Forums / Miscellaneous Discussions / A big debate, on the chat box!

Just because one does not agree with the literal word of the bible,doesn't that mean they won't think twice before sinning.  That's a bit of a haughty assumption.

About a year ago I was in the same position as you, Ambrosia.  I used the same arguements, cited the same evidence (minus the prophecy stuff.)  And even now I defended Christianity from those who say it is worthless or harmful. 

The only thing is the more I read into threads like this, the further away I was pushed from believing the literal truth of the bible, not closer.

Mhm... dignity... sure :p  I could also attempt to destroy your credibility and claim that you are afraid you are losing the debate, which is why you are withdrawing now.  It's called ethos :)  If you want to just let it rest though, that's fine.  This exact same controvery will spring up again in about a month or two.

well... its kinda what i did...

im glad somone could find a little interest on the debate. such as yourselve. somone else needed to pick it up for me. im fixing to get into school dont have anough time for all of this.

Abrosias i love you.

You say humans are not perfect etc.
Since they aren't perfect, we could also assume that most of the things they do are wrong. Or however, many things.
Considering the quanitity of humans in this world, we can guess that everything we do is somehow wrong, since we are not perfect.
This leads to: even people who believe in god are wrong.


That's an extrapolation of what you say.


The bible is written by a ***FEW*** humans. (The 12 apostoles I guess, anyways: a number smaller than 50).
Science is written/studied by THOUSANDS of humans.

So um, I'd dare-say that science is much more perfect than the bible.
Sure, there's lots of preachers/priests/monks etc.
But they DO NOT ADD ANYTHING TO THE BIBLE NOR CHANGE IT IN ANY SIGNIFICANT WAY.

Whereas lots of scientists DO change and improve science everyday.
Science proved that we can make computers. Not god.
Science proved that we can have lightbulbs. Not god!
Science can precisely say when a person/animal died. This has been tested and was found effective.
Using the same technique found that some egyptian pharaohs were 4000 years old. By reading written documentation of egyptians/romans did prove that the pharaoh was 4000 years old.
The same technique was used on other animals/humans/plants and said they died 6000 years ago.
That kind of nails down that the world is 5000 years old...


Another point I'd like to make is this:
Jesus couldn't write. How is that perfect?
Jesus managed to help only a few people around him. How is that perfect?
The bible was written by people who HEARD and SAW Jesus preach. And we all know that humans can understand wrongfully. Even someone as perfect as Jesus.
This means that the bible is NOT perfect.

Since it's not perfect we can doubt it.
Also, note that the Bible was TRANSLATED BY HUMANS from it's original language to English (or maybe to Old English first and then to English).
This makes it even less perfect and rightful.


So how is the Bible any more perfect than science?
Science has EXPLANATIONS.
The Bible has only beliefs.

Last point:
does it really matter weather God created earth or the big bang did?

-----
probably my longest post evah O_O

Maybe not using the words "I guess" to assert a point, a false one. and also, learn to spell if you want assert yourself as educated and legitimate to make a point. As for the claim that the bible was written by a few people? Maybe if you read it, you would know differently. The bible was written across thousands of years by many, many people and included principles still hidden to the ancient world, such as hygiene preventing illness. Also, if your principle stating that if a lot of people do things, then surely it is all wrong in some way or another, why, o why, would you state that science is done by a lot of people.

Yeah, I was going to bring that up too.

A theory does not need to be "proven."  There is no way to proove a theory, as such.  But if it is tested again and again, and the results always point in the same direction, it can be considered "proven" until evidence pops up contradicting otherwise.  And that evidence must go through the same process.

You mention an experiment with a chicken bone that said it was 1.1 million years old.  How many times was this done?  How many different bones were tested?  How many different testing devices were used?  A single chicken bone that created false reading in one instrument does not prove that the entire system is unreliable.

Oh, and just to mention it, when you're dealing with a device that deals with items as old as hundreds of millions of ye*beep*ven a 1.1 million years of error is considered accurate.  You wouldn't try and measure a car with your bathroom scale without allowing for a bit of numerical tolerance.

Don't forget, gravity is also just a theory, yet who is saying gravity isn't proven and shouldn't be taken seriously?

"First off, much of the bible has been proven."

Just because the setting is right does not mean the characters and events were accurate.

" Is your chair going to hold you now?  How about 1 minute from now?  Can you know for sure?  No, you cannot."

