Underlying Philosophy

That dynamo theory is an explanation of the earth's geomagnetic field, not of gravity. Electrical and magnetic fields have nothing to do with gravitational fields. Gravity is not static cling!Next thing we know, you will join ICANT in claiming that lightning is caused by anti-matter! Or some other even more bizaare foolishness!Saint Augustine, from De Genese ad litteram:

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It very often happens that there is some question as to the earth or the sky, or the other elements of this world -- respecting which one who is not a Christian has knowledge derived from most certain reasoning or observation, and it is very disgraceful and mischievous and of all things to be carefully avoided, that a Christian speaking of such matters as being according to the Christian Scriptures, should be heard by an unbeliever talking such nonsense that the unbeliever perceiving him to be as wide of the mark as east from west, can hardly restrain himself from laughing.

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And the real evil is not that a man is subjected to derision because of his error, but it is that to profane eyes, our authors (that is to say, the sacred authors) are regarded as having had such thoughts; and are also exposed to blame and scorn upon the score of ignorance, to the greatest possible misfortune of people whom we wish to save. For, in fine, these profane people happen upon a Christian busy in making mistakes on a subject which they know perfectly well; how, then, will they believe these holy books? How will they believe in the resurrection of the dead and in the hope of life eternal, and in the kingdom of heaven, when, according to an erroneous assumption, these books seem to them to have as their object those very things which they, the profane, by their direct experience or by calculation which admits of no doubt? It is impossible to say what vexation and sorrow prudent Christians meet with through these presumptuous and bold spirits who, taken to task one day for their silly and false opinion, and realizing themselves on the point of being convicted by men who are not obedient to the authority of our holy books, wish to defend their assertions so thoughtless, so bold, and so manifestly false. For they then commence to bring forward as a proof precisely our holy books, or again they attribute to them from memory that which seems to support their opinion, and they quote numerous passages, understanding neither the texts they quote, nor the subject about which they are making statement.

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Before you do even more damage to your cause, don't you think that you should at long last pull your head out of your benighted theological cockpit and perform that long-overdue reality check?But if you would rather wish to continue furthering the spread of atheism, then do please stay your course.

It turned out that this thread is not as advertised (wanting to know about what atheists think or believe), but rather about trying to dictate to atheists (and even to many theists) what they think and believe. It has been about sac trying to pidgeon-hole us all into his presuppostional theology; more explicitly stated in his Message 27: Now, sac is taking that as being axiomatic, which is to say that its truth is taken for granted, and serves as a starting point for deducing and inferring other (theory dependent) truths. However, what is actually self-evident is that sac's starting point is not in the least bit axiomatic. Of course, just as with any supernaturalistic claim, it cannot be proven or disproven on its own. Furthermore, sac repeatedly uses his axiom (AKA "postulate") that God exists as the basis for "proving" that God exists. It's a classic circular argument.So that got me thinking about how we are supposed to deal with axioms and postulates. And that Wikipedia article says that "Their validity had to be established by means of real-world experience." Since real-world experience of "God" and other ghosties is not possible, I would propose another approach, an approach taken in a number of mathematical proofs; it's been a few decades, but I seem to remember it being called "proof by contradiction". Basically, you start by assuming the exact opposite of what you're trying to prove and apply that assumption to the proof. When the conclusion proves to be contrary-to-fact, you then know that the assumption was false and hence, its opposite (which is what you were wanting to prove) must be true.In this thread, we have repeatedly seen sac use his "starting point" to arrive at absurd and contrary-to-fact conclusions. Assuming that his logic was performed correctly, that would mean that his "starting point" is false. One of the problems with presenting an answer is that all atheists are individuals and have arrived by their own individual paths. OK, fundies are/were also individuals, but then they were intensively indoctrinated into their central dogma and continue to be indoctrinated by their churches. OTOH, there is no central dogma or doctrine for atheists, nor do they undergo any indoctrination. When you're dealing with atheists, you're dealing with individuals; there is no one "underlying philosophy". But then you've been told that repeatedly; have you stopped to listen yet?So I'll take one segment of the atheist community. I think it's safe to assume that many atheists started out as believing Christians. So that means that their "starting point" was believing that God exists, etc. Just like you! The difference is that they started to realize that it didn't work, that there were too many problems with that starting point, problems that just would not go away and that would point to even more problems. Eventually, they reached a point where they came to realize that their starting point was not valid, that they could no longer believe in God. They used to believe in God, but they had grown out of it.So then, many atheists had the exact same starting point as yourself, but they grew out of it. And, no, that starting point is not valid, as your innumerable absurd conclusions also indicate.And BTW, atheists' approach to the world is not based on "there is no God!". Rather, it's based on just dealing with the real world, as it is, without throwing in any extra and unnecessary crap. You're the one who has to throw in extra unnecessary crap as you have to filter everything through your religious beliefs. Must be very tiring for you, as it was for Gary. That friend of mine from church I told you about. He's much happier and more spiritually fulfilled as "an atheist and thorough humanist" than he ever could be as a fundamentalist Christian.Also, this approach of dealing with the world as it is that atheists use. The theists using it far outnumber the atheists. And many, if not most, of those theists are Christians.

