Now this is plain stupid. No, there is no :presupposition that a god or gods is not the ultimate authority" merely my disbelief in YOUR claim that there is.
If there is evidence for such a thing then produce it. Don’t be shy.
Trying to turn the argument on its head and get me to prove a negative just won’t wash
So I see, to be honest I think it was inevitable. kudos for your and David’s patience anyway.
What was that line again? It eats the dirt? Hmm, no. He was the next one to be swiped away with the dust broom? Bugger. What was it? Yet another person presented with a decent opportunity to prove himself fucked up? No. Dammit. The Queens sang it. Another one ate the dust broom? Yes? Yes, I think that’s it.
Wow, a 3 month ‘time-out’ just like that? Seems pretty harsh to me. I know SCMike is banned, but I can imagine what he would say if he had been allowed to post again. It would have no doubt been something like this:
"Well folks, that should just about do it. Sheldon has finally (though reluctantly) shared with me the basis for how an atheist claims to justify the validity of their senses and reasoning without appealing to the God of the Bible. Unfortunately, for him (and you), his claim for how an atheist justifies their senses and reasoning is the equivalent of stating that it is by ‘sensing and reasoning’ that one’s senses and reasoning are valid’.
Since I have seen none of the other atheists here attempt to refute or deny his claim. I can only assume that you also hold to this position (By the impossibility of the contrary). Naturally, there is no point in continuing to try to engage in rational discussion with those who can’t know that the very senses and reasoning they are using to frame their arguments are valid.
As I mentioned from the get go, only the God of the Bible provides us with a rational justification for believing in and utilizing any of the preconditions of intelligibility (logic, truth, knowledge, truth, the validity of human reasoning, etc.) via direct and indirect Divine revelation. When one suppresses the objective truth of God’s existence as the Ultimate Authority and appeals to any other source as the justification for the validity of their reasoning (and any other preconditions of intelligibility) the outcome is always absurdity–as we have seen repeatedly here. After all, it doesn’t get any worse than ‘I sense and reason that my senses and reasoning are valid’. By the way, it’s no wonder it took so long to pry that confession out of someone here----I would’ve wanted to keep from having to admit that too, if I were in your shoes. I mean, Egads!
Of course, if anyone wants to posit some other way that they justify the validity of their senses and reasoning without appealing to those same senses and reasoning, then be my guest. I won’t be holding my breath, though. Take care!"
Oh, well. Guess we’ll never know for sure. Merry Christmas anyway.
@Banned_in_the_USA has been suspended because shock of all shocks 
“he” was our silenced theist @scmike
That theist lives their life based on lies and dishonest, deceit.
The bible isn’t the truth because most of the science points elsewhere. You have to learn to trust the science as far as it can currently explain. It’s a lot better than trusting a book from thousands of years ago that was made with medieval ideas. I take the stance of no, you can’t prove he doesn’t exist but weighing the likely hood of it doesn’t seem like god does exist. I don’t think you can find anything that proves the bible was made by man just as I don’t think theirs anything to prove that it isn’t. My point here is more, the bible was a book and if there was a god then what I’d tell you is the best proof is the fact an all-knowing all-loving god wouldn’t need a book. Maybe there is information out there I can’t think of anything of the top of my head that could prove it but if someone has found something then great. I just gave you what I think may be the best answer but i don’t know.
What a cunning disguise, had me completely fooled. 
Is there any current research on the average IQ of internet trolls?
Oh no! What magic is this? scmike has returned from the dead. A RESURRECTION and we are ALL witnesses. Praise the Mike for he is indeed the Lord of Presupposition!
PRAISE HIM!
Each of you must know write your accounts of interractions with the Beloved Mike, tales of his intellectual prowess, his courage in the face of derision and his ultimate , his steadfast refusal to disavow his fallacies. PRAISE HIM.
He was right, not ALL men are mortal and we have witnessed his electronic rebirth. How clever is MIKE (pubh) that he has fooled us all?
