Why Do Christians Insist They Are Correct
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Ya know, the great thing about good ol' V.D. and others like him is that he and his ilk come here and do all the heavy lifting for us. All we have to do is sit back and let him keep yammering on and on, and his own ridiculous words do wonders in displaying the religious nonsense FAR BETTER than any of us could possibly explain it. Thank you, V.D. You are a fine credit to atheism worldwide... *grin*...
@ Vasily
There are two creation stories in Genesis and two Flood stories. You claim some authority for Theological study...apparently not for christianity nor the bible.
As for the Council at Nicaea it wasnt convened because of persecution of christians but because of violent disageement among christians over the nature of their god's essence. And nothing was resolved. The disputes continued for decades after, caused the split between the Holy Roman Chuch and the Greek orthodox and led to massacres of christians against christians when they werent killing jews and pagans.
Theres much you do not know yourself. Why not take a break, read up on some history etc and come back to try again. I will re-read some Augustine Origen Justin Martyr and my favourite Pseudo "ineffable"Dionysis.
@Vasily
Reason and logic along with a healthy dose of skepticism dictate that God is either non existent or prefers to remain hidden. Now, why would a God who chooses to remain hidden punish anyone for not believing he exists? Do you think he expects you to believe in him based on faith? There are thousands of religions and just as many Gods. And millions upon millions of people believe their God is the one true God and they all believe it based on faith. Wouldn’t your God understand this? Wouldn’t he understand that faith is not a pathway to truth but rather gullibility? Why would he remain hidden and expect people to believe in him based on faith?
Is there a problem with God suddenly revealing himself to everyone on the planet? No more multiple gods, no more thousands of religions, no more Athiests, no more divisiveness, no more conflicts over which God is the one true God, no more discussions about morality, everyone on the planet would know without a doubt that this God is the one true God. If this should happen, then the only real problem this God would have would be is to explain why he waited two thousand years to reveal himself!
The fact you cannot prove something does not exist, does not mean it does. You do not get to imagine possibilities into existence.
Also, the vast majority of us on this forum were raised in the Christian Church. I was a devout Christian for over 40yrs. I can assure you that I did not leave to be mean spirited. I left because I thought it through & thought that I was wrong. It is emotionally very difficult. Religion is divisive!!
Dup
I am still trying to contain my mirth at the "eye witness gospels" comment.
Not much evidence of study right there, unless it is a study of unwashed, recycled socks.
Great post R F
I especially like your first paragraph. Seriously, how does any religious apologist properly counter that? I do not think they can, without making themselves look like a fool.
Only thing I would add, is:
why did "god" wait at least 13.8 billion years to reveal itself? It certainly did not reveal it self 2000 years ago, no matter how much of a tantrum the religious apologist throw that think that nonsense.
We can view the most distant super bright galaxies/clusters that are snapshots of the past going back billions of years, and there is still no sign of the various "god" ideas.
.
On a mostly unrelated note, I just learned it can take a photon 100,000 years to escape the core of our sun. So when you look at anything in the daylight, photons by the trillions upon trillions bouncing off whatever you are looking at and hitting your eye, that were fired off from the core of the sun roughly 100,000 years ago.
Put another way, some of the light you use to read a book in daylight, was first fired off from the core of our sun, back when humans were just beginning to use more complex tools, and maybe just started to leave the african continent. Most all of the major religious holy sites were not settled for 10's of thousands of years yet. (Israel was only settled by humans a mere 5-6 thousand years ago.)
References to the 2nd law; the association of Hitler with atheists; claims of objective morality; uncased causes; unmoved movers...
If you guys can get Vasily to start talking about missing links; someone might get a creationists bingo!
"If you guys can get Vasily to start talking about missing links; someone might get a creationists bingo!"
I'm waiting for the flat earth proposition to be introduced. ROFLMAO
Or better yet, that the christian god is a loving and caring god.
@All: DO YOU GUYS KNOW THE "HITLER RULE?"
"GODWIN'S LAW: (REDUCTO AD HITLERUM)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1" that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or his deeds, the point at which effectively the discussion or thread often ends. Promulgated by the American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990, Godwin's law originally referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions. It is now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and other rhetoric where reductio ad Hitlerum occurs."
I actually made an account just so I could reply to this.
You ask, Why do Christians Insist they are correct? Well, why do you insist that you are correct? it is because we both believe we are correct.
Now, you say that we have zero proof aside from our Bible and I believe a previous reply highlighted the notion that what Christians are doing when using the bible as proof for their beliefs commits the fallacy of circular reasoning. While it does appear that way I would argue that it actually isn't.