We've had some threads dealing with morality. You should give them a read. Some of the titles are:
Morality is a Logical Consequence of Evolution, not Creation
Morality! Thorn in Darwin's side or not?
What morality can be logically derived from Evolution?
Evolutionary Explanation for Morality
Atheist morality
Are Fundamentalists Inherently ImmoralThat might give you some much-needed background in the subject matter. Then you would no longer be able to plead ignorance for such absurd postings as this: Or Do you really have absolutely no clue about society? Do we need to spell it all out for you? No, wait, we already have and yet you still have no clue. You might want to read the replies you get and think about them.And just what brain cramp did you have to produce the single person who's his own society? That could only apply to somebody like Alexander Selkirk, who was marooned alone on an island. Or possibly metaphorically refer to a sociopath, somebody whose mental illness renders him incapable of functioning within society. In either type of case, when a murderer comes in contact with a human society and poses a danger to that society, then that society must deal with that danger. Just what part of that are you so incapable of understanding?Also: What Flood? Where is the evidence for that Flood? And what about all the evidence that contraindicates that Flood?This is another example of absurd statements that your "starting point" in Message 1 leads you to make. You claim some event for which there is no evidence. "Creation science" does the same and has created a sizable body of false claims and deceptions to back it up. And "creation science" leaders continue to make those false claims even after their falsehoods have been demonstrated to them thousands of times.Which brings up an interesting moral question: what role do lies and deception have in Christian doctrine? Are they condoned or condemned?

I'm an engineer. I work in the real world. I do not have the luxury of imagining that I can redefine reality at will, but rather I am stuck with the bottom line: does it work or not? Sure, it would be nice if, upon failing an acceptance test or having to troubleshoot and solve a failure, I could just redefine reality so that those failures would become successes, but I do not have that luxury. I work in the real world. Oh, I understand what you're saying. It's just that you keep failing to understand the simple thing that we keep trying to tell you.Here's a glass containing a powerful toxin. I tell you that drinking it is bad for you. You just go on and on about "how to you know that it's 'bad' for me?" Because it'll kill you, if you're lucky! Or leave you in a severely debilitated state after having experienced horrific illness, if you're unlucky. What part of that do you refuse to understand?We've seen societies fall apart; don't you think that's "bad"? We've seen the suffering that certain acts inflict on people; don't you think that's "bad"? We've seen how growing distrust and suspicion adversely affects the ability of a society to function; don't you think that's "bad"? And we've seen the overall decline in quality of life and in life expectancy that follows; don't you think that's "bad"?Pull your head out of your cockpit and observe the real world. Immorality has a deleterious effect on society. We all depend on society and on each other for our own personal survival and for the survival of our families, so something that adversely affects society also adversely affects us. Our success as a species is largely due to our ability to form and function within societies, so what adversely affects society also adversely affects the ability of our species to survive -- though said adverse effects would need to be felt world-wide to pose a great enough threat to the species.That which endangers society or prevents society from functioning is bad for society. What part of that do you still refuse to understand? Haven't you visited those morality threads yet? Your question has been answered there many times and far better than I can answer it here. Why haven't you done your homework?Morality is very real, just as behavior is real. It is and has been part of every human society, throughout history and prehistory, the vast majority of which most definitely had nothing to do with YHWH. In effect, each society collectively decides what is right and what is wrong. Those rules that don't work or that cause even worse problems or are too impractical get dropped, while those rules that work are kept, especially if the need for those rules continue to be felt. Over time, those long-standing rules became codified and acquired mythologies to explain them and where they came