work on the principle of methodological naturalism.
"You wouldn't say Copernicus, Galileo, Newton's view they saw through the secular glasses, would you?"
No, not at all. But again, they were doing their science on things they could observe, measure, test, and repeat, i.e. things in the present.
"In science, it's relative clearer what they don't understand yet or what they do,…"
I disagree, because the scientists rarely make a distinction between things that they study in the present and things that they pontificate about the past.
"Yet, there're so many different interpretations."
True, but why? Is it because the text is hard to understand, or is it because they are trying to marry the biblical account with the views of people who don't believe the Bible. Here's a quote from a theologian, James Montgomery Boice: "We have to admit here [concerning those who take the six days of Creation as literal days] that the exegetical basis of the creationists is strong. … In spite of the careful biblical and scientific research that has accumulated in support of the creationists’ view, there are problems that make the theory wrong to most (including many evangelical) scientists. … Data from various disciplines point to a very old earth and even older universe."
As you can see, the "different interpretation" comes from taking the (naturalistic) science into account, not from the text itself.
"Even in amongst Christians, some believe in Trinity, some don't."
That depends on how you define "Christian". Most Christians would say that if you don't believe Jesus is God, you're not a Christian. Those that deny the trinity are therefore not Christians, by definition.
"Some Christmas say it's 13.8± billion years from the BB,…"
Yes, but they don't get that from the Bible. So that's not really a different interpretation of the text, but a different view of history from extra-biblical sources.
"What I hate the most is saying this is not what my saying so but what God's … saying so. It's not true."
Again, I get back to my analogy with the stop sign. Some things are quite clear. And, as I've pointed out, some of the "different interpretations" are not based on what the Bible says. But it's not just me saying that. James Barr was Oriel Professor of the interpretation of the Holy Scripture at Oxford University, and he wrote that "… probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story…"
So it's not just me saying that it's clear. It's the world's top experts on the language saying that this is the way it was meant to be understood.
"Would you kill someone if if God's telling you to do so? (You interpreted he's saying so)"
That's a silly question, because God telling me to kill someone would contradict God saying that we should not murder. So even if, for a moment, I thought God was saying that, I'd reject it as being from God because God doesn't contradict Himself.
"Didn't God tell Abraham to sacrifice his son? Yes. God stopped him just in time. But that's because Abraham was actually going to do it for real, wasn't it?"
Actually, Abraham had faith that it wouldn't happen. God had already told Abraham that Isaac would be the ancestor of many people, and Abraham told Isaac that God would supply the sacrifice. So Abraham trusted God that it would not happen, although he didn't know until the last moment how God would arrange that. (By the way, this was before God gave the ten commandments in which it says not to murder.)
"Everything and anything in nature by nature with the order of nature or without the order of nature is possible with God…"
One of the reasons that Christians started science is because they believed that God was a God of order and consistency, so would not (like the Greek 'gods') change things (like laws of nature) on a whim.
"…this annoys me that we won't sin once we're in Heaven even though we've still free will."
Yes there are some things that we'd love to know more about now, but we'll have to wait to find out.
"Everybody was in the Garden, including all animals, right?"
There were animals in the garden, but no reason to think all the animals were. And Adam and Eve were booted from the garden before they had children, so they were the only two people ever in the garden.
"So that means there's no BBQ in Heaven."
You can barbecue things other than meat! 😁 God gave us permission to eat meat after the flood, but yes, I expect that permission will be withdrawn in heaven.
"No sex in Heaven either?"
Well, no marriage, so unless sex outside marriage is okay in heaven, I guess you're correct!
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@tTtt-ho3tq
The postulated planet was Vulcan, not Volcan.
"Actually everything we observe is pst in time."
By a fraction of a micro-second?
"It seems light travels instantaneous but it's not."
Actually, that is not certain. Find the video "Why No One Has Measured The Speed Of Light" by Veritasium.
However, this is all distraction. You could argue (although there are rebuttals) that you are observing the past when you observe stars explode, and that sort of thing. But we don't observe the past to see dinosaurs evolving into birds, etc.
"Jesus couldn't be God BEFORE he was crucified because if he was ... God doesn't die, does he?"
What is death? A cessation of brain activity? A cessation of biological life? Separation from God? The last one is known as spiritual death. Jesus died physically, and He was separated from God the father when He did. He didn't cease to exist, but then neither do humans when they die.
But Jesus must have been God before He was crucified, as Jesus is actually the creator of everything.
"So he joined his father after he was sacrificed and became one. I didn't know that. It makes sense, though."
God is the supreme being. There can be only one. Jesus becoming God doesn't work. Jesus is God, but per the concept of the trinity, God is three persons in one God.
"Did Jesus know he was going to scarified? Killed?"
Yes. He prayed about it before it happened.
"But also knew he's not gonna die anyways because he's God, too?"
He didn't cease to exist, but He did know that He would come back to life.
"…would you volunteer to be sacrificed too?"
I would hope so if the cause was good enough. Plenty of people have through history. Think of soldiers who threw themselves on grenades to protect their mates, for example.
"Vegetable BBQ? Are you ... it's like tofu bergers? To some it's ain't BBQ."
I was thinking more of sliced onion, eggs, etc. But vegetable patties are also another option.
"Is there alcohol in Heaven? What do you think?"
No reason for there to not be alcohol in heaven. It's a useful chemical. But why drink the poisonous drug? It does you no good.
"Canaanites? Didn't Morse told Israelites to wipe them out?"
I said that God said that we should not murder. Murder does not include self-defence or capital punishment. Both the latter, and former in the case of war, are functions of government, not individuals. Moses was the government, and killing people who were attacking them or defying God is not murder.
"God himself can kill, though. right?"
He made us, so He can destroy us. Murder is wrong because God delegated dominion over creation except for man to man. That is, as humans, all of God's creation is at our disposal to make use of (which does not mean to abuse). Except for other humans. We can't make use of them (except with their permission, such as hiring them). But God does have dominion over all of his creation, including man. He can do what He likes with us, because He owns us.
"Except Satan and demons, he didn't eliminate them with the flood. Because?"
I don't have a definite answer on that. But God didn't eliminate humanity at the flood either. Clearly God had a reason to not eliminate Satan and the demons at that time, but then why should He do that at that time anyway? The flood destroyed or damaged the physical creation; if God was to "eliminate" Satan, why wait until the flood? That doesn't seem a particularly appropriate time.
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@geryleier4577 "Of course there is a logical contradiction."
No, that's not a logical contradiction. The contradiction you're claiming is a contradiction between the claim and the evidence, not a logical contradiction.
But the word "proof" is a problem. Both sides can provide evidence, but science doesn't do proofs, and history (which that book is) is not really studiable by empirical science.
"Your argument only works if you make the presupption that god exists."
If you're referring to my particular claim of contrasting the infallible God and fallible man, then yes, that's correct. But then your argument only works if you presuppose that God doesn't exist (or doesn't get involved or similar). So both of use are working from presuppositions. Why is yours correct?
"If you look first what you can proof and what not, you will come to another conclusion."
Again, that word "proof". But no, suppositions come first. In fact science depends on Christian suppositions. Loren Eiseley: "The philosophy of experimental science … began its discoveries and made use of its methods in the faith, not the knowledge, that it was dealing with a rational universe controlled by a creator who did not act upon whim nor interfere with the forces He had set in operation … . It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origins to an act of faith that the universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption."
So if you presuppose no God, you can't do science except by adopting essentially Christian ideas for no good reason, in which case you've lost the very argument you're trying to make before you even start.
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@sweeney4727
"ok but u cant change chromosomes even with trans people"
I never said you could. Before you edited your post, you, however, indicated that that was possible. I challenged you on that, and then you conceded that it was not possible. So I don't know why you're continuing to argue something that I agree with.
"and thats legit the definition of a transphobe"
No, that's name-calling. First, a phobia is an irrational fear. So no, it doesn't simply means someone who disagrees.
Second, if all you're saying is that I disagree with transgenderism, then why not just say that, instead of using a term that is derogatory?
"look up the definition lol "Phobe doesn't always mean "Fear" but dislike or something else"
Yes, the term can be used more loosely, but a) it doesn't simply mean disagreement, and b) 'transphobia' is taking its cue from 'homophobia', a word coined in order to denigrate those who reject homosexuality. The origins of the term are in trying to denigrate. Ergo, you are, as I said, name-calling.
IDAHOBIT day is an "International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia". So are you trying to say that IDAHOBIT is a day against people even disagreeing with transgenderism (etc.)? Why?
No, clearly transphobia is supposed to be wrong. To claim that even disagreeing is wrong is bigotry.
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@100percentSNAFU
"A spoon, or anything for that matter, is indeed very complex if you break it down to the molecular level."
Not particularly, assuming a metal spoon. The molecules are arranged according to the laws of physics, and are relatively uniform. What's not arranged according to the laws of physics is the spoon shape itself. That's the bit that is (somewhat) complex, not being a natural shape, but having a particular shape designed to be able to hold a liquid, plus also a handle with which to manipulate the spoon comfortably in a human hand.
"Or, maybe, "There is no spoon" "
Well, I only need to look in my cutlery draw to prove that one wrong!
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@pope9187
"…surely it is saying something about science."
I think you are confused about what science is. It's the study of creation; or the study of things in the world. The Bible is not performing a study, it's recording historical events. Yes, it's a literal account of what happened, not a scientific study of those events.
"I mean, as far as I’m aware it’s actually mainstream Biblical scholarship to regard at least Genesis 1-11 as more of a cultural mythology."
Many Christians do see it that way, but Jesus didn't. I'll stick with what Jesus thought.
"After all, there are literally two accounts of human creation,…"
No, there is not. There is one account that starts with an overview, then focuses in on man.
"…with the account of Adam and Eve reading very clearly as figurative…"
And yet the experts disagree. James Barr, Oriel Professor of the interpretation of the Holy Scripture at Oxford, said "… probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience, the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story, and that Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark."
"…the name adam literally just means “human”…"
Which is what you'd expect. God had just created various kinds of creatures, such as the cat kind, and the elephant kind and the frog kind, and then made a kind in His own image, which He called "man" (hence 'man-kind'). So that's what he was known as: man, or Adam. That is, being the prototype, his name was the name for the kind.
"Even fundamentalist Christian apologists like William Lane Craig has conceded that these accounts from Genesis are not just straightforward history."
Craig has compromised with naturalistic science. Barr, by the way, is no fundamentalist. And as I said Jesus believed them to be straightforward history. In fact he quoted from both of the "two accounts" as though they were one, and history.
"…it does require methodological naturalism—the key word there is methodological."
And yet you don't give a good reason why, nor do you address why it should prioritise natural over correct. See my next comment.
"That is until we have a reliable methodology for investigating non-natural or supernatural or immaterial claims, which we currently do not have."
Not having a method for studying the supernatural is no reason to say that the explanations must be natural. That simply doesn't follow. And your claim is wrong in any case. We can investigate claims that involve the supernatural. In fact some critics claim that this is possible and has been done, even if they contradict themselves. Philosopher P. Quinn wrote: "In a recent collection of essays, Stephen Jay Gould claims that “‘Scientific creationism’ is a self-contradictory phrase precisely because it cannot be falsified”…Ironically, in the next sentence Gould goes on to contradict himself by asserting that “the individual claims are easy enough to refute with a bit of research.” Indeed, some of them are! But since they are so easily refuted by research, they are after all falsifiable and, hence, testable. This glaring inconsistency is the tip-off to the fact that talk about testability and falsifiability functions as verbal abuse and not as a serious objection in Gould’s anti-creationist polemics."
"That’s why ID is an “unapproved” science,…"
Given that ID doesn't make claims about the supernatural, that's a false claim. And given that I have given an example of how it could be falsified (which you've ignored), that's another reason it's a false claim.
"…not because scientists are all mean atheists that don’t want to acknowledge the possibility of a creator or designer (though some may be)…"
I literally said "Not that all those scientists are atheists, ..."
"…but because it legit doesn’t offer any coherent mechanism for the how and when supernatural intervention took place in the history of the evolution of life,…"
Why does it have to? Why isn't simply showing evidence of design enough?
"…and because such a thing is not at all verifiable or falsifiable."
You asked for something that could disprove ID. I provided it. You have ignored that and repeated your claim. That is not honest. It shows that your mind is made up and no evidence will change it. Okay, maybe you just missed it, but if that's the case it means that given that you challenged me on it then repeated the claim without checking that I'd answered the challenge, you're negligent.
"…if there is a God who made the universe and everything in it, there’s just no way that the human sciences of cosmology or biology or chemistry is going to be able to detect and say anything conclusively about that God or the nature of that God or how that God interacts with the world or any other such thing."
And yet those human scientists do just that—they claim, with certainty, that God didn't do any such thing.
"…science is the study of the natural world and is never going to be a study (or should not be regarded as such) which affirms nor denies those beliefs."
And yet those scientists do deny those beliefs. With vigor. If they actually remained agnostic on it, I wouldn't be complaining about it.
I notice that you failed to address my evidence that evolution is unfalsifiable and is contrary to the evidence. And yet you dismiss ID on essentially those grounds.
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@pope9187
"it is most definitely not a literal, historical account,…"
Definitely? Why not?
"…or if a literal account it’s not at all accurate."
Ah, that's why. It can't be because you think it's inaccurate. That's not really a reason.
"…in the second one man os made first, then all the animals,…"
In English, the first mention normally says "then", which makes the order explicit. But that word is generally not present in the second mention, so the order has to be inferred.
I think this is a case of first assuming that they are different accounts, then looking for differences. If you assume that they are the one account, then you read that second mention of making the animals in the context of the first mention, and take it to be a reference to the animals already made. A number of translations do it this way, saying things like (my emphasis): "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; "
"(is this supposed to be a literal historical account as well, a female made from a rib?)"
Why not? If God can do anything, including making a man from the dirt, making a woman from the man's rib would be a walk in the park. But also, the marrow of the rib bone is a good source of the DNA that God might have based Eve on. Plus, Adam's rib would grow back; taking a part from almost anywhere else would have left Adam with a defect for the rest of his life.
"Like are we to take all of it as literal? Even the part about the sky being a solid firmament which has windows open up when it’s time to rain?"
A 'firmament' is an old English word which doesn't mean something solid. But the Bible does use metaphors, phenomenological language, and other figures of speech, just as we do today, so not everything should be taken literally. But just as you read a news story today and it says that a person "passed away" rather than died, you know what should be taken literally and what is a euphemism, for example.
"…just look up Hebrew Bible cosmology and tell me that that’s an accurate representation of the world."
The Bible's cosmology is accurate, but is your understanding of the biblical cosmology accurate?
Regarding Barr, criticisms of the creation account fall into two categories: 1) it's wrong, and 2) It's not meant to be taken literally, but is poetry, metaphor, or etc. Your objection ("the account of Adam and Eve reading very clearly as figurative") falls into the second of those categories, so I provided Barr's quote that also addresses the second of those categories—he is an expert on the language and is saying that the language indicates that it's indented to be understood 'literally'. So not figuratively, for example. He's not saying whether it's correct. I would only use "compromised" in relation to someone who claims to believe the Bible but doesn't believe part of it because they think that the mainstream view is correct. I don't know if Barr claims to believe the Bible, so I wouldn't use the word 'compromised' of him.
"…literary scholars generally accept the fact that Genesis and various other early books of the Hebrew Bible where redacted and smoothed out by multiple Hebrew authors over a period of time, each if whom had varying agendas…"
Like who? Are you talking about the long-discredited Documentary Hypothesis? On the contrary, the Israelites treated the text with such great reverence as God's word that they would not dare alter it, and went to great lengths to ensure that they didn't accidentally do so.
"…do you literally regard like the genealogy accounts from the Gospels (two different genealogies btw) as accurate and that in accordance with the genealogy that traces back to Adam that the earth is about 6,000 years old?"
I'm not sure precisely what you are asking there. Everyone has multiple 'genealogies'—that's why they are known as family trees rather than family lines. So Jesus had one via Joseph and one via Mary. Two different ones are therefore not an issue. Secondly, it's not those that one uses to determine the age of the earth, as they don't include chronological information, unlike the genealogies in Genesis and other places. Third, Matthew was writing for Jews, and his genealogy is known to (probably deliberately) omit a few people. His purpose was apparently to show that Jesus was legally a descendant of King David. Luke was writing mainly to non-Jews, and his purpose was apparently to show to non-Jews that Jesus was a descendant of Adam.
"And that human beings in earlier times were able to live upward of 900 years?"
Humans were designed to live forever, so 900 years is rather short. So yes, I believe that.
"I mean, this is clearly not historically accurate,…"
Why not? Because it doesn't fit with your expectations?
"And to keep it short, I don’t have time to respond to everything, ..."
Understandable, but by doing so you've avoided addressing some key questions and points I made, in particular, why science should prioritise natural explanations over correct explanations, and the evidence that evolution is unfalsifiable. I'd like both of those addressed.
"…we already have a mechanism which demonstrates this, it’s evolution by natural selection."
First, I was referring to individual claims that the ID people (or creationists) put up as to how particular things (such as the blood clotting mechanism) could not occur naturally, not how variety in living things could occur naturally. Second, no, evolution doesn't demonstrate this at all. Natural selection only selects. It doesn't create new organs, processes, etc. And mutations, supposedly the thing that generates the novelty that natural selection then selects, only destroys genetic information; it doesn't create it. So no, evolution completely fails as a mechanism. Richard Dawkins was once asked to provide an example of a mechanism that generates that new information, and was unable to provide even one example.
"…the difference between “showing evidence of design,” which you’re suggesting ID is doing, and merely claiming design, which is what ID is actually doing."
Blatantly false. It's showing evidence of things that cannot be explained naturally. That is actual evidence of design.
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@pope9187
"I said it’s not at all accurate—yeah, that’s me saying that if you regard this story as literal, that’s wrong because it is not historically accurate."
Which was not the actual claim that you made (which was of it being figurative). But also, you haven't shown that it's not accurate. What's your evidence? By the way, a competing view is not evidence.
"I’m sure plenty of Romans took the Aeneid to be historically accurate, or plenty of Hindus have taken the Mahabharata to be historically accurate, and yet I don’t think that’s actually the case based on the historical record, least of all because of the highly literary and fantastical elements found in these texts."
A reason that doesn't apply in the case of the Bible. Except for your subjective opinion of what's "fantastical".
"I mean if I told you that the Mahabharata or the Bhagavad Gita was literal history, what kind mental gymnastics (which we be highly favorable to myself) could I not say that could not be said of the Genesis account of creation?"
I'm not familiar with those documents, so I couldn't provide specifics. But you've already mentioned the literary style, which doesn't apply in Genesis.
"I mean, do we have any historical evidence independent of the Bible that would support the creation account from Genesis?"
Yes, depending on just what you mean by that. There are, for example, stories from cultures from all around the world that agree with Genesis in various specific details (despite also having difference which can be attributed to the accounts being corrupted over time). For example, there is an Australian Aboriginal story that agrees on about a dozen details, including that the first woman was tempted to eat the produce of the tree that they'd been told they couldn't eat from.
"For goodness sake, the story includes a talking snake, this is a definitional hallmark of a fable."
No, it doesn't. It includes an incident in which Satan spoke through a snake on one occasion. There is nothing there to suggest that there was a snake that was in the habit of talking.
"We can twist and turn and say “well God can do anything, so he can make a woman from a rib”…"
Except that no twisting and turning is needed. That is simply a logical statement.
"We can say “well, if God wanted to allow Muhammad to fly to Medina from Mecca, that could very well have happened,” but that provides absolutely no evidence that would affirm that account as being true at all."
Yes, we could say that, and yes, that fact (that God could have) doesn't mean that it did happen. But then nobody claims that it did. If someone did claim that, we couldn't rule it out on the grounds that it's not possible. Which is what you're trying to do.
"And no, I never said anything about the documentary hypothesis,…"
That's okay. It was a question asking you after all.
"…but this still entails the fact that multiple writers contributed to the compilation of the Pentateuch,…"
Fact? What's factual about it? (I do, however, accept that claim in a very limited way.)
"…a view which is even more so discredited than the documentary hypothesis."
As I said, I accept that claim in a very limited way, but in what way is it discredited?
"…both Luke and Matthew purport to record the genealogy of the line of Joseph, one claiming that Joseph’s father is Heli, another claiming his father is Jacob…"
See the article "The genealogies of Jesus" by Lita Sanders.
"my real question was about the fact that if we were to add up all of the alleged ages of the people named in the genealogy given in Luke, we’d find that they only add up to about 6,000 years."
