A Fundie Email

[Greydon Square]

First i just wanna ask that you please "suffer" through reading this... I saw your video and felt compassion for you... I know you dont know me... and you have no reason to believe a thing i am about to say... but its worth a shot right? This past summer i really started getting close to God and me and my cousin were walking on the beach and i said i wonder what God wants me to do... and then i said maybe He wants me to go to Israel... and just then the biggest brightest shooting star shot across the sky... and i've never seen anything that big and bright in my entire life...so i took that as a sign... and you might think well that was just a coincidence... well what are the odds?

 

I know you've probably heard this a million times... You cant see air but you believe in it... so why cant you believe in God... and i didn't wanna say that at first but if you really think about it... the most important thing there is on this planet for our survival we can't see... wouldn't that be fitting for God to be the same way to us? But anyway on with tha show...

 

 

 

A Revolution against Evolution

 

Introduction:

 

First i wanna say that we as our individual selves cant prove what happened in the past. We just have to accept what the evidence that we have gathered. We cant prove without a shadow of a doubt, that we actually landed on the moon because i wasen't there... who knows they could have filmed that in a studio... but based on the evidence and the facts we all have to assume they did land on the moon. Just as we have to assume and believe all the historical figures of the past existed based on evidence and facts and documents... How do i know Abraham Lincoln was who everybody says he is... i wasent around back then to witness it. But i just believe it without even thinking about it.

 

So im going to talk about Macro Evolution. Which basically means that life came from something that wasn't living. In Charles Darwins theory basically says that a random process plus time produced this common ancestor which Plants, Animals and anything you can think of came from. Science cant prove this theory without a shadow of doubt... for it to be 100% fact...but they except its true because they dont want to believe in God...You have to have more faith to believe in something came from nothing, that life came from death. Than you do to believe that God is real. That God created everything that you see. But if thats not good enough for you im going to tell you some deficiency's of Evolution.

 

Fossil Flaw- If we all came from a common ancestor. Then there should be intermediate forms or transitional species. For example you should have a species of half bird half fish or anything at all. Darwin said himself i know this theory is true i just cant find proof. Since this theory was made 0 transitional forms have been found.

 

Dead/Live Dilema- No scientific evidence to prove life can come from death. Every living thing had to come from somethinge else that was living.

 

DNA- A scientist cant reproduce DNA. Only DNA can produce DNA. A scientist did come up with this for the probability of this evolution process taking place and he said that life spontaneously happening is about as much chance of a tornado blowing through a junkyard and making a well flying 747 air plane and its about but let me break it down for you in the numbers that were given...

 

100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000% Chance. Hmm... not too good of a chance i say...It sounds more realistic to believe in a creator of such eloquently made beings and nature. Just look around you ask yourself did this stuff really just accidently happen or is there really a God who made this stuff... the answer is 100% true.

 

If your still not convinced...

 

Why believe the bible most people say?

 

Theres a basic or general world view which consists of these questions: Who are we?, How did we get here?, Where did all this come from?

 

I ask you to ask yourself what makes the most sense? The bible answers all of it very clearly, Who are we? God's children... How did we get here? He created us. Where did all this come from? God... now the bible goes in alittle bit more detail than that... but to sum it up for you... but beyond this why believe the bible?

 

#1 Historically Reliable:

 

There are 66 books in the bible from Genesis to Revelation it was written over a period of 1500 years to finish. There were 40 different authors living in 3 different continents speaking 3 different languages writing about the same theme.

 

Now going off of what i said earlier about how can we believe something actually happend or someone actually was the way people say... because we werent there... we just have to believe the evidence. Well...

 

Julius Caesar- had only 10 manuscripts about him discovered and they were written 1000 years after he lived... but we all believe what we hear about him.

 

Plato- had only 7 manuscripts discovered and they were written 1300 years after he had lived.

 

Homer- had 643 manuscripts about him and it was 500 years after he had lived...

 

However the new testament alone was written only 35years after the last event of the book was written and there are 5300 manuscripts.