from. In prehistoric societies (ie, ones with no writing), this would have happened much more quickly, within a few generations, because they would have used an oral tradition. An oral tradition is also more flexible, such that new changes can be incorporated within a single generation.For example, a fellow engineer was a problem teen, so his mother sent him to a boys' ranch. When he arrived, the ranch only had four rules. By the time he left a year or two later, it had 36 rules. Every time he did something stupid, but not against the rules, they had to add a new rule to keep that from happening again. It kind of worked like that.Now, could a society arbitrarily vote in a new rule? Sure, they could. But the real question then would be, would it work? If the new rule worked and the society benefited from it, then it would be kept. But if the new rule didn't work, then the trouble it would cause that society would motivate them to drop it, or else the society itself would become too weak and disorganized to survive and its members would either die off or be absorbed into stronger neighboring tribes. Same if they arbitrarily decided to drop an old rule that they actually needed. True story: a world-famous atheist visited a school in Sweden which has a state religion. He asked the schoolchildren what the purpose of life was: "To go to Heaven." When will that happen? "When we die." He didn't have the heart to ask the next question, which would be why they are still here. Wouldn't they all want to kill themselves immediately in order to go to Heaven? What are they waiting for?Please learn something about evolution so that you could at least say something intelligent about it. "Natural death" is a legal and medical term. It has no relevence to anything that we have been talking about. Why bring up such a red herring?Now I need to start securing.

Parte Deux: No, I was definitely talking about the brain cramp that your philosophy was giving you that led you to dream up this in Message 207 (my emphasis added): As I correctly pointed out, such a person would be a psychopath or sociopath to view himself as being a "society of one" and since he presents a danger to society then society must deal with that danger by removing him (eg, to a cell, either padded or not, or by elimination).You keep tying yourself in philosophical knots. Pull your head out and observe the real world; that may help you to avoid coming up with such silly arguments. Except for the most abstract matters, philosophy should be informed by the real world. Otherwise, what good is it? In the real world, systems have operating ranges within which they function normally, but outside of which they malfunction and fail. The Germans rediscovered this in 1941 when Russian temperatures dropped below the operating range of their vehicles' lubricants, stopping them in their tracks 15 miles from Moscow. In North Dakota winters, gasoline engines will no longer start when the temperature drops below the flash-point of gasoline vapor; we needed to pour alcohol or spray ether into the carborator. In Siberia, arc welding will no longer work when temperatures drop down around or below -50F (in ND, I've only been down to a little below -40, which is where F and C meet). Your computer's circuitry components also have operating temperature ranges. When you exceed the upper limit of those ranges, before the components start to smoke (and burn up) the digital voltages will wander outside the specified limits for the logic levels and will start to operate in analog modes, causing the computer to "go crazy" in a kind of cybernetic epileptic fit.Now, engineers can be interested in learning what happens when a system exceeds the limits of its operating ranges, but not the customers. The customers only want their systems to work, which means that they need to operate those systems within the operating ranges given to them by the engineers.Your argument, which is so typical of such hypothetical situations presented by theists in this kind of discussion, is flawed. The flaw is that within the context of discussion of functioning societies you present an extreme hypothetical situation which lies far outside the operating range of a functioning society. We both know that far outside that operating range society will either cease to exist or else will malfunction badly, so what's the relevence of such a hypothetical situation? Yes, sociologists and psychologists could be interested in how the system falls apart under such extreme circumstances, but we are not interested in that because we are talking about the normal operation of a functioning society. I have just given you my objection: your extreme hypothetical situation is irrelevent to