Luke doesn't give ages. And of course that 6,000 year period includes the 2,000 years since then!
"If we are to literally and historically regard Adam as an actual historical figure and the first human in existence, would this mean that the earth (or at least the human race) is only about 6,000 years old as well,..."
Using the ages given in the Genesis and other genealogies, then yes. Which is where that figure comes from.
"in spite of the scientific data which would contradict this."
There is no scientific data contradicting this. There is a competing view (the naturalistic one) that contradicts this. But a competing view is not scientific data nor evidence.
"So no, it’s not that the Genesis account doesn’t fit with my “expectations,” it doesn’t fit with any objectively verifiable historical or scientific account."
It doesn't fit with your expectations, because your expectations are based on that competing view. There is no objectively verifiable historical or scientific evidence that disagrees.
"I reject the idea of early humans living for over 900 years as the Bible records (which I would take more a a motif that is used to honor the reign of one’s purported ancestors)…"
How do you then explain the ages when they had their children? And why reject it in the first place other than it not meeting your competing-view-based expectations?
"…there’s simply no good reason to suspect this as being true…"
Other than it being recorded in a proven-reliable historical document, claimed, believed, and supported as being authored by God Himself.
"…but the question is whether this did historically occur,…"
Yes, you're right. That is the question.
"…and I see no evidence that would support such an extraordinary claim."
What, other than your (competing-view-based) expectations make it extraordinary? But there IS evidence, of the Bible itself, in the form of agreement in various details from other cultures, in support from genetics which fits with the biblical account (see the video"Origins: Noah’s Flood Genetics" or the article "Adam, Eve and Noah vs Modern Genetics" by Robert Carter), in geological evidence, and so on. Yes, those things are also explained by the competing view, so the question comes down to which view makes the most sense of the evidence, but my point at the moment is that there IS evidence.
"And I have already explained this 3 times now, ..."
And I have challenged it three times.
"...science is the study of the natural world and therefore it can only operate within a framework of methodological naturalism…"
You're still avoiding a direct answer to my questions. You could for example, say that 'science can only study the natural, but should not be dogmatic that the natural explanations are the correct ones', but then you'd have to concede that scientists are not doing that, and so are being deceptive. The point is, though, that you are avoiding the critical questions.
"…science is literally incapable of verifying supernatural claims."
Despite me providing evidence that that is a false claim? You've ignored the quote from Quinn. Why?
"If you want to invent or provide us with a study or a methodology that can coherently and concisely investigate the supernatural,…"
It seems that you're still failing to see the distinction that I made. In your previous sentence, you said that "science is literally incapable of verifying supernatural claims ", but you justify that by saying that it can't "investigate the supernatural ".
The supernatural can't be studied by science, but claims that involve a supernatural element potentially can be.
"And I’ve already given an example of how evolution can be falsified."
And I've shown it to be baseless. So you are simply repeating a refuted claim.
"I’ve also said that our understanding and our models will alter in accordance with the data—this has certainly occurred,…"
I never suggested otherwise. Particular details will be altered, but the overall claim is sacrosanct; it's not allowed to be falsified.
"And you’ve literally just proved that ID is in fact just an argument from ignorance, because to say “this cannot be (or rather, is not currently able to be) explained naturally”…"
So now you're inventing quotes from me? I did not say "is not currently able to be". That was you. I said "cannot be". My basis was that it's not from ignorance, but from knowledge.
"At this point, I think we’re very clearly not going to see eye to eye,…"
Really? 😛
"I still appreciate your perspective and your good mannered nature,…"
Thank you. And I hope you had a happy Christmas too.
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@jumpmasterpadre9335
"This is a nice and substantive reply and I appreciate it."
And I feel the same way in return.
"It is simply and logically inarguable/undisputed that most - if not all - states have violence in their history."
It's not logically inarguable, but in practice, yes, one would be extremely unlikely to find a state that doesn't have violence in its history.
"…an inept attempt to advance the failed philosophy of William of Ockham."
He was responsible for the principle known as Ockham's Razor, but what was his philosophy that you're referring to?
"My contention lies in the fact that violence by definition is the use of force to comply or submit an unwilling populace to conditions established outside of their approval, etc."
I consider that definition too broad for general use. Violence is normally considered to be doing someone physical injury (or death), and perhaps only unjustified injury. The definition you provide could include laws which are enforced by means of fines and/or imprisonment that do no physical injury.
"This is not how states exist."
The problem I have with that statement is that it's ambiguous. Why does America exist? Because (simplistically) people founded it. But that only explains why it began to exist, not why it still exists. Your explanation regarding a willing populace seems to apply more to the latter: why it continues to exist. At least that's the point your reference to Marxism is making of it.
"Western Civilization was not established by and through violence."
That's simplistic, as I'm sure that there would have been some violence involved somewhere along the line. But yes, in principle and mostly in practice, I can agree with that.
"Protestantism did NOT ADVANCE society further."
And yet numerous scholars would disagree with you. In fact you appear to disagree a bit, saying that "...many good things that have come out of Protestantism...". It was Protestants who abolished slavery (while acknowledging that popes had previously made moves in that direction). It was Protestants who spread democracy to various places (see the paper The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy by Robert Woodberry). It was Protestants who introduced universal education because they (unlike Catholics) wanted everybody to be able to read the Bible for themselves.
"…the roots of Western Civilization’s current demise are contained wholly within the tenets of Protestantism: essentially that “I” determine my own faith, belief and practice of religion."
I consider that claim to be simplistic, arbitrary, and wrong. It is simplistic in claiming that it's "wholly" because of that, when obviously there were other factors involved, including rebellion against God by atheists. It's arbitrary in selecting the Protestant stress of individual responsibility because one could equally make the case that it's due to the "Catholic" (i.e. pre-Protestant) belief in free will, which is the principle that we all have the capability of choosing things for ourselves. It's wrong in implying that Protestantism is a free-for-all where it's totally up to us, whereas Protestants give priority to what the Bible teaches, not what we want to believe for ourselves. It's also questionable in that a significant factor in Western Civilisation is capitalism, a system that is based on personal freedom to do what we want with our own capital, and yet the early development of capitalism occurred before the Reformation.
"Thus, there are literally thousands of denominations - nearly all of which claim their own authority and adhere to their own tenets."
That is a common anti-Christian or anti-Protestant claim, but is largely baseless. First, the statistic that is often cited is not denominations per se, but organisations. So the Victorian Baptists and New South Wales Baptists are counted as two, because they are different organisations. And by the same token, the Australian Catholic Church and the New Zealand Catholic Church are two different organisations, so are counted as two, not one. Second, it does not follow that they disagree on anything. They are simply different organisations, not necessarily disagreeing. Third, some of the disagreement that does exist is over church government and secondary issues, not over doctrine, especially of primary issues. So the Wesleyans and the Methodists, for example, might have the same doctrines, but the Wesleyans believe in local churches appointing their pastors whereas the Methodist pastors were appointed by the hierarchy. Fourth, many of those organisations were national ones. That is, missionaries from one or more denominational or non-denominational missions might start churches in a particular country, but when the churches in that country are strong enough, they form their own national church organisation(s) rather than be branches of the foreign ones that planted them. Again, not necessarily any doctrinal differences. Fifth, they don't claim their "own" authority, but consider the Bible to be their authority. Sixth, although they might have different (secondary) doctrinal views (e.g. baptism by full immersion or sprinkling), they don't consider adherents of other denominations to not be Christian. They recognise that not all people believe the same thing and accept that there are different views.
In summary, the supposed thousands of denominations, and the implied lack of agreement between them all, is largely misleading nonsense. (None of that is to deny that there are a relatively small number of exclusive groups that are the exceptions to the rule.)
"Martin Luther was a not by any account a holy man concerned with following God’s law."
Contrary to your subsequent claim of that being apparent from the supposed evidence, I would say that that is a baseless claim.
"The Enlightenment contained within it the very seeds of our current demise - this is historical fact and has been stated by our very Founding Fathers."
That may well be so, but the so-called Enlightenment was taken over by atheists, and that is where the blame lies.
"The Catholic Church, beginning with the writing of Saint Augustine and early Monasticism established by Saint Benedict is the very foundation and skeletal-musculature from which our history has enjoyed the greatest fruits."
No, the Bible is. Which was the Catholic church's basis. Agnostic historian Tom Holland attributes it primarily to the writings of Paul (although of course Paul based it on Jesus and the then Scriptures, along with teaching from Peter and the other elders in the church). See the YouTube video "Tom Holland tells NT Wright: Why I changed my mind about Christianity"
"From this we have: [snipped]"
Yes, but all that shows is what I've already acknowledged, that "…the Catholic Church created much of the basis for Western Civilisation…"
"…hospitals,…"
As a Protestant, I would say that (public) hospitals were started by the early church (true), before it could be legitimately called the "Catholic" (capital C) church. Certainly before it could be called the "Roman" Catholic Church, i.e. before the east/west split.
"Just War - not the ridiculous abuses of the M-I complex we know today,..."
I can't think what "M-I" refers to, but one of the lines of argument you're taking is drawing a distinction between Catholicism and post-modernism or post-Christianity, not between Catholicism and Protestantism. On those sorts of issues, Protestants are on the same side as Catholics. This modern stuff is not from Protestantism, but from Marxism, a form of atheism.
"When the “I” is THE authority,…"
Which it's not (in Protestantism).
"…and the “I” determines Scriptural interpretation and thus application,…"
And that's not accurate either. Protestantism rejects the idea that Scripture can only be properly understood by the pope and his priests. One defining distinction is sola scriptura, that the Bible, not the church, is the authority (so not "I" either). The Bible is God's infallible Word; the church is composed of fallible humans. It does not say that interpretation is individual so much as not being the exclusive property of the (one) church. It's more of a checks-and-balances type thing, where if the church states one thing, others are allowed to challenge it. That is, challenge that the church's interpretation is an accurate one. But the same applies to Protestant churches—they can be challenged as well. Of course any such challenge must be based in Scripture, not on one's personal beliefs.
"However, Our Lord has promised that the Church will endure, as it has for over 2000 years since Matthew 16:13-20."
Well true, but we would differ on whether "the Church" is the Catholic Church or the entire body of Christians (again, pointing to a unity, even if that's in a diversity of organisations and of secondary views).
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@joshkay411
"of course a persons health can be negatively effected by non physical things,"
Thanks for implicitly conceding that your argument, which was based on that, fails.
"I would argue that the huge majority of these negative effects are caused by the societal ostracisation of the transgender community, caused by people like yourself, and not caused by the gender affirming surgery itself."
And I would argue differently, that is is caused by people continually telling the transgender community that they are ostracised. The fact that people disagree with transgenderism as being not reality-based (as I do) does not mean that I ostracise the people themselves. That they keep being told that lie is probably a big part of the problem.
"of course there will be individuals who regret their decisions regarding surgery, as there are with every single major surgical procedure one can undertake, "
Generally that's not true with necessary surgery, only optional surgery. Why regret what was necessary?
"but it is a long and complicated process to undergo a lifestyle change like gender affirmation, needing a specialist diagnosis for gender dysphoria,"
I guess that's why you now have doctors and others affirming people's choices the moment that they see them, including having laws against trying to tell them that they don't need to change, as pointed out in the video.
"...so there would be plenty of time for the majority of people that have second thoughts to change their mind."
But why would they change their mind if they are prevented from hearing any view other than that they should go ahead with it?
"it would be because of the existing biases and pressures from the society in which they exist, that cause the transgender community to have such high suicide rates,"
No, it would not be that, by itself at least. The mainstream media, social media, governments, education system, and most politicians all affirm transgender people. The most-discriminated-against religious group in the world is Christianity, but you don't see Christians committing suicide at anything like the rates of people with gender dysphoria. There's obviously another factor in play, which in my opinion is likely to be the cognitive dissonance of believing that they are something that they aren't.
"...with 41% of transgender people experiencing a hate crime in 2018..."
I'll give that figure some credence when I'm convinced that "hate crime" doesn't include people simply disagreeing with them.
"It would be wrong to blame the suicide rate on sexual affirmation surgery."
Given that the high suicide rate is apparent before surgery, I'll agree with you on that point. But then I think his point was that it doesn't go down after surgery.
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@Eve25525
Given that I provided a verbatim quote, it should have been easy enough to Google, but it was Christopher Dummitt, in "Confessions of a Social Constructionist", Quillette, 17th September 2019.
There is another comment above with sources for a different claim.
"I meant they are valid as in they ARE the gender that they say they are."
So a 'transgender woman' is actually a 'transgender woman'? That says nothing. Or a 'transgender woman' is actually a woman? That is simply false. The whole point of someone calling themselves a 'transgender woman' is because they are a actually a man. Else they would simply be called a woman.
"They can’t change the sex they were BORN AS..."
They weren't "born as" a sex. Their sex began when they were conceived and continues until they die. The very thought that they were "born as" a particular sex and are now something different is fiction.
"...they can get gender affirming surgery..."
Translation: they can have their body mutilated to look like something that they are not.
"And how do you know that academic wasn’t making that statement up?"
In one sense, I don't. But then why would he make up the idea that he was a fraud? Plus which, it fits with the whole transgender nonsense anyway, with activists claiming that people can change the sex, and simultaneously claiming that it's actually gender, not sex, even though it is clearly used as a synonym for sex. And also claiming that there is no difference between men and women, but men can think/claim that they are women (or vice versa) on the ground that there is a difference between the two. The whole movement is anti-scientific, anti-Christian, self-contradictory, and totalitarian in the way that they expect others to agree with them.
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@Eve25525
"Gender and sex are different..."
Yes, I know. Sex is based on biology and gender is an invention. And yet, gender is used as a substitute for sex, requiring others to use sex-based pronouns, expecting to use sex-based toilets and changing rooms, expecting to play in sex-based sports, changing sex on birth certificates, and changing one's body to have the sex-based appearance of someone of the opposite sex. In other words, gender=sex.
"... but for trans people they don’t."
I'm aware of that too. Their invented gender doesn't align with reality.
"Trans women are called trans women because they were assigned male at birth..."
That's another invention. That is simply false. I was not assigned 'male' at birth. I was simply male since conception, which my parents discovered (not "assigned") when I was born. When we adopted my sister, my parents did not ask the orphanage for a baby that my parents then assigned to be a girl. They asked for a girl.
"... but they are still women"
More invention. They are still the men that they have always been.
"It is an adjective, like saying a tall woman or a short woman they are not any less of a woman because they are trans."
Again, false. When you add an adjective, you don't change the noun. 'Transgender woman' is changing the noun from man to woman. If you want to describe the man with an adjective, you'd call him an effeminate man, not a transgender woman.
"Trans people get surgery so that they FEEL LESS DYSPHORIA."
I'm not disputing that's their reason.
"How does what trans people do with their own bodies affect you?"
Part of making an argument is getting your facts straight. I've shown that you haven't. Another part is to address the actual issue, not a straw-man version of it. The thing that affects me is not what they do with their bodies, but with their expectation, insistence, and even requirement by law, that everyone else has to accept their false claims and support them by allowing them to use the wrong toilets and changing rooms, using the wrong pronouns, etc. So they are not actually just keeping it to themselves, but affecting a lot of other people.
"Also cisgender people may get similar surgeries done if they have damage to that area but people don’t seem to have a problem with that."
That's because you're comparing chalk and cheese. One is fixing something that's broken (a good thing) and the other is breaking somethin that's working (a bad thing).
"The high suicide rate in this example may be because of all the discrimination they see against transgender people on the internet [snipped]"
As I commented above to a different person, the mainstream media, social media, governments, education system, and most politicians all affirm transgender people. The most-discriminated-against religious group in the world is Christianity, but you don't see Christians committing suicide at anything like the rates of people with gender dysphoria. There's obviously another factor in play, which in my opinion is likely to be the cognitive dissonance of believing that they are something that they aren't.
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@aidenaune7008
"when I say proof, I mean the literal definition."
Like (Oxford): 1. Evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement.
1.1 The spoken or written evidence in a trial.
1.2 The action or process of establishing the truth of a statement.
1.3 A series of stages in the resolution of a mathematical or philosophical problem.
Which one of those?
"proof is something that cannot be refuted in any way."
Oh, not a literal definition! Is there such a thing? I pointed out that criminal trial proof—the sort of proof used to sentence people to death at times—is not absolute, but merely 'beyond reasonable doubt'. You're talking about something beyond any doubt, which is probably non-existent.
"evidence is not proof, evidence only points in a direction, and evidence alone, no matter how much there is, will never guarantee the thing it points to."
I agree. So I take it that the answer to my question is that you're not denying that there is evidence for God, just not something that leaves no room at all for doubt. I can accept that, at least on the grounds that there is probably no such thing.
"the story of Adam and Eve is just that, a story, like most of the bible. the bible isn't a history book,..."
On the contrary, a large part of it is history. The history of God's relationship to man, starting with creation, the flood, Babel, the relationship with Adam and the subsequent founding and history of the Israelite nation, and the history of Jesus' birth, preaching, miracles, death, and resurrection, to give a very brief overview.
"it is a book of lessons and teachings with some historical truths mixed in"
It's largely a book of history, including the historical accounts of the teaching that God gave through prophets and others.
"plenty of things occur in the bible that do not line up with reality, ..."
Like what?
"should we believe God changed reality for absolutely no reason?"
I'm not saying that He changed reality; that was your idea. Unless you are talking about miracles where He intervened in nature.
"or that the people who passed these stories down orally and later wrote them down changed the stories slightly each time in order to better convey the message that it was supposed to have."
What makes you think that they were passed down orally? Your misleading reference does not mention that.
"...God made our universe to look like one without him in it."
He did? How? What's your evidence for that?
"... if God was proven to exist, then people would never sin, they would never do wrong, they would do exactly as God wishes they would"
So you're saying that God's existence wasn't "proven" to Adam and Eve? Please explain that one.
"there is no proof of God's existence in our universe,"
There's no proof for anything in our universe, according to your extreme definition. In fact there's no proof that there even IS a universe; we might be in the Matrix by your definition.
"... this must mean there has to be a logical, atheistic, explanation for everything's existence, specifically pit there by God himself."
You've now switched from talking about (absolute) proof to 'explanation'. If there is no absolute proof for God, then there is also no absolute proof for any atheistic explanation. This is smelling like a double standard. And if it looks like God wasn't involved, why claim that God put "a logical, atheistic, explanation for everything's existence" there? Are you claiming that God set out to deliberately deceive us?
But also, if God wanted us to believe that there are logical, atheistic, explanations, why did He tell us He did it? Why not, at the very least, remain silent on that? And why did the Psalmist write "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands" if the creation is supposed to look like God didn't make it?
"Jesus did refer to many of the events as if they or something similar did happen, this does not mean the whole old testament is true down to the last word,"
He didn't just refer to many of the events as though true. He treated the Scripture as though it was authoritative. Even in talking with Satan, who knew who He was, Jesus didn't refute Satan by saying "But I, God, say this..."; He cited the Scripture, without reservation. He treated it as though the whole thing was true. Including the creation account.
"especially since it was written by humans."
Under the 'inspiration' of God, i.e. they wrote what God wanted written, with His authority and accuracy, although with their words.
"science isn't religious or irreligious, it is a process."
Yes, but one based on a Christian worldview.
"it is the people who use this process that are religious or irreligious, and they are more likely to be irreligious and as such gravitate towards the no God origin in their conclusions."
Definitely! But that is the problem. It's not just that atheists use it to argue for no God, but that mainstream scientists adopt a philosophical principle of naturalism, that says that explanations involving God must be rejected even if the evidence supports them. In that sense, naturalistic science (as opposed to true science) is explicitly irreligious, to use your word.
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@harrisonw6065
Sorry to hear that it's totally gone (I gather).
I'm not looking for criticism of a PragerU video. I know that there's plenty of criticism out there. But from what I've seen, it's mostly just people disagreeing because they have a different worldview.
My challenge was because you claimed that one could find multiple errors in "any" PragerU video. So the other videos critical of individual PragerU videos would not prove that point.
Even if there's a good reason why you're currently unable to support your claim, the point is that your claim, at this point, has no evidence to support it.
The notification (which, interestingly I can still see even though the comment is gone), finishes with this: "firstly, the statement by Dennis Prager that for all of history fathers have been regarded as being vital to ". That's where it finishes. So while I don't really know what you were going to say, I'll reply with three increasingly-relevant points.
Firstly, he actually says "all of recorded history", but that's arguably irrelevant, as if it's not recorded then it's not history. But possibly it's relevant to your claim.
