The secret Christians aren’t telling you

Debate Room
101

Thankyou Shelldon and Mordant, ypur answers are indeed illuminating…however I think I have a much simpler answer …

The strident preachers dont like to answer as their membership of a particular cult/schism/sect is then open to view and their claim to be " christian mainstream" can be challenged and the darkest recesses of the cult of choice exposed, often to well deserved ridicule.

Mordant: each version of the bible contains the following despite their claims of translation from the earliest texts…
Mistranslation according to the latest societal mores or sect leader permissions.
Deliberate interpolations
Deliberate excisions..even of entire texts

No modern translation tallies with another completely and compared with earliest versions such as the Codex Siniaticus marked differences so as to make the modern version almost unrecognisable as being garnered from the same texts.

1 Like
102

It is fairly obvious that even where extant ms. agree, things are stiched together with odd, jarring transitions; there are in some cases what appear to be interpolations by scribes, etc. So I’m not arguing that it’s all some solid pristine source. It’s just that all holy books are vague templates by design, and all who revere them take away whatever they want and need to take away from it, in the era and culture they exist in. Hence the mutually exclusive understanding of various basic doctrines that I pointed out. I prefer not to get bogged down in fighting the edifice of “textual scholarship” when it’s clear that even if for the sake or argument that’s all valid, it means nothing because like the Cheshire Cat, the scriptures mean exactly what every cleric says they mean – no more and no less.

1 Like
103

As a side note, I once caught a flat-earther doing extreme selective quoting (after a long bible-related rant) when trying to “prove” that the Michelson-Morley experiment contradicts a moving earth. The supposed quote from Michelson-Morley, which he lifted from a FE Youtube video, was:

“This experiment…contradicts…that the earth moves”

So after finding a PDF of the paper in question, namely
image
(Source: https://archive.org/details/mobot31753002153002/page/127/mode/2up)

The quote is found on page 128. I have highlighted the alleged quote, so that the reader can judge whether it accurately represents the actual meaning of the “quoted” sentence (plus the preceding one) or not:

image
image702×244 63.1 KB

I don’t know if this counts as “lying for Jesus”, but it’s at the very least awfully close. I chose this example instead of someone directly “quoting” the bible, as this attempt at perverting sources was so obvious. Since then, and after a few similar experiences, I have come to the conclusion that it seems to be acceptable among some of the self-confessed highly religious to lie in order to promote religion and religious related dogma. I am not generalising this to apply to all of them, but there are enough of those around that one should always check their quotes and the context they are lifted from.

2 Likes
104

And that is why I tend to call ALL of them “bible-things”.

Saves having to type “those Things the religious reference as a Bible.”

Franklin

1 Like
105

No you don’t.

If you just use your eyes all you’ll see is the planet Earth hanging in the vast void of space.To see any evidence of God in this image you have to use your faith. Which is expressly outside of the terms and conditions I set down for you.

If you don’t want to answer the question as it’s framed for you or don’t want to answer it at all, then please say so. But please don’t try and have the question on your own terms, using your faith to answer my question.

My question requires you to answer using only your eyes and not your faith. In fact, here are the terms and conditions I asked you to abide by.

I’d like you to tell me what you see.

Not what your faith tells you about this image, not what your feelings about it are and not what you’d like it to be as a matter of personal preference or volitional choice.

Just what you see.

What do you see?

Now, please answer the question.

Thank you.,

Walter.

1 Like
106

That’s a Christian for ya! The ultimate example of that monkey photograph: “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil!”

107

Hej,

Men du förstår väl att det kan finnas situationer som vetenskap inte kan lira med Gud.

Exempelvis: utgå från att Gud finns och Gud skapar en människa på begäran i ett ögonblick. Människan är 180 och väger 80 kg. Människan är 1 min gammal, dvs exiterade inte 2 min sedan. Om “vetenskap” skulle genomföra undersökningar så skulle vetenskapen antagligen konstatera att kroppen är minst 16 år gammal. Men om ansiktet skulle vara rynkig så skulle vetenskapen på påstå att kroppen är minst 50-60 år gammal.

Så vi kan dra slutsatsen att vetenskapens beräkningar utgår ifrån en förutsättning som startpunkt. När det kommer till jordens/universums ålder, att allt var ETT från början.

Vi har även kol14 metoden som man kan mäta hur gammal en produkt/material är, men hur kan vi med säkerhet veta att metoden stämmer? Metoden själv erkänner att det finns begränsningar (upp till 40 000).

Därav så kan inte vetenskapen slutsatser utesluta att bibeln är korrekt avseende jordens ålder.

Men något som sällan diskuteras är alla dessa rätt som bibeln har och haft haft. Eftersom folk vill bara hitta fel!!!

108

Dette er et engelskspråklig forum, og så vidt jeg vet er det ingen andre aktive her enn meg som forstår skandinaviske språk. Personen du svarer (Sheldon) vet jeg ikke forstår svensk. Det ville derfor vært fint om du kan oversette innlegget ditt til engelsk.

TL;DR: Politely asking poster to translate his Swedish posting to English.

3 Likes
109

I have translated it, so I’ll use quotations for now.

“Since science cannot observe or replicate supernatural acts of creation, it cannot rule them out either; it can only describe how the matter appears to function.”

I never claimed science had ruled anything out, but believing something because we lack an alternative explanation or evidence would be an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.

“Biblical interpretations: Within theology, there are very different views on how the Bible should be interpreted.”

Ample evidence that subjective bias is useless in verifying the truth of claims.