 

The old testament- the dead sea scroll were found in 1947 which is 1 year before Israel become a nation... imagine that... and they dated back all the way to 150b.c. 200 years after the last recorded event in the old testament. There were fragments of every book in the bible found in them and the entire book of Isaaih. So a book which was written 2150 years ago and it lines up 99.87% of the english text we got right now. So 40,000 manuscripts that contain the bible no other historical document can make that claim. You cant tell me there isent a God who is pushing this material for people to find and come to know Him.

 

There was a Archiologist by the name of John Gerstane who was from great brittain who wanted to see if the event in the bible could be possible so he looked up the battle of Jericho and found the site where the city was and he discovered that the city's walls had fallen outward. He said the only way this could have happened is if there was a nuclear explosion within the walls or something other than man did it. He's not even a Christian and said that... now you might need to read the battle of Jericho in the bible to know more about this. For it to make more sense. There are many Archological discoveries made based on information given in the bible and it is found in great detail.

 

#2 Scientifically Realistic-

 

1500 years ago people thought the world was flat...But Christopher Columbus took a trip around the world because he was a Christian and had read in Isaiah 40:22 which reads: [it is] "he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof [are] as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:" (kjv)

 

People didnt use to wash there hands back in the day before they did surgery until they figured out about germs and that they were killing the patients with the bacteria on there hands. So now they wash their hands not in still water but in running water well guess what the bible says about how to get clean. in Leviticus 15:13, "And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue; then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean."

 

#3 Prophetically Right:

 

No other book contains the amount of prophecy that the bible contains which is 30%. 1 out of every 3 verses predict the future. 2000 prophecies in the old testament have already come to pass. So how could this book predict the future? Or why would it even want to unless it were all true... because if something that we predicted didnt come to pass then you could say that it's all a lie... so if man just meerly was trying to get people to follow their little made up religion then they wouldnt have predictions in there... but since God is the real Author He can put it in there because He knows whats going to happen.

 

#4 Personally Relevant:

 

The bible contains things that are relevant for me in my every day life... how i should treat my fellow man... what i should do in life... everything you need to know of relevance is in the bible... and i suggest you read Proverbs, John, Ephesians they are really good books in the bible.

 

So in saying all of that lets look at the outcome of both Evolution and Creation.

 

Evolution: If you believe in this and you are right the best case scenario is you will live the rest of your life and then you will die and thats it.

 

If you are wrong and there really is a God you would have lived your entire life away from Him and you would go to hell, because He's not gonna make you go somewhere, that you dont believe in.

 

Creation: If you believe in creation and God and accept Jesus in your heart then the best case scenario is you will be in Heaven and be happy for all eternity.

 

Worst case scenario: You still die but at least you would have lived a life worthy to live. Full of helping people and experiencing true joy of life.

 

But if you believe there is no worse case scenario. Its all good.

 

I wanna end on this Hell was made for the devil and his demons. But those who refuse God and Jesus there is not other place for people to go when they die... so if you dont want God He's not going to make you go to heaven. But He wishes that not should perish but have everlasting life. He is a God of love and mercy and forgiveness and all you have to do is turn to Him and accept His son as your Lord and Savior.

 

So i pray that you all come to the realization... and Father i give You all honor, glory and praise and love You and thank You... in the name of Jesus i do pray Amen.

 

A Few Good Men

 

 

Christopher Columbus - The person who discovered America might i say by accident... he was a Chrisitan.

 

George Washington - Our 1st president, Also was in many wars and never died... i wonder why... he was a Christian too.

 

John Adams and John Quincy Adams - Both in my family by the way... they too were Christians and presidents too. John Adams was one of the ones who helped draft the constitution... went over to France and convinced them to help fight with us against the english to gain our independence.

 

Benjamin Franklin - One of the signers of the Constitution... He found out how to control electricity... Isent that amazing that God would use a Christian to invent a means for us to have Light? Because God calls us to be a light to the world.

 

Abraham Lincoln - He too was a president and a Christian, He helped bring about the Freedom of slaves.

 

Alexander Graham Bell - he invented the telephone it would be God to get a Christian to invent a way for us to communicate with each other... Because God wants us to communicate with Him in that same way but through prayer... He wants a relationship with us.

 

Isaac Newton - He was a Christian...

 

Optics and Light

He created a very early stir within English philosophical/scientific circles when he presented to the Royal society of London a paper on the theory of the constituent colors of white light (resulting from his work with prisms) and a unique new telescope that worked with curved mirrors as well as lenses (the reflective telescope).