Secondly, he didn't make a dogmatic claim. He says the explanation of why they are necessary " would have been regarded as, well, unnecessary". Clearly this is meant as a reasonable conclusion, not a empirically-demonstrable one.
Thirdly, your objection might very well depend on your view of history. While I can't speak for Prager, in my case my understanding of history likely differs dramatically from yours. My evidence-based understanding is that God created Adam and Eve, and we are all descended from them. So in that view, I'd argue that Prager is correct. You, on the other hand, presumably believe that we evolved from lower animals, and that 'history' (albeit not recorded) goes back much, much, further in time. This view is based not primarily on evidence (although evidence is interpreted to fit it), but on the philosophy of naturalism that underlies a lot of modern education (including a lot of history and science).
So is Prager demonstrably wrong, or is he basing his comment on a different understanding of history? Could you actually show him to be wrong, or would you be simply basing your objections on a different worldview?
Or have I gone in a completely different direction from what you tried posting? That's possible too.
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@harrisonw6065
I reject your claim that "in most cases" men haven't been around to father their children, for several reasons.
1) Many of the men fighting battles would be younger men, often unmarried and without children.
2) In the case of tribes, the fighting men would not be fighting far from home.
3) For the most part, they would not be off fighting wars for most of their lives. It would normally be for a handful of years at most.
4) Wars don't make up that much of history.
Despite that, although that is a counter-argument you could make, it's not something that you can show him to be wrong on. I't your claim vs. his claim.
"…when it was common to adopt others' children even if they are not orphaned;…"
This undermines your claim. In these cases it wasn't the child's natural father, but it was an adopted father, presumably precisely because they understood that a father was needed.
"…my point being that a child isn't raised and taught these values exclusively by a father…"
Which doesn't show that it wasn't considered vital; just that it didn't always happen.
"…and especially in Modern civilisation…"'
Which doesn't affect the claim about history.
"My greatest criticism of PragerU is that they claim to use facts and statistics but he didn't actually state any figures in this video…"
They didn't claim figures in this video, and a general claim about using facts and figures is not undermined by an exception to the rule.
"…when they do use statistics, it is from studies which have been disproved by many…"
That's a case of you using one unsupported claim to support another claim. I would suggest that the supposed disproof of those studies are themselves contested.
"…as the author has not had them peer reviewed or even qualified for their study."
As is the case with many of the rebuttals.
"…he states that he's a psychologist but he's not, he's in fact a psychological assistant and the only reason he's allowed to call himself it is because the state of Minnisota (if I remember correctly) allows him to."
Umm, so he's legally allowed to call himself a psychologist, but you know better?
"I got all this information from a YouTube video critiquing that video and it brings up many objective points about how reliable the "psychologist" is."
Was that video peer-reviewed? Or is that only needed for arguments supporting PragerU?
"I can give you the name of the video if you'd like,..."
Okay. It won't support your point that "any" PragerU video has numerous fault, but I'm prepared to look at it.
Ah, that's in another comment that's in my notifications, but not here! I'll look for it.
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@harrisonw6065
Okay, I found the video you mentioned, and from that found the PragerU video, which I watched first, then watch the "debunking" one.
I wasn't terribly impressed with the PragerU one, based on my personal experience as a child. I did agree with his claim that an obedient child is a happy child (in general, and I guess conditional on that obedience being to loving parents, not tyrants), and with being authoritative. I can accept his point about not getting down to a child's level as being generally not a good idea. I did balk at him saying that a parent should not explain, as explanations can always be disputed. I'm strongly of the belief that a parent should explain why they have to do something (where practicable). But not to convince them to do it, but so that they know that their parents have good reason. Having explained, the parent should insist on the child doing why they are told because the parent says so (as he says). Yes, explanations can be disputed, but no explanations can lead to resentment on the basis that the commands seem to be arbitrary and can lead to the child doing things that they have been told not to do, once they are not under their parents' control.
Now for the rebuttal. It's bias, condescension, and approach was not becoming. It extremely-quickly flashed "not a PhD" on the screen with no explanation at that point, but implying that if you don't have a PhD your views are completely worthless. That is no allowance for experience or lesser qualifications (which he apparently does have).
To rebut the video's claim, the Bee (the presenter) cited opposing views, a tactic that is commonly used by the media and the left. That is, one way to "rebut" an argument is to find someone who disagrees, and present them as being the last word on the subject. And yet academia is rife with leftists who bias their studies according to their beliefs. To take one rather extreme (or is it?) example in a different field, a researcher in the transgender field (he earned a PhD in gender history) later admitted "The problem is: I was wrong. Or, to be a bit more accurate, I got things partly right. But then, for the rest, I basically just made it up." But this is not just a case of one bad apple. he added "Everyone was (and is) making it up. That’s how the gender-studies field works."
So back to the rebuttal video. It claims that the advice is "out of date", which is a way of saying that modern leftist activist academics have argued differently to academics in the past. But does that make it true? Well, no, because these academics, more than in the past, are typically Marxists (atheists) or at least leaning that way.
Bee admits that Robert Larzelere, one of the sources, is a genuine academic, but, horror of horrors, he advocates for spanking which "most other parently scholars consider child abuse". Well, it can be if done improperly, but not, it's not child abuse. That is another modern leftist invention.
He is further dismissed because he belongs to an organisation of paediatricians that, unlike the "actual leading" organisation for paediatricians is ... Conservative! See, that's bad right there. This is a video by a leftist who, despite claiming to want to see opposing views, is a dyed-in-the-wool leftist. But of course there's more. That conservative society is pro-spanking, pro-life, anti-LGBTQ, etc.! Frankly that clearly shows them to be the saner organisation. People who want to kill unborn babies. who, contrary to both God's design and science, think that there are more than two genders, who fantasise that a person can change their gender, and other completely bonkers idea, have no credibility with sensible, fact-based, people.
And just to top it off, this organisation is cited by the extremely bigoted (not that Bee said that) Southern Poverty Law Center. Probably another reason to like them.
And yet, she makes the claim that the video's sources "are a little, let's say.. questionable". She should look at her own sources which are anti-Christian, ant-scientific, and anti-life.
And obviously Bee is anti-Christian too, because one of the presenter's faults is in using "biblical psychology". She doesn't explain what is wrong with basing some of his views on the world's best-selling book, written by God Himself, that is the basis for Western Civilisation, and which resulted in its followers starting public hospitals abolishing slavery, introducing universal education, spreading democracy, founding science, and so much more. No, according to Bee, that he bases some of his views on such a solid book "speaks for itself". Well, it does, but not in the way that she thinks.
Ironically, the video pauses to point out that it's an "essay ... based on opinion". Yep. That bit's accurate.
To summarise, this "rebuttal" is claiming that the PragerU video is wrong based on finding leftist academics who disagree, and is itself bigoted against Christian and other conservative views. While there might be a valid point or two hiding in that video somewhere, it's basically garbage, and as such fails to show the PragerU video to be wrong. And, as I think I mentioned, this is the problem with a lot of anti-PragerU videos. They are simply by people with a different worldview who argue not from accepted or demonstrable facts, but from that worldview.
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@harrisonw6065
"you yourself are arguing from a world-view…"
Absolutely. We all do.
"…and not from a pure perspective of objectivity…"
That doesn't follow. Part of my worldview is to be objective.
"Christianity is, in essence, where you derive your opinion from in many topics."
To be accurate, I derive my views from God, via His book, the Bible. Christianity is also based on that. But then, God being infallible and omniscient (all-knowing), that's surely a good basis for deriving one's views.
"But to base your entire arguments from a purely religious stand point…"
How are you using the word "religious"? I said that I was basing my views on God, not on a religion. And many Christians don't consider Christianity to be religious. (I disagree, but it gets down to which definition of the word one is using, hence my question.)
"…is not wise since ( I know this is going to anger you) there is not enough substantial evidence to support the existence of a God…"
No, it won't anger me. I've encountered this claim many, many, times. But I reject it as utterly baseless, as there is heaps of evidence.
"…other than "the world's best selling book" which was written by Jesus' disciples who could've been a normal man, a lunatic, a cult leader etc…"
You don't know what you are talking about. First, the Bible was written by a range of people (princes, kings, judges, preachers, fishermen, etc.) over more than 1500 years. Only the last third, the New Testament, was written by Jesus' followers. Second, although God used humans to write it (like a celebrity might use a professional 'ghost writer' to write his autobiography for him), it is ultimately God's book with His authority and His guarantee of accuracy.
Third, a "normal man" doesn't go around claiming to be God, and a lunatic doesn't manage to rise from the dead. "Cult leader" may be technically accurate, but has bad connotations that are inapplicable here.
"…and the point is that because of this all religion is is just a theory just like the Big Bang theory or evolution."
No, in the case of Christianity (not all religious are the same, you know), it's quite different. Christianity is based on historical evidence of God's revelation; people actually witnessed and experienced what God did, including Jesus performing miracles and rising from the dead. That is, it's evidence-based. The Big Bang and goo-to-you evolution were not witnessed by anybody; they are based on an evidence-free philosophical view of naturalism. I can demonstrate that fact.
"…I genuinely cannot provide any more utility to sway your opinion…"
Because you have little that is not worldview-based, i.e. a worldview that I don't accept.
"…you may view this as a victory…"
Which it is, in the sense that you made a claim that I challenged on the grounds that you couldn't substantiate it, and you didn't substantiate it. I wasn't trying to show that my views are right, but that you can't substantiate your views.
"…that doesn't disqualify me from entering discussions and weighing up how reliable other people's words are and if I can do that, so can you."
Of course it doesn't. But a bit of advice from someone older. Rather than start with saying that something is wrong, start with questioning why it's right. Your first contribution in this thread was to make a far-reaching claim ("you could literally watch any PragerU video and disprove…"), whereas my first contribution in this thread started with "Why?", and my first to you was not to express a contrary view, but to challenge you to substantiate yours ("Prove it"). When a person makes a claim, they have the onus to back it up if challenged. (You didn't do this, but I've often had people make a claim and then when I challenge it, they expect me to prove them wrong; that's back to front.) Starting with a question rather than a claim puts you in a better position to make your case.
"Have a good one and it's been interesting to chat."
You too. I've enjoyed it.
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@paulrevere2379
"You seem to be a true critical thinker."
Thank you.
"It's often not easy to make a clear point (at least not for everyone) on a complex issue with few words in this medium."
Probably why I often use more than a few! 😜
"My point about the homelessness of Jesus is to contrast it with the utterly wrongful view many people have these days in seeing "homelessness" as a particular form of misconduct."
I'm not sure that I completely follow, and that may in part be because I'm not all that familiar with the attitudes of the sort of people you are talking about. And although there is a homelessness problem here in Australia, perhaps attitudes are a little different in the U.S.
The way I see it—and I'm definitely generalising, knowing that there will be many different circumstances—is that homelessness is often a problem the 'victims' bring upon themselves in some way. Perhaps alcoholism or other drug addiction, perhaps family breakdowns, perhaps refusal to reconcile, and so on. I'm not therefore suggesting that they are only getting what they deserve and therefore should suffer the consequences. The Christian way is to help people who need help, and they surely do. But I reject the attitude that they are innocent victims who should be able to expect government handouts. The way to help them is to get them off the drugs and help them back into productive society, but that probably requires a change of attitude and/or worldview. Government handouts that simply assume that giving them free accommodation or similar will solve the problem will come up short, because it doesn't address the core problem that got them there—or on the path to there—in the first place.
That appears to be consistent with some of your comments, such as allusions to homeless being a symptom.
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@paulrevere2379
"I could go on, but I've provided enough..."
And yet you then continue with two more comments! 😜
I appreciate the thought and effort that you have put into this. And much of what you say I could agree with. But I'm not convinced that you're not a bit harsh.
"This PragerU video begins right off with a clear inference that The big problem is one of optics."
I don't agree. It mentions that "you literally face it every day", but I don't see any inference in that comment that optics is the main problem.
"...that the problem of drugs and/or mental health and homelessness are essentially one and the same."
Again, I disagree. They cite data to support the claim that "approximately three quarters of people living in cars, tents, and on the streets suffer from serious mental illness, drug addiction, or both". So on one hand there is obviously another quarter who are homeless for other reasons, and on the other hand there is no inference that mental illness and drug addiction are no also a problem with non-homeless people. So no, I can't see that they're saying that the two are essentially one and the same.
"The video implies that the increase (double in some cases) in homeless populations in the West coast cities is from "homeless" people moving away from one place to get free services in those west coast cities."
I'm not sure what you're questioning here. That the homeless people move, or that the motive is free services.
On the former, the video states (not implies ) that for San Francisco "it is estimated" that 30% came there from somewhere else. I guess you could challenge their source, but they did at least have a basis for saying what they said. It also said that for Seattle the figure is 51%, and the source of that figure is a much better one. HOWEVER, it appears to me from a quick look that they have cited the wrong figure. My first thought (after noticing this) was that they have cited the figure for those already there (51.6%) instead of moving there, but (a) that is actually the percentage of those in shelter who were already there (the percentage not in shelter is a bit lower), and elsewhere the source says that 70% were already in Seattle or King County (I assume that's where Seattle is) when they became homeless. So the actual figure for moving there is 30%, which although quite different to the supposed 51%, is actually in line with the San Francisco figure!
Another detail that the video didn't mention is that in Seattle, they found that 15.4% moved there "To access homeless services", which supports the video's claims as to why, even if not on the percentage. (The biggest factor was supposedly because "Family/friends live there" (35.4%), which I struggle to understand; why move to be with or close to family/friends if they are not going to help with accommodation?)
"While partly based on truth, it is blatant spin which diverts attention away from more fundamental problems imo."
I saw that part as trying to explain only a more general point, that the numbers of homeless is significantly affected by government policies, that being merely one way that government policies are a factor.
"Simply put, it seems clear to me that even PragerU would rather choose the easier path of gross oversimplification in order to avoid tackling the much tougher core cultural problems..."
You could make that charge, but on the other hand, these videos are intentionally short in order to reach more people, so I'd think it's more likely that gross simplification is for that reason rather than to avoid anything.
"The two keys to apply to the issue imo are these. #1 Personal face to face involvement."
In one sense, I strongly agree with that. However, the other side of the coin is that government (and other) attitudes and policies are without much doubt a big factor, so if you don't also deal with those, you're going to find the face-to-face involvement much harder. And (in a different sense) you say as much yourself.
"The video equates Property Crime with homelessness,..."
Again, I disagree that it equates it. There is nothing I saw in the video saying that property crime does not occur with non-homeless people. (Otherwise I agree with your comments about Portland and Seattle.)
"As someone who really appreciates most of what PragerU puts out, I hope that my criticism would carry more weight than that which comes from the left."
Given your detailed analysis (even though I don't fully agree with it), I would hope you're correct on that, given the drivel and slogans and falsehoods that typically come from the left. That is, even though I think your wrong in some respects, you're at least making a good attempt at making a reasoned case.
You know that Melbourne has been ranked as the world's most liveable city several times (albeit not currently)? And yet you didn't get to this part? You don't know what you missed! 😜
I'm not sure that Australia's age ranges are really any different to America's. You're observation on complying with government policy may be correct. At least I would agree that the country as a whole is more to the left than in America, although with both countries having a political spectrum that's very wide, that might be hard to quantify.
"... smaller population and hopefully fewer levels of bureaucracy."
Governmentally, there are three levels (federal, state, and local), despite the "small" population (about 25 million in a country about the size of the U.S.) and many consider this to be too much (I don't necessarily agree), but ...
"People don't equate Australia with heavy corruption,..."
... you're right, in my opinion, but possibly because we elect only the parliamentarians (and local council members). Judges, police chiefs, etc. are not elected.
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"PragerU knows it's audience. It knows that confirmation bias is a powerful thing and that the viewers will use this video to reinforce their contrarian beliefs about climate science, ecology, epidemiology, and even evolution in extreme cases."
And the mainstream media knows their audience. It knows that confirmation bias is a powerful thing and that its viewers will use their articles and videos to reinforce their beliefs about climate science, ecology, epidemiology, and evolution.
So your point is? Other than including the word "contrarian" solely on the basis that they don't agree with the left? That is, the left is, of course, correct, and anyone with different views must be "contrarian". After all, the left needs to make an insult somewhere, given that they have trouble actually making a rational argument.
"But not by people who never went to college, who are this channel's target audience..."
Why did you just switch from the teacher to the student? That's a false equivalence.
"...and who most certainly don't have a legitimate reason to doubt peer reviewed scientific research."
Other than all the known problems with peer review? Sure, no other reason. For example, the climate scientists who wanted to take over a peer-review publication that was disagreeing with them. Or the fact that peer review tends to reinforce popular views and weed out unpopular ones even if the unpopular ones have evidence? (I think peer-review is a good thing if done properly, by the way.)
"If this man is a well educated scientist,..."
He apparently is.
"...he has a right to try to disprove things through research."
Glad you agree. He also has a right to teach us ignoramuses (as you seem to think we are). And yet, before you even see the video, you're trying to undermine its legitimacy.
"Uneducated viewers have no legitimate reason to believe they know better than modern scientists though."
Thanks for slandering all of us as "uneducated". You seem to have a very low opinion of your fellow man. But you are wrong, in any case. I do have legitimate reason to believe that I know better than modern scientists in the case that their conclusions are based on worldviews that I don't agree with. As is the case with evolution, which is a claim about history, (not empirical science, because the past cannot be observed, measured, tested, nor repeated), and which is based on a principle that excludes supernatural explanations even if they are true. Why should I accept the conclusions of scientists with that bias?
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I don't know for sure. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, or at least that is the language that we have the earliest extant manuscripts of it in.
However, I seriously question your claim that "Moses did not speak or read Hebrew, he spoke Aramaic.". Moses was raised in the Egyptian royal family, and would have spoken some form of Egyptian. But he was very likely bilingual, or perhaps even knew several languages. What's your reason for thinking that Hebrew was not one of his languages?
Further, there is a lot of misinformation about when Moses lived. According to the Bible, it was (just from memory; I might have this wrong) around 1500 BC, but if you try to apply that to Egyptian history, it won't make a lot of sense, because Egyptian chronology is full of holes. So various people have tried to determine when in Egyptian history the exodus happened and come up with quite different answers. And as the Egyptian language changed over time that then affects which Egyptian language was in use in Moses' time.
Which all suggests that it's not an easy question to answer.
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@kiwiman358
"still not proof or a source on "burning all the major cities" "
Yes, he did exaggerate. But he's not otherwise materially wrong.
"...there were very few in comparison to all the peaceful protestest..."
A claim I would not accept without evidence, given how widespread the violence was, even in the vicinity of reporters calling it mostly peaceful.
"...most importantly these cases have been condemnd by almost all of the people who supported the cause..."
You mean like the now VP raising money to bail out these people? Oh wait, that's the opposite of condemnation. Perhaps you mean like the journalist who questioned whether the constitution said that protests had to be peaceful. Oh, no, that's also the opposite of condemnation.
"... on the other hand, people on the right are still defending or denying the insurection."
You mean that largely-peaceful protest in which a very few people got violent and no more than a few hundred even trespassed (peacefully)? And in which the only person killed was an unarmed white woman shot by a police officer? I don't deny that happened, but I do deny that it amounted to an insurrection in anything more than a pedantic technical sense, and certainly that it was the greatest threat to democracy that America has seen, as claimed by the loony left that want to demonise anything that Trump was involve with, even falsely claiming that he caused this kerfuffle.
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@kiwiman358
"...he was also wrong, as only a few builings ever took any damage through the protests..."
Define what you mean by "few".
"...the lie ... is simply not true."
Well, if it was true, it wouldn't be a lie, would it!
"...the lie that the protests led to whole cities burning down is simply not true."
A claim that I can't say I've ever heard in serious conversation. A lot of buildings being burnt in a lot of cities, yes, but "whole cities"? I can't say I've ever heard of that claim. It sounds rather like a straw-man.
"...when it comes to wheter or not the protests were peaceful, most sources claim that 93 - 95% of the protests were peaceful, which is a good amount in my oppinion."
That depends on your perspective. In some circumstances five to seven percent is a high figure, whereas in other circumstances that would be considered a low figure. It also depends on how violent. From what I saw, there was far too much violence, and certainly a lot more than the 6th January incident.
"...of cource this will not change your mind as you said that you dont care about the evidence."
I said no such thing. Ouch! I did say that! I meant "A claim I would not accept withOUT evidence..." I've corrected that.
"Kamala Harris did not personally bail any protesters out, she only advertised a fund for bailing out protestors."
