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Bonky

Nonbeliever
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  1. That same thought process is what led people to think various illnesses were the work of evil spirits. You don't solve mysteries by appealing to bigger mysteries.
  2. Except that you may be forgetting that I came out of Christianity given my upbringing. I didn't know any better but to believe. It wasn't forced on me in an abusive way but it's what I was taught since I was around 5 or so. I'm only responding to the claims I see the in the Bible and I hear Christians regularly make. So let's say someone has a faith paradigm that they can't be wrong about X. You think that's logical merely because they believe it is within their worldview? People can believe what they want, but when those people ask others to believe the same then I have every reason to press them for more details and give me confidence that they're on the right track. It makes no sense for me to promote something I can't defend. Do you also deny that the Bible states that I am w/o excuse? This isn't misguided Christians it's their scripture telling them that people are horrible and you can't trust them etc. I've spent too much time in the Bible and in church I know the talking points.
  3. Right so given the unverifiable claims in the past how did we get this confidence again? I guess we'll answer that below. That's nice for those special chosen ones but what about the rest of us lol. If I want a relationship with someone I don't play games. Relationships aren't hard...and considering what's at stake?
  4. Aren't we talking about something above and beyond confidence though? It's not like any of this is settled, far from it. We're talking about things that happened way in the past and much is relied on "eye witness" which you stated requires another level of faith. Doesn't sound like something people should hold dogmatic views on but that's just me. I agree. I feel that I have grown a lot in this area since 12 years ago when I started getting involved in these discussions. I used to be more dismissive of things but I realized that wasn't wise. I agree here too. Keep in mind now, I have often [and I mean often] heard from Christians that being a non believer must mean "I'm willfully ignorant", "too prideful", and that when this is all over I deserve to be tortured forever. It goes both ways. I haven't read his conversion article in years but if you search "Why I Left Young-Earth Creationism" by Glenn Morton he writes about it there.
  5. Except the person saying this has concluded that their initial assessment or guidance in these matters is spot on and is infallible. That wasn't the reason why I mentioned it. As a matter of fact, Glenn Morton didn't leave Christianity. He just stated that he could no longer accept young earth creationism based on his field work. I was just meaning to provide a real life example of someone who went through a fairly major change in religious views/interpretations due to what they viewed solid evidence for an opposing view. Some people would have kept their views in tact because they aren't open to such modifications in their theism.
  6. People such as William Lane Craig etc are able to see it that way. I lean towards the stardust idea. The building blocks of life are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Using spectroscopy a lot of data has been captured about the abundance of life building elements and they are more concentrated in the center of our galaxy than the outer regions. I don't think that's conclusive at all but it's certainly interesting.
  7. And that little word "dust" will be used in whatever way is convenient for the user. Without any hard work someone could propose that dust means the elements that we are composed of [created ex nihilo by God] and a theistic evolutionist could say it's referring to "star dust" which is what many scientists would say all earthly matter [source material for our bodies etc] came from.
  8. You started out ok but pulled a fast one at the end. Your first point sounds acceptable to me... 1. Humans are so feeble in their attempt to navigate reality with any kind of certainty, faith is ultimately deployed for the gaps we are missing. The 2nd not so much... 2. How has "faith" enabled humans to navigate territory that we couldn't navigate otherwise? If 10 people employ "faith" but believe things that are ultimately incompatible, who's "faith" is right?
  9. I guess it depends what you mean by "faith". There are some folks who have told me that they won't accept any conclusion that goes counter to scripture. That's not a scientific principle, but they don't care about that, they care about what scripture says as they believe it's inspired by God [and that their interpretation is spot on]. There are plenty of people who have modified their view of scripture based on evidence. One example is a geologist by the name of Glenn Morton I think [last name not sure] who was a young earth creationist but after he spend some time in the field he said he couldn't hold onto that view anymore. His philosophical framework appears to be compatible with opposing views based on evidence.
  10. What do you mean the bones are "fake"?
  11. Like One is suggesting often times they use other methods to help verify. Carbon dating is also but one method there are many using many different radio decay signatures etc. These methods do indeed work within margins of error and yes there is no time machine to go back and know for 100% sure.
  12. You don't carbon date living or recently dead things. If you purposely don't use tools properly why would you say "ah hah!" when the results are poor?
  13. I'm sure there are some in Congress [in the US] that have seen the last one.
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