The reason we don't give any other "proof" is that the Bible is our ultimate authority. It is the ultimate truth. If we were to provide you with proof from another source then that would become our ultimate authority. Then you could naturally and rightly ask us to prove that source of authority. It's turtles all the way down, you must, at some point chose your ultimate authority.
This questioning of ultimate proof can also be applied to Aiethists as well. I ask you,"Why do you believe that there is no God?" You will probably give me some scientific evidence. After that, I would have to ask, "How do you know that fact is true? How can you prove science?" you could reply with "because it is logic, and we can test it. we can visually observe this occurrence." Well, I'm afraid I would have to ask you "where does logic come from? how can you know for certain that you can trust what your eyes see and what your fingers touch?"
At some point in your argument, you have to put a stick in the ground and claim an ultimate authority to which there is no more proof to justify that ultimate authority. it simply is.
Also, on the thought of logic, And if you decide to declare that your ultimate authority I would have to respond to you that the only reason you have logic, to begin with, is because God gave it to you. You have no scientific evidence that logic exists nor do you have any proof of the validity of logic besides the fact that it makes logical sense.
My apologies if this is rambly or is in any way incoherent.
Thank you for reading.
Oh God... A presuppositional "logic" proponent...
Bible Advocate, you asked, “I ask you,"Why do you believe that there is no God?"
Sigh, you don’t understand atheism. Saying “there is/are no god(s) is NOT required to be identified as atheist.
@Bible'sAdvocate: re: Well, why do you insist that you are correct? "FACTS and EVIDENCE." supporting the proposition that you have not met your burden of proof. It's really simple.
RE: "Using the bible is not circular reasoning." I can't wait so see the following butchery of logic and reason.
1. Bible is our ultimate authority. (Argument from Authority Fallacy.) Please demonstrate the authority of your book. The bible is the assertion and not the evidence.
2. You must, at some point chose your ultimate authority.
NO! Belief is allocated to the degree of evidence provided. No good evidence, regardless of how you stack it, results in no good reason to believe. You have a burden of proof. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the response "I don't know." It is the only logical response absent evidence.
RE: "Why do you believe that there is no God?" (Straw Man Fallacy) If you are going to assert that Atheists assert that they do not believe in your god. You must define the god that Atheists do not believe in. Most gods are defined out of existence, like Zeus on top of mount Olympus hurling lightening bolts. The position of Atheism, which you so crudely butchered. is; "Atheists do not believe in God or gods." This is not the same thing as believing Gods do not exist. If you have a god that actually does exist, we are all willing to believe in that god. Please demonstrate your God's existence. We are happy to hear you out. If you can demonstrate your God's existence, we will no longer be atheists and we will no longer be atheists whether or not we worship the god you demonstrate is real.
Well.... please demonstrate your god.
RE: This questioning of ultimate proof can also be applied to Aiethists. How so? Atheism is a position of non-belief in God or gods. The only people asserting ultimate proof or ultimate authority are the theists. Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, etc.... Most atheists tend to be skeptics. (Not all admittedly) To a skeptic, nothing can be known for sure. Belief is allocated to the degree of the evidence provided. It's just that simple.
RE: Why do you believe that there is no God?" (See Above) I am more than happy to believe in your version of god. Please demonstrate that there is evidence for its' existence.
RE: ""How do you know that fact is true?"
Easy, you have not demonstrated a God existing beyond time and space that is invisible, all powerful, personal and .... whatever. You have only made an assertion. Please demonstrate your god.
RE: How can you prove science?" WHAT? Prove science? What do you think science is? There is NO THING called "science." Science is a time honored and tested methodology for evaluating the truth of a claim. It is a system of testing and comparing ideas and concepts to the world around us. It is done by systematically measuring, performing experimentation, seeing reliability of results as well as predictability of outcomes. The results of the scientific mode of inquiry are demonstrable. They have split the atom and taken men to the moon. Please demonstrate anything at all your version of god has done that is comparable.
RE" Science is logic ? "because it is logic, No, it's not. Not only are you ignorant as to what science is but you have no foundation in logic either. Hence your inane ramblings in this post. Why not take a science class or a class in logic and understand what in the hell you are talking about prior to making absurd comments. You would look a whole lot more rational by doing so.
RE: "where does logic come from? how can you know for certain that you can trust what your eyes see and what your fingers touch?"
Logic is a process created by philosophers. How do you not know this? The second part of your bullshit addresses "Hard Solecism" How do we know we are not merely brains in vats. How do we know anything exists.