I never said that she did personally. I said that she was "raiding" (sic; another typo I've fixed) money to bail people out. Which advertising for the fund qualifies as.
"...regardless Kamala Harris does not represent BLM or any protestors, so she doesn't matter."
It matters to your claim that "these cases have been condemnd by almost all of the people who supported the cause".
"I have not seen any journalists question whether protesters have to be peaceful,..."
I said that from memory, and I was incorrect in mentioning the constitution in that. But it was CNN's Chris Cuomo who said "Please, show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful." That exact quote should be plenty for you to confirm the claim.
"...even if they did, it is fine to question and discuss the constitution. "
He wasn't questioning the constitution, he was trying to justify or downplay the violence.
"...none of this actually matters much, because what matters is that most of the protesters have many times condemd the looters and violent protesters."
That's not in evidence.
"...the definition of insurection is "an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government" "
Like the BLM etc. rioters did? They were never described as insurrectionists. And the 6th January protestors were not revolting against the government, but against the 'stolen' election. And yes, it was 'stolen' at the very least in how the mainstream media had a constant attack on Trump for four years, in how the social media censored pro-Trump view, etc. There are also good grounds, even if not proof, for thinking it was rigged in other ways too.
"...this is definitly what happened on jan 6."
No, not definitively. Technically, perhaps, but not really.
"...it is historical that any group of people have "invaded" the capitol."
I don't know what you're trying to say there.
"...any on the right can't accept what happened and the consiquenses it could have had"
The reason I can't accept that the election was a fair one is because the evidence says otherwise.
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@kiwiman358
"somewhere around 5%"
Five percent of all buildings? That's a LOT!
"The violence of the protests compared to the Jan. 6. Insurrection have very little to do with the definition or the consequences of the insurrection."
True, but it has a lot with how that one incident is compared to the widespread, far more violent, BLM 'protests'.
"No, Kamala Harris doesn’t represent the opinions and ideas of the BLM protesters,..."
You claimed that "these cases have been condemnd by almost all of the people who supported the cause". Harris clearly supported the cause. You're now moving the goal posts.
"...the protesters condemning the looters actions, which can be seen though interviews and from actual representatives of the protestors intents opinions."
I believe that I have seen otherwise, but I don't know where to find that now, so I won't take that further.
"... its one guy saying something stupid."
That "one guy" is a prominent CNN reporter, and there was also the CNN reporter who claimed that the protests were "mostly peaceful" while standing in front of a fire set by 'protesters'.
"Whats more interesting is that you still believe that the election is stolen, despite all reliable evidence,..."
What reliable evidence?
"I could say the same thing for Bernie, who did not get much good publicity from the media either,..."
Nothing as bad as Trump got.
"In addition, bad publicity from the media doesn’t mean the election was stolen."
I didn't claim that it does. But wall-to-wall bad publicity and censorship does.
"In the end through all the court hearings, ..."
Most cases were not taken up by the courts for various reasons. That is, they did not actually investigate.
"...there has been no evidence of the election being stolen."
False.
"Provide one source that proves otherwise."
Proves that it was stolen? I already said that there is evidence, but not necessarily proof. Or a source that proves that there is evidence ?
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@kiwiman358
"I meant 5% of protests not being peaceful, nothing to do with buildings."
One things that annoys me is people only half-answering questions, and therefore not really answering. You claimed that "…as only a few buildings ever took any damage through the protests…" So I asked what you meant by "few". Your answer was "somewhere around 5%", without saying what that was five percent of. Now you claim that it was nothing to do with buildings, but you explicitly referred to buildings.
"No, it doesn’t, few people portray the insurrection as a violent attack or whatever,…"
Not true. The frequently call it both violent and deadly.
"The claim about BLM protests being “far more violent” has very little proof and there is no evidence that anyone has been killed by protesters during the protests."
There were numerous people killed by the BML protests. You could only deny that by drawing a distinction between the peaceful protests and the non-peaceful protests and rejecting the non-peaceful ones as not actually protestors.
"Additionally, the right claims there was only a white woman killed by police who died from Jan. 6., but this is not true, because in the aftermath of Jan. 6. Up to 4 police officers have committed suicide, most likely because of the insurrection,…"
I note the unverified "most likely". And that you concede that they weren't killed by the protestors, despite your desperate attempts to link them.
"…nor do I think Kamala supported the cause at all, she used it for populism, nothing more."
Okay, so her support was not really support because you think she had a different motive. Got that.
"…that other guy was not wrong saying “mostly peaceful” which is true statistically."
Maybe, although that's not in evidence. But the media didn't call the 6th January incident "mostly peaceful". Because they have an agenda.
"Evidence:"
Ummm, yeah? Well, there's a lot of stuff there, so I can't go through it all, but from the quick look I've had of it, I'm not convinced.
campaignlegal: It tends to quote only critics, not defenders. It's coverage of the Maricopa audit is clearly biased, again citing mainly critics of it, and not defenders. It's labelling of the Arizona Senate's intensive audit as "highly questionable" is clear bias, and their claim that it's "methods of doing a recount are not transparent" is blatantly false, or at best cherry-picking, given that its methods were very open, fully explained, and broadcast live.
apnews: The reporting is very one-sided. I have no doubt that some of the claims about voter fraud, etc., were false. But this report simply picks out the ones that go against Trump, omitting the ones that support him.
I've given Wikipedia a miss, given that it's definitely biased and doesn't even claim to be truthful.
I skipped the second apnews one.
aljazeera: A story about Dominion suing news outlets, a case that is yet to be conducted, is not "evidence".
And it's been shown that the fact-checking organisations are biased and inaccurate too, so that's hardly a good source.
"Show one source which proves otherwise, the burden of proof is on you."
Did any of them (not that I saw), refute the evidence of social media censorship of news favourable to Trump?
"Well, I disagree, Trump at least had Fox News and OAN to help him, unlike Bernie."
But Trump had many more outlets against him, parroting the Democrats invented charges.
"Sure, censorship might, but Trump was not censored, ..."
Nonsense. First, I didn't refer just to direct censorship of Trump. What about the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the newspaper that ran it? But even Trump was censored in that the mainstream media often didn't accurately report what he said and did. That he was free in -some venues to speak does not mean that he was not censored in others. That's just misleading spin.
"And no, bad publicity does not reduce the elections legitimacy."
Deeply deceptive publicity does.
"Wrong again, you keep lying, are you bad faith or don’t do research?"
Not wrong, not lying, no bad faith, and I've done research.
The reuters link is another so-called 'fact checker' by journalists, that actually 'fact-checks' a different claim, a Facebook post that claimed that “Not one court has looked at the evidence and said that Biden legally won. Not one” Even that report concedes that a case brought by Texas was not investigated by the court. It doesn't mention that when Trump tried to bring the same case, it was also dismissed without being heard.
"Provide it then."
I have; the election interference by much of the mainstream media and social media.
"You’re admitting it is a conspiracy theory without proof or evidence then, well what a waste of time."
I did no such thing. So can I accuse you of lying? I explicitly said that there is evidence, and yet here you are claiming that I admitted to there being no evidence. That's pretty good evidence of you lying. (Not to mention your claim that your comment was nothing to do with buildings.) Or failing to read what I wrote. And I never even mentioned it being a conspiracy. You simply made that up.
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@100percentSNAFU
"So, ask a scientist which one it was, and the answer you will get is that nobody knows."
While your overall response is great, this line is not. Some scientists may answer that, but others will answer with one of the three explanations you mention. In summarising the views of Alan Guth, one of the leading Big Bang theorists, Discover magazine said this:
"The universe burst into something from absolutely nothing—zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. How is that possible? Ask Alan Guth. His theory of inflation helps explain everything."
So Guth would answer with your first explanation, despite that being contrary to cause and effect, a basic principle of science.
Others go with the second option, of the multiverse, often said to have been invented or become popular precisely to avoid the third option. Of course that is an evidence-free metaphysical explanation, so, strictly speaking, outside the realm of science.
The third option is therefore the only one with any credibility. But because that implies a God to whom we are all answerable, many don't like that answer so will opt for one of the other two bizarre answers.
"...because none have been proven."
Actually the third one has been "proven", depending on what is meant by that word. That is, there is sufficient evidence for the third option to have convinced people, which amounts to it being proven in their minds.
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@ExistenceUniversity
"It's a misconception that you cannot prove a negative."
The misconception is that I made that claim. I said that you can't prove a universal negative. I can prove that there are no matches in this matchbox, but not that there are no matches in the entire country, because it's impossible to search everywhere in the country.
"Is there a tea cup in orbit around the sun? Did anyone make a cup and send it into space? No"
How do you know nobody did?
"God is interacting with the world, but the world cannot interact with God."
And yet people do all the time.
"God and physics are opposite, ..."
In what way? I am not my house, but that doesn't mean that I'm the opposite of a house. Which I made by the way (albeit by hiring builders). We both exist, even though one is a living thing and the other isn't (so in that limited sense we are opposites).
"physics exist because it is physical ..."
Huh? That doesn't make sense.
"...the universe is full of physical objects."
You've checked every part of it, have you? Actually, the statement is false anyway. The universe contains information, numbers, etc. that are not physical.
"... the universe is full of physical objects. Therefore god is opposite to reality."
You seem to have overlooked that, in one sense, God is outside the universe. So no, your argument is garbled, and your conclusion simply doesn't follow from the premises.
"You cannot prove a negative if you are a skeptic that reality exists. "
As I have shown above, I can prove a (non-universal) negative. And I most certainly believe that reality exists. The physical reality we experience was created by God.
"You give me any "fact" about God and I will demonstrate why and how it is counter to reality, and why it would mean this character must be fictional."
Okay. God is eternal. He has no beginning. He exists outside of time. (Pre-emptive response: your experience of reality not being eternal is of physical reality not being eternal, but God is not physical.)
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@ExistenceUniversity
"I think your issue is that you think your beliefs need to change to have something to be proved."
I'm not sure what that means, but "proof" is not an absolute, but is more a case of being convinced by the evidence, which will vary from person to person.
"To non-insane people that don't believe in "outside of reality",..."
I don't believe in outside of reality, but I don't consider the physical universe to be all of reality. Rather, it's just all of physical reality.
"...your requirement that God is outside the universe..."
That's not a requirement of mine. That's just the nature of things.
"...is the evidence that god doesnt not exist as nothing can be outside the universe."
Why do you think that nothing can be outside the universe? Simply because you define the universe as everything that is? If that's the case, then you would indeed be right. But if the universe is defined as the entirety of the physical, then you need not be right.
"I can prove that your schizophrenia invisible friend is imaginary, it won't cure your schizophrenia and you will continue to BELIEVE."
You seem to be under the delusion that my views are not based on evidence. You would be wrong. Christianity is an evidence-based view. Beliefs do come into it, though, such as the belief that the supernatural is a possibility to be considered. And as for proving, you have now twice failed to refute my claim about God that you said you would.
"If you stop believing and engage in reality, god cannot fit into it."
We all believe. Belief is simply assent to an idea. You assent to the idea that God doesn't exist, i.e. you "believe" that God doesn't exist. The question is whether a particular belief is evidence-based or not. Therefore, you can both "believe" and "engage in reality". The two are not mutually exclusive. Hence your conclusion that God cannot fit into it does not follow from your premises.
"What came before God? Who created him? Your believe requires an infinite regress, which is also counter-reality."
Simply false. There can be no "before God", because that requires time, but time is part of God's creation. He exists outside of time. Further, that means that he doesn't have a beginning, and therefore He was not created. This is basic biblical teaching, which you should know if you knew what you were talking about. Therefore, there is no need for an infinite regress.
The naturalistic view, on the other hand, does require either an infinite regress or a miracle, but without a miracle-worker. The Christian view is sensible, in that it proposes a cause (God) for the beginning of the universe. Do away with that, and you have a universe that has either existed forever (physically impossible, given thermodynamics) or that had an uncaused beginning. That is contrary to our understanding of reality.
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@magatism
"Yep, and you are known by the fruits of destruction you bring on your own people."
STILL making up things.
"Your response is typical to that of the Islamist brigade who claim the same. They too ask for evidence when confronted with logic".
Another falsehood. When I'm confronted with supposed logic, I counter it with logic. I only ask for evidence (which I've not actually done explicitly in this discussion) when people make bald assertions, i.e. without logic or evidence.
"It's written in Bible in black and white, what more evidence do you as a Christian require."
Yes, that parable is written in the Bible. That's not the issue.
"All you are saying is that Jesus told stories which do not mean what they mean."
Not true. I'm saying that Jesus told a story (there's only one we've talked about) which doesn't mean what YOU claim it means.
"The parable is simple, an authorative figure trusted his servants, they stole from him, he sent his son, they killed him and then the master sent his soldiers to deliver justice."
There's a bit more to it than that, but loosely, yes.
"Now compare this with life of Jesus and voila you are proved to be a fake Christian."
That simply does not follow from your previous comment. You have not shown how that parable means that I'm a fake Christian.
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@mylittledashie7419
"Maybe that I've literally just finished 4 years of university, no one told me I needed a "safe space", ...
Okay, but that only shows that it's not the case in your particular experience. That doesn't mean that it's not true in other places, and I don't believe for one moment that anybody's claiming that it's true in every case.
"...clearly I'm not completely afraid of anyone with differing opinions to my own."
You had already effectively said that, and I'd already agreed that that was a fair point to make.
"If the brainwashing of university students is truly so ubiquitous, how come I literally never once encountered any political beliefs from my professors, or the university as an establishment?"
As I said, I don't think anybody's claiming that it's everywhere. But on the other hand, would you recognise it if you did encounter it? People who only hear one side often don't even realise that there IS another side that they're not hearing. Or, to put it another way, what formed your views such that you so readily dismiss the conservative views found on PragerU? Typically, it's parents, peers, mainstream media, social media, or the education system, and not necessarily in that order in terms of influence.
"...I'm sure PragerU has provided ample, peer-reviewed studies that prove how much it "actually" happens."
Given that they didn't actually make any claims about how much it happens, that's not a fair point to make.
"This would still be their safe space."
Not so, and not so even by your own logic, at least as I understood it. You rightly rejected his claim about you having a safe space by the fact that you came here. A safe space is where you avoid hearing alternative views. You came here, so you're not avoiding it. You don't know that he doesn't go elsewhere, so you don't have grounds to say that this is his safe space, i.e. he stays here to avoid hearing other views. I think the issue here is what is meant by "safe space". It's not where you go after hearing opposing views, but to avoid hearing opposing views.
"PragerU is just a hub of right wing circle-jerking and confirmation bias."
Not in evidence.
"They make you believe stuff just by saying it over and over again,..."
Not so. First, they don't "make" you believe anything. Second, they give evidence and/or reasons and/or logic to help you believe. Unlike the left in many (not all) cases).
"...not by actually making good arguments, and providing valid sources."
Again, untrue. They typically make good arguments, and they typically provide valid sources.
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@mylittledashie7419
"Yes, I'm very confident I would've noticed if all of a sudden my professors had started spouting leftist talking points."
I wouldn't expect them to "suddenly" do it. So that's not convincing.
"Literally the only thing I can vaguely think of as a "left wing" belief that was touted by one of my professors, was... the existence of climate change. "
However, you make a strong point there, in that you show that you recognise that as a left wing talking point.
"I rejected the idea that this is my safe space."
I don't think that's what you did, but as I said, I think the issue is of what a 'safe space' actually refers to.
"What is this very video if not a right-wing circle jerk about how spooky leftists control the universities,..."
Whether or not this video is an example of that depends on whether or not they are correct. You're making a circular argument: PragerU is bad because they are wrong. Here's my evidence that they are bad: they are wrong.
"Which for the record, is a proven phenomenon."
Citing Wikipedia is not likely to convince me, but I'm not questioning that the phenomenon exists. The question is whether that's the case here.
"Yeah, logic based on men made of straw. This is the confirmation bias I was talking about."
Again, not in evidence. Yes, this might be the confirmation bias if you're correct. I don't believe that you are.
"Anyone on the left can see how PragerU will constantly tell you "what leftists are like", and "why they believe what they do" and how wildly inaccurate they are about it."
Except that I can see for myself that they are correct. No, not in every details, but (not in a university) I have encountered leftists just like some of their descriptions, and I'm in a completely different country.
"If you don't already agree with PragerU, it's clear how much the misrepresent, how much relevant information they deliberately leave out, ..."
I agree with them because it fits with other things I have seen. So yes, I "already agree" in a sense, but that agreement is evidence-based.
"...the fact that they never leave links to their sources,..."
Simply false. In the description below many of their videos, they have a link to "FACTS & SOURCES, Transcript, and Quiz", and that page has links to sources.
"Again, I can tell you first hand... they don't."
If I was able to post pictures here, I'd put a screenshot. But they do.
"...only to find they've quoted someone out of context, or cherry picked data,..."
I've heard claims like that (not necessarily about PragerU) many times, only to find that the claim is false. I can't say whether you're wrong or not, because you've provided no examples, but experience tells me to be sceptical of that claim.
"...or completely ignored the conclusions of the people who's information they're pinching."
First, that you refer to them as "pinching" the information shows that you're not being fair. Citing someone is not "pinching" information.
Second, there's nothing wrong with what you accuse them of. That is, there's nothing wrong with citing the facts someone provides while reaching a different conclusion from those facts. I've often seen cases of an expert saying "This is the evidence I've found and this is the conclusion I've reached" where the conclusion doesn't have to follow from those facts, and it's perfectly legitimate to reach a different conclusion.
"Genuine question, how many PragerU videos have you looked at the sources for?"
Not many. On the other hand, I have looked at a handful of anti-PragerU videos and can see that their opposition is ideological and their arguments don't hold water.
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@therick363
"Saying everything we see it because of a God is a belief and interpretation. "
No more so than saying that it's all because of nature, or chance, or whatever.
"Saying because we can’t explain something…therefore it can only be God? Weak argument."
That wasn't his argument. You misrepresented him. He gave evidence in support of the creating having been designed.
"Evolution is one of the most scientifically demonstrated and evidence backed theories there is."
Utter nonsense. Even if you were correct to say that it's scientifically demonstrated and evidence-backed, it's certainly not "one of the most".
"You think alllllll the scientists and teachers would teach a lie for this long and get away with it?"
It's not a lie, if you define that as them claiming things that they know are not true. On the contrary, they really believe it. And yes, they get away with it because of active suppression of the creationary alternative, and because people don't want to believe God did it.
"If it’s a hoax then it should be easy to demonstrate as such..."
Like phlogiston and other past scientific beliefs, it's a 'ruling paradigm' in science currently, and so people won't accept that it's wrong even when it's demonstrated to be wrong. J.B.S. Haldane (I think it was) said that you won't find wheels and magnets in nature, and you won't find 'out of place' fossils (rabbits in the Precambrian was his example). And yet we have since found wheels and magnets in nature, and fossil pollen in the Precambrian. So evolution has been falsified (there are many more examples), and yet people still believe it.
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@phillipstroll7385
"Pay special attention to that which is recorded to have been said by God and Jesus and not so much of what Paul says."
The entire Bible—including Paul's parts—were inspired by God. They are all God's words.
"I'm merely stating what is written..."
No, you're misrepresenting what's written. Some of it is sort of correct, but much isn't.
"...good looked down on all that which he created, every bird in the sky, every animal, every plant every being with disgust and decided to destroy it all. That was before the supposed sin of man."
Absolutely false. It was after sin. About 1600 years after.
"Also, whom exactly created sin? Man or God?"
Sin is rebellion against God. It's a bit like asking who created darkness, when darkness is not a "thing", but an absence of light.
"Just that I have no reason to believe there is one."
And yet there are many reasons. You either haven't looked or you've dismissed them for no good reasons.
"For example: morality was defined long before religion was even created. Any religion btw, not just the hewbraic one."
That conclusion is based on an atheist view of the history of the world, assuming that "religion was ... created" after morality was defined. What's your hard evidence for that? The "Hebraic" religion (Judaism) traces back through Moses to Joseph and Israel to Isaac to Abraham to Noah to Adam. And God. So no, "religion" did not came later. Belief in the creator God has been there from the very beginning.
"The same laws and commandments in the Bible along with every biblical story in the Bible predates the Bible by thousands of years."
According to what chronology? The biblical one or an atheist/secular one?
"Case in point. God is all for abortion. The Bible is very clear on this."
Utter rubbish. And I note that you don't cite anything in support.
"Neither God nor Jesus ever said anything about forgiveness of sins..."
What about where Jesus actually forgives sins Himself?
