:DDN: Nice job Gideon, but you are wasting your time. Facts, math, and logic are respected by people like this only when these tools can be twisted beyond recognition and selectively ignored to support their absurd biblical beliefs. :Nikhil: Right, did you forget the Communist Christ bit, the part where he says "whatever you did for the least of my
brothers you did for me" (Matthew 26:40)? Was that also, as you put it, 'absurd'?
DDN: I didn’t say I found everything in the bible to be absurd. I can find meaningful morally sound concepts buried underneath all kinds of absurd gibberish in this world – the Bible included. So what.
:Nikhil: May I remind the gentleman that Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Robert Hooke, Blaise Pascal, Theodosious Dobzhasnky, Leonhard Euler, Gregor Mendel, and many other fathers of science, logic and mathematics wereall committed practicing Christians?
DDN: Certainly you may, but to what ends? Bill Clinton is a golfer, a dope smoker, an adulterer and the president of the United States but you don’t see him pokin’ his secretary with a joint hanging out of his mouth and a golf club resting on his shoulder while he’s giving the state of the union address. Human beings often wear many different hats throughout the week and they’d look pretty silly wearing some of them simultaneously, like trying to make the Bible’s 10,000 year old, flat, square, pillar supported earth look scientific. I’m sure their religious inclinations fueled their scientific aspirations and vice versa, but was it really Christianity per se that inspired and supported their scientific endeavors or more so just a general curiosity about the nature of reality? Did Christianity per se represent to them the finality of their scientific inquiries or were they just christians because that’s how they were raised? When Newton wanted to prove his laws of motion, did he have more luck with math and scientific experiments or with reading passages from the bible? It’s a square peg in a round hole if there ever was one.
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:DDN: I'll wager my life savings that, if this thread were to continue back and forth between the two of you, at about the fifth or sixth exchange this turkey will be backpedaling like crazy with biblical reminders of how our mortal human intellects are worthless (if not dangerous) deterrents to understanding "God" and the Holy Bible. They ALL do this eventually, regardless of what the debate is about.
:Nikhil: "They"? "They'? Who is "THEY"? We're using a pretty broad brush here, aren't we?
DDN: “They”: The Christians I have debated with that think the earth is 10,000 years old only because in lends credibility to the Bible but try to pretend like this belief is based on science and reason instead.
:DDN: …They MUST; Thinking is simply incompatible with the Holy Bible (as a map of reality or a book of instruction). Every debate I've ever had with Christians bares this out. Its pathetic.
Nikhil: if you're arguing that everything in the Bible is not literally true, then that's obviously true. But as a book of instruction, I cannot disagree more. You must know about 'liberation theology'?
DDN: Look, if I gave you a road map that was only 10% accurate, readable, meaningful, and consistent would you keep it in your glove box because every once in a rare while something on it would prove useful or would you try to replace it with a real map? Sure, liberation theology is cool, but so what. Liberation theologists have simply taken the parts of the bible that appeal to their particular needs and ignored the parts that don’t. And that’s pretty much what all Christian denominations do – they have to, otherwise they simply wouldn’t make any damn sense to anyone because the bible is wrought with contradictions and errancies. Not one single book of the bible is simultaneously consistent within itself, consistent with the other books, meaningful to modern man, and scientifically accurate. Some of the books don’t meet ANY of these criteria. A sincere bible reader must constantly abandon logic and reason just to get from one chapter to the next. I certainly had to. It was the most painful read of my entire life. And yes, I’m bitter about it damn it!
:DDN: It is pretty amusing though to watch them thrash in the water as they are dragged inevitably downstream to the falls and the jagged rocks below. Maybe I'm a little sick, but somehow I never seem to tire of watching this take place. Someone should write a book about it. Maybe it would simply be a collection of scientific debates with Christians on a wide variety topics, each final Christian reply being on the order of "Because God said so" or "Science is evil". That'd be a real hoot.
:Nikhil: Yeah, right. Do you know where we would be today without the intellect fo farady, that fundamentalist Christian? In the dark, without electric power or generators. that's where.
DDN: We’re all still in the dark anyway, Nikhil. I just wish the Christians would admit it so we could all start making some real spiritual progress together as a race.