 

Question and Answer Time

 

 

You may have many questions about God... and if you have some that i have not answered then you can e-mail me or put a comment on here and i'll try my best to answer them...

 

Question #1:

 

How was God made?

 

Answer: To answer this question I must say this there had to be a beginning of one thing in order for another thing to be created....God is that Beginning. For instance even on a more logical standpoint it is more realistic to believe God created everything than to assume planets were just there... or something slammed into something else in space and then life sprang up from that. God was the very first then He created all else. Its hard for us to comprehend sometimes because we come from something else as do everything we see. Also God is a creater and we were molded in His image thus we are creaters...

 

Question #2:

 

If God loves us so much why does He let bad things happen...especially to good people?

 

Answer:

 

2 reasons, one He gives man free will if one man chooses to kill that was his choice, God wants us to freely love Him and each other. God could make us be good but then we would be robots. The second reason bad events in our lives mold us to what God wants us to become. For example when you work really hard and you get a blister it hurts really bad at first. But after awhile your body developes a calis and becomes stronger and enables you to endure much more than before. In that way God is molding us.

 

Question #3:

 

Why is the bible so inaccurate?

 

Answer:

 

The truth of the matter is it is actually extremely accurate Jesus confirms it in scripture. The bible is God breathed which means God inspired, God directed. The different translations you see are as of the same difference in these two sentences:

 

"It makes me Joyful to see television programs."

 

"I am happy when I watch T.V. shows."

 

Two completely different sentences but they mean the same thing. You wouldn't say these are inaccurate, differen't yes but all the same.

 

Instincts

 

 

How do you explain instincts?

 

definition - 2 a : a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason b : behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level.

So in other words an animal knows what to do without having it learned... a baby spider doesent learn from its moma spider how to spin a web... it just knows how... you cant teach a baby how to swim but if you put it in the water it will start swimming...there are many more... but you cant explain these things... they said above below the conscious level... so in other words it is just put in there... well how is it in there if it isent learned? Because God put it there... it defeats all logic... something cant have something in its brain unless its put there... so God puts it there... just like a computer... you have to program a computer to do certain tasks... you program a computer to have Virus control... if there wasent virus control it wouldnt program itself to have virus control... it cant learn how to protect itself unless you put an A.I. unit in there... which means artificial inteligence which means has the capacity of learning on its own... But you cant learn instinct it is just deep within you... how can this be? Only God can prove this... only a superior being can make sense of instinct.

 

Im not trying to change you because only you can make any changes in your life... i just hope what i may have said might have sparked something within you to at least try and prove that God isent real... at least ask Him... before you just make your final statement in saying there is no such thing... because He is real... and is more than willing to show you... just give Him a chance... if you want that is...

 

Extremely Sincerely,

Brandon

[Dhampir]

God. There's just so much shit here to disect. I'm daunted by the amount of typing necessary to break it all down. I say you make this the topic of one of your broadcasts. Just this letter. There has to be enough here to make a good 20 minutes out of.

[YDOAPS]

Talk about a total lack of research. Right now, I just like to point out that of the 8 Christians he listed, at least 4 were not Christians.

[godlessgrrl]

Hmm. This sounds suspiciously like they're plagiarizing something, or at the very least parroting a bunch of stuff from somewhere else.

 

It's really hard to know where to start, it's so full of assumptions, fallacies, inaccuracies, and ignorance. The author really just doesn't have the slightest clue what the fuck they're talking about. I mean what the HELL is this:

 

So im going to talk about Macro Evolution. Which basically means that life came from something that wasn't living.

 

Uh, no, that would be abiogenesis, fool, not evolution. Evolution is about changes in life forms and species over time, not about where said life forms came from in the first place.

 

Jeezus! Why the hell can't these fucknuts get their definitions straight???

 

Yeah. Anyway. Not like that pisses me off or anything.

 

One could spend quite awhile dissecting that letter. But spouse just put dinner on the table and frankly I'm way more interested in yummy food than bad apologetics at the moment... Maybe later...

 

Edited to add: Oooh, I know, maybe a bunch of us could each take a section and address that section in particular?

[Taphophilia]

I'm in tears, that was so funny!