"People claim the ten commandments God spoke are invalid negate Jesus came in fulfillment."
Sorry, but that's barely coherent.
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@The King of Nature
"PragerU failing at life advice we get stuff like Brad Wilcox telling you to marry and have kids extremely early without financial security, because some guy in the military ended up making 6 figures that way."
I take it you're referring to the video titled "Is Marriage Good for Men?"
The first issue I see with your claim is that you reckon he made his claim on the basis of one example. That is patently false.
"This means that all your freedom in career options is just gone,…"
It does? Since when?
"…your boss can exploit you however they want because you need to have a job or your wife and kids (yes this video is aimed at men specifically) will suffer the consequences."
That is an unjustified criticism. There is nothing (in principle, and it's principles that we are talking about here) stopping the person from leaving that job for another.
"The guy in the video also didn't have a useful degree or anything, he was extremely irresponsible and he got lucky."
The example case? That was just an example, as I've pointed out. The argument was NOT based on a single example.
"Telling people to start a family before you have the job security you need, one that you might not be able to afford and one where the wife doesn't work (which is implied) will probably backfire and give you a one way ticket into poverty."
Well, he's done the research. Where's yours to show he's wrong?
"…this kind of thinking will ensure that every problem without a personal solution, that won't solve itself is guaranteed to stay."
"ensure"? How so?
"PragerU supports socio-economically right wing policies…"
And there your bias is displayed. It's not their arguments that you disagree with, but their worldview. If they are "right wing", then they MUST be wrong.
"…as well as "personal responsibility"."
Yep. A characteristic of the Judeo-Christian ethic that underlies Western Civilisation that has made it the freest, most successful, civilisation the world has seen.
"So when something like global warming comes along, where personal solutions are only a small part of fixing the actual problem and the rest of it is about holding coorporations accountable,…"
Why isn't that a case of holding those individual corporations personally accountable?
"…it's not hard to see why PragerU's policies and climate change denial go hand in hand."
Are you saying that PragerU denies that the climate changes?
"They get one expert (Richard Lindzen) in the field of climate physics to agree with them,…"
Did he agree with them, or them with him? After all, if he's the expert, presumably they are his own views. And what's your point anyway? That they picked one when they could have picked many?
"…his sources for why climate change is not a big deal are obviously biased,…"
I completely agree with that. His sources are obviously biased towards the evidence and the truth, unlike the bias of the climate change alarmists who are not actually interested in climate change but in tearing down the basis of Western Civilisation.
"…sometimes literally just his own opinions…"
Okay, the opinions of experts don't count now?
"These are only two examples of PragerU giving advice…"
So I thought you were trying to say that they give bad advice? You haven't shown that. All you've done is present your own competing opinions.
"But that's the thing, I actually pick apart positions from my opponents."
You mean like I'm doing with yours?
"The videos where you can find these are titled "be a man, get married" "fix yourself" and "climate change, what do the scientists say"."
Now you tell me! Hang on while I check those ones out.
Oh, the first one is the one I watched, with a different title. So I've taken care of that one.
On the Peterson one, you have misrepresented him. The video is not about all the problems of the world, but the personal problems individuals have in their relationships. There is nothing in there that talks about how one should or should not tackle larger issues, nor that all issues can be solve by individuals. You're criticising it for what it doesn't say about things that it's not talking about!
On the climate change one, I see that PragerU (assuming that this represents their view) does NOT deny that the climate changes. Rather, the video talks about the non-scientists pushing the alarmism, plus the group of scientists who are part of that climate alarmism.
"That's how you can tell that none of these are strawmen."
You know, the nice thing about critics who get specific, such as mentioning an actual video, is that you can more readily check them out and potentially find out, as in this case, that they ARE actually straw-men.
"While you did the "the left does/says:" trick twice in this very discussion already."
What trick? You have misrepresented the videos, thereby supporting my comment. Which I made only once, by the way.
"For all I know, you're arguing against positions no one actually holds."
It seems that I was arguing against positions that you hold, so I guess you now know.
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@The King of Nature
"…they value job security more from which it logically follows that they value financial freedom less."
It does? How? I'd think that the opposite follows. Financial freedom comes from having money to do what you want, not from being free to quit a job and be without work for a while.
"Because the ability to take financial risks is smaller."
When you don't have financial freedom.
"Starting a family before having the job security you need to sustain it isn't a one way ticket into poverty but it is a horrible and incredibly selfish descision regardless."
In your opinion. I don't believe that it follows.
"If you fail to get a stable high enough income, you didn't just screw over yourself but your spouse and children as well."
Living involves taking risks. I'm not disputing that there is a risk to it, but there's also a risk to not doing it. There being a risk doesn't mean that its "horrible and incredibly selfish".
"…you are talking about principle, I'm talking about moral/logical descision making. He can in principle abandon his family as well,"
My use of "in principle" did not mean "in theory", but more along the lines of a principled decision, i.e. moral. I equated it to "talking about principles ".) So no, your "in principle abandon his family" is not the equivalent of my use of it; you're using the word in a different way.
"…the issue is that he shouldn't, just like he shouldn't quit his job without a new one because that can horribly backfire on himself and other people."
Abandoning his family is morally wrong. Quitting his job without a new one may (or may not) be unwise, but it's not morally wrong. He may not have a definite new one, but likely prospects, or his family might agree that it's worth taking the risk. Or he might have some other fall-back plan.
"Well he says that we shouldn't look to fix the world, and only ourselves. He literally says "a proper way to fix the world isn't to fix the world"."
He does. But again, the focus of the video is on personal problems, so this is a side comment. Secondly, it doesn't follow that "every problem without a personal solution, that won't solve itself is guaranteed to stay". If everyone fixes themselves, then what problems remain?
"So anything that doesn't have a personal solution, we shouldn't attempt to solve, leaving the problem solving itself as our only remaining option."
I'll concede a minor point. But only minor. In other videos, I'm sure he says that you can fix other problem, once you're learned how to fix your own. And this video is not a comprehensive treatment of the topic, but just a quick look focusing on fixing personal problems. P.S. I've since noticed that you later agree that this is not a major point.
"…this single line is just a total blunder."
So it's just a single-sentence blunder, not evidence of PragerU not teaching life skills.
"Ah yes the good old assuming intent."
You're the one that brought up political position.
"It is an obvious fact that PragerU supports socio-economically right wing policies."
I'm sure that they also support eating breakfast and driving on the correct side of the road, and a whole host of things, but you chose to mention that one as though it was relevant. It wasn't just a random fact.
"They're ill-equipped to handle climate change due to their stances on not trying to solve larger problems and them being capitalists..."
What stance on not trying to solve larger problems? You've conceded that Peterson's line was just a blunder, not (apparently) a deliberate or key point. And capitalist societies have the best record on protecting the environment, so supporting capitalism does not mean that you're opposed to "handling" climate change.
"...but the biggest reason is that they're funded by oil billionaires so don't lecture me about bias."
Why not? What's wrong with being funded by oil billionaires? Why even mention that if not for bias against that sort of funding?
"Please cite the many experts who agree with Lindzen.."
No way am I going to try and track down a comprehensive list, but Peter Ridd, the late Bob Carter, and Ian Plimer (although I'm no fan of his), are among them. P.S. I just happened across some more: Lennart O. Bengtsson, John Christy, Roy Spencer, Judith Curry, and Nir J. Shaviv.
"That's the most childlike bastardisation of the climate debate I have ever seen."
Except that it's not.
"Do you have ANYTHING to back up these wild claims about the "alarmists" intentions,..."
Of course. Extinction Rebellion (XR) co-founder, Stuart Basden said:
“And I’m here to say that XR isn’t about the climate. You see, the climate’s breakdown is a symptom of a toxic system that has infected the ways we relate to each other as humans and to all life.”
But if you want to dismiss him as a crank or outsider, then this is what German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer said:
"But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole."
"If the expert in question uses his own opinion as a source for his own opinion than he shouldn't be taken seriously."
What's your evidence that he's doing that rather than expressing an expert view?
"And a paper with "do not cite" written on every page but you're still casually ignoring that."
Your claim was vague. What paper? And what's your evidence as to why it has that?
"Yes this is subjective, "
So the claim is meaningless.
"Lindzens video doesn't imply that climate change isn't real. It implies that the damage won't be so bad..."
Which you misleadingly label as "climate changed denial"
" "sponsored by oil billionaires" ."
So? Is that worse than being sponsored by leftist governments? And some oil companies are on board with the climate alarmism, so simply being oil billionaires proves little. And at least they are spending their own money and not the taxpayers'.
"well to that you would reply "Okay, the opinions of experts don't count now?" "
No, I would point out that views are divided (plus a whole lot other things).
"But seriously are we just going to ignore his sources for saying all of this... again."
We shouldn't. But then we shouldn't ignore the sources of the alarmists either. Nor their biases, nor their funding, nor their failed predictions. Nor the non-empirical aspect of basing so much on computer models.
"…and one by Lawrence Solomon.... the executive director of Energy Probe which is another lobbying organisation."
And being involved with a lobbying organisation means that he can't know what he's talking about. Okay, I see the logic there.
"he rest of this source list is a disaster, see for yourself: "
What's disastrous about it? I see it includes Bjorn Lomborg and the IPCC. I forgot to mention Lomborg earlier.
"They're not the main points of the video's, but they're still claims within them (not strawmen)…"
Given that one was a blunder, and you've not shown I'm wrong on the others, then no, they are still strawmen.
"And any critic who doesn't get specific is no true critic, that's just debunking positions while not being sure if anyone actually holds them, what would be the point of that?"
I'd say "attempting to debunk" rather than "debunking", but otherwise yes, I agree with that.
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@JonGreen91
At first glance, that all sounds very reasonable. But looking a bit closer, I disagree.
First, I think a question here is what does "proven" mean? You can prove something logically, but that assumes the accuracy of the premises. Science doesn't do proofs, so we can discard that one. A criminal court attempts to prove things beyond reasonable doubt. A civil court attempts to prove things on the basis of which is more likely.
You have said "beyond reasonable doubt", implying that you're referring to something akin to criminal court proof. But criminal proof is deliberately biased. It's designed to allow the guilty to go free rather than convict the innocent.
So is that biased process really the type of proof that is reasonable here? Why not civil court proof?
Second, proof, in such cases, is a matter of being convinced by the evidence. A judge is supposed to be unbiased. Ideally, a jury is also unbiased, at least as a group. But are all of us? Is an atheist going to be convinced of the existence of God strictly on the basis of probabilities, or is he going to choose the biased 'beyond reasonable doubt' option? Or even a 'beyond all doubt' option? Because most atheists I talk to seem to want one of those last two options, because they are biased against the idea of God.
Third, we cannot each individually 'prove' all things. So we rely on trust, or faith. For example, there are thousands of peer-reviewed science papers published each year. We cannot personally 'prove' all of them, or even anything beyond a tiny fraction of them. Rather, we trust (or have faith in) the scientists and/or the publishers and the peer-review process. So we accept the outcomes as true. (Or not, if we don't have that faith.)
Fourth, facts are facts regardless of whether or not we are convinced of them.
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@NicolSD
You're incorrect. First, the concept of intelligent design was around well before that, although possibly used mainly used by creationists. The term itself also has a history long predating the 1989 Of Pandas and People. Second, there were books espousing the concept before Of Pandas and People. Books such as The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories (1984) which, apparently, used the term. Then there was Denton's 1985 Evolution, a theory in crisis written by an evolutionist but which is considered a book in the ID camp. As a creationist, I bought that book around the time it it came out, but knowing full well it wasn't a creationist book (the author rejects the Genesis account).
Of Pandas and People probably gave the term and the concept a much wider audience, but it was NOT the first such book, as you claim.
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@unvoicedrocktx3739
"What's funny about 616,377 Dead Americans?"
I never said that it was funny. Rather the opposite, actually.
"The republickan party and their "dear leader" killed them with their corrupt and incompetent response to Covid-19."
Nonsense.
"There are currently just under 2000 Covid-19 deaths in South Korea, because South Korea didn't have donald trump leading their response."
Non-sequitur. A isn't the same as B, therefore X is the cause. But you haven't shown that.
"...a republickan party more interested in pleasing their "leader"..."
Given the amount of opposition to Trump from within the party, even that claim is quite disputable.
"South Koreans did the rational and responsible things to mitigate the spread of a pandemic on a personal level whenever they could... "
As did Trump. For one, he stopped flights from China, and was vilified by the left for doing so.
"Hmm... no national lock down,..."
Lock downs have been shown in various studies to have no effect, and Trump didn't have the power to do that anyway. America is a federation of states, and much of the power belongs to the states (which is probably unlike South Korea).
"...no national mask rule,..."
Again, he didn't have the authority. And of course Fauci originally said that they didn't work.
"...no self-quarantining if you're exposed to Covid-19, and you don't want a vaccination?"
If you're exposed to it, getting a vaccination is too late. But again, the authority for that lies with the states. And various Democrat-run states bungled it big-time. But for political/ideological reasons, you're blaming Trump instead. Trump, by the way, sped up the development of a vaccine, despite the left saying that it couldn't be done.
"Must be a selfish, childish republickan that hates America."
Trying to be a comedian again? It's the left that hates America, at least in the sense of what it stands for and what its values are.
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@100percentSNAFU
"Agreed, in no way is the existence of God proven..."
On the contrary, it is proven in some ways.
"so scientifically you cannot say as such, however religion works on belief and not proof."
Christianity works on faith, which is trust, based on trustworthiness, which is based on evidence. We believe God because what He says that can be checked is true. We believe Jesus is God because that's what the evidence points to. And "belief" simply means agreeing to an idea; it doesn't require that the belief be baseless. So although I've never been there, I can accurately say that I believe that America exists.
"Yes, no man has seen, touched, or proven that God exists."
Apart from Adam, Moses, the people who saw and touched Jesus, and more.
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@blackknightjack3850 What makes you so sure that that is the only thing that justifies that sort of comment? Lots of people have that view, and most, I would suggest, are not being paid by fossil fuel interests. One reason for saying that is that fossil fuels, unlike solar and wind, are very good for providing baseload power, i.e. not subject to the sun shining or the wind blowing.
And you're still not justifying most of your claim. Rather, you make a claim, get challenged on it, then ignore that and make another claim. On the few occasions that you do try and justify a claim, it's on the basis of baseless assumptions, such as in this case of reckoning that there could not be any other reason for his views.
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@tomgachagan1347
"on a legal level it is marriage however."
Yes, various governments, in defiance of God, have declared that to be the case. But just as if they declared that 2+2=5, it doesn't make it so.
"give me an argument against same sex marriage that doesn't involve religion"
What about the argument I've already given? I've already said that I'm not claiming that it's "religious". I'm claiming it as so from history and design. History tells us that God designed people and designed us to be heterosexual and designed marriage as a life-long union of a man and a woman. My argument is from design, not "religion". That you want to put that label on it, and thereby somehow pretend that my main argument is irrelevant, doesn't change any of that.
But to address your point a bit more, as God designed marriage to be between a man an a woman, any forgery of that, such as so-called same-sex 'marriage', can not help but be inferior. So my argument would therefore be that true (God-designed) marriage is, logically, the better way to go in practice. In other words, go against the way that God designed and things will, inevitably, be worse, just like using a book as a hammer won't work very well because that's not what a book is designed for.
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@tomgachagan1347
"why would an all loving god allow us to kill each other in endless wars"
Because we rejected Him, so He gave us what we wanted: life without Him interfering too much. Besides, how do you know He's not actually stopping even worse things from happening? We are suffering the consequences of our own actions; you can't blame Him for what we do. Ergo, your argument completely fails to demonstrate that He doesn't exist.
"...let these horrific illnesses be a thing. a god that allows that to happen is no god I want to follow"
So you don't want to follow a God who has provided everything that you own and use and have access to (including food, life, free will, intelligence, love, happiness, friends, and so much more), plus He's provided a way, at great cost to himself, to be reconciled to Him, merely because He's not stopping us from suffering the consequences of our own actions? If you have a child who keeps doing bad things (throwing bricks through windows, attacking the cat, taking drugs, etc.) but you are somehow able to prevent any consequences to him for that (you pay for the neighbour's window; you somehow stop the cat being hurt (without stopping him from attacking it), you somehow prevent those drugs from having any bad effects), do you think he'll ever learn to be good? Won't he simply do worse and worse things, given that he suffers no consequences? And yet you seem to think that if God really did exist, he MUST, for some reason, stop all the consequences of what we do? Why can't you see that there might be a reason why He allows these things?
Ergo, you have not provided any evidence that He doesn't exist. Your faith in his non-existence is baseless. And yet you would have no coherent explanation of why we exist, of how life started, and so on, without invoking God.
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@loganmyers1489 No, don't link to pages upon pages of research. Link to one to start with, and I'll engage with it. And I'm not a sea lion.
Climate research (at least the questionable part) is mainly models about what will happen in the future, which is of questionable value in the first place, but then given that so many of them have been wrong, it's not just questionable but demonstrably unreliable.
By the way, here's what one of the experts, Christopher Dummit, said:
"The problem is: I was wrong. Or, to be a bit more accurate, I got things partly right. But then, for the rest, I basically just made it up. ... Everyone was (and is) making it up. That’s how the gender-studies field works."
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@NicolSD
"You just claimed that it is not true that the universe is older than 6,000 years old."
Yes, I did.
"Lemaître would dismiss your comment out of hand. Why? A claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
But I have evidence. True, I didn't give it in that comment, but it's readily available and examples are available from me for the asking.
"Especially since the speed of light was already known (for quite a while, might I add) and the distance to the various stars was known."
Yes, and mainstream science's supposed size and age of the universe are known and there has not been enough time for the temperature of the cosmic microwave background to have evened out as much as it is. This is known as the Horizon Problem.
Of course Big Bang theorists have come up with ways around that problem, but then creationist physicists have come up with ways around the problem you mention. So it's not necessarily a problem after all.
"He knew the universe was more than 6,000 years old..."
He believed that it was.
"...and he had no problem reconciling that with his faith."
Yes, well, cognitive dissonance is all too common. In order to 'reconcile' it, he needed to reject the clear statements about the age of the earth in the Bible. I don't consider that to be 'reconciliation'. It's closer to capitulation.
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"...religious people were also not okay with the big bang theory."
Unfortunately, many are okay with it. But true, many others are not.
"... if you don't address how anti-science religious people can be when the science threatens the dogma."
Which people are you talking about? There is no reason for Christians, who founded modern science as this video (and many scholars) points out, to be anti-science. There IS reason, however, for them to be anti-naturalism, a position that many scientists adopt.
"Hard to stay when they demand you try to believe in their set of unique truth claims."
Only if you don't accept those claims.
"I believe these kinds of arguments that justify a scientific or literal reading of the bible is just gross. I don't believe that is how the bible or any other ancient text was thought of when it was written nor do I think that is how it should bow be read."
Why do you think that? And yet Jesus and the other biblical authors treated the Bible (the parts they had at the time) as actual history. That the creation account meant to be understood as actual history is also the consensus of the top experts in the language.
"If church could focus more on becoming and less on knowing ..."
That sounds like you want it to have no hard claims—to stand for nothing—which kind of makes it useless.
"but as it is, they are so preoccupied with what they think they already know there is no room for any kind of growth or learning."
I can't speak for your particular experience, but it was the conviction of Christians about what they knew of God that led them to study his creation and learn. In fact the Bible says as much, instructing us to study and learn. But if you don't have any convictions that the Bible actually means that, why bother?
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@100percentSNAFU
"Well, many fundamentalists still do not believe in things like the big bang theory, evolution, etc, and believe the earth is 6,000 years old and every excerpt from the Bible is meant to be taken literally."
Yes and no. Those "fundamentalist" Christians acknowledge the existence of metaphors and other figures of speech in the Bible. But they also know, from studying the language, that the creation account and the other bits of history that provide the age of the earth are not figures of speech, but are meant to be taken literally. James Barr, Oriel Professor of the interpretation of the Holy Scripture at Oxford and no fundamentalist, said "… probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience, the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story, and that Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark."
"But yet of course such dogma does make it difficult to take organized religion seriously."
Why? Simply because you don't agree?
"I believe in God, and I also believe in the science, which I think is possible."
Given that modern science is based on a Christian worldview, it's definitely possible. What's questionable is whether you can be an atheist and accept science. Paul Davies said (my bolding) "In the ensuing three hundred years, the theological dimension of science has faded. People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature- the laws of physics - are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they come from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is rational basis to physical existence manifested as lawlike order in nature that is at least part comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological world view. "
"...the lessons it teaches and rules it gives to be a good and pious person in the eyes of God is pretty sound,..."