“Many Christians and theologians believe that the biblical creation story should be understood symbolically or theologically”

Yes the ones that understand it make erroneous claims try to rationalise it with subjective and biased interpretations, this could be done for any text to believe anything, and so is useless in verifying the veracity of the texts. Which are also unsupported by any objective evidence, and no interpretation can square the claim humans were created with the objective fact of species evolution.

However, there are also many historians and archaeologists who study and confirm the parts of the Bible that align with extra-biblical sources.”

Great, produce any objective evidence from any of them that a deity exists, and I will take a look.

Some of the historical events and places in the Bible that have been confirmed by archaeological discoveries?

New York is accurately depicted in the Spiderman movies, this does not make Spiderman real.

110

Our poster is suggesting in essence that god created the earth with apparent age (or perhaps also that he placed the intermediate forms of fossils in the earth to make it seem that things evolved to the form in which he created them?)

This seems like motivated reasoning to fit known facts.

I am not aware of a situation in which an elderly man was produced by an act of creation 60 seconds earlier. It is the realm of sheer speculation to say that this happened (or even that it could happen) and would be no different than an elderly man claiming to have just arrived from Mars. It is an extraordinary claim for which he would have to provide evidence to be believed. Otherwise he is simply a crackpot.

111

Omphalos hypothesis - Wikipedia

Specifically, Last Thursdayism.

Beginning of false creation

Although Gosse’s original Omphalos hypothesis specifies a popular creation story, others have proposed that the idea does not preclude creation as recently as five minutes ago, including memories of times before this created in situ. This idea is sometimes called Last Thursdayism by its opponents, as in “the world might as well have been created last Thursday.”

Scientifically, the concept is both unverifiable and unfalsifiable through any scientific study—in other words, it is impossible to conclude the truth of the hypothesis, since it requires the empirical data itself to have been arbitrarily created to look the way it does at every observable level of detail.

If God created the universe to look ancient when it isn’t, then how can we believe the evidence of our senses? This inability to be sure that what we are seeing is real also extends to the contents of the Bible. If everything we perceive is false, then how can scripture be true?

No. To claim that the Bible remains true while everything else our eyes see is false is to commit the logical fallacy of Special Pleading.

Special Pleading - Logically Fallacious

Description: Applying standards, principles, and/or rules to other people or circumstances, while making oneself or certain circumstances exempt from the same critical criteria, without providing adequate justification. Special pleading is often a result of strong emotional beliefs that interfere with reason.

Logical Form:

If X then Y, but not when it hurts my position.

Any way you cut this Mordant, JC’s position is untenable.

Thank you,

Walter.

1 Like
112

You say so, but I do not recognise any of your quotes from the original Swedish? What am I missing here?

113

(My summary: “The C14 dating method cannot be used for dating the earth since it is limited to ~40kYr”)

*Yawn* :yawning_face: :sleeping_face:
This is a typical naive creationist straw man argument, debunked approximately 14 milliseconds after the first time it was put forth. C14 is not used for dating the earth, but for dating biological material from the past 40-50 thousand years. For dating the earth, one uses instead a related method of radioisotope dating, more specifically uranium-lead and lead-lead isotope dating. The rest of @StefanNilsson’s post falls as a result.

I wish the creationists could put some more effort into actually learning the science they pretend to debunk, and present some more sophisticated arguments. This is boring.

3 Likes
114

Ah I just pasted into Google and asked Ai to translate it, is it that bad, my bad.

115

I hate it whan a copy doesn’t “take” and I paste something completely unrelated as a result.

Sometimes when I notice this I go back and copy it to the clipboard a half dozen times just for emphasis. I’m sure my computer is impressed and cowed so it won’t ever do that again, lol.

1 Like
116

Nobody seems to use the acronym these days Goml, but at Ex-Christian.net we used to call Stefan’s claim a P.R.A.T.T.

Point Refuted A Thousand Times

:roll_eyes:

2 Likes
117

P.R.I.C.K. — Point Refuted Incessantly, Completely Known

2 Likes
118

Lol. But you know, if you’re interested not in figuring out how reality works, but how it appears to work as it does yet doesn’t contradict the inerrant Word of God, then there IS no refutation for your “point”. It is just something you assert with impunity “because God” or “because The Bible”.

It’s as if someone decided, as in Terry Pratchett’s DiscWorld universe, “it’s turtles all the way down” (the world is flat, on the back of a turtle moving through space, on the back of another turtle, etc etc such that you never have to examine the logical implications or your claim).

119

This is a true story, Mordant. Your mention of ‘turtles all the way down’ brought it to mind.

In the first half of the 20th century an American observatory (can’t remember if it was Palomar, CA or the Lowell observatory at Flagstaff, AZ) was holding an open day for the public. There were many large, highly detailed maps of the Moon and Mars on prominent display with the names of their features written across them.

Mare Serenitatus, Mare Frigorus, Utopia Planitia and Syrtis Major. That kind of thing.

A little old lady enthusiastically buttonholed an astronomer, saying how wonderful it was that they could see such things on distant worlds with their telescopes. Swelling with pride he affirmed that their instruments were indeed capable of seeing amazing details on the surfaces of other planets.

Then she said, “How marvellous that God has written those names in giant letters for us to see.”

:roll_eyes:

1 Like
120

Utter garbage.

You don’t have a “theory”, you have a blind assertion that you pulled out of your rectal passage, and apparently don’t possess the cognitive machinery required to understand the distinction.

1 Like