It's really not the same thing.  Chairs are material objects.  You can test them, load weights onto one until it cracks under the weight.  You can make a stronger chair or a weaker chair based on archtictural design.  I have faith in my chair that it won't splinter because it hasn't splintered under anyone else under the weight limit.  But in the event that it were to break, I could look at the pieces and see why.  Maybe a part was cracked.  Maybe I gained 300 pounds overnight.

However, putting faith into an immaterial item or entity is different.  There is testing, no way to see what goes wrong.  It is mere belief without physical, real evidence.

Perhaps you should bring up peoples' faith in something like justice, law, or right and wrong :p

"The Carcass of a whale was found in some mountains in Arizona a while back as well as thousands of sea shells and many other sea creatures.  Many other marine animal bones have been excavated from high mountain regions as well from all around the world.  How exactly could this happen without a flood."

Mountains rise out of the ground as techtonic plates push together.  Material that was once underwater is raised up with the land, including fossilized remains of sea life.  Simple earth science.

"Many things in the bible have been proved through scientific methods such as the age of the earth as discussed before... "

Um... you do realize that the general scientific consensus is that the earth is indeed 4.5 billion years old and not a mere 5,000?  Creation Science is not true science, because science attempts to explain from observation and does not set out to prove one certain line of thought.  That is called bias and is meant to be avoided as much as possible.

Suppose there had been no bible, no written accounts of Jesus.  No Christian religion.  Do you honestly think that anyone would have come to the conclusion that the earth was 5,000 years old?  Why 5000 and not 10,000?  Or 4,242?

most of the opponents of the bible in this debate are brining up the same point over and over. I believe we've provided enough evidence that places, people, and historical events of the bible are indeed trustworthy. Let's stop making that claim shall we?

Gnisis, the whole purpose of that dicussion is to show just because the places were right does not mean the stories all must be literally true.  No one's arguing that Rome didn't exist; we know it did.  But that does not mean every supposed claim made in the Roman era was true, obviously.  Therefore proof that the earth is 5000 years old, or that Jesus actualy did his miracles. cannot be taken from the bible as direct truth.

I'm not going to put an age on the Earth, because I'm honestly not sure it is possible to do so.

I will say, however, that is far easier to believe in a chair holding you up every day than many religious concepts; if you remember from the New Testament, one of the apostles (Thomas) did not believe in the Resurrection until he saw Jesus with his own eyes and felt the wounds with his own hands.

Sure, it all seems preposterous.  In fact, as a Catholic, I have stood back and watched the Mass and thought it must be pretty crazy to outsiders, what with the "body and blood" and all.  But then I realize that a more philosophical religious ideal is at work here, and that the tenants and stories preached, read, and taught are meant to be guidelines for a happy life.

The faith in the Bible's authenticity is certainly reinforced by scientific support.  Even if the Bible is regarded by Science as one of the oldest and most comprehensive collections of literature still available, the downright mythical-seeming nature of time, place, and characters in the Bible are a cause for doubt in many people today.  It certainly may seem out of touch for many, and requires deeper levels of understanding to relate to life today.

Unlike Homer's epic stories of lore, and other legends, the Bible does not lay claim to the epic exaggerations that are a core of Greek mythology or the parthenons of civilizations long past.  Rather, the Bible's stories are of great accomplishments and hardships endured through faith.  In the end, that is all it comes down to.  Faith.

Man, thank*beep*a Mor for getting to some of those ridiculous claims before I had to bother. So here's my reaction to where we are now, with some abreviated because Luta did a good job:

1st sentence, second paragraph:

It is theorized that the true age of the earth is about 4.6 billion years old...

First of all you may know "something about the scientific theory" but you display here that you don't know anything about science relevant to this discussion. You are totally misunderstanding the term theory as it is used in science. It's a theory when the less than the entire thing is provable with 100% success. Like someone else said; gravity is a theory because it fluctuates. So is nearly every thing you hold true about the world (light/time/pressure/so on). Also, you stopped at the first sentence. Science is not the unbreakable word of some magic man where the whole thing falls appart when you can raise some lame objection to line one. It is made up of thousands or more tests with hundreds or thousands of testers and disproving one part of a theory only adds to that theory; nevermind the lack of any ground you gain simply by CHALLENGING when the whole idea of science is to challenge everything you find yourself before you even say it!

Well, radiometric dating has been disproved

You're trying to mislead people or you misunderstand. A*beep*a said, the measurement tools used to date the earth and similar things have error rates of hundreds of thousands of years depending on the particular method. One chicken bone being off by a million is an accurate reading when you understand the science behind the test. Best to let scientists try to disprove their results; they do it as a matter of routine.