IT DOES NOT MATTER: The world around us and our senses are all we have. Anything we add to this is mere conjecture. You are attempting to equate not knowing the ultimate reality of a chair to not knowing the ultimate reality of a god. The comparison does not work. I do not need to know the ultimate reality of a chair to use it or understand it to a necessary degree. I have, and there is, no way to understand your god thing to the same degree. Chairs actually exist and whether or not your god thing exists has yet to be proved. This world is what we have. This is true whether or not ultimate reality is known.
RE: At some point in your argument, you have to put a stick in the ground and claim an ultimate authority to which there is no more proof to justify that ultimate authority. it simply is.
NO! You do not get to assert ultimate authority without evidence. You do not have to put a stick in the ground or do any such thing. It is, in fact, clearly and logically possible to simply assert, "Not only do I not know, but based on the lack of evidence, no one else knows either." It is perfectly reasonable to withhold belief until such time as belief is warranted.
RE: I would have to respond to you that the only reason you have logic, to begin with, is because God gave it to you.
Please demonstrate your claim.
RE: You have no scientific evidence that logic exists nor do you have any proof of the validity of logic besides the fact that it makes logical sense.
WOW! THAT IS A STRING OF UTTER AND COMPLETE NONSENSE. Do you know what logic is? With your magical thinking, you seem to be completely incapable of determining a process from a thing. Why not take a philosophy class and try again.
RE: My apologies if this is rambly or is in any way incoherent.
At least you recognize your own ineptitude. "Rambly" did you mean "Rambling." It was incoherent from top to bottom. Hope that is obvious now.
@Cognostic
Wow I don't believe I need to write any-kind of reply. You have done a better job than I could even dream about. When it comes down to it, they really have no actual proof, just a belief.
"The Bible this and the Bible that." they say, but produce 0 actual evidence.
Unless one ignores all scientific evidence, it's not hard to understand why we are atheists.
@ Bible'sAdvocate
1. The collection of texts that make up the bible are the 'claims' not the evidence. You need outside corroboration to evidence them as fact. Much of the 'history' in the bible has been discredited by modern archeology and textual analysis. Many of the claims of the creation and even genealogy have been utterly discredited by science.
2. The collection of texts that is the modern bible is a network of contradictions and fallacies. So much so there is an entire industry that has been created to attempt to explain away such inconsistencies and errors.
3. It is the ultimate truth: Would you care to tell us poor non believers exactly WHICH of the 30,000 plus christian sects has that "ultimate truth" in their pocket?
Yes, you were rambling. Maybe doing some reading would help you. Do try and avoid reading apologetics or how to do "biblical hermeneutics" they only make the practitioners of such flim flam and dishonesty look even more unreliable than their initial impressions.
@Bible'sAdvocate
Actually, you ask one good question, when and where we put the stick into the ground, where is the reference point for our reality.
For me, it is my senses, touch, sight, and sound primarily. My senses have been consistent and kept me alive. I trust my senses to ensure I get across the street safety, I trust my senses to calculate that I get the proper pay, I trust my senses to smell my wife's perfume so I can compliment her and ensure a harmonious relationship.
I guess you could say my ultimate authority is my brain and the senses I uses to communicate with the outside world. My senses can be tested for veracity and consistency, my brain can be tested for proper function.
I do not need to invent a reference point, I have one that has worked very well all of my 69 years.
Bible'sAdvocate your claimed reference point, the bible is a book that is approximately 1200 pages, yet there are over 33,000 different interpretations of the bible in the form of various sects. Thus it can never be considered a valid reference point, since it is just a multiple choice book. Almost every various christian sect is derived by people picking and choosing what suits them or makes them feel good.
I come from the United Church of Canada, a loose and liberal interpretation of the bible where the positive teachings of jesus were emphasized, and the hateful and scary stuff like eternal damnation was basically ignored. The fact that my previous religious practice is very much different from Southern baptists or the Westboro Baptist Church confirms my statement that the bible can be interpreted in any way one chooses, thus is it not a valid reference for anything.
@Bible'sAdvocate
Notice no one agrees with you?
Know why? Because we are right.
Oh we have another live wire ... this is going to be fun ...
BZZZZT! WRONG!
Those of us who paid attention in class, insist we are correct, when evidence supports our postulates. An important difference between us and mythology fanboys.
Oh this is going ot be good ... break out the popcorn, everyone ...
In other words, you treat mythological assertions uncritically as fact, regardless of how much real world data pisses all over said assertions. Oh wait, I can already tell at this point you're a presuppositionalist, which means you not only flout the rules of proper discourse to an egregious extent, but adopt the position "if reality and doctrine differ, then reality is wrong and doctrine is right".