our discussion.As for the thinking of a cannibal, that is a question for psychologists and is also irrelevent to this discussion. If you are still morbidly interested, then research the airplane crash in the Andes after which the survivors kept themselves alive by eating those who died in the crash. The 1970's book in English was Alive, the 1976 Latin America film was Los Sobrevivientes de los Andes (I saw it in Mexico City), and there was a much later film in English which I did not see nor do I know its title. In this case, they were all Christians. From what I recall, they only ate those people they didn't personally know and they rationalized it in their minds as an extension of the Sacrament, the eating of the Flesh of Christ. Actually, I have caught creationists in deliberate lies, as well as Christians who turn their backs on the truth to knowingly support, or at least refuse to condemn, the telling of lies. True, most rank-and-file creationists and even many professional creationists (Kent Hovind comes immediately to mind) simply pass on the falsehoods they've heard believing them to be true, or at least avoiding to verify their veracity. And we can allow that many creationists who come up with new false claims do so out of incompetence rather than deliberate deception, though that's getting to be a stretch. Yet once they have learned that those claims are false and they persist in spreading those false claims, they are then lying even though they had technically not be lying before.But that doesn't really affect the question itself. The question can stand on its own. What does Christian doctrine have to say about the use of lies and deception in the service of God? Can it be condoned? Or must it always be condemned?Something to consider is that the effects of the telling of falsehoods are independent of lying. In order for one to lie, one must have the knowledge that what they are saying is false; it can be argued that someone telling a falsehood while believing it to be true would not be lying. Hence, the question of whether someone is lying would mainly be of interesting in judging that person's culpability and lack of character and how much he can be trusted in other matters.But, remember, I'm an engineer. Actions have consequences, regardless of what's going on in the mind of the person performing that act. What are the effects of the telling of a falsehood? Are those effects any different if the person doesn't know it to be false than if he does? No, the effects are exactly the same. For example, some shady character (again, Hovind comes to mind) comes up with a tax evasion scheme and, knowing that that scheme is highly illegal, deliberately lies to his followers by telling them that it is legal. His followers, believing that scheme to be legal, relay it on to their friends. They all then implement that scheme, including its originator, and they all get arrested for tax evasion. That falsehood had the same effect for all of them regardless of whether its propagator believed in its veracity or not. I'm an engineer, not a philosopher. I have real work to do in the real world and do not have the time to get sucked into useless philosophical mind games. You provide three "answers", stating that they are all premises, by which I assume that you are saying that they are axiomatic, that they cannot be proven and are to be accepted as true. However, they are also your conclusions. Looks like you're trying yourself into philosophical knots again. Knots of the worst kind: theological.Just because something is axiomatic doesn't mean that it doesn't get tested. The entire basis of arithmetic is axiomatic, but they get tested every time we perform arithmetic calculations by producing the correct answers. Plus, they do finally get proven, but for that you have to wait for the higher math of number theory. Just how are you testing your three axioms there?Or as I stated in Message 213, to which you have not yet replied:

Now let's put that back into context, shall we? All I was doing was the exact same thing you had done. Of course there are problems with that true story. Just as there are serious problems with what you had written.Your problems stem mainly (I would hope) from your ignorance of evolution and how it works. Which is why I ended with Please learn something about evolution so that you could at least say something intelligent about it."BTW, that story is true; I did not make up a single bit of it. And it does illustrate the odd things that children are taught without considering the consequences. Such as teaching them that they can do anything they want without guilt if they don't believe in God. I have already shared the testimony of one such child.