Scientists have not found a way to determine the exact age of the Earth...  Therefore, they don't know, this link is out.

Sorry, finding truth isn't that easy. Again we don't just throw out the book when we have a typo on page one. We have to read on and find the evidence that makes them think what they do; it is irresponsible to go on speaking what you claim to be the truth when you don't look at what is there. First of all we know the age is accurate within some millions of years and when the estimate is 4.5 bil then a couple mil is nothing at all. The important thing here is that we have people saying it is 5 thousand or ten thousand now (I guess you guys can just make up whatever number you feel like) and a hundred thousand. Well, imperfect or not, we know it is absurd to say anything less than several billion which makes the religious opinion out of the question for this.

This can be combated by saying that maybe the amount of dust falling on the moon is NOT(?) constant,.... But if you were to say that to disprove my method, you would be throwing your whole argument ou the window.

This is really fractured reasoning. The theories are totally unrelated and based on unrelated principles. Don't assume the religious are the first people to come up with objections to science. Science does not take the first thing that seems to work and run with it. These methods are tested and retested and your weak, ill-informed objections are nothing new if you actually look into how these things work. Secondly, the 10,000 year result: I'll eat my hat if there isn't a correction out there somewhere. Meteor*beep*ting the moon are constantly reshaping its survace. Digging an inch down does nothing at all to show its age...nothing.

All the Theories on that page come from the same dating techniques we discussed before, therefore they are out as evidence, and they call themselves theories, therefore not fact, therefore this page is also out.

Anyone participating needs to stay away from this kind of simplistic reasoning if we are to continue. I see it everytime creation science comes up and it is totally irresponsible.

First off, much of the bible has been proven.  Members of the scientific community have found remnants of things addressed in the Bible. 

As stated way back in this thread: THE BIBLE has not been proven; CERTAIN THINGS in the bible, all of which have sweet nothing to do with the topic of this thread, have been proven. Can we please get off this now?

And something that seems to not be getting through to you guys is that the pope has nothing to do with Christianity.

Premise one: Christianity was started in ancient Rome which developed the Catholic Church, the first Christian religion.
Premise two (as stated by my opposition, and which I whole-heartedly disagree with....): The bible has not changed over the years. It is the same translation now as then.
Forced outcome: Catholicism has EVERYTHING to do with Christianity. All christianity comes from Catholicism.....which came from Judaism....which came from Perian mystery religions.... which came from the Babylonioans.... which came from who cares because you guys don't seem to accept that it came from anything but a magic man anyway...

again using scientific methods, that a worldwide flood did in fact happen. 

Nope. I'm sure what you meant to say is that some people setting out to prove a flood have found a few isolated pieces of evidence that when put together can paint that story. Also I'm sure you just forgot to mention how you can plug those pieces into the billions of other pieces of evidence which as a whole say nothing at all about a global flood, unless you mean Pangea. To repeat myself... A:the whole of our evidence points 100% away from a GLOBAL flood and B: the evidence used to talk about floods usually talks in the millions of years, so why are you shooting your other argument in the foot by bringing it up? I'm humbled by your leet debating skills.

b:SCIENCE tells us that we CANNOT believe in the accounts in the bible.

Care to explain this?  Many things in the bible have been proved through scientific methods such as the age of the earth as discussed before...  Could you explain this thought further for me please?

Luckily, I just did. You've prematurely claimed victory on the age of the earth thing though. If you want to convince anyone other than those who already think you are correct then you're going to need a lot more. The important part is that I slightly mispoke. I should have said (and did at all other times) that the parts of the bible relevant to this discussion are disproven. That means Noah, Adam and Eve, Age of earth.

You have no evidence of this and if you read the world's ancient sources all you will find is evidence against it.

What exactly are you speaking of?  What of the Bible are you dis-proving?  What is this evidence attesting to?

As I say above... We can trace the big stories of the bible to other more ancient sources. This does not mean the bible is supported; it means the bible has ripped off stories from other cultures and passed them down as was the style back then. We have much more ancient stories of man-gods, floods, angels and heaven than christianity has ever given us and we can trace where they came from. All the bible is is a posthumous deification of a philosopher using all the common symbology of the times. These are your Jesus: Osiris, Dionysus, Mithras, Adonis, Orpheus and more. Between them are all the miracles Jesus was ever said to have done.

well i am pretty awesome. and yes some theorys are ridiculous but then so are a lot of parts of the bible.
Your evidence that the earth is 5000-10000 years old comes from a book.
So if i wrote a book and then someone found it 2000 years later it must be true because America exsists and Iraq was invaded so all my other stories are true? :o

The following little snippets will be mostly from wiki but you get the general idea from them nonetheless. The rest from some books/classes I've run into along the way. I'm posting the little bits and pieces of each god-man that were borrowed by early christian mythos-writers. Italics is quotes, regular is where I sum up because some of this is wordy or not on wiki for easy access =p. Keep in mind that all of the following predate Christianity.