 

1500 years ago people thought the world was flat...But Christopher Columbus took a trip around the world because he was a Christian and had read in Isaiah 40:22 which reads: [it is]"he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof [are] as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:" (kjv)

 

So...Columbus discovered the America's in 506AD? Yeah, and a Catholic would, of course, read the KJV decades before it existed.

 

Um...they knew the Earth was round, they didn't know it was as big as it is. Columbus was trying to prove a faster trade route to India.

[Dhampir]

Christopher Columbus - The person who discovered America

Yeah, you can have him as a christian. Didn't he force indigenous people to mine for gold and cut their hands off when he suspected them of stealing?

[Taphophilia]

It's a good thing he lists what his "Christian All Star Line Up" did or we wouldn't know. Except for Isaac Newton, I wonder if he even knows what Newton did.

 

Elisha Gray invented a telephone, the same time Bell did. Bell beat Gray to the patent office by a couple of hours. Bell was a ruthless business man, securing the patent for 17 years, he built his company with no competition.

[sarahgrace]

95% of that shit could have come out of my apologetics textbooks.

 

yes, I have apologetics textbooks... I went to these evangelism equipping youth conferences in high school (SEMP - some of you may have heard of it?) where they instructed us in apologetics in the mornings, then let us loose on the streets of Toronto in the afternoons to go out and try and win some souls. We got textbooks to work in (fill-in-the-blank stuff) for our classes, which we got to keep. Mine are still in my dad's house somewhere. Next time I go back I should dig them out and have a look at them, just for old time's sake. Then maybe I'll burn them.

[Leaf]

Well, This stuff is not hard to dismiss and each topic he addressed has been talked about here on this site many times.Most here are well schooled in this Bull S%ht that he addressed.

[sanaslove]

Aw, he even threw in a scatterbrained version of Pascal's Wager, how cute.

 

If you are wrong and there really is a God you would have lived your entire life away from Him and you would go to hell, because He's not gonna make you go somewhere, that you dont believe in.

 

Oh, but what if I don't believe in hell either? I think we have a paradox.

[PaulQ]

We can prove that mankind did land on the moon beyond a shadow of a doubt, regardless of whether you were personally there to witness it or not. There is plenty of evidence; quite a bit more than simply the written words of some men who claimed to be divinely inspired as is the case with your god. Interesting that you should have most likely seen an old piece of man-made space hardware burning up in the atmosphere then believed that to be an omen from your god. You do not seek the truth; you only do a very lousy job at supporting the lie that your god exists.

[Guest]

George Washington - Our 1st president, Also was in many wars and never died... i wonder why... he was a Christian too.

 

When I first read this I thought he was trying to say that Washington was taken up to heaven in bodily form too, like Mary and Jesus!

[exbeliever]

Cut and paste apologetics:

 

Macro-evolution/Transitional forms--describes transitional forms of reptile-birds, reptile-mammals, ape-humans, legged whales, legged seacows.

 

Historical Reliability of the Bible--BTW, what's the point he is trying to make about Julius Caesar and Plato? If a manuscript said that Julius Caesar walked on water, I wouldn't believe that either. Is is suggesting that we don't believe Jesus existed? I don't get it.

 

Scientifically Realistic--Roundness of the Earth, what does ritualistic cleaning have to do with surgery? If God really wanted to help, why didn't he tell them about penicillin?

 

Prophecy

 

Personally Relevant?--Irrelevant. Hey, I would really love to live forever and eat pizza and ice-cream for every meal while receiving oral from Angelina Jolie in the celestial kingdom. So, if you don't like that you simply cease to exist at death, is it better to cling to another view simply because you like it better?

 

Notable Christians:

 

Columbus--genocidal maniac; so, yes, probably a Christian (cf 1 Samuel 15:2-3).

 

George Washington--elite, slave-owner; yep, sounds Christian.

 

John Adams--basically a good guy, but belived that only the elite should rule and supported the Sedition Act of 1798 to shut up his opponents.

 

John Quincy Adams--chauvinist; refused to be interviewed by female journalists

 

. . . Screw it, this is taking too much time.

[Greydon Square]

I knew you guys would destroy this fundie propaganda....i love throwing raw meat to the wolves, i love you guys.....

