Straightforward, hard-to-answer-questions about the Bible/Christianity

But Adam was different. But he was still perfect ..."Perfect" ... unlike the saved, who will never sin, right? WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!You are now entering the final, irreversible stage of madness. Once you have stepped over this line, you will never, ever, get back. You will be insane for the rest of your life if you take this final step.Please don't. My dear Dr Sing, I thought I had made it clear that I don't need to forgive you. Because you have not hurt me. I don't care about it for myself. If I have tried to shame you (which I have) I am trying to shame you into accuracy.If it makes you feel better, then I forgive you.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You were asked to finish the sentence: "I can reasonably conclude God exists by..."

But you yourself can hardly think it reasonable.It is evident that faith cannot be a good reason, because it tells people such radically different things.It tells one person that they should be Protestant, and another person that Protestants should be burnt at the stake. It tells one person to be Jewish, and another person to start a pogrom. It tells one person that Islam is evil, and another person that Allah wants them to crash a plane into a building.Obviously, then, faith can't be a way of discovering facts, because if it was, people would find out the same facts by applying it.Compare it with a scientific instrument such as a telescope. If two completely different people, with two completely different world-views, look at the planet Saturn through a sufficiently powerful telescope, then they will both see that Saturn has rings.But when two different people use faith as a way of finding out about the world, they end up with completely different answers: just as if two people put the same question to a "magic eight ball" it'll tell one of them "yes" and the other one "no".

Well, no there isn't.You seem to be saying that other people's faith is just religion, which is bad, but your religion is faith, which is good.But they look exactly the same from the outside; and of course since you are not a mind-reader you have never seen anyone else's faith from the inside. Yeah. For example, I know of a religion, I don't know if you've heard of it, it's called "Christianity", which teaches its adherents that just by sincerely believing in that religion, all their sins are automatically forgiven and when they die they won't actually die but instead they'll live eternally and be perfectly blissfully happy for ever.This seems tailor-made to suit the desires of Christianity's adherents. Certainly I've never seen any Christian object to it and say --- "Darn, I wish God hadn't forgiven all my sins, I wish I didn't have eternal life, I wish I wasn't going to be happy for ever and ever, but I guess that's just the way things are, and I'll just have to learn to deal with it. It sucks, but what can I do?" Which is my point. You were asked how you could reasonably know that God exists, and you answered "faith". This is as though I asked an anti-semite how he could reasonably know that Jews are subhuman and he answered "bigotry". Or if I asked a New Ager how he could reasonably believe in astrology and he answered "superstition". Or if I asked David Icke how he could reasonably know that the world is secretly being run by reptilian lizard-men and he answered "because I'm mentally ill". You were asked for a reasonable foundation for your beliefs and you responded by naming a form of irrationality.

What about the historicity of Noah's flood? Is that not completely confuted by all the archaeological evidence?Heck, why did I even phrase that as a rhetorical question? It is confuted by all the archaeological evidence.Show me an "archaeologist and unbeliever" who thinks that that's a real historical fact rather than a fairy-story for children. However, it is sufficiently recent that we can be absolutely certain that it's false. The reason that you can't confirm it isn't that it's too long ago, but that it's claptrap.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

And notice that in Jeremiah 23:24 it isn't. The fact that God says that he can see everything does not mean that when he says he is everywhere he doesn't really mean that he is everywhere.

No. I was expecting nothing at all like that. That was and remains my point. I expect that you and your creationist chums will never be able to say anything like that. 'Cos of you being wrong. Again, that is my point. Well, let me rewrite that for you. What you should have said was this: You see, you have faith in faith itself. But you don't have evidence, as we normally understand it. When I say that I have two legs, then this is a question susceptible to investigation. In the last resort you could take a ticket to Las Vegas and track me down and count my legs yourself.So you don't have the same standing to say: "My Salvation and faith were installed in me by a supernatural being", in the same way that I have standing to say: "I have two legs". Then stop saying things that are not true.You wrote: Challenged to name just one such person ... you've got zip. Zilch. Nada.And you said that there were "many" such people. But you can't name oneSo why did you say it in the first place? Don't you feel a little bit ashamed of yourself when you do stuff like that? Does the phrase THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS mean nothing to you?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

That's not what he said. He just challenged you to suggest an alternative.For example, if you claimed supernatural powers to raise the dead, then we could in principle take you to a morgue and see if you could do what you claimed. That would be using the scientific method, and the test would be effective --- either you really could or you really couldn't, and we'd be able to tell one way or another.Can you suggest an equally good, or superior, method of testing such a claim? We're all ears.

But "we" do not all have 66 books. Different Christian sects have different canons. Hence if your reasoning was correct we'd have to conclude that the Bible is not God's word.

This seems to be a non sequitur. How would it follow from your previous statements? But this does not follow. Being hungry does not prove that we have bread, and being conscious of our own imperfection does not prove that there is propriation, just that we'd like there to be.

I can conceive of the possibility, just as I can conceive of the existence of unicorns. What I cannot do is see a unicorn. Because there aren't any unicorns. Ironically, that's the one thing that all religious people agree on. If you can think of any other way to find out what the world is like except by examining the world to find out what it's like, then now would be a great time to say what it is.And if you want to make out that it is "ridiculous" to apply this concept to your religious beliefs, then perhaps it is time for you to offer some actual special pleading, rather than behaving as though this has already been offered.But it seems to me that the only reason you have to make your religion a special case is that it's wrong. If there was evidence for things like fiat creation, a young earth, Noah's flood, and so forth, then you wouldn't be going about saying that it was "ridiculous" to look at the evidence when it comes to questions of religion, would you? No, it would be the first thing you'd want to talk about.Just as, for example, homeopaths wouldn't need to go about badmouthing the scientific method if their magic potions actually worked.

(1) You're making a distinction where there is no difference.(2) Since you mention it, I don't see why we can't extrapolate from our experience to draw conclusions about the afterlife. We observe that when part of the brain ceases to work, this results in the loss of the corresponding mental function. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that when the whole of my brain stops working, as it will when I'm dead, I will have no mental functions whatsoever, i.e. that I will actually be dead. This is not a cheerful conclusion, but I don't see much of a way around it. of course one can imagine a miracle, but one could do that with respect to any question at all. Given a miracle, monkeys might fly out of my butt, but I don't expect that to happen either.

On exactly the same basis that you do. The only difference between you and me is that I know this and you don't.

But the same problem applies to any moral standard.