Osiris was not only the redeemer and merciful judge of the dead in the afterlife...Osiris rose from the dead so would they, in union with him, inherit eternal life....was depited partly mumified, iconizing his death as the symbol of his cult...he died and came back to life leading to....The cult of Osiris had a particularly strong interest towards the concept of immortality....he was related to the grain harvest (life/death cycle stuff) and so in death his body became the bread of Egypt... during his celebrations, little bread men of wheat, holy water, and ale (symbolizing his blood) were made, put through elaborate rituals, and eventually All of these sacred rituals were climaxed by the eating of sacramental god, the eucharist by which the celebrants were transformed, in their persuasion, into replicas of their god-man...it was literally believed to be the body (bread) and blood (ale) of the god....Although this sacramental concept only originated once in history, it spread throughout the Mediterranean area and became the dynamic force in every mystery cult.

Now that was just Osiris. I'll be more brief with the others because you can look into this yourself if you like the truth.

His mother was Semele (daughter of Cadmus), a mortal woman, and his father Zeus, the king of the gods...he is killed and there are two different stories about how he comes back but the point is he is thereafter worshiped for having come back from death...Dionysus was distinct among Greek gods as a deity commonly felt within individual followers (as opposed to only ever sensed by being seen walking around and doing things)....his two major holidays were dec 25, the Greek solstice, and march at easter time....he spent a large piece of time in palestine... This is Dionysus.

Ok I'm unexpectedly called away here but look into the other guys yourselves. As I said, take them together and you don't end up with much left of Jesus that wasn't told somewhere else and way earlier.

Osiris rules!

Mr. Bayushi Clamps Report 1/15/2008 8:53:32 PM

Apparently he's as good as Jesus =p

Obveasly you have not even read one qourter of the bible...

Lord of The Morning Report 1/14/2008 3:09:19 PM

Abrosias i love you. You say humans are not perfect etc. Since they aren't perfect, we could also assume that most of the things they do are wrong. Or however, many things. Considering the quanitity of humans in this world, we can guess that everything we do is somehow wrong, since we are not perfect. This leads to: even people who believe in god are wrong. That's an extrapolation of what you say.

Firstly I did in fact say that all men on earth can be wrong and none are perfect [except one, Jesus] and all sin. However I also did say that the men who wrote the bible were led under the divine direction of God, so therefore there was no mistakes in the bible.

That is something we Christians believe in. And we will most likely not change our faith in that. It is something we cannot prove, except the for the bible says listen to the Word of God (the bible) and do likewise. And neither can you atheist say otherwise. For you were not there when the books were written.

The true bible codes, the hidden messages, is too complex for a human mind to write.  The codes are placed with detail meanings ,and accurate as well, that its has been proven its scientifically impossible for it to be coincidence.

The book of Daniel and Revelations are perfect examples of how the Bible is the word of God. Example of a code in the bible that proves it before it is said to happen.  Russia and Iran.  The bible code predicts Russia will aid Iran when it is attacked by America/Israel.  Russia has already came to the aid with Iran by stating they are not planning to build nuclear weapons.

By code I mean Predictments, Prophicies, ect.

"The following little snippets will be mostly from wiki"

Does everyone know that these "articals" are made by people like you and I? Weither or not these articals are confirmed by Wiki?

"The rest from some books/classes I've run into along the way."

You cannot confirm that you have infact obtained this information from books and classes.

Lord of The Morning Report 1/14/2008 3:09:19 PM

Abrosias i love you. You say humans are not perfect etc. Since they aren't perfect, we could also assume that most of the things they do are wrong. Or however, many things. Considering the quanitity of humans in this world, we can guess that everything we do is somehow wrong, since we are not perfect. This leads to: even people who believe in god are wrong.

Here this person even states that these articals made by people like you and I are infact posibaly wrong.

That is something we Christians believe in. And we will most likely not change our faith in that. It is something we cannot prove, except the for the bible says listen to the Word of God (the bible) and do likewise. And neither can you atheist say otherwise. For you were not there when the books were written.

are you blind?