Yet again you have pulled what I had written out of context, so I must restore that context, yet again (the omitted portion in bold): So then, since there are serious problems with your "question", we can follow your advice and just discount it. Certainly, your "question" is much more deserving of dismissal than my story is.For one thing, my story is haggadah, whereas your "question" is a miserably failed attempt at khalakhah (if you don't understand those terms, ask your rabbi to explain it to you -- I wish him far better luck than we've been having with you). The problem with my story is that whereas it might be used to discount Christian doctrine, that is not what it does. Rather, that story shows what children get out of the religious instruction that they receive. And since most adults still have the childish ideas about God and religion that they had acquired in childhood, what children really get out of religious instruction is of importance. At the very least, it indicates a very real need to get adults to question their own childish beliefs so that they can develop a more mature understanding of such matters.There are two principal problems with your "question":1. It is not really a question, but rather an attempt to avoid and to draw attention away from the real question of "Why should an atheist be good?" We have answered that question honestly, cogently, and repeatedly -- and we have explained it to you, both thoroughly and repeatedly -- , but you do not want to recognize our answer, rooted in reality, because you cannot accept the fact that reality flies in the face of your faulty presuppositions. So you instead have been trying to draw out attention away with philosophical red herrings with which you intend to tie us up in the same philosophical knots that confuse and imprison your own mind. I have specifically witnessed you doing that exact thing with those who fell for your old philosophical canard of "what is real?".2. Your "question" is silly. Sorry, but we have far more important things to do than to play the silly mind games that you intend with such silly "questions"; eg, I had the Scottish Games to attend, needed to nail the Jump Charleston Break in the Big Apple so that I can help my friend with it, worked on emptying my DVR. Of course, it would have been different if you were to ask real questions about real issues, but you have chosen not to, since your holding to your faulty presuppositions would be endangered by real discussion.Here's your "question" again (having to state it again for you, since you tried to change it): That particular wording of your "question" had been preceded by such nonsensical blatherings as how good or bad natural vs unnatural death are and issues of good and bad in how we deal with a murderer's "society of one within himself". If you are trying to lead us astray with red herrings, then shame on you! If you really and truly believe that those are real question worthy of serious discussion, then how are we supposed to respond to a person whose mentality has been so confused and tied up in knots?Please, please, please, pull your head out of your cockpit and conduct a reality check! Then maybe you would be able to start to ask actual meaningful questions and to honestly engage in actual meaningful discussion, rather than trying desparately to protect and support faulty presuppositions.Edited by dwise1, : word choice

No, wrong. Metaphysics is not reality. By burying your head in metaphysics, you may be talking about reality a lot, but you are also
separating yourself from reality. You are not facing reality, nor are you dealing with reality. In fact, you are burying your head in
metaphysics in order to escape reality and to avoid discussion of reality. Your head is stuck down in your cockpit; pull your head out of
your cockpit and conduct a reality check!Yes, I do realize that that is never going to happen. Because you must avoid facing reality at all costs in order to protect your religious
faith. Seen it countless times before. But reality will still be out there waiting for you. Which means that you must forever guard
yourself against it. And let your mind get increasingly twisted in the process. That is your choice, but if you persist in trying to impose
your madness upon us, we will continue to speak truth to your madness. Heinlein once advised against trying to teach a pig to sing, because
it's futile and it annoys the pig, but sometimes annoying the pig can be its own reward. As I've gathered over the years, a number of the
atheists on this forum used to be in very much the same position as you are now. Regardless of how tightly you try to keep your eyes shut
closed for however long you attempt it, it will still be possible for them to open.So here's a stupid idea for you: Instead of trying to protect your faith by denying and avoiding reality, why not look reality straight in
the face and then try to harmonize your faith with it? The former method leaves your faith vulnerable to reality, whereas the latter method
should strengthen your faith against anything that reality could throw at it. Assuming, of course, that you are able to correct those parts
of your personal theology that are wrong. To give you some perspective, it is creationism's denial of reality that makes it one of the
leading forces in the growth and spread of atheism. OK, your conclusion is not the one suggested by the premises. For one thing, in order to your conclusion to have any possibility of holding,
each and every premise must be true. If even one of them is not true, then your case fails completely. What are the odds of each