Poppycock. Your mythology was written by piss-stained Bronze Age incels, who were too stupid to count correctly the number of legs that an insect possesses. The short bus occupants who scribbled this fatuous collection of fairy tales, were incapable of even fantasising about vast classes of entities and interactions, that have since been alighted upon by scientists, and placed by said scientists into usefully predictive, quantitative frameworks of knowledge. The fabricators of your mythology didn't even have a concept of "continent", let alone exhibit any awareness of the existence of three major continental land masses on this planet, and if you reside upon one of those land masses, this should be a serious source of embarrassment to you.
Your failure to do so merely demonstrates that all you have here, is uncritical acceptance of unsupported mythological assertions.
We, on the other hand, have something more robust to turn to, with respect to large numbers of postulates about the universe and its contents.
Except that the only source we would consider "authoritative", is real world data. But even this statement is misleading, because we don't consider real world data to be an "authority" in the sense of an entity handing down decrees. Real world data simply IS. It doesn't matter how much you want to pretend that the sky is pink, if all the data you gather on the subject tells you it's blue. The fun part being, of course, that scientists worked out reasons for this a long time ago.
First of all, proof is the remit of abstract disciplines only, such as pure mathematics. When dealing with concrete entities, correspondence with observational data is the test of choice. There's your first mistake. And I can tell, even before moving on, that you're making the mistake of assuming that atheism involves the presentation of assertions. Wrong.
Atheism, in its rigorous formulation, is nothing more than suspicion of unsupported supernaturalist assertions. That is IT. We leave the business of presenting postulates to those disciplines for which this is a remit. Let's see how long it takes you to fail to understand this as we go on, shall we?
At which point, I would say to you, "your question is null and void". Because I don't consider the question of the existence of a god-type entity to be answered one way or the other. And it's precisely because that the question is unanswered, that I don't present assertions on this matter. I'm prepared to present speculative hypotheses when pressed, and have already done so here and elsewhere, but that's an entirely different process from issuing categorical statements.
However, one categorical statement that I do issue, on the basis of supporting evidence, is that mythology is incompetent at providing an answer to the question. All the purported candidates for the "god role" in mythologies, yours included, are constructed as edifices replete with paradox, contradiction and absurdity, and can be dismissed on that basis. This doesn't mean I assert that NO candidate for the role exists, merely that mythological candidates are ruled out. A non-mythological candidate devoid of absurdity and internal contradiction, will be a different matter once one is presented.
No, I'll provide you with the answer I've given above. Which is already destroying your feeble apologetics.
You don't "prove" science. Do learn the elementary concepts at work here. Science is a method, not a postulate. Furthermore, it is a method that clearly works. For evidence of this, see: your famine-free, disease-free life, surrounded by expensive electronic toys.
Except that we don't respond to substantive questions in such an infantile manner. Oh, and logic is another abstract discipline. Furthermore, it is a discipline that only validates conclusions, not premises. An elementary lesson that several supernaturalists manifestly don't understand.
It's a human invention. But one which, again, clearly works when applied to postulates.
Oh wait, scientists have been moving away from using the senses, to using instruments for observational purposes, precisely because they are aware of the issues involved with human perception. Said issues having been uncovered, wait for it, by scientific investigation.
And your attempt to erect a fake "symmetry" between rigorous disciplines and mythological assertion, fails here precisely because the postulates arising from those disciplines can be tested, and verified by multiple independent observers On the other hand, supernaturalists around the globe, have not only been unable to agree on a global scale, which of the numerous human mythologies invented is purportedly the "right" mythology, but adherents of a particular mythology cannot even agree among themselves what that mythology is purportedly telling us. As an illustration, put several thousand people not suffering from documented sensory defects in front of a tree, and ask them "what is that?" and they'll all agree it's a tree. Some might be more specific and tell you what sort of tree it is, but you won't find anyone in that crowd telling you it's a slab of cheese. Whereas supernaturalists can't even agree among themselves on a global scale what their magic man's name is.
Except I don't. I recognise it's remit of applicability. It applies to postulates considered in the abstract.
And this rectally extracted assertion of yours can be dismissed with the same absence of effort you put into tossing it into the ring here.
I have a lot of documentary existence that the subject was brought into existence by human thought, courtesy of the relevant textbooks. You'll find Willard Van Ormand Quine wonderfully informative here.
Oh, you mean that it observably works? Boom. That was not only the sound of your apologetics exploding, but everyone's irony meters here.