[Piprus]

I knew you guys would destroy this fundie propaganda....i love throwing raw meat to the wolves, i love you guys.....

The really sad part is, that a lot of True Believers would buy into those feeble and careworn apologetics heart-and-soul, and say "That's really tellin' it like it is!"

[ShackledNoMore]

OK, I wasn't going to take a crack at this because it's long enough to cover many (absurd) points, but here goes, I still haven't answered everything, but this covers many or most of the writer's major points:

 

... and just then the biggest brightest shooting star shot across the sky... and i've never seen anything that big and bright in my entire life...so i took that as a sign... and you might think well that was just a coincidence... well what are the odds?

 

Well, let's see... Shooting stars are a natural phenomenon. There is dust and debris that enters the atmosphere all the time, and if you're out taking in the sky you'll see them sometimes just as surely as you'll see rain. Being a lover of the night sky, I easily see two or three of them a year. Admittedly that's more than average, but since you seem to like nighttime walks along the beach lets say that you're likely to see one per year. Let's also assume that you're obsessed with your god and that you think about him or his will for you 60% of the time while you're out walking at night. Then in an average year, you'd have a 60% chance of that particular "sign." Over the course of a five year period, you'd have a 99% chance of such a message from god. Might I also enquire as to which evening you took your walk? There are many meteor showers that occur predictable throughout the year: Perseid, Leonids (with cyclical intensity, but bright in some recent years), Orionids, and the usually impressive Geminids. Were you aware of this? And if you draw in all the novel things that could happen to a person that you might interpret as a message from god, I should think that the probability that he'd send you a sign to be astronomical. Now I know I may not be exactly on spot with my assumptions about how likely you are to see a meteor or how often you'll be thinking about god, but I trust you get my point.

 

I know you've probably heard this a million times... You cant see air but you believe in it... so why cant you believe in God...

 

I have senses other than sight, you know. I can feel the air. I can hear the wind. I can smell scents carried in the air. I can blow up balloons, pump up tires. I can see haze. And I can do grade school experiments to establish the existence of the air. No, a much better analogy would be the idea of humors, the aether, or Franz Mesmer's "animal magnetism" which unlike air (and like god) were never able to be demonstrated by experimentation or empirical evidence. Look at what happened to those ideas.

 

Before directly addressing your arguments about evolution I'll briefly point out the absurdity of your premise that it takes more faith to believe something for which there is evidence, can be examined, and fits with the best scientific knowledge we currently have (which will be tweaked in the future, but is sufficiently well established to make it very unlikely that it will be discarded). Now then:

 

If we all came from a common ancestor. Then there should be intermediate forms or transitional species...Since this theory was made 0 transitional forms have been found.

 

How dare you make an assertion that simply isn't true and not even try to support it! First off, we can see even from micro-evolution that it is possible for transitions to occur relatively quickly. How much of a fossil record will be left to show the transition from canis lupis to canis familiarias? Secondly, as we've found more and more fossils we've seen a lot of transition species. You can always look at http://darwiniana.org/transitionals.htm if you want to educate yourself further.

 

Dead/Live Dilema- No scientific evidence to prove life can come from death. Every living thing had to come from somethinge else that was living.

 

First off, your life from death statement is so confused and ill formed that it is meaningless. What you really want to say is that (you believe) it is impossible for life to come from non-life. Notice the simple DNA and RNA viruses we have today. Notice the building blocks, the complex organic molecules. The most rudimentary stuff we consider life isn't that far removed from non-life--it's not a reach. But if you think it is, you're going to have to do better than simply make unsubstantiated assertions.

 

A scientist did come up with this for the probability of this evolution...100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000% Chance. Hmm... not too good of a chance i say

 

I don't know who your scientist is, but granting you the benefit of the doubt that he he did say this, I wouldn't put very much stock in the word of a "scientist" who has a poorer grasp of percentages than the average third grader, especially while selectively ignoring hoards of credible scientists. While I'm at it, this is as good a place to interject this point: I do not like to use ad hominem attacks, and this is the only place in my reply that I'll say something that resembles one, but your apparently have neither the math nor grammar skills of a third grader, either. I hate to say it dude, but it doesn't do much for your credibility.