and every one of your premises being true? We already know that you don't know any physics, but do you know any math? Specifically,
probability. If you have a chain of independent events, each of which has a probability of happening, then the probability that each and
every one of them happening is equal to the product of all of them. If you have n events and the probability of each is 1/2, then the
probability of each one happening is 1/2ⁿ. And if each event's probability is less than even odds (1/2), then the overall
probability becomes even less.Let's examine your premises more closely, and include some of the hidden intermediate premises that you had overlooked.1. If God is real -- OK, what's "God"? Hey, if there's no definition for that term, then your entire argument is null and void. Since you
will probably continue to avoid meaningful discussion, I will offer two possibilities. One would be your idea of "The God of the Bible".Now, others will have their own ideas of the same, so which one is it? Wikipedia reports about 2.1 billion (an American billion, I assume,
which is 10⁹). So among Christians, there are potentially 2.1 billion different ideas of "The God of the Bible". Though we also
have the Jews, who number somewhere between 11 million and 14 million by various estimates. Even though Muslims believe in the same god and
even though they number about 1.5 billion, I will allow you to exclude them from this count, even though you really should include them.So we have potentially 2.114 billion different ideas of "The God of the Bible". Which one is the correct one? Pick one, any one. What's
the probability of it being the correct one? About 4.73x10^-13, ignoring the choice that each and every one is dead wrong!
(which, interestingly, is the most likely outcome). Allowing for duplication and for many Christians not participating, we could be
extremely generous and give you far greater odds, like about 4.73x10^-8.Of course, there is also the very likely scenario of some supernatural something that would fit the bill of us calling it "God". But since
we have no way to detect the supernatural, to observe the supernatural, to determine anything at all about the supernatural, then what can we
possibly know about this supernatural something that would fit the bill of us calling it "God"? Nothing, nothing whatsoever. So all of our
ideas of "God" are really just made up. And so realistically, the probability of having the right idea of "God" is zero. Zero times
anything is zero, dead impossibility. End of story.So to be inordinantly generous, let's keep this at an artificially high probability of about 4.73x10^-8.2. Hidden premise: which god? -- Let's face it, we have had a multitude of gods throughout history and even prehistory. How many? Who
knows? I would guess that a million would be a very conservative guess. This is one of the critical weaknesses of the infamous Pascal
Wager, which assigns a 50% probability of God existing, whereas the probability of the god he had in mind existing is far, far less. Indeed,
if we assume one million possible gods and a 50% chance that no god exists, then the possibility of your god existing would be 1:2,000,000.To be exceptionally fair (not that that has ever worked out for me; believe me, I've been divorced -- if you are going through that yourself,
given that it happens to Christians a lot more than it does to atheists, I could offer you some critical practical advice), let's leave your
god's probability at 1:1,000,000 (10^-6).3. and if He is then omnipotent and omniscient -- Hmm. What if this "God" person isn't? I vaguely remember from my young childhood (about
50 years ago) a Superman comic in which two Supermen somehow had come into existence -- it might even have been the first time Bizarro was
created -- and the situation needed to be rectified. So they dredged up some old philosophical problem of what happens when an irresistible
force meets an unmovable object, and it worked. Well, philosophy does have some useful purpose after all, that of resolving comic book
plots.Now, of course, you are assuming that it's your god that we're talking about. But there's only about 1 chance in one million (by
extremely generous estimate; don't forget to thank me for my exceptional generosity, but my ex has taught me to be a pessimist (the pessimist
must be the happiest person; 99.99% of the time he's right and 0.001% of the time he's pleasantly surprised). What if the True God is one
who is not omnipotent and omniscient? For one thing, this premise of yours then becomes -- not necessarily superfluous, but rather
over-specific. The True God, if any, is the True God, period! If that "True God" is also omnipotent and omniscient, then OK, but if not,
then WTF?This premise is useless! Please let's just eliminate it altogether. Now, if you choose to object, then that would be fine by me, because
that would lower the overall probability of your conclusion being correct. 4.73x10^-17.4. and if he created this earth -- This is also an odd one. Did this "God" person thingee also create the earth? Again, since you are
obviously speaking only of your own particular god, for whom there is only an exceptionally generous one in a million chance, what can we say
about the vast majority of the other gods? How many of them are creator gods?Again, I must be very generous and allow for 1-1,000th of the gods to be creators of the world. Good thing I'm not in business, because I
keep giving away the store! OK? 1/1000. Way too generous!5. and if the Bible then be true -- ho, boy! Now this one is a real problem. We have got to break this one down! But it's not an easy one!