Im not going to post anymore on this topic. so don't bother talking to me any more through this topic.

"The following little snippets will be mostly from wiki"

Does everyone know that these "articals" are made by people like you and I? Weither or not these articals are confirmed by Wiki?

"The rest from some books/classes I've run into along the way."

You cannot confirm that you have infact obtained this information from books and classes.

Then if you think I'm lying to you look it up ffs! Do you think winning an argument against you is actually going to drive me to lie in front of everyone else who passes by this thread, who are just waiting to call someone on something like that? Get a grip. If this is all you can answer with then you've made the right choice in stopping. That makes two down.

Quoth Ambrosias the Christian:
"" That is something we Christians believe in. And we will most likely not change our faith in that. It is something we cannot prove, except the for the bible says listen to the Word of God (the bible) and do likewise. And neither can you atheist say otherwise. For you were not there when the books were written. ""

Cool.
Means there is not a single reason, I should believe in God actually. I mean, I'll go to hell anyways. Every religion says I'm going to hell if I practice any other religion than theirs.

ok, and here is a succinct set of arguments against mystery religious influences on Christianity. Some very good points made here, I think.

What about the dating of these stories? Who is influencing who? A couple of quotes from two articles:

- The key here is dating. Most of the alleged parallels between Christianity and mystery religions, upon close scrutiny will show that Christian elements predate mythological elements. In cases where they do not, it is often Jewish elements which predate both Christianity and the myth, and which lent themselves to both religions.[2]

- In the case of all three, there is no evidence earlier than the second century A.D. for the supposed "resurrection" of these mystery gods.[3]

- For a discussion of certain parallels between the Osiris cult and Christianity, where "any theory of borrowing on the part of Christianity from the older faith is not to be entertained, for not only can it not be substantiated on the extant evidence, but it is also intrinsically most improbable." see S. G. F. Brandon. "The Ritual Perpetuation of the Past," “Numen”, vi (1959), 122-129 (quotation is from p. 128).[4]

I am fully aware of the similarities and differences between the two. You could easily list ten thousand things different between the two of them and that wouldn't address the point I made. I said that the similarities (of which you omitted nearly every one) are not coincidence, and that the differences (of which there are thousands, because they are totally different stories), are not a big deal.

To reiterate: in those days there were many a god-man. This type of myth came from Persia with increased trade and exposure. Someone in this thread said it was inconceivable that people from different cultures could all write of the same god (I think they were referring to like the authors of the bible). What that person (and you, Gnisis) don't understand is that the time period we're looking at was very cosmopolitan. Ideas were coming in from the 4 corners of the world and the trendy ones stuck.

Here's the short version; Jesus was a man. He was a man interested in the Persian religions that were sweeping his country. He added a very mild twist to his standard assortment of Persian religious "stuff", that his god was the only god you were allowed to worship. The reason the Romans didn't put up with it was because that meant people were meeting in secret, to talk about their god away from prying eyes.

 There was a law that said you weren't allowed more than two people meeting after dark, during this period, because that was a standard sign of treason brewing. When Cultus Christi started to get big and people started meeting together at the exclusion of others, the Romans got pissed and did what they did to everyone else who broke the law against treason. When Christ was gone, his people saw him as a martyr (another Persian idea), and started telling great stories about him, all of which are straight from the Persian tradition they were into at the time.

So it came to pass that an important figure was adorned with big stories from other gods all around him because that was tradition for looking at a dead celebrity. Just like our culture has an idea of what an alien or angel or ghost  or vampire looks like, and we have an idea of the powers they have, people had an (new, Persian) idea of what gods were like. That's why the stories about him came to spread just like they did of say Augustus. This is why the differences between Jesus and say Osiris don't matter. The Cultus Christi borrowed the neat godly things several gods did; I wasn't saying they just copied another god wholesale.

God is omnipotent?
Definition of omnipotent:
Omnipotence (literally, "all power") is power with no limits or inexhaustible, in other words, unlimited power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence only to God.

Means God can create anything?
Such as, a stone so heavy, that he can't lift? (If he can't do it - he's not omnipotent)

And since it's a stone so heavy that he can't lift it, it means that he's not omnipotent.
Thus, we can say that Omnipotency does not exist!
w00t

Lol.... ok I guess I'm going to have to make exceptions in my beliefs. I'va actually met Osiris personally so it would be rather silly to deny his existence. Fine then; Osiris is the one and only god =p

four.*