 

Plato- had only 7 manuscripts discovered and they were written 1300 years after he had lived.

 

Are you talking about manuscripts attributed to Plato, or texts written about him? Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dialogues_of_Plato for a list of 41 manuscripts attributed to Plato. Are you saying these are hoaxes? Put simply, you are simply fabricating claims that are not true and using them to rest your argument upon.

 

However the new testament alone was written only 35years after the last event of the book was written and there are 5300 manuscripts.

 

The New Testament was written over a period of decades. I won't lie: there's a range of dates suggested for the writing of the new testament, dates suggested by serious scholars and historians. The dates provided by Christian apologists tend to be earlier than other dates. Yours is among the earliest suggested, and I suspect you'd have a hard time supporting that figure. Many sources seem to cite the latter part of the first century as the probable date range. The general consensus among those who study such things is that Mark is the first gospel written and John is a lot. The range from around 65 A.D. to 100 A.D. is frequently cited for the gospels. Misinformation tends to spread pretty quickly: even today many make wild claims of mystic and supernatural events, some of which are not consistent with the beliefs of contemporary Christians and are frequently rejected by them as hoaxes (even while embracing other claims consistent with their beliefs). There was ample opportunity for an entire mythology to circulate by the time the New Testament was written.

 

People didnt use to wash there hands back in the day before they did surgery until they figured out about germs and that they were killing the patients with the bacteria on there hands. So now they wash their hands not in still water but in running water well guess what the bible says about how to get clean. in Leviticus 15:13, "And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue; then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean."

 

The ancient Hebrews hit upon something with running water as evidenced within a much broader reference from Leviticus, did they? Well if THEY figured this out, it must have come from God. Oops, what about the Egyptians who figured out how to move those big rocks? Perhaps we should all be worshiping Ra instead.

 

#3 Prophetically Right: [blah, blah, blah]

 

Interesting how this book, vague, filled with imagery, and frequently alluding to issues relevant to the culture and time it was written is dissected to retroactively manufacture fulfilled prophecies. And the one biggie: an mistakable arrival by a sky-daddy in the clouds heralded by trumpets has left generation after generation behind who claimed it was nigh.

 

The bible contains things that are relevant for me in my every day life... how i should treat my fellow man... what i should do in life...

 

Gee, a text, a religious text at that, that addresses matters like that. That's unique.

 

If you are wrong and there really is a God you would have lived your entire life away from Him and you would go to hell, because He's not gonna make you go somewhere, that you dont believe in.

 

Uh, sorry to point this out, but your lack of ability to make a coherent point is showing again. You just said that God will send you to a place that he WON'T send you to (because you don't believe in it).

 

Christopher Columbus, George Washington, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Graham Bell

 

There you go again, some of this is just plain wrong: George Washington is considered by many historians to be a Deist. Even if you side with those who consider Washington more a man of faith, he clearly wasn't a zealot. John Adams and John Quincy Adams were both Unitarians. Adams did not believe in the divinity of Christ. Benjamin Franklin was a Deist not involved in organized religion. Lincoln did not affiliate himself with a church, nor was he a Christian. I don't know what Bell's religious beliefs were, but you'll forgive me if I'm hesitant to take your word.

 

How was God made?

 

Answer: To answer this question I must say this there had to be a beginning of one thing in order for another thing to be created....God is that Beginning.

 

You are not about to try to explain where God came from, are you? You can't. You need to explain where God came from, or just how he, unlike everything else, always existed and never had a beginning, and prove that he is the first cause for your argument to have weight (you are the one making the claim). Sorry.

 

Why is the bible so inaccurate?

 

Answer:

 

The truth of the matter is it is actually extremely accurate Jesus confirms it in scripture.

 

You mean from the same New Testament for which we established above how murky the claims are about Jesus, right? The same Bible crammed full of contradictions, right? Two that come to mind at the moment are the claim the value of pi is 3 and brazenly contradictory genealogies. What, you want to scramble for a lame explanation to try to pretend that these were inspired directly by an omniscient and infallible god? Dance Brandon, dance. There are hundreds more where that came from.

 

How do you explain instincts?