Atheism
Noun
disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
Hope this helps.
The apologists in this thread might also want to learn what a common logical fallacy is, and then look up argumentum ad ignorantiam.
Also "rambly" is not a word, it's rambling. Also if atheism carries a burden of proof could the two theists in this thread please present proof for each and every deity they disbelieve exists.
Oh this thread is becoming quite the comedy goldmine.
Let's start with this, shall we?
No. But that's because I'm aware of the output of tenured cosmological physicists, who are very careful about the postulates they present. One of those postulates being that the universe in its current form had a beginning, which says nothing about entities or interactions might have been present beforehand. Indeed, much of the scientific literature in the field of cosmological physics, is now devoted to the business of devising a consistent pre-Big-Bang physics, complete with entities and interactions therein that could have led to the emergence of the current observable universe via testable natural processes alone.
But then, your confusion about this arises from you thinking that apologetics is something other than made up shit, a topic I'll return to in due course.
Bullshit. This is nothing more than a rectally extracted assertion.There's no reason why testable natural processes, involving well defined entities and interactions, could not have performed the task. As I stated above, cosmological physicists have been developing relevant hypotheses in this vein, and furthermore, seeking methods of testing those hypotheses. A particularly interesting example thereof arising from the work of Paul Steinhardt & Neil Turok in 2011, when they published two papers from the world of M-theory, presenting a mechanism for the instantiation of the observable universe that possesses the following elegant features:
[1] It provides a mechanism for donating the initial energy to the observable universe, to fuel matter synthesis;
[2] It provides a mechanism for eliminating the singularity problem from standard Big Bang cosmology;
[3] It provides a testable and observable consequence of its operation, that can be searched for in the observable universe, to determine if this mechanism was in operation.
It's game over for mythology fanboys.
Now, moving on to this:
Oh, please, this is another rectally extracted assertion on your part, and one that is manifestly false. This has much to do with the demonstrable fact, that apologetics is nothing more than the fabrication of convoluted discoursive elisions, for the purpose of pretending to provide evidence for unsupported mythological assertions. In short, it's made up shit pretending to be fact.
I'll provide a hilariously illustrative example, courtesy of the fatuously named "Institute for Creation Research", which I won't link to, because I don't want to give these professional liars for doctrine any Internet traffic if I can help it, especially any Internet traffic that adds to their funds via click-through adverts. However, for those who, in the interests of diligence, want to see the original text, the URL is (in non clickable format)
www dot icr dot org slash article slash 1844
Here's the text in question ... the regulars here will enjoy laughing at the infantile level of discourse contained therein ...
Yes, this is the level of bullshit that I routinely see emanating from the world of apologetics. Let's dismantle this piece by piece, shall we? In accordance with conventions I have applied elsewhere, when dealing with bullshit of this sort, personal pronouns during this dismantling, are to be understood as directed to the original author of the bilge in question. Let's start the Arclight raid, shall we?
That's the least of your worries regarding the bullshit that is creationism. Though having your 3,000 year old book of myths, the same one you want us all to believe is the last word in knowledge, exposed as being unable to display competence with respect to elementary fact, doesn't help your propagandising for your masturbation fantasy of a doctrine one bit. We have the scientific papers, we have the evidence, we have the data, all of which says your book of fairy tales is a crock of shit.
Yes, why don't we look closely? And see how much of a crock this really is?
So how IS biblical "kind" defined then? Ever going to tell us? Only we've been waiting for creationists to answer this one ever since they began asserting that "kind" was a valid biological term. I'll remember this reference that "kind" is not related to any modern scientific taxonomic classification next time another creationist tries using "kind" as a discoursive elision to distract from his or her rampant scientific ignorance. Bet you didn't expect to hand me that gift on a plate did you?
Though anyone who peruses the requisite output from the usual suspects, will note that the anti-consilience on display within the output of assorted creationists on this matter, is truly cosmic in scale. Indeed, the whole exercise of pretending that mythological assertion contains valid scientific concepts, and erecting the farcical edifice known as "baraminology" on the basis of this pretence, is a comedy goldmine all on its own, though the comedy in question is very much an acquired taste.
In the meantime, I want everyone reading this to bookmark that above assertion. Let's call this Bookmark #1.
But there's more to deal with ... back to our author of apologetic bullshit:
And on what actual evidence is this assertion based? Especially as the above passage in Leviticus explicitly mentions insects?
Plus, it mentions locusts and grasshoppers, which manifestly have six legs. Seems the Ancient Greeks were better at counting legs than the Bronze Age nomads who wrote your book of fairy tales.