I believe there’s some research saying sarcastic people tend to be smart. In that case you must be in the top percentile 
. Not sure about trolls, maybe it’s just their immaturity that makes them seem so stupid.
I was late to this party, but Whitefire caught it. We Admins have tools that allow us to catch such dishonesty.
As soon as Banned made that post, red flags went up, I went to my Admin tools, did the appropriate research, and yup, sure enough it was him. Thank you Whitefire, your actions are commendable. I would never want to be your enemy.
I was pondering going through all of his posts and compiling a list of fallacies and such as begging the question and special pleading, but in all honesty, it is a VERY long list.
Strange as it seems, I hope one day he rehabilitates his arguments and does some learning on how to debate, logic, and fallacies. He can fix that, but you can’t fix dishonesty.
@Banned The door has not slammed shut on you being able to reengage this forum. But you are definitely on your last strike. When the time if right you are welcome to return, and hopefully offer valid and sound arguments. Why knows, maybe you can convince me. But you have made yourself a pariah because of your dishonesty, and on the thinnest ice imaginable.
Good. He was just trolling, repeating himself, and goading. He doesn’t care about what any of us say to him. He didn’t come here because he was having second thoughts about his religion. He just came to aggravate. That being said. We will definitely see his like again.
As we have so many many times before. With the same tired arguments, the insults, the arrogance and the supreme confidence in their own ignorance.
I described him as a chew toy, which, indeed he was.
I love it when Sheldon get “proper logical”…LOL>
Actually, no. Some nitpicking needs to be done here. The (European) Middle Ages is the period between the downfall of Rome in the 5th century and the start of the Renaissance around the 13th century. The Bible as a book was assembled in the 4th century, from existing fragments and scriptures(*). Thus, the Bible as a book predates the Middle Ages and medieval ideas (although medieval ideas obviously have roots from earlier time periods).
The stories and myths repeated in the Bible can, arguably, be traced back to older cultures and ideas, even lifted directly from them. For example, the Noah flood myth seems to be almost a blueprint of the flood described in the Epic of Gilgamesh (or from its descendant myths), which originated in writing around 2100 BCE in the Neo-Sumerian empire. So we’re talking bronze age myths here. The flood myth was presumably a widespread myth in the larger region of the fertile crescent, also finding its way into Greek mythology. And with ideas like this surviving for a couple of millennia before being put into writing in a different culture, in a different book, who knows how many other older ideas are embedded in these scriptures. Can we speculate that ideas, myths and stories surviving from as far back as the neolithic period have survived?
(*) Let’s ignore the forgeries, they are not really relevant here.
Pubh? Pubic hair? 
Or did you mean something else?
damn fingers…of couse with Mikes towering intellect, faultless logic and ineffable choice of underwear I meant to type (PBUH) .
Apologies for the terrible error and possibe punishment for apostasy and disrespect to a genuine prophet in Mikes name (pbuh) forgive me.
I’ve never come across such literature but there is this.
Trolls really are a special kind of nasty, turns out.
Constructing the cyber-troll: Psychopathy, sadism, and empathy
• Trolls more likely to be male with high levels of trait psychopathy and sadism
• Trolls have lower affective empathy, and psychopathy moderates cognitive empathy
Interesting, the aboves just what iv’e always heard. So what time zone was bonze age what dates?
I’m not sure if i understand it to be honest. But that’s interesting.
For the region of interest, what we today call the Near East (the Fertile Crescent which consisted of Mesopotamia and what is today northern Iraq, Syria, south eastern Turkey, Lebanon, and Israel), the Bronze age was from around 3300 BCE to 1200 BCE, i.e. some 5300 to 3200 years ago.
@Get_off_my_lawn FYI I am currently starting to go down the path of learning the history and reasons for the collapse of the bronze age civilizations circa 1200 BC. Interesting stuff, especially about the sea people.