 

Uh, an adaptive response? Infant mammals who weren't preprogrammed to suckle their mothers' teats never lived on to reproduce. An amoeba doesn't need intelligence to draw back from an irritant. It needs no more intelligence than photochromatic lenses need to darken when exposed to sunlight.

[Greydon Square]

OK, I wasn't going to take a crack at this because it's long enough to cover many (absurd) points, but here goes, I still haven't answered everything, but this covers many or most of the writer's major points:

 

... and just then the biggest brightest shooting star shot across the sky... and i've never seen anything that big and bright in my entire life...so i took that as a sign... and you might think well that was just a coincidence... well what are the odds?

 

Well, let's see... Shooting stars are a natural phenomenon. There is dust and debris that enters the atmosphere all the time, and if you're out taking in the sky you'll see them sometimes just as surely as you'll see rain. Being a lover of the night sky, I easily see two or three of them a year. Admittedly that's more than average, but since you seem to like nighttime walks along the beach lets say that you're likely to see one per year. Let's also assume that you're obsessed with your god and that you think about him or his will for you 60% of the time while you're out walking at night. Then in an average year, you'd have a 60% chance of that particular "sign." Over the course of a five year period, you'd have a 99% chance of such a message from god. Might I also enquire as to which evening you took your walk? There are many meteor showers that occur predictable throughout the year: Perseid, Leonids (with cyclical intensity, but bright in some recent years), Orionids, and the usually impressive Geminids. Were you aware of this? And if you draw in all the novel things that could happen to a person that you might interpret as a message from god, I should think that the probability that he'd send you a sign to be astronomical. Now I know I may not be exactly on spot with my assumptions about how likely you are to see a meteor or how often you'll be thinking about god, but I trust you get my point.

 

I know you've probably heard this a million times... You cant see air but you believe in it... so why cant you believe in God...

 

I have senses other than sight, you know. I can feel the air. I can hear the wind. I can smell scents carried in the air. I can blow up balloons, pump up tires. I can see haze. And I can do grade school experiments to establish the existence of the air. No, a much better analogy would be the idea of humors, the aether, or Franz Mesmer's "animal magnetism" which unlike air (and like god) were never able to be demonstrated by experimentation or empirical evidence. Look at what happened to those ideas.

 

Before directly addressing your arguments about evolution I'll briefly point out the absurdity of your premise that it takes more faith to believe something for which there is evidence, can be examined, and fits with the best scientific knowledge we currently have (which will be tweaked in the future, but is sufficiently well established to make it very unlikely that it will be discarded). Now then:

 

If we all came from a common ancestor. Then there should be intermediate forms or transitional species...Since this theory was made 0 transitional forms have been found.

 

How dare you make an assertion that simply isn't true and not even try to support it! First off, we can see even from micro-evolution that it is possible for transitions to occur relatively quickly. How much of a fossil record will be left to show the transition from canis lupis to canis familiarias? Secondly, as we've found more and more fossils we've seen a lot of transition species. You can always look at http://darwiniana.org/transitionals.htm if you want to educate yourself further.

 

Dead/Live Dilema- No scientific evidence to prove life can come from death. Every living thing had to come from somethinge else that was living.

 

First off, your life from death statement is so confused and ill formed that it is meaningless. What you really want to say is that (you believe) it is impossible for life to come from non-life. Notice the simple DNA and RNA viruses we have today. Notice the building blocks, the complex organic molecules. The most rudimentary stuff we consider life isn't that far removed from non-life--it's not a reach. But if you think it is, you're going to have to do better than simply make unsubstantiated assertions.

 

A scientist did come up with this for the probability of this evolution...100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000% Chance. Hmm... not too good of a chance i say

 

I don't know who your scientist is, but granting you the benefit of the doubt that he he did say this, I wouldn't put very much stock in the word of a "scientist" who has a poorer grasp of percentages than the average third grader, especially while selectively ignoring hoards of credible scientists. While I'm at it, this is as good a place to interject this point: I do not like to use ad hominem attacks, and this is the only place in my reply that I'll say something that resembles one, but your apparently have neither the math nor grammar skills of a third grader, either. I hate to say it dude, but it doesn't do much for your credibility.

 

Plato- had only 7 manuscripts discovered and they were written 1300 years after he had lived.