Plus, "beetle" is cited as being a "kind" in the relevant passage. Rather inconsistent with the above assertion that "kind" does not correspond to any modern taxonomic designation, given that beetles So this is starting to degenerate into utter farce before we're even halfway through this turgid nonsense. And I haven't even reached the dénouement.
So already, we have another rectaly extracted assertion, this time directly contradictory to the rectally extracted assertion contained in Bookmark #1.
Except that the part about "flying creeping thing" in 11:22 is immediately followed by a list of insects in 11:23. The birds were mentioned before 11:22 and covered separately.
Your attempt at apologetic obfuscation is starting to look seriously ridiculous. If you can't even reference your own mythology sitting in front of you without error, then it shouldn't be difficult for those of us who paid attention in class to see where this is going ...
Moving on (it gets more hilarious with each new section) ...
As opposed to the actual scientific facts taking precedence. In other words, once again, we have a creationist telling everyone than when reality and doctrine differ, reality is wrong and doctrine is right. Why does this not surprise me in the least? Oh, this might have something to do with the fact that this is a routinely observed aspect of the creationist aetiology.
Which again corresponds to a well defined taxonomic Order, in this case the Orthoptera. So that's twice you've contradicted yourself in this failed attempt at apologetic justification for your nonsense. See Bookmark #1 again, everyone!
Now let's move on ...
And, once again, this idiot cannot even present elementary facts correctly.
Actually, that should be phylum. There is only one Phylum Arthropoda. Now if you had mentioned subphyla or classes at this stage, then these would be plural, because the Phylum Arthropoda contains a number of these, viz:
Subphylum Crustacea
Class Branchipoda
Class Cephalocarida
Class Malacostraca
Class Remipedia
Class Maxillopoda
Class Ostracoda (note: may not be monophyletic)
Infraclass Cirripedia (may be reassigned to full Class status once the phylogeny of the Crustacea is resolved)
Subphylum Hexapoda
Class Insecta
Class Entognatha
Subphylym Myriapoda
Class Chilopoda
Class Diplopoda
Class Pauropoda
Class Symphyla
Subphylum Chelicerata
Class Arachnida
Class Xiphosura
Class Pycnogonida
Class Chasmatspididia (extinct)
Class Eurypterida (extinct)
Strange how you never mentioned any of these taxonomic groupings. Perhaps because doing so might lead some of your readers to ask how they were constructed, and as a corollary start asking the sort of questions that would lead them to answers that provide evidence that creationism is a crock? Indeed, I've written much here and elsewhere, on the matter of how Linnaeus' work, constructing the taxonomic system, pisses all over creationist pretensions wholesale, and did so 112 years before Darwin presented any substantive material on evolution. But I digress. Let's move on, and see what other drivel awaits us from this professional liar for doctrine, shall we?
Oh, by the way, here's one that your so-called "last word in knowledge" mythology missed ... the Symphyla are unusual in that they have six pairs of legs (12 in all) upon hatching, but with each moult (ecdysis), they add another body segment and another pair of legs, so that in the adult instars they end up with 24 legs (12 pairs). Funny how it took scientists to alight upon these creatures when they started taking notice of observational reality instead of the pontifications of a doctrine. Though I've remarked both here and elsewhere, how the authors of this turgid mythology were, all too often, incapable of even fantasising about vast classes of entities and interactions, that were instead alighted upon by scientists, and placed by said scientists into usefully predictive, quantitative frameworks of knowledge. Though you, as a professional liar for doctrine, are hoping no one who paid attention in class will embarrass you by pointing this out.
Moving on, we have ...
You don't say? Exactly what level of audience are you pitching this apologetic screed at, and with what literacy level? Is this aimed at the segment of the public with an IQ below 70? The functionally illiterate? Because only that segment would regard your apologetics as anything other than a joke, and would need to be told something as obvious to those of us with functioning brain cells as this.
But I've noticed the manner in which apologetics is frequently grounded in the inane and the infantile.
Which still makes a total of six legs. FAIL. But wait for it, boys and girls, the part of this that is truly pants-wttingly funny, is about to appear ...
I don't even need to be an invertebrate zoologist to look at this, and laugh so hard that I'm not only in danger of pissing my pants, but suffering a prolapse. This is truly infantile, feculent dreck of the most steamingly coprolitic order. Because, wait for it, anyone who has actually observed members of the Orthoptera walking, as I have myself frequently during biological recording, will know that, wait for it, they use all six legs for walking.