If they are not based on reality, what makes them sound?
"you can't really argue against teachings to be kind and honest and such..."
With a belief in no God (as many people have), why couldn't you? Evolution is about the survival of the fittest, which means the non-survival of the less-fit; it's 'nature red in tooth and claw'. If that's all you have to go on (i.e no God), that seems like reasonable justification to not be kind, but to be ruthless.
"But yeah, the ritualistic stuff turned me off, as well as the people who "went to church so they could be seen at church", which sadly I felt was most."
That's understandable. Evangelical Protestantism doesn't have much in the way of rituals, at least hard-and-fast ones (baptism, although not essential, and marriage being about the only ones). And of course even Jesus spoke against people just being seen to be good.
"I think just living a good and honest life is what is important,..."
Of course, you could be wrong. Much better would be to find out what God says is important. But for that, you'd have to believe what the Bible says.
"...it is hard for me to accept it is all just random."
As it should be. It being random just doesn't add up.
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@timpieper5293
"I encourage you to reconsider whether origins of life would require an intelligent designer after seeing how many steps in the process don’t require design."
Those episodes didn't mention one case (I believe) of any of those proteins and other molecules occurring naturally in nature outside of a living thing. They were all the result of intelligent scientists. If anything it only serves to show that intelligence is required.
"And an open question; how does a beginning to the universe imply a designer?"
It doesn't. However, a beginning to the physical universe—that is, going from nothing to something—requires a cause that is outside the physical universe. This implies a non-physical creator. The idea of a designer as opposed to just a creator comes from the arguments for fine tuning and of information in living things.
"…thus bringing on more deconstruction of such unsupported ideas in more places at more times."
The ideas are not unsupported.
"That would further undermine the harm done based on such ideas."
What harm?
"Some religious beliefs have some use."
That's understating it. Christian beliefs have been extremely positive for the world.
"I just don’t think there’s much use that religious or theistic belief offers that cannot be achieved without said beliefs,…"
History has shown otherwise. The beliefs provide the incentive, or motivation, to do something. Sure, people without those beliefs could do the same things, but why would they?
"I think there’s several ways that religious beliefs can be harmful, and used as the basis for harm."
Certainly! This is definitely the case for false religions, including atheistic ones.
"…the initial problem that religious beliefs aren’t reasonably justified."
Again, it depends on which religious beliefs you are referring to. One problem I have with atheists is how they stick every religious belief except their own in the one basket, as though they are all similar. In fact, they can be very different. Christian beliefs are justified, as they correspond to reality.
"Yes, I’m convinced human behavior and thought are determined."
So you're saying that you didn't choose to write that?
"…free will … doesn’t even seem apparent in our subjective experience if we pay close attention."
Close attention will see people choosing things almost every moment of their day.
"This doesn’t lower the value of attempting to persuade others of things, because the very act of attempting to persuade may yet deterministically persuade others."
It kind of does lower it, actually. While I understand that attempting to persuade others in a free-will-free environment could very well have a consequence, the very concept is at odds with what it's trying to achieve.
"I can see that I am not authoring my next intention or thought,…"
Who or what is authoring it? And what's your evidence for that?
"…I’m unable to act on on anything other than my intentions thoughts…"
I'm not sure that makes any sense. If you have the thought to jump, you can't skip instead? Why not? Or is it a case of if you choose to skip instead of jump, then you do so because you've had the thought to skip? The point is, you have chosen to change your thought. Anything else would be chaos, where you go to pay the shopkeeper for your purchases, but shoot him instead, because you did something without that being a thought that you had.
"I have no reason to think matter in human brains is any less deterministic."
What makes you reject the idea of an immaterial mind residing in your brain is not so deterministic?
"There’s no topic other than free will and determinism in those videos, so it’s unclear how you came up with “ideology”."
I don't know how 123mneil came up with it, but it was apparent to me too (I only watched the two shorter videos) because there was a complete absence of any discussion on a human soul, being made in the image of God, etc. It's effectively all done from an atheistic perspective.
"The confidence that a fundamentalist has is not grounded in good reasoning;…"
Depending on who/what you are meaning by "fundamentalist", that is false.
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@Tim Pieper
"Each section below is in response to your corresponding chronological section of text."
1. Chronological? 2. To help if there is a next time, I've added numbers (probably too many, but ...)
"Origin of life experiments are replications of natural environments."
3. Only to a greater or lesser extent. The Miller-Urey experiment included a reducing atmosphere or methane and ammonia which is not known to have been the case, because they knew an atmosphere with with oxygen wouldn't work.
4. They also had an unrealistically-high concentration of organic matter, and a trap to gather the products before they could be destroyed, something that would not have been the case in a natural environment.
"The rise of each step of abiogenesis isn’t engineered or intentionally put together; each happens on their own on the simulated environment."
5. No, they don't happen on their own. The scientists assembled the required environments.
"How did you come to believe that there was a change from nothing to something?"
6. Because that is what is taught (except when they equivocate). Discover magazine described on the views of a leading Big Bang researcher this way: "The universe burst into something from absolutely nothing—zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. How is that possible? Ask Alan Guth. His theory of inflation helps explain everything."
"The fine tuning argument assumes the constants could’ve been otherwise, but no proponents have ever shown this."
6. Prima facie, they could have been otherwise. Nobody has ever shown that they couldn't have been.
"As far as I can tell, “information” just means non-random patterns."
7. In a sense, yes. But non-random means designed, unless there is a physical process that can generate it, but we know from observation that information only comes from an intelligence.
"Life is biochemistry, honed over billions of years of evolution."
8. Yes, that is the mainstream naturalistic view. That's not a rebuttal to my argument, though.
"Given every new discovery in original of life research, its origins don’t seem to need intelligence."
9. Every new discovery shows how hard it is to occur naturally. 10. The Miller-Urey experiment, for example, produced a racemic mixture of amino acids, which is not conducive to life. (11. Reed attempts to counter this by citing a test that showed that an already-existing RNA molecule could handle the insertion of some right-handed molecules. 11. They also selected "promising" ones. That is, the scientists had a goal that nature wouldn't have had, and used artificial selection. I don't know much about this test; I'm going on what Reed said.)
"This is a short list of harm done on the basis of, or given cover by the undue reverence caused by, religious beliefs:"
12. Your list comprises things that are not based on Christian ideas, but on how some individuals apply their beliefs, or things that you haven't even shown are harmful, but are things that you simply don't like. There is nothing in your list that is actual harm that is due to Christian ideas. Your claim was baseless.
"No, I don’t think so. Net-negative impact overall, in my view."
13. Yet the scholarship disagrees with you. Christianity is the basis of Western Civilisation, and has introduced public hospitals and many charities, introduced universal education, founded modern science, elevated the status of women, abolished slavery, spread democracy, promoted the concept of human rights, and more. 14. To give one example of the scholarship, Rodney Stark wrote:
"Christianity created Western Civilization. Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand copied scrolls. Without a theology committed to reason, progress, and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800: A world with many astrologers and alchemists but no scientists. A world of despots, lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys, and pianos. A world where most infants do not live to the age of five and many women die in childbirth–a world truly living in "dark ages."
"The modern world arose only in Christian societies. Not in Islam. Not in Asia. Not in a "secular" society–there having been none. And all the modernization that has since occurred outside Christendom was imported from the West, often brought by colonizers and missionaries."
15. Meanwhile, what has atheism done? 16. Well, in the 20th century it has slaughtered millions under Stalin, Mao, and others, and 17. it has taught that humans "live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." (Carl Sagan), are "just a bit of pollution,... We’re completely irrelevant." (Laurance Kraus), are "just a bit of slime on the planet" (Peter Atkins), and have "no ultimate meaning to life" (William Provine). But, I guess teaching people that does no harm, does it? 18. Whereas teaching people that "If you want to have a massive reason why human beings are special, here it is: God became one." (John Lennox) must be harmful, I guess.
"They provide the incentive to do horrid and unintelligent things,…"
19. Things other than the ones you've already listed which are no such thing?
"But you can see secular people doing the same charity and love that religious people do, for example The Scathing Atheist and Cognitive Dissonance podcast audiences recently raised upwards of $400,000 for the charity modest needs."
20. Copycats. Except that they rewarded some of the people for donating! 21. Christians have been doing it for 2000 years (without rewards). 22. A study in America by Arthur Brooks showed that religious people gave more of their money, time, and blood than non-religious people.
continued...
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@timpieper5293
...continued
"No, the bare minimum Christian belief, that Jesus rose from the dead, isn’t justified."
23. It is definitely justified, being one of the most-documented events in ancient history, and something that changed the world.
"There’s no data anyone can cite that isn’t consistent with Paul having a brief, possibly guilt-induced hallucination on the Damascus road,…"
24. What about the fact that his companions also heard the voice? 25. What about being blinded in the process?
"…stories in the gospels being 30+ years of legend development."
26. What 30+ years and 27. what legend development? 28. And 30 years is not that long for this sort of thing anyway.
"Resurrections are not even close to as common as people developing legends, even from a Christian worldview."
29. So you're arguing that a rare event is probably wrong simply because it's rare?
"I’m saying that my choice to write this was determined…"
30. If it's determined, it's not a choice.
"How does it lower it? How is the act of attempting to persuade at odds with belief in determinism?"
31. If what a person thinks is determined by brain chemistry, how could he be persuaded of anything? 32. Yes, maybe the discussion will change the brain chemistry in some way, but why would that change be along the lines of the point that is being argued? 33. What's the mechanism that turns that cause into that particular effect?
"Just before you stated such, I had already explained how they aren’t at odds."
34. You expressed a view; it only barely qualified as an explanation.
"My brain’s neurochemistry is creating my intentions and thoughts."
35. That is supposition.
"The many direct connections between brain matter and consciousness, whether it be from the effects of drugs, to brain damage survivors, to split-brain patients, to the differences in the mental capacity of species with different brains; all point to consciousness being the product of brains."
36. No, it doesn't. It does point to damage affecting the mind-holder. 37. An analogy to what you're arguing is that the information (concepts, explanations, etc.) contained in a printed book are the product of the chemistry of the paper and ink because damaging the paper changes the information. A physical alteration to the paper and the ink can indeed corrupt the information, but it simply doesn't follow that the chemistry of the paper and the ink created the information in the first place.
"You’ve seen the two short videos explaining this so you should understand."
38. I understand, but don't agree that they make their case. 39. You can't choose to do anything that you haven't thought to do, but having the thought to do something else IS choosing to do that something else.
"See the section above the previous one."
40. That doesn't answer it.
"Why would they mention a soul?"
41. Because we have one. 42. Atheist ideology, on the other hand denies this. 43. That's why the videos were based on ideology. 44. If they weren't, they'd at least consider how well a soul would explain the evidence. But it's not even considered.
"The soul isn’t evident,…"
45. Lot's of things aren't evident, but there's evidence for them anyway.
"…the myriad of things I’ve listed previously point to a material origin of consciousness."
46. No, they are interpreted in that framework.
"I’m certainly talking about creationists, and those who find fault with sound science."
47. Creationists don't find fault with sound science, so that's a contradiction, and your previous claim was therefore false.
"Their confidence against science is not grounded in good reasoning;…"
48. Creationists created science!. They are not against it. You are constructing a strawman.
"That’s not even an atheist-take; digital footballer and 321mneil are not atheists and they see this too."
49. They've been brainwashed to believe it, more likely. It's a common view promulgated by atheists. They invent lies to spread misinformation like this. 50. An example is the lie that the church used to believe in a flat earth. Complete fabrication.
"Creationists will almost always ignore or twist the evidence for evolution,…"
51. False and false, unless you want to supply some evidence of that scurrilous charge.
"…and almost never characterize evolution accurately as they are victims of the harmful miseducation done by their religious leaders and family members."
52. That claim is contradicted by the facts that many creationists were taught evolution in university, were evolutionists themselves, some even taught evolution, and a few even wrote textbooks on it, before changing their minds because of the evidence that it doesn't work. Your claim is nothing but slanderous invention, albeit a common one.
"Even the most valuable purposes of a justice system, like rehabilitation, restraint, restitution, and deterrents, don’t require free will to make sense."
53. The most valuable purpose of a justice system is to make it clear that we expect certain standards (such as no theft) be met. The things you mention are secondary. If you set a standard and don't enforce it, it's not a standard.
"Accepting that our actions are determined allows for a more compassionate view of those who commit crimes. There is no reason for hate or blame on determinism, and so there is no reasonable justification for vengeance or punishment for the sake of getting some sadistic pleasure. That’s a good thing determinism offers."
54. What do you mean by "blame"? 55. A dictionary definition is "feel or declare that (someone or something) is responsible for a fault or wrong." 56. So if a person robs a shop, with determinism we shouldn't declare that the person is responsible for robbing the shop? 57. Actually, that's the very problem with determinism: not putting blame where it belongs.
58. With free will, there is no reason to hate or vengeance or getting sadistic pleasure either. 59. You're drawing a false dichotomy there. 60. As for punishment, that is simply doing what I said: showing that the standards must be followed.
"Another big difference it makes is It undercuts the fairness of religious views on how some get to heaven and others hell,…"
61. I'm not sure you meant to say that, but yes, that is a problem: it undercuts fairness.
"If our experience was somehow able to show an ability to think about what thoughts we could have or choose our desires, maybe that would convince me."
62. I was scared of heights even on things like fun park rides, but I chose to accept the empirical evidence that they were safe and got rid of that fear. 63. I don't like the taste of coffee, but believe that if I chose to do so, I could come to like it.
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@timpieper5293
13. Stark is basing his assertions on his study of the history of Christianity and Western Civilisation, which he has written extensively on. He looks at the evidence, rather than start with an opinion, as you are doing by labelling them 'counterfactual' before even knowing where the ideas came from.
And as I said, he is just one example. Given your baseless dismissal of him, here's another, from journalist David Aikman:
"The eighteen American tourists visiting China weren’t expecting much from the evening’s lecture. They were already exhausted from a day of touring in Beijing. But what the speaker had to say astonished them.
'One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world,' he said. 'We studied everything we could "from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next, we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.'
This was not coming from some ultra-conservative think tank … This was a scholar from China's premier academic research institute, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing in 2002."
Or maybe you'd like an Indian source. Vishal Mangalwadi:
"'Devout Christians cultivated their minds by copying, preserving, and studying great books because they believed that to be God-like meant to develop the intellect, to grow in our knowledge of all truth—whichever individual or culture discovers it first. That is what made the West a thinking civilization. Amputation of its soul cannot but lead to the closing of the American mind."
"Hardly a Christian phenomenon, as it was influenced by several different ideas then able to be spread at far greater rates by the relatively new printing press."
I don't know what you are referring to. Much of what Stark refers to predated the printing press, which in any case was invented over 300 years before the so-called Enlightenment.
16. I didn't say that atheism caused them. Atheism says that we are not answerable to God. That means that we can decide right and wrong for ourselves. If you have the power, and no higher authority that you're answerable to, you get results like that. Atheism enabled it.
17. I beg to differ. First, it was not a claim about what the universe thinks, as the universe doesn't think. It's a claim about our worth as people. Second, which is more uplifting? That we are significant to a few other people who are as insignificant as us in the grand scheme of things, or that we are significant to the creator of that entire, vast, universe? Third, Australian statistics show a good correlation between the introduction of teaching evolution and the rise of youth suicide.
24. Most translations for Acts 22:9 say that the men did not understand the voice; not that they didn't hear it. So no contradiction. To understand why this is the case, see the article "Does Acts 9:7 contradict Acts 22:9 ?" on the Apologetics and Agape website.
I don't know why you're mentioning Corinthians. Are you presuming that this is the same event as Paul experienced on the Damascus road? There seems to be little support for that idea.
25. It wasn't momentary. It was three days, and only ended after God instructed Ananias to see Paul. Also, Paul explicitly says that he was blinded by the brightness of the light.
26. I guess that does answer the question "what 30 years", although I still don't know why they think it was necessarily that long. Also, that surely doesn't exclude earlier written records being used as a basis for the books after 30 years.
Of course what those scholars also often say is that oral repetition was common and, unlike today where it's not, was done accurately. So no, not evidence of legend development.
What suspension of the laws of physics? Also, why is legend development a more parsimonious explanation than it being done by an infinite being? Apart from not wanting to believe in that being, of course.
29. How is resurrection against the laws of physics? What physical laws are broken? After all, with modern medical equipment, we can revive dead people. Not after three days, but the point is that it's not against the laws of physics. Further, does Occam's Razor really select "God resurrected Jesus" better than "It didn't really happen, despite hundreds of people seeing Him alive after a very public crucifixion, and guarded tomb, plenty of people willing to call bull on it if they could find a way to, and disciples with a radically changed attitude who went to the grave holding that belief"? I think you're being selective and jumping to answers you prefer.
31. But "convincing them" implies thinking and the ability to choose, not determinism. When you flip a light switch to turn a light on or off, you're not doing any "convincing".
continued...
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@timpieper5293
51. Aaron Ra? Oh please. He's not a reliable source. The first few minutes of the first video was a lot of bald assertions that basically dismissed the biblical view out of hand, with ridiculous claim such as "nothing can be shown to be true theologically" (blatantly false; I figure he means that nothing theological can be shown to be true, which is a massive hand-wave anyway), arguing on the basis of his own views (e.g. things that can't be shown to be true are not 'truths'; well of course not, but he hasn't established that they can't be shown as true), and that therefore there is no truth in Genesis (so I guess it's not true that living things reproduce after their kind, i.e. cats don't give birth to dogs, etc. and also not true that humans come in two forms, male and female).
The Gibbon video was too long to spend the time watching in full, and it was done in a very unscholarly and unprofessional way, and clearly trying to find fault even where none existed. The first comment when it finally got into the video went off on a tangent and didn't actually find fault. The second comment responded to the question of whether Lucy was our ancestor or "just an extinct ... ape". Gibbon said that "well she's both". But it can't be both, the way the question was framed. Note the "just" in "just an extinct ... ape". So no actual fault there, either. But then she said "She is of course an ape, because we are, of course apes". This is a typical illogical argument, where the creationist view is not compared to the facts, but to the competing view! In other words, the Bible is wrong because the secular view is right! Of course, by that logic, the secular view is wrong because the Bible is right. But of course if a creationist ever used that logic, they'd be pilloried no end.
The video wandered and side-tracked in a way that made things hard to follow. 18 minutes in they'd only covered 65 seconds of the creationist video.
Gibbon criticised a creationist reconstruction of Lucy, one of the criticisms being that the face structure appeared more gorilla-like than chimp-like, adding that it was probably intentional to distance it more from humans. She then took exception to the video pointing out that reconstructions of Lucy show white eyes, which only humans have, a claim that she later stressed was "so dumb!". After yet another side-track, she got around to 'debunking' the claim that only humans have white eyes by showing images of chimps with white eyes (no references or indications of where the pictures came from) and an image of a paper with the title "Gorillas with white sclera: A naturally occurring variation in a morphological trait linked to social cognitive functions", which she just showed for a few seconds as if that was the final word on the subject. What she didn't mention or point out was that the paper had the following introduction: "Human eye morphology is considered unique among the primates in that humans possess larger width/height ratios (WHR), expose a greater amount of visible sclera (SSI; width of exposed eyeball/width of visible iris), and critically, have a white sclera due to a lack of pigmentation. White sclera in humans amplifies gaze direction, whereas the all-dark eyes of apes are hypothesized to conceal gaze from others." Oops.
She then justified portraying Lucy with white eyes on the grounds that "this seems to be the evolutionary trend". In other words, evolutionists are portraying Lucy in a way that favours their view, but when the creationists portray Lucy in a way that favours the creationary view, that's bad. Double standards.
I doubt that the criticisms of Meyer are any more valid than those, but he's not even a creationist, so I skipped that one.
The first Paulogia video was a pain to watch (so I gave up six minutes in) not being clear on just what they were disagreeing with the creationists on. Again, it was also quite unprofessional and unscholarly.
The second Paulogia video was no better. At about the 1:50 mark they knock down a strawman.
I assume you're referring to the claim that they didn't read the research about language acquisition, because they referred to a turkey that wasn't in the research. However, as the video admitted, the word was used in the article about the research. The "failure" was not that they didn't read the research; the failure was that the referred to something in the article about the research. But how is this a problem? Unless you're scratching to find something to criticise. Further, they weren't trying to debunk anything! You're also inventing criticisms!