 

Are you talking about manuscripts attributed to Plato, or texts written about him? Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dialogues_of_Plato for a list of 41 manuscripts attributed to Plato. Are you saying these are hoaxes? Put simply, you are simply fabricating claims that are not true and using them to rest your argument upon.

 

However the new testament alone was written only 35years after the last event of the book was written and there are 5300 manuscripts.

 

The New Testament was written over a period of decades. I won't lie: there's a range of dates suggested for the writing of the new testament, dates suggested by serious scholars and historians. The dates provided by Christian apologists tend to be earlier than other dates. Yours is among the earliest suggested, and I suspect you'd have a hard time supporting that figure. Many sources seem to cite the latter part of the first century as the probable date range. The general consensus among those who study such things is that Mark is the first gospel written and John is a lot. The range from around 65 A.D. to 100 A.D. is frequently cited for the gospels. Misinformation tends to spread pretty quickly: even today many make wild claims of mystic and supernatural events, some of which are not consistent with the beliefs of contemporary Christians and are frequently rejected by them as hoaxes (even while embracing other claims consistent with their beliefs). There was ample opportunity for an entire mythology to circulate by the time the New Testament was written.

 

People didnt use to wash there hands back in the day before they did surgery until they figured out about germs and that they were killing the patients with the bacteria on there hands. So now they wash their hands not in still water but in running water well guess what the bible says about how to get clean. in Leviticus 15:13, "And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue; then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean."

 

The ancient Hebrews hit upon something with running water as evidenced within a much broader reference from Leviticus, did they? Well if THEY figured this out, it must have come from God. Oops, what about the Egyptians who figured out how to move those big rocks? Perhaps we should all be worshiping Ra instead.

 

#3 Prophetically Right: [blah, blah, blah]

 

Interesting how this book, vague, filled with imagery, and frequently alluding to issues relevant to the culture and time it was written is dissected to retroactively manufacture fulfilled prophecies. And the one biggie: an mistakable arrival by a sky-daddy in the clouds heralded by trumpets has left generation after generation behind who claimed it was nigh.

 

The bible contains things that are relevant for me in my every day life... how i should treat my fellow man... what i should do in life...

 

Gee, a text, a religious text at that, that addresses matters like that. That's unique.

 

If you are wrong and there really is a God you would have lived your entire life away from Him and you would go to hell, because He's not gonna make you go somewhere, that you dont believe in.

 

Uh, sorry to point this out, but your lack of ability to make a coherent point is showing again. You just said that God will send you to a place that he WON'T send you to (because you don't believe in it).

 

Christopher Columbus, George Washington, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Graham Bell

 

There you go again, some of this is just plain wrong: George Washington is considered by many historians to be a Deist. Even if you side with those who consider Washington more a man of faith, he clearly wasn't a zealot. John Adams and John Quincy Adams were both Unitarians. Adams did not believe in the divinity of Christ. Benjamin Franklin was a Deist not involved in organized religion. Lincoln did not affiliate himself with a church, nor was he a Christian. I don't know what Bell's religious beliefs were, but you'll forgive me if I'm hesitant to take your word.

 

How was God made?

 

Answer: To answer this question I must say this there had to be a beginning of one thing in order for another thing to be created....God is that Beginning.

 

You are not about to try to explain where God came from, are you? You can't. You need to explain where God came from, or just how he, unlike everything else, always existed and never had a beginning, and prove that he is the first cause for your argument to have weight (you are the one making the claim). Sorry.

 

Why is the bible so inaccurate?

 

Answer:

 

The truth of the matter is it is actually extremely accurate Jesus confirms it in scripture.

 

You mean from the same New Testament for which we established above how murky the claims are about Jesus, right? The same Bible crammed full of contradictions, right? Two that come to mind at the moment are the claim the value of pi is 3 and brazenly contradictory genealogies. What, you want to scramble for a lame explanation to try to pretend that these were inspired directly by an omniscient and infallible god? Dance Brandon, dance. There are hundreds more where that came from.

 

How do you explain instincts?

 

Uh, an adaptive response? Infant mammals who weren't preprogrammed to suckle their mothers' teats never lived on to reproduce. An amoeba doesn't need intelligence to draw back from an irritant. It needs no more intelligence than photochromatic lenses need to darken when exposed to sunlight.

Impressive