When I first dealt with this drivel some years back, I found a nice series of YouTube videos illustrating the point, that Orthopterans use all six legs for walking. One of those videos has ceased to exist, but the rest are still available. Here's a nice selection of video illustrations of Orthopteran locomotion for everyone to enjoy ...
Very loud stridulating Orthopteran that uses all six legs to walk;
Katydid from Thailand, again demonstrating the use of all six legs;
Another Katydid from Thailand, again demonstrating the use of all six legs;
Grasshopper from Germany, again demonstrating the use of all six legs for walking ... you can all see where this is going, can't you?
More Orthopteran locomotion, including a 6 legged wall climbing sequence;
Predatory Orthopteran from Mexico
So I think once again, the evidence from the real world would suggest that this nonsense that somehow the rear legs aren't used for normal locomotion is more apologetic wankery.
But of course, there's more to deal with here. Namely, the fact that the Orthoptera is but one Order of insects, and that the Hexapoda (the clade containing the insects) contains over twenty other Orders, containing something like 1½ million species, the vast majority of which are NOT jumping insects, and for which this apologetics utterly, utterly fails. Indeed, one Family of Coleoptera I'm aware, of, the Elateridae or Click Beetles, happens to contain insects that propel themselves away from danger explosively when threatened, but these insects don't use their legs at all for this! Instead, they have a completely separate appendage, consisting of a spine on the prosternum, which can be snapped into a corresponding notch on the mesosternum. Indeed, some nuce scanning electron micrographs of the structure in question, can be found in this paper, covering an extensive biomechanical analysis of the operation thereof, complete with some nice, intimidating second order differential equations and their solutions.
Quite simply, that someone even thought this excremental apologetic brainfart was worth concocting, let alone disseminating to a global audience on the Internet, merely demonstrates yet again, the palsying and neurotoxic effects of supernaturalism.
But there is, of course, more to cover. Let's do that now ...
Really? Once again everyone ... citation to support this?
Now of course, professional liars for doctrine like you, sunshine, have a habit of tossing shit like this into your vomitings, because you know damn well that people with access to in-depth knowledge of ancient Hebrew are few and far between, and as a corollary, anyone can toss in an assertion of this sort, safe in the knowledge that the gullible rubes in the BuyBull Belt will be too stupid even to think of fact checking this. But, lo and behold, it turns out that there exists, online, the Hebrew and English text of Leviticus 11 side by side, which everyone can examine here. Of course, the structure of Semitic languages makes it difficult for non-specialist scholars to check this, courtesy of the fact that Semitic languages (Hebrew, Arabic etc) have a totally different system of operation to Indo-European languages. Indo-European languages have well-defined verbs and nouns, with separate, well-defined rules of declension associated therewith, whilst Semitic languages have "root words", from which nouns, verbs and other classes of word can be derived, involving the use of prefixes as well as suffixes. Then you throw in to the mix, that Semitic languages are written right to left, adding to the difficulties for the non-specialist to check. However, if there IS someone out there with the requisite specialist knowledge, do please point us all at the relevant parts of that text, and tell us if the above assertion by our creationist liar for doctrine, is something other than the product of his rectal passage.
Thus, we move on ...
Wrong. See those YouTube video clips above? They've just made a nonsense of your 3,000 year old book of fairytale nonsense. Along with your apologetic nonsense trying to prop up this crap.
Wrong. It bears eloquent testimony to the fact that whoever wrote that passage was too stupid to count the number of legs on an insect correctly. It's not as if those YouTube video clips make it difficult to count the number of legs an Orthopteran insect has. I would have been pointing and laughing at you peddling this drivel at the age of 11, let alone now.
Wrong. See those YouTube video clips above? They've just flushed your nonsense down the toilet. As has every entomological observation made since the days of Linnaeus.
The only "standing" it's doing here is standing as an example of doctrine-inspired fuckwittery when compared to the real world.
You actually managed to stretch out a sequence of blind assertions in support of your doctrinal masturbation fantasy for 90 minutes? Wow, that deserves some kind of award. Oh, and "scientific evidence for creationism"? Please, don't make me laugh, I hate having to wash all the extra underwear that results when I see farcical tripe such as this.
We only have your word for it. And the evidence once again suggests that creationists are to be trusted in this regard, about as much as most of us would trust a convicted paedophile to supervise a kindergarten. Though funnily enough, it's now not only Catholic priests we have to worry about in this regard, but an increasing number of fundagelicals like you, as numerous news items about persons of your ilk being arrested on relevant charges demonstrate. I won't bother bringing all of the instances I know of into this post, as it's starting to become a 10,000 word dissertation as it is.