Which Bible are you talking about? Which translation? Constructed from which source documents?sac, do you know any Greek? Koine Greek, which is the common Greek in which the New Testament was written (well, barring those segments also
written in Aramaic). Have you ever seen a Metzger New Testament? That was our text in our Greek class and was a translator's bible. Each
verse had its alternative wordings and was heavily annotated concerning which manuscripts and papyrii each wording came from. Are you
familiar with Luke 2:14? In some sources, it's "eudoxia" and in others it's "eudoxias", the genitive. So is it "Peace on earth, goodwill
towards men"?, or "Peace on earth among men of goodwill", or even "Peace on earth among men with whom God is pleased"? All depends on that
final sigma. Which is it? And while you're at it, is it the short or long ending of Mark that applies? And if you have absolutely no idea
what I'm talking about, then why not?On one dance cruise, I had a very odd conversation with my cabin-mate. We were watching "The Da Vinci Code" on ship's TV and I verified the
film's recount of the Council of Nicea. He had been raised a 7th-Day Adventist. He wasn't active, but he still held to what he had been
taught as a child (remember those schoolchildren in Sweden?). The Greek New Testament is the original text and the Greek and Aramaic texts
that had contributed to it are even more original. The Authorized King James translation (KJV, circa 1600) is just that, authorized
by the Crown, but otherwise not necessarily any more authentic than the originals. He had been taught that the KJV was the only
authoritative Bible, period. In my mind, the each subsequent version could only be a further corruption of the previous versions, so the
idea that a 1600-year-old corruption of a long line of corruptions being considered more authentic than the originals was totally mind-
blowing, in the extreme eye-rolling sense. It still makes absolutely no sense to me, but I do recognize it as being a case of one's beliefs
superceding all logic. While that may be one individual's personal perrogative, it in no way supports any argument he may advance to try to
convince others.OK, here's the big problem. The Bible was written by Men. It is not of divine origin. You seem to believe that the Bible is of divine
origin, but it clearly is not. So then, what probability are we supposed to grant this canard? One in a million? Nowhere near that! But
just to keep this going, I will grant you 1 on a million.OK, what's the probability? Again, these are incredibly generous probabilities, several orders of magnitude too generous:4.73x10^-8 * 10^-6 * 1/1000 * 1/1000000
4.73x10^-8 * 10^-6 * 10^-3 * 10^-64.73x10^(-8-6-3-6)
4.73x10^(-23)Now, I seem to recall that 10^-27 was supposed to be considered to be virtually impossible. The extremely overoptimistic estimate
is very close to impossible, so the more realistic figure must be firmly within that range of probabilities.So then, sac, the probability of your scenario is, well, virtually impossible. Sorry, but that's how your own scenario plays out. Uh, I'm sorry, but ... huh???? The Christian worldview is supposed to better describe how we act? Well, if you have such a superior
description, why do you keep getting it completely wrong?OK, let's be honest here. Back in the mid-1960's, I came to realize that what the Bible was literally saying was something that I just
simply could not believe. Navely, I believed that I was supposed to believe what the Bible literally said, but what it literally said was
just simply not true. It was at that point that I realized that I could not be a Christian and I simply left.OK, let's review what I had given you before. What are the presuppositions of atheists? Well, many, if not most, atheists started out
believing that God existed, etc. But then they found that those presuppositions about the existence of "God" just simply did not work, then
they became atheists. We covered this before. Why haven't you learned from it yet? Sorry, but you are lying. We have explained it to you repeatedly. In detail. It is your own inability to deal with reality that is the
problem.Edited by dwise1, : HTML clean-up. Added one sentence, removed one other, and modified one other.