"There’s consistently no recognition of how isochron dating verifies the accuracies of radiometric dating,"
So now you're criticising them for not agreeing with the mainstream view? Well, duh! That's why it's a competing view!
"...or explaining index fossils, or endogenous retroviruses, or nested hierarchies in taxonomy from creationists."
Ho hum. More of the same. They don't agree with the naturalistic view, so they must be wrong.
So, in summary, you've provided no evidence that withstands scrutiny for your scurrilous charge that "Creationists will almost always ignore or twist the evidence for evolution,…"
"You will struggle long and hard to find me a creationist who can adequately articulate evolution or engage with the evidence for it."
Utter nonsense, that I have already refuted, in No. 55. Why are you repeating it?
And a comment you made to 122mneil:
"I just want to point out that the effort to become better is perfectly consistent with determinism, ..."
Only if you describe determinism in a way that makes it indistinguishable from free will. Which is probably what you're doing: Free will is imaginary, it's actually determinism, which looks like free will. So if you can't tell them apart, how do you know it's determinism?
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@123mneil
"How are you so sure that you are not the one arrogantly claiming things that are not true and vilifying people that disagree?"
On the second point, because I make a point of attacking the argument, not vilifying the person. I never call them stupid, morons, liars, bigoted, deluded, uneducated, brainless, gullible, etc., which abusive ad hominems have often been levelled against me. And just to be clear, I wasn't accusing you of any of those things.
On the first point, because I back my claims with evidence, except when I'm replying to an evidence-free claim, in which case I provide as much evidence as the original claimant.
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@timpieper5293
26. Legend development doesn't explain so many of the details, including how dispirited disciples were suddenly reinvigorated and went on to change the world. It's only 'parsimonious' by leaving out bits it can't explain.
29. They ARE facts that need to be accounted for. Wishing them away doesn't change that.
You are describing it as a "religious creed" in order to not address the claim. The fact is recorded in one of the letters of Paul which historians agree was written by him around AD 53/54. He also records that most of them were still alive. This indicates that the claim was checkable.
There IS corroborating evidence for the tomb: three of the four gospel writers talk about it
"There’s no possible way anyone could recover Jesus’s dead body if it was thrown into a mass grave,…"
But it wasn't in a mass grave. It was in a tomb.
"…even if someone could, and they came to a church and said “hey I checked into it; the resurrection didn’t happen”, are you telling me that would actually stop the believers from persisting?"
No, because they had seen the risen Jesus. Why would they believe someone claiming that it didn't happen when they had seen it with their own eyes?
" “People could’ve checked if it was false, so it must be true” isn’t a good argument."
It is a good supporting argument, actually. If you want to make up something and have people believe you, make it something that can't be checked. Leaving yourself open to being checked helps credibility.
"The changed attitudes of the disciples are easily accounted for as legend, as there’s no independent or reliable source for their post-crucifixion attitudes."
One of the points of agreement by historians is that "James, Jesus’ unbelieving brother, became a Christian due to his own experience that he thought was the resurrected Christ;" Another is that "the Christian persecutor Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus) also became a believer after a similar experience." Historians consider the sources reliable enough for that. (See the article "Minimal Facts on the Resurrection that Even Skeptics Accept" by Gary Habermas.)
"The die for a lie apologetic can’t get off the ground without establishing any of them died for their faith."
That has been established.
31. I don't accept that being convinced is not a choice. You can choose whether or not to believe the evidence. Yes, the evidence is a big factor, but it's not deterministic. You can still choose whether or not to accept it. How many people hear the same evidence but come to different conclusions?
51 Which correction? I gave examples to show why he is not reliable, and you have ignored them.
"The concept of kinds are used by creationists to make arbitrary distinctions between parent and daughter Clades in taxonomy, so in that sense, kinds aren’t coherent or mappable onto reality."
Which shows that you have no idea what you are talking about, given that peer-reviewed research is conducted to determine which living things are in the same kind as each other.
"I’m sorry you haven’t seen an explanation of what an ape is, but it’s a fact that we are apes. That’s not a “view”. "
It absolutely is a view, a naturalistic one. Okay, you have a point. It's possible to arbitrarily define "ape" to include human. But doing so is based on the evolutionary view.
"You just take the criteria of all apes’ morphology as distinguished from every other taxonomic family, and we fit those criteria."
That's rather vague and also selective. Why just morphology? Why not genetics, or behaviour, or etc.? I think what you're claiming is that we have a number of features in common with many of the apes. However, those features are not necessarily unique to apes or ubiquitous among the apes, and you overlook differences. For example, your first video starts off mentioning some common features, but it's rather vague, and then it lists differences. An example of each: "We have a unique appendix" Unique to what? Humans? That's a difference, not a common feature. Or unique to apes? Except that the appendix is not unique to apes. "In our locomotion living apes are highly diverse. Suspensory adaptations, high-speed brachiation, knuckle-walking quadrupedalism and obligate terrestrial bipedality all characterise our family". Huh? So what we have in common is a lot of different ways of getting around? That in itself contradicts your claim.
But then there are the things not mentioned, such as the big toe of humans, or the hairlessness of us, or our ability to hold our breath, or our subcutaneous fat layers, and of course our ability to use complex language.
"Creationists don’t engage honestly with this. They can’t."
Nonsense.
"I pointed out that creationists don’t address the tests or method of isochron dating and your facile retort is “they don’t agree? Well duh!” "
That is a strawman. You didn't claim that they don't address the tests or methods, but that they don't give " recognition of how isochron dating verifies the accuracies of radiometric dating" (my bolding). Your comment was not about the tests or methods, but about the naturalistic conclusions.
"…your comment just reeks of the very mentality you claim I haven’t provided evidence of…"
Your comment reeks of typical anti-creationist conflation of facts/evidence and conclusions.
"For an explanation of how this verification works:"
Or at least how it is supposed to work in theory.
"Creationists don’t engage with this honestly. They can’t."
And yet they do. If you search the creation dot com website for 'isochron dating' you'll find many articles and papers that 'engage with' isochron dating. And they do so honestly.
"You pull the same rewording with the creationists habitual refusal to engage with nested hierarchies."
You make the same claim that creations won't "engage" with various things, that presumably being a euphemism for not "agreeing", because they do in fact engage with with them. For just one example, that "unique appendix" of your first video link contradicts the nested hierarchy claim of evolutionists. According to an article on the Science website (i.e. they accept evolution), "They found that the 50 species ['now considered to have an appendix'] are scattered so widely across the tree that the structure must have evolved independently at least 32 times, and perhaps as many as 38 times.". This is of course known as convergent evolution, i.e. evolution that doesn't conform to a nested hierarchy.
"If you just call all the verifiable facts “the alternative view that creationists don’t agree with”…"
I'm not referring to facts, but to conclusions. I'm not referring to the methods of isochron dating, but the conclusion that it verifies the dates.
"…then you are proving my point again and again all on your own."
You're proving my point about conflating facts/evidence and conclusions.
"Here’s nested hierarchies explained with examples so you can see the facts you’re disagreeing with…"
I'm not disputing that there are, in general terms, nested hierarchies (in fact that's how the creationist Linnaeus was able to introduce the taxonomic system). I'm disputing the conclusion that it's good evidence for evolution.
"Creationists don’t engage honestly with this. They can’t."
You keep repeating a common anti-creationist mantra, with examples that are clearly false.
By the way, thanks for the timestamps on the videos.
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@archive2500
"If there is lack of evidence then what is the sense of claiming something."
You're the one claiming a lack of evidence, not me.
"Christianity has the story of the Garden of Eve which features a talking snake."
Yes, it does (sort of). But that's not what you claimed. That is, you didn't claim that the snake in the Garden of Eden couldn't talk. You implicit claim was that Christianity says that snakes (plural) talk (present tense).
Further, you ignore that it was actually Satan talking through the snake.
"If Adam and Eve is perfect then it would not make sense that 8 billion people right now would suddenly be imperfect, would it?"
No, but then nobody claims that they would "right now ... suddenly" be imperfect. Instead, the claim is that they deteriorated over time, as genetic defects accumulated. This is supported by science, which has shown that each new generation gains around 100 additional mutations.
"Make it make sense."
God created everything without any fault or error, but then man rejected God, so He withdrew a bit, and this allowed things to start running down. Including genomes. Ignoring whether or not there is evidence for that, it is a quite rational position to take and therefore it makes sense.
"...mutations happen throughout the generations, therefore, the lineage would slowly degenerate like the royal bloodlines."
Exactly. Which is why we have many, many, genetic defects today. One paper I've read says "The Human Gene Mutation Database currently [this was in 2014] contains records of more than 141,000 mutations. New ones are being discovered at a rate of over 11,000 per year. A September 2012 summary reported that of these about 6,000 constitute ‘disease associated’ and ‘functional’ polymorphisms (different versions of a DNA sequence)."
"Your never disproved my counterarguments."
I don't need to disprove your counterarguments. All I need to do is show that your arguments are faulty. Your arguments could be based on faulty reasoning and yet still be right. If I show that they are based on faulty reasoning, then I've shown that they don't constitute evidence, even if they happen to be correct. But what counterarguments did I not rebut?
"Stop being in denial."
Why? What if you're wrong? Denial would be appropriate.
"Science easily disproves these non-sense."
Do you mean empirical science based on observation, measurement, testing, and repeatability? The sort of science that cannot be done on events in the past? That's not so easy. And of course you haven't shown it to be nonsense.
"To start there, there is no evidence of Adam and Eve,.."
So again, an evidence-free claim of a lack of evidence. And common sense, to quote you, easily debunks that. There is, for starters, the Bible. The very fact that this highly-regarded, proven-reliable, book records it, IS evidence. You can argue that the evidence is faulty in some way, but saying that there is no evidence is just you being in denial.
"I could go on and on about these baseless claims. Just adding more points to my claim."
I'm sure you could go on and on. But can you actually show that they are baseless? That's the point. So far you've failed.
What you don't realise or ignore is that these "baseless" claims were actually the basis for Western Civilisation and many of the advances it has made, including founding science. That is, many intelligent people have believed those claims and they have been studied intensely for a long time, and yet many intelligent people still believe those claims. Because the evidence is actually there, contrary to your claims of no evidence.
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@baldmansopinion2007
I've seen the Veritasium video before: it's very interesting. I wouldn't hang my hat on that as conclusive evidence that we are not seeing into the "past', but it does refute the dogmatic position that we are seeing into the past.
I hadn't seen Sheldrake's talk. It's interesting, and makes good points about the materialistic views of most scientists, but I do have some issues with it. He claims that given that everything evolved, how can we be sure that the 'constants' are actually constant. The interesting thing is that the idea of constants and laws didn't come about they way he claims, but by the early scientists believing that they were laws and constants because God is a consistent God and a law-making God. Physics obey the laws not because physics is anthropomorphistic, but because God designed physics that way.
As Loren Eiseley said (my emphasis): "The philosophy of experimental science … began its discoveries and made use of its methods in the faith, not the knowledge, that it was dealing with a rational universe controlled by a creator who did not act upon whim nor interfere with the forces He had set in operation … . It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origins to an act of faith that the universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption. "
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@Tiny_and_Reese
"…if you were hoping I didn't have reasons…"
It was more a case of not expecting you to have legitimate reasons.
"Firstly, PragerU is a propaganda mill…"
So right off the bat, you fail. This is supposed to examples of the untruthfulness, but your "first" point is to make another allegation.
"…that was astroterfed by fracking billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks, so their content is always going to be a little wrong in support of the narrative that old money wants you to hear."
Yeah? So what is it that causes it to be "a little bit wrong"? That the money came from fracking? Or that it came from billionaires? Or that it came from those two gentlemen in particular? Or that "old money" is necessarily wrong? My point is, you haven't actually pointed out anything wrong! But it seems that simply describing a situation means that something is wrong.
"Next, they have on equally flawed speakers like…"
Hmmm, more description. What is flawed about Shapiro's comment? You don't say. I can see why you thing Owen is inconsistent, but then given your lack of substance so far, I'd assume you're likely taking things out of context. As for Crowder, you might have a point if he selected individuals to put on the spot, but when he leaves it open for people to self-select, they can always not offer their views if they are not themselves well-versed in the topic. And Ruben—well, you didn't actually point out anything wrong. So it seems that PragerU is lying for money because they have people on that you don't agree with. Which of course is not evidence of them lying, let alone for money.
"Here's what they get right, because lying is always easier when you mix it with some truth:"
So you admit that you're original claim that it "just can't seem to ever tell the truth" was itself a—well, an exaggeration, to be nice.
"…what isn't is the notion that most of them are teenage girls that are coming out, as the CDC study didn't include that in their categorizations. That's the lie she's selling that supports her narrative."
It seems that you are correct that the CDC study didn't show that bit. But that might be an error of attribution. You've not shown that it's a lie (something known to be untrue in order to deceive).
"That's the "a little bit wrong" that you can see in all of PragerU's videos."
So the "little bit wrong" is actually a correct statement according to the reports of the time? Sorry, that's not evidence of lying.
Regarding the Section 230 video and their position, you completely miss the point. They are not saying anything in contradiction to a free market position.
"But anyway, where they're wrong is in the citing of that quote. See that is in the bill Section 230.... in the Findings" section."
I see your point, but again, is it a clear-cut case of lying? That finding is not included arbitrarily; the findings are there to provide rationale for the law. Yes, it's not directly stated as a requirement, but it's reasonable to infer that the intent of the law is that it applies to companies doing that, and as such is an implied requirement. So I'm not saying you can't argue against that, but it appears that their claim is a reasonable argument, not a bald lie or even clearly a half-truth.
"Well PragerU, until recently, was suing google for censorship. And was citing Section 230 as their main complaint." As is their right and reasonably so.
"Of course nowadays PragerU, Donald Trump and the like are trying to get rid of it…"
I've heard suggestions like that, but also the claim that section 230 protection ought to be withdrawn for companies acting like publishers, but remain for other companies that are offering a genuine open forum.
"The very premise of her book implies that there's anything dangerous about the process, but there isn't."
Yeah, pull the other one. Mutilating their bodies because of a delusion is clearly not a good thing to be doing, and is irreversible.
"She outright says these kids are able to get testosterone from any local 7/11 but they're not."
Where does she say that? It's not in the video.
"Puberty blockers until you're older which have NONE, 0, NADA side effects,…"
Googling easily shows that to be false. (So are you lying, or merely mistaken? By your own standard, I'd have to say you're lying). Potential side effects include lower bone density, delayed growth plate closure, less development of genital tissue, headache, fatigue, insomnia, future fertility, and more. Oh, by the way, yes, I Googled to get that. But didn't get it just anywhere. I listed side effects mentioned on the web-sites of the Children's Hospital of St. Louis and the Mayo Clinic.
That social media can be a bad influence and at the same time provide some useful information is not a contradiction. So nothing wrong there.
"All this, along with the entire notion that any transgender individuals who've stopped transitioning isn't a result of how they are now treated differently by their peers, family, and general support group,… is laughable on it's face."
So stopping transitioning could be due to pressure, but transitioning never is? You're indulging in the same kind of apparent contradiction that you're accusing Shrier of.
So all in all, some possibly -accurate but mild criticisms, a fair dollop of non-faults presented as though they were, and nothing even approaching the claim that they are lying for money.
It seems that my expectation was essentially correct.
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@Ponera-Sama
So you're conflating wisdom with "knowing good and evil"? Solomon asked for wisdom, and God granted it. In James it says "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him." and "the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere." Does this sound like something God would punish man for wanting?
Are you familiar with the biblical expression that someone "knew his wife", as in "Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain,"? It doesn't mean that he had met her and was aware of who she was. It is referring to a close intimate relationship. That is what Adam gained, a close intimate relationship with evil.
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@Ponera-Sama I would say that yes, God also has that knowledge, being well acquainted with Satan, experiencing evil first-hand as a human (Jesus). It would seem to me that the reference to "good and evil" would be to the contrast between them. Already being acquainted with good but not evil, Adam had no experience of the contrast. Or, to put it another way, one often doesn't appreciate the good until one has experienced the evil. So although Adam already knew good, he now understood it a lot better, having also experienced evil.
But all this is missing the point that God punished them for disobedience, not for gaining wisdom, which is something good.
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@beldiman5870
"I believe your ideas fit only in small, religious, homogenous groups such as the Amish where everyone is treated equally, where everyone contributes as much as they can, where all the rules are unwritten."
Not so. Christianity is the basis of Western Civilization, and that's hardly a small group. Being treated equally, etc. comes from Christian views. You're claiming that these Christian views only work in those sorts of societies, but it's Christian views that create those sorts of societies.
"To make a bigger, multicultural society to work you need a strong government which will in force written rules and give people some rights by default whether they"deserve" them or not."
First, John Adams, (the second American president) said "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." So yes, you need a strong government which will enforce it's laws. But that will only work if the people go along with that (generally speaking; the point of the laws is to set limits as a guide and also to control the few who don't agree with the rest).
Second, yes, those people have rights. Such as the right to justice (i.e. when someone does something wrong to them) and safety from attack. Whether those rights extend to being given material things is another matter.
Third, those rights should be part of being human, not something they only get because the government decides to grant those rights.
Fourth, yes a government will give rights beyond those. But the question here is whether they should, not whether they do.
"Does the veteran deserve to be helped by religious organizations, if they choose to love him, or should this be his right secured by the government? What is your take on this?"
A war veteran (i.e. fighting for his country, I'm not talking about people who go off and fight for someone else like Isis, but I'm sure you weren't talking about them either) does deserve to be helped by those he suffered for. In biblical language, "the labourer deserves his wages." If that war veteran has worked to the point of suffering for his country, his country (i.e. the people of this country) owes him.
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@caboose2569
"Brain activity and structure in transgender adolescents more closely resembles the typical activation patterns of their desired gender, ..."
And yet, their brain activity is obviously within the range of people of their (actual) sex. To put it another way, what determines a female vs. a male "activation pattern" of a brain?
"They dont think theyre female or male,..."
Clearly they do think that, otherwise they wouldn't have any dysphoria.
"they literally THINK and develop like a female or male."
But what determines how a female or male thinks? If a female thinks like X, then X is like a female thinks (even if it's also like a male thinks).
"...as you so clearly love to cling to purely observable constants,..."
Yes, I do love to cling to things we observe as opposed to those we make up.
"not evidence enough for you that it is QUITE different from the baseless comparisons youre making?"
Because you haven't made your case, and you haven't shown how my comparison is baseless. Have anorexic brain activity and activation patterns been studied in anorexics? Maybe they are different too? When you have an entire industry devoted to finding differences, you're sure to find some. But if you don't look, you won't. After all, an anorexic (to stick with that analogy) clearly has something going wrong in their brain too. But you don't have an industry trying to find justifications for anorexia.
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@caboose2569
"See this is how i know you dont want to actually learn and are in fact biased..."
Because I disagree with you?
"(and an actual biggot too... I mean who would defend pathologizing homosexuality?)"
I didn't defend it. I pointed out why it was changed.
But in any case, we were designed to be heterosexual. Homosexuality is going against our design.
"You dont like the facts so you call them bias and you dont want to research from unbias'd sources like government websites..."
It's not in evidence that they are facts. What makes government websites unbiased? They can be as biased as anyone else.
"(which is where a simple google of those quotes would show they originated from (silly lazy boy)"
You're right, although I've looked into such studies before and seen that they don't stack up, so get lazy about looking into even more. After all, the field is rife with invention. For example, Christopher Dummitt, a researcher in the field, said "Everyone was (and is) making it up. That’s how the gender-studies field works."
But I've Googled it, and found the study. As I suspected, it was asking people what they thought/remembered, with no apparent controls on their thoughts/memories being accurate. But that's not the only problem. Here are more:
* They didn't seek people who had been exposed to "gender identity conversion efforts", but people from so-called transgender people. That is, they selected people where those efforts had failed, not where those efforts had succeeded. There's a methodological bias right there.
* They didn't distinguish between different types of efforts. Some efforts could clearly have a bad effect, but it doesn't follow that all will.
* As a critique of the study ("NEW STUDY LINKING CONVERSION THERAPY TO DEPRESSION IN TRANS ADULTS & CRITICISM") pointed out, "The key limitation is that the study did not control for comorbid psychiatric illness, the greatest single predictor of suicidality. While mental health conditions are acknowledged as confounders, they are declared unlikely based on the spurious idea that this would require internalized transphobia. Rather, it seems likely that professionals encountering persons with gender dysphoria (GD) and significant mental health problems were more likely to engage in conversations about the merits of transition, which may later be recalled as a conversion effort. Thus, the association found is arguably more likely due to reverse causation."