Well as a creationist, you'd know a lot about erecting those. Indeed, "smokescreen to sidestep the issue" pretty much sums up a lot of creationist apologetics.
It has several. Genesis alone is replete with these. "Global flood", anyone?
Those Orthopterans in those YouTube video clips are laughing at you at this point. As are my tropical fish. Which are laughing because they would have been exterminated wholesale thousands of years ago, if the fantasy "global flood" was something other than a bad mythological assertion, instead of happily swimming and breeding in my aquarium.
The real world does that. Oh wait, there's an entire series of these in the tetrapod lineage alone. The ones I can remember off the top of my head, include Eusthenopteron, Panderichthys, Tiktaalik, Ventastega, Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, and they're just the ones I'm familiar with from several peer reviewed scientific papers. I suspect that the authors thereof, including Jennifer Clack, Neil Shubin and Per Ahlberg, are aware of at least a dozen more. Again, exposition of those papers would turn this post into a 100,000 word dissertation, so I'll spare everyone having to wade through that for another post.
Actually, what you are seeing is the illusion of design, which you as a propagandist for a masturbation fantasy of a doctrine assume is "design" because you're too stupid to devise a notion other than "invisible magic man did it". Oh, and by the way, do you know what it takes to convert the "design" assertion, into something other than the product of your rectal passage? I've never met a supernaturalist who even understands the question, let alone has what it takes to provide the answer. Here's a clue for you, "it looks 'designed' to me, therefore my magic man did it" will simply result in those of us who paid attention in class pointing and laughing at your stupidity. Indeed, I can provide a nice little test, which points to the farcically, dribblingly encephalitic nature of "design" apologetics, which no supernaturalist has ever passed. I'll enjoy watching you join the list of failures in this respect if you want to try.
Real scientists diligently observing the real world do that. Oh, wait, there's a few papers I could bring here on this subject too, including Richard Lenski's landmark work.
No, they're pointing out that your masturbation fantasy of a doctrine is founded upon manifest error. But then I wouldn't expect a creationist to understand this. But since your fantasy "creation" never happened, no one needs to worry about any blindly asserted "implications" thereof. Oh, and I've already explained elsewhere in detail, why the whole "fall" drivel in Genesis is a crock of shit from start to finish. Go here to read more on this.
A huge "if" that is completely unsupported by evidence, and in the case of your 3,000 year old book of fairy tales, flatly contradicted by observational reality. Those Orthopterans in the YouTube video clips are laughing at you again. Oh, and when was your imaginary magic man anything other than a merely asserted entity, existing only in your mythology and the minds of the fanboys thereof?
Blind assertion on your part. Since you apparently prefer to give credence to a 3,000 year old book of fairy tales rather than the real world, which as those YouTube video clips demonstrate, makes a mockery of your fantasies here, we can dismiss your assertions fom this point on forthwith.
Well this presumes on your part that your invisible magic man in the sky actually exists. Unfortunately for you, we can see that those Orthopterans have six legs, and use them all for walking, which flushes your nonsense apologetics down the toilet.
I think this example demonstrates the total fucking vacuity of apologetics, don't you, boys and girls? If this is the level of infantile made up shit that you have to peddle, in order to continue your adherence to pre-scientific mythology written by piss-stained Bronze Age incels, then you might want to consider spending your time on an enterprise involving actual knowledge, instead of the peddling of made up shit.
2 cents to apologists, from this atheist.
I state that ; I do not believe in gods, the soul, an afterlife, heaven hell, angels, demons, the paranormal, goblins, mountain trolls, dragons, alternative medicines or fairies at the bottom of my garden, due to lack of proof. That makes me an atheist.
I do not claim to know.That makes me an agnostic athesit
As I've been able to tell over a life time is that so far, no one has managed to argue god into or out of existence .
When I see the writings of some apologist and theologians , I think "What a waste of a good mind." Have never had that thought on an atheist form . The apologists we tend to get are pretty crude and parrot their positions. Most lack the most basic understanding of scientific method and reasoned discussion .
It is my position that the existence of god is unfalsifiable. By that I mean thats so far, nobody has managed to prove or disprove the existence of god .
Took me a while to understand why theists are permitted on most atheist forums. (we are not welcome on theirs). My perception is It can get boring always preaching to the choir. Most theists are at least amusing, although they tend to get a bit tedious after a while, with the arrogance and the circular logic,.------.With luck we get the odd theist who is articulate and not demonstrably stupid. These specimens make quite acceptable chew toys.
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