* The study is clearly done by people with an agenda, given that they accept the trans-activist lie that "Transgender persons are those whose sex assigned at birth differs from their gender identity..." Sex is NOT "assigned" at birth or any other time. That is simply one of those inventions.
"There is nothing more to say on the issue."
Good. Let's see if you stick to that.
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@maximustrolleus9860
"ppl call bias to anything they disagree with."
Yes, some do. Not all.
"well then how do you even know what the truth even is."
How do we know anything? We look at evidence.
"Like i said its subjective as indoctrination can be anything that you simply disagree with."
Only if you're misusing the word. Indoctrination is to be taught to accept something uncritically. Alex Blaze is also wrong when he says "If something can be proven as true, then it’s not indoctrination". You can indoctrinate someone in true things. Although perhaps that's what he meant with his qualifier.
"The earth is proven to be round but to a flat earther that is indoctrination."
What "is indoctrination"? The earth being round? No, to be clear, a flat earther would say that the the acceptance of a round earth is because of indoctrination.
"To a creationist, evolution is indoctrination and to a scientist, it is truth."
No, to a creationist, evolution is accepted because of indoctrination, while an evolutionist believes it to be truth. The contrast is between creationist and evolutionist, not between creationist and scientist. There are scientists on both sides of that debate. And that is a good example. Evolution IS taught uncritically. Even teachers who have not taught creation, but have taught evolution with its problems have been fired or otherwise stopped from doing so, because dissent if forbidden.
"So you see how it can be subjective?"
No, it's not necessarily subjective. Sometimes it might be, but often it's simply people bandying the term about without evidence.
"...solipsism which basically states that nothing in this world is true..."
Which, if left at that, is obviously self-refuting.
"...and that the only thing you could ever truthfully know..."
So nothing is true except ... ?
"...is the fact that your mind exists and that everything else is subjective."
So if those two things are true, why can't other things be. I know you're only citing, not making, that argument, but...
"In fact there is a whole philosophy called solipsism..."
... citing an incoherent philosophy doesn't show that bias and indoctrination are subjective. Only that some people seem unable to be objective.
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The Christian community does not "ignore" that commandment. Rather, it has various reasons to say that it no longer applies. Whether or not those reasons hold up is not a question that can't be answered in a few sentences, though. But one line of argument is that the entire Mosaic Law doesn't apply to Christians, or even to non-pre-Christ Jews. But that argument is that the specifics don't apply, or that certain parts of it don't apply (e.g. the ceremonial parts), but that the principles still do. So when the Mosaic law says that homosexuals should be stoned, that law no longer applies, but the principle that it's based on—that homosexuality is wrong—is still true.
How much of that is relevant to the Ten Commandments is not clear, given that it only espouses principles, not penalties, but Christians still agree with setting aside one day per week, which arguably is the principle involved. So that's not a conclusive answer, but may provide some aspects to consider or investigate more.
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@moonethealien
"It’s not wrong, because the videos implications were that the teen could get them “like candy” as said by the OP, which they can’t."
Who said "like candy"? That's not in the script of the video.
"No the teen cannot get the medication if the parent hasn’t provided them with trans affirming health consultants (endocrinologist, therapists, primary care doctor, etc). Therefore, the teen has the consent of the parent via these provided services. "
Are you saying that the teen has to have the consent of their parents to get assessed, but not to have the treatment?
"... if they worked and paid for these services themselves ... then by all means they seem mentally capable enough to assess what goes into their body and what doesn’t."
That doesn't follow. I suspect that the law allowing them to work that young would be on the basis that their parents have agreed to them working, or that they are working for their parents.
"So do you have a real argument against the lies shown within the video that I called out,..."
What lies? The only one you specifically claims was the age of consent, which they were correct on.
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@ATLMike94
"Propaganda -
information, especially of a biased [snipped]"
Yes. I didn't see "this video" or "PragerU" in that definition. Sure, information of a biased or misleading nature can be called propaganda, but it doesn't follow that this video is propaganda "by definition".
"Being blatantly biased and having bias are two different concepts you can't seem to understand."
And yet you don't explain that distinction. Are you basing that on the word "blatantly" or something else. Because I don't see the distinction between "being biased" and "having bias". They seem to me to be the same thing.
"Thanks for proving my point about PragerU subscribers not being too smart."
Except that I've done no such thing.
"f course everything has bias but a real journalist or educator doesn't purposely present things in an opinionated, biased manner."
Not strictly correct (unless a "real journalist or educator" is, by definition, one that is not biased), but ignoring that, you haven't shown that this video "purposely" presents itself that way. What's your evidence?
"If you're going to watch PragerU at least watch left leaning channels as well to balance it out."
Funny man! Most of the mainstream media and government education systems are left-leaning. It's difficult to avoid left-leaning sources. It's people on the left who should seek out conservative sources to get balance!
"Too much of a conservative bias isn't good whether you think it's the "correct bias" or not."
Given that conservative views are not infallible, I'll agree. But as I've pointed out already, it's mainly the left that lives in a bubble. See for example the video "bindi changes mind, bindi gets banned".
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@davidlewocz7271
"Back in November prageru made a pro slavery video"
No, they did not. They made a video that argued against removing statues of Robert E. Lee, and explained a bit about what he did. Some of what he did, they pointed out, was supportive of slavery. The argument was barely coherent (in that it didn't actually make a case), but it wasn't pro-slavery. That is something that critics chose to read into it.
"Prageru has also spread massive amounts of fear mongering and misinformation about schools and politics. "
Allegedly. You got the first one (about slavery) wrong, so why should I believe you on this?
"They have also had Heather MacDonald, someone who has been against criminal justice reform and has also been denounced by using statistics in the wrong way."
Is this your way of saying "They had on a person that believes something that PragerU didn't mention (I don't know; I'm speculating), and who has people disagreeing with her"?
"The founder is Dennis prager, who wrote a column in 2008 saying that women should always say yes to sex to their parters whether or not they actually want to."
I would want to see that in context.
"There’s more but i just gave you objective evidence that shouldn’t be biased"
True, it (your evidence) shouldn't be biased. Doesn't mean that it isn't, though. Your slavery claim was wrong, your MacDonald claim was vague, and your Prager quote lacked context. Not really good evidence.
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@tommyn3522
"do you genuinely think people would become transgender as part of a brainwashing agenda when they can be ridiculed and bullied by half of a society of people like you?"
Yes, because they mostly interact with the other half that thinks it's a great thing. Many leftists live in leftist bubbles where all they ever hear are leftist views.
"when people talk about transphobia and hate crimes, you know they're talking about conservative viewer bases like this right?"
Yes, I for one know that. I also know that they are insulting labels put on those conservatives because they can't actually makes a reasoned argument. So instead they just try and shut them up.
"the difference between liberals and conservatives these days is simply that conservatives attack progressive movements while liberals rely heavily on humanity and emotions."
Let me fix that for you: "the difference between liberals and conservatives these days is simply that conservatives attack progressive movements with logic and evidence while liberals rely heavily on humanity and emotions."
"libtards hate the police - conservatards begin chanting blue lives matter and getting BlueLM flags "
That's called fighting back against the nonsense of the radical left.
"libtards chant "black lives matter!" - conservatards begin chanting "all lives matter" when everyone and their mother knows conservatives don't give a [deleted] and never did until the BLM movement became a thing. "
No, everybody does NOT know that. That's why, for example, conservatives have been opposing abortion for years, and helping pregnant women. Because they do care for people's lives. It's also why they donate more of their own money, time, and blood to helping others.
"libtards talk about any form of discrimination"
Not so. They don't talk about the massive discrimination suffered by Christians, not about the 'discrimination' (by denying them the chance at life) against unborn babies, nor about the discrimination they themselves inflict on conservatives, by vilifying them, getting the sacked, cancelling and censoring them, etc.
"...where they intellectually belittle people..."
You mean that they put reasoned arguments that the left can't answer? Yes, I can understand the left feeling belittled by that.
"...and deny that discrimination and hate crimes even exist..."
Complete nonsense.
"because they're white and have never experienced it themselves"
Ben Shapiro (a Jew who you named) has certainly been the recipient of discrimination. You are showing your ignorance and prejudice.
"... conservatives have a lot of "gotcha!" points and "I never said I believe that" points when everyone knows what their true intentions are."
No, not "everyone"; rather the left, who imagine what their true intentions are. The very fact that you think "everyone" knows, shows that you think that everyone is of the left, despite drawing a contrast between the left and conservatives! You contradict yourself!
"claiming that they simply CANNOT be racist because they don't hate black people - while continuing to do the things that black people are saying is racist."
Translation: saying that they are not racist (giving a reason), while black people continue to claim that they are racist anyway. That is, you are saying that two groups disagree, but presenting it as though one is wrong and the other is right, without explaining why.
"they're just things I've observed in conservative comment sections."
No, some of them are ascribing motive that you cannot "observe". You are imagining.
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@unionpepe7864
"sex is your genitals."
No, it's whether you are male of female, determined at root by the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, and expressed physically in a number of ways, including by secretion of hormones, facial hair, skeletal build, and other things, including by the genitals.
"Gender is an inner expression of yourself."
Which means what? And if it's an "inner" expression, why express it out loud? And why express it in sexual terms? People are a lot more than just what sex they are. And why insist that others have to refer to them by the wrong sex (male/female pronouns have always referred to one's sex. )
"Without creativity and expression what's the meaning in life? Work sleep procreate die?"
I never suggested otherwise, but I don't see what relevance that has here.
"We're complex creatures and develop cultures that to our knowledge no other species in the galaxy has done."
There are no other species in the galaxy, apart from the non-human ones here on Earth. But yes, we were made extremely complex. Again, relevance?
"Basing who a person is down to just their genitals is down right creepy."
An argument from opinion, not fact, and incorrect anyway, as it's not down to just their genitals, as I've pointed out above.
"because attempting to express opinions to rally people to a cause that's removing the rights of African Americans is a violation of their liberty."
No it's not. Removing their rights would be a violation of their liberty (as is not allowing people to use correct pronouns, but the left doesn't care about that ), but expressing an opinion is not.
"Expressing ideas that limit the liberty of individuals or groups of people is hate speech."
Simply expressing ideas doesn't limit anyone's liberty. By your logic, expressing your ideas here is limiting my liberty, and is therefore hate speech. So you should be fined. By your logic. So are you going to turn yourself in to the hate police?
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@redblaze8700 "Watch this and tell me that there is no evidence that proves evolution and disprove creation"
First, I pointed out the difference between evidence and proof, but you have ignored that. I never claimed that evolution doesn't have any evidence. I said that science doesn't do proofs, so evolution has not been "proven". Similarly, I never claimed that there is "no evidence" that goes against creation.
Second, having looked at numerous anti-creation videos that fail abysmally to make a sound argument, I'm not about to spend the best part of an hour watching this one. How much have you looked at the arguments for creation (from the creationists)?
However, having said that, I am prepared to look at a bit of it, and have done so. And, I must say, it starts of better than most I've seen. For about two minutes, then goes downhill. It adopts the fallacious position that science is the way to study the past (ignoring recorded history, for example) and it makes other disputable claims, and it does make claims for evolution that are not true. But I won't leave those points as bald claims; I'll give actual examples.
At about the 2-minute mark, it lists three "predictions" for evolution and creation. However, the predictions themselves have several problems.
1. (E) we should see a chain of gradual and progressively related fossils marking the evolutionary advancement of life.
(C) we would not expect to see a chain of morphing taxonomy. Creatures in the past should bear close resemblance to present-day organisms.
"progressively related" is not an observation, but a conclusion drawn from observations. "a chain of morphing taxonomy" is not possible in the sense that you can't see something static (the fossil record) morphing (changing). That A changed into B is not an observation, but a conclusion.
Yes, according to Darwin, we should observe a finely-graduated change of fossils. The problem is that we don't.
And yes, ignoring ones that have gone extinct, we do see creatures in the past bearing close resemblance to present-day organisms. Even one of the supposed oldest, blue-green algae (from memory) is indistinguishable from its living counterpart.
So no luck for evolution there.
2. (E)we should see objective proof of the uniformitarian principle – that natural laws have always operated invariably in the past as they do now in the present.
(C) we would see the principle of catastrophism – that evidence exists that demonstrates cataclysmic event left indelible marks upon the earth's geography.
The uniformitarian principle is not about the natural laws, but current processes. It's not about whether laws change or not, but whether processes (such as how much erosion occurs in a given time) operate at the same rate. The old (non-biblical) view of multiple catastrophes (the Bible only proposes one catastrophe) was abandoned because it tended to support the Bible, not because of observations contradicting it. Observations have, however, led geologists to re-embrace a limited form of catastrophism, because uniformitarianism is insufficient to explain it all.
So no luck to the evolutionary view there either.
3. (E) we should be able to accurately date rocks and fossils with simple dating methods that would yield expected and sufficient time for evolution
(C) we can closely estimate age of the earth based on biblical records.
It simply doesn't follow from evolution that one should be able to accurately date rocks and fossils, especially with simple dating methods. What it would predict is that if they can be dated, it should show sufficient time for evolution.
However, "age" is not a property of anything that can be measured. Rather, some other property, such as relative values of certain elements, can be measured, and from these measurements an age can be calculated if all the assumptions involved are correct. Some of those assumptions can be shown to be incorrect, and some of those assumptions assume the long-age view, which makes the argument circular. For example, carbon dating supposedly shows artefacts that have been around since before the time of Noah's flood, proving that the flood couldn't have happened. However, the flood would have upset the quantities of carbon 14, making the ages around then look older than they really are. But carbon dating assumes that the flood didn't happen, so doesn't adjust for that. As such, the claim that carbon dating contradicts the flood account is assuming what it attempts to prove, i.e. a circular argument.
Further, many/most dating done on items of a known age (i.e. known from history, not one of these dating methods) gives incorrect ages. So if it doesn't reliably work on objects of known age, why trust it on objects of unknown age?
The dates only support the evolutionary requirement because that's what they've been selected to do.
And of course you can closely estimate the age of the earth based on biblical records. Numerous people have done it for centuries with close agreement.
So no luck with the evolutionary view there either.
Whew! i watched up to about the six minute mark, and could point out other fallacies for most of that. But this is long enough already. If you have a particular claim or two in that video that you think are convincing, relate them and I'll address those. But I saw nothing in there that creationists have not already answered.
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@blackriver2531
"you are the commentor who hates trans kids."
Except that I don't, so you are flatly wrong.
"You compared being a trans kid to bulimia or anorexia or believing that they can fly."
Yes, I likened them in one respect—that they are wrong about what they believe about themselves. Which they are, so how does that make your case?
"Obviously you're transphobic."
On the contrary, obviously you don't understand logic and words. Disagreeing with a viewpoint is not the same has having an irrational fear (phobia) of it. Basically, you are blatantly accusing someone of being something that they are not, on the basis of a false equivalence, apparently not understanding what words mean. This is name-calling, or guilt by false labelling, a completely illogical reason.
I'll be happy to accept your apology for your false and slanderous accusation.
"the scientific consensus is conclusive, transition is the only proven way to increase the quality of life of trans kids. "
Simply false. Or perhaps you can point to the rigorous scientific papers that demonstrate that conclusively.
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@Shadow-go5ky
"because you're transphobic"
Except that, as I have pointed out already, I do NOT have an irrational fear of trans people. You are simply name-calling, and without providing any valid reason.
"if you think that being trans is anything more than normal??"
I'm not even sure what "more than normal" means in this context.
"These are real people with real lives you're talking about"
Yes. I agree. So what's your point?
"what causes trans suicide rates to go up broski, not cool dude."
One significant reason that they have high suicide rates is because they are trying to harmonise two contradictory ideas, that they are a particular sex but wrongly think that they are the other sex. This is what is known as gender dysphoria. That is, this particular reason has nothing to do with what other people think; it's a conflict between what they think and reality.
"Not very jesus of you."
Nonsense. Jesus is "the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6) Jesus does not endorse lies or falsehoods. Yes, Jesus is also love, but the loving thing to do is speak the truth, not endorse falsehoods.
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@SandyGooen
"one debate is over views. The other is over personhood."
Ignoring the possibility that there might be someone, somewhere who denies a trans person's personhood, that claim is so ludicrous I don't know whether to laugh or cry. No, it is not over personhood. People who disagree with trans people don't deny that they are people. My employer has a policy that says that we have to respect the views of trans people. I objected to the policy, but in so doing say that I respect all people because they are people, not because of particular views they are hold. I was told that my views are not acceptable and was told that I could not share my views with my work colleagues. So I'm not allowed to tell my work colleagues that I respect all people! That is the sort of idiocy promoted by trans activists, and completely contradicts your claim.
"Christians in the west are so desperate to be oppressed. You’re really not."
Oh yes we are. We are vilified, discriminated against, fired from our jobs, denied jobs, denied membership in organisations, told to keep our views to ourselves (see my previous paragraph), taken to court and sued, and so on.
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@ScottBub
"it’s a matter of logic."
I agree, which is why I use logic.
"I’m saying that fairies have not been demonstrated to exist and whatever has been asserted without evidence can be rejected without evidence."
I agree with that too. Which is why I challenged you to provide evidence of your claim that Matt couldn't prove that pixies created the universe. You have failed to provide evidence that he couldn't, so your claim that he couldn't can be rejected without evidence. (Which of course doesn't mean that he can provide such evidence.)
"Therefore there is no reason to prove that fairies or god did or didn’t create the universe because it first has to be proven whether they or it exists first before moving on to a different claim."
Actually, it's not clear which claim comes first. If archaeologists find stones in shapes that they believe had not occurred naturally, that would be considered evidence that they were shaped by man. They don't have to show that men existed there before making that conclusion. The stones are themselves evidence for that.
Similarly, the existence of the universe not being able to form naturally IS evidence that it was created by an intelligent being, which we would call "God".
"Why is it that someone would need to prove that fairies didn’t create the universe if it’s never been demonstrated that they even exist first?"
Someone should prove that fairies didn't create the universe if that someone made a dogmatic claim that fairies didn't create the universe. As I said, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. And as you said, what has been asserted without evidence (that fairies didn't create the universe) can be rejected without evidence.
"...the way we evaluate existential claims is that nothing exists until it has been demonstrated it exists."
That depends on what you mean by "demonstrated". If "demonstration" means showing that it's more probable than not, then I agree with you. But again, you're contradicting yourself. Because you haven't demonstrated your claim that fairies didn't create the universe. Therefore, we can reject your claim. (Which doesn't mean that they did create the universe, just that we can't yet rule out that option.)
I'll also explain it this way. There are three options to the question "Did God create the universe?"
1) Yes, God created the universe.
2) No, God did not create the universe.
3) I don't know if God created the universe.
If someone makes either claim 1) or 2), they have a burden of proof. The only person who doesn't is they one that answers with 3). You are making claims like No. 2), but not accepting your onus to provide 'proof' (or evidence, at least).
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@ScottBub
"I am not saying that god didn’t create the universe and that fairies didn’t create the universe."
I didn't say that you were saying that. Your claim (well, one of them) was that "I have no burden to prove that something that hasn’t been demonstrated to exist doesn’t exist." But that is incorrect. If you claim that something hasn't been demonstrated to exist, then you have a burden of proof to show that it hasn't been demonstrated to exist.
"I am saying why should we even make that valuation until it’s been demonstrated to exist."
It? The universe?
"Do we have to prove that everything that some random person asserts created the universe..."
The only think you have to "prove" is the claims that you make. If a random person asserts that X created the universe, they have the onus of proof. But similarly, if anyone says that X didn't create the universe, they have the onus of proof.
"Therefore there is no need to say “I don’t know” because making up random stuff that could potentially create universes is not something we need to waste our time on until it’s been demonstrated it potentially exists."
But we are not talking about "making up random stuff", are we? We are talking about a long-standing, well-accepted claim that has evidence to back it.
"You are trying to say that we need to leave room for skepticism..."
In the absence of reason to do otherwise, yes.
"I’m just saying do we have to say “it’s possible” or “I don’t know” if kermarblefluffins created the universe? No."
If someone makes a serious claim that kermarblefluffins created the universe, then yes, you have to say "I don't know" unless you can provide reason for it to be wrong. To simply assert that it's wrong without reason is not intellectually honest.
"Because it’s nonsense..."
While I don't doubt hat kermarblefluffins are something that you made up and therefore are nonsense, apart from that, you are begging the question by calling it 'nonsense'. Is it actually nonsense, or is that just your prejudice?
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