Token Atheist

No-one did. We evolved. (Simple question: simple answer!)

I have never yet heard anyone claim that Mars had a world wide flood until just now. Please could you let me know who these "most evolutionists" are who claim this. A few links to "evolutionists" making these claims or endorsing them should be enough. The only links I can find are some astronomers talking about a patch of water about 4 times the size of Lake Tahoe (hardly a "world wide flood"!) and creationist propaganda sites. 1) Astronomers find what appears to be a lake bed and ravines coming off it on the surface of Mars. 2) Astronomers announce that the ravines may be evidence of a local flood in the area. 3) Creationists claim that "most evolutionists" believe in a "world wide flood" on Mars. It sounds like you have fallen for a creationist lie, to me... P.s. Mars has ice caps. There is incontrovertable evidence that there is water on the planet, not "very little" evidence...

We are not failing to accept Ross's explanation because it "doesn't have enough scientific terms to meet the quota" as you put it. We are failing to accept Ross's explanation because it is fundamentally flawed in the ways that I have described. Then why did you introduce it as "Scientific Proof for God" if you think it is no such thing?

I would disagree. He has asserted that other conclusions are extremely unlikely, but has not shown anything of the sort. His arguments that attempt to show it are deeply flawed, as I have pointed out. The entire strength of his lecture rests on us simply accepting that what he says is true because of his "authority" as an astrophysicist.

Dr Ross might know his Astronomy, but the theological conclusions he draws are weak at best. His lecture is certainly not "scientific proof" of anything. To go through his lecture part by part (although the length is such that I cannot do it full justice here)... He starts by taking some quotes from other physicists. These have no relevance to what he is talking about except to mix quotes from atheist physicists and Christian physicists to make it look as though all those physicists agree with him, rather than just the Christian ones. Then he gives a brief overview of "dark matter" - nothing controversial there (except that he says the existence of "dark matter" is "proven", when it is in fact only one hypothesis out of many, and is inferred from the evidence, not deduced from the evidence). Being an astrophysicist, he should know better than to do this. However, this lecture is rhetoric, rather than science, so he probably thinks he can play fast-and-loose with his terminology. He then takes a sarcastic comment made by another physicist (comparing the zeal with which physicists embraced the "Big Bang" theory with the zeal of Christians) and twists it to make it sound as if the other physicist is "admitting" that "Big Bang = Christ"! He then introduces the evidence that the universe is expanding - which is fair enough - but tries to imply that Evolutionary Theory relies on older "static universe" hypotheses (presumably to put doubt about it in peoples' minds and make them think that the modern discoveries about the universe preclude Evolutionary Theory). This is, of course, completely irrelevant. All that Evolutionary Theory relies on is an old Earth - which both the "static" universe and the "inflationary universe" models provide. He also repeats lies about Einstein's religious beliefs - lies that Einstein himself refuted, but that are still repeated by apologists - claiming that Einsteins discoveries made him into a theist. He then goes on to say that because time has a beginning, Christianity must be correct because it is the only religion that claims that time and the universe had a beginning. He is, of course, wrong on two counts. Firstly, Christianity does not claim that time had a beginning, and secondly many other religions claim that the universe had a beginning. He then claims with absolutely no evidence that this proves there to have been a creator - since something must have caused the universe to come into existence. I am surprised that he can say this with a straight face. For a start, being an astrophyiscist, he should know that time began at the beginning of the universe - so the whole notion of cause-and-effect cannot be applied before then (since cause and effect relies on the existence of time). His argument is also flawed in other ways, but this should suffice. After having given this poor quality version of the oft refuted Cosmological Argument for God (I can only assume that he is hoping people will be "wowed" by the fact that he is an astrophysicist and that this will distract them from the weakness of his argument - a sort of Argument by Personal Authority) he launches into a typical version of the Teleological Argument for God. In this rather lengthy section, he lists a load of things - and says that if they were different then the Earth and Universe would be different. He combines this with the we in the form that we are could not live if the Universe were different. Thus, says,he, the universe must have been formed especially for us. Of course, he neglects the obvious answer to this. We are the way we are because we fit the existing universe, not because the universe was designed to fit us. The best analogy for this is to go outside on a cold day and find a puddle of water that has frozen. We can (if we are careful) lift this frozen lump of water out of the depression that it is in and examine it. Notice how the contours of the frozen water exactly match the contours of the depression! The odds of that are incredible! Therefore the depression must have been intelligently designed to fit the water! Of course, this is not the case. The water fits the available space. If the depression were differently shaped, we would still have a frozen block of water but it would be a different block of water. The same applies to us. Just because we fit our environment, it does not mean that the environment must have been created especially for us. If the environment were different, we would be different and still fit it. Finally, he launches into an ill-informed attack on Evolution. He is an astrophysicist and not a biologist - so there is no particular reason for him to know any biology. He shows this amply by simply throwing in a quote from two people (who he does not give any information about - but a quick Google search on Paul Erlich brings up a variety of sites gleefully pointing out how wrong he has been about many things) that there is no evidence for speciation. Once again he relies on his Argument from Personal Authority. He's an astrophysicist! Therefore when he says that someone else says that Evolution can't work, it must be true! Ignore the fact that Ross himself is not a biologist! Ignore the fact that the person he quotes appears to be something of a crackpot! Ross is an astrophysicist! He must be correct! So there we have it. It is a fairly run-of-the-mill apologetic screed, with the usual out-of-context quotes and the same old arguments that have been brought up and refuted time and time again. Just because the person who wrote this is an astrophysicist doesn't make it any better. It is most certainly not "scientific proof" of anything...

I notice that you say "largely established" rather than "established". So did the 2nd century Christians agree on the canon that we use now or not? The answer, of course, is a resounding "No". There were many competing canons in the 2nd century, all copmpeting - with each group insisting that the books which matched its theology were the true inspired ones... However, the one we use today was not established until "The Holy Church of Rome" became "The Roman Catholic Church". Which specific "founders" in the 2nd century held to the 66 book canon that we use today? I look forward to your answer - since none of them did. The canon we use was established at the Synod of Carthage in 397AD and ratified by Pope Damasus I. That verse says that ALL scripture is good for reproof ect. You missed a vital word there. He was speaking of that wich was already established. If you are right about the meaning of the verse (and we have already established in this thread that this is unlikely to be the case), this would mean that only works written before 2 Timothy are inspired. When 2 Timothy was written, there was no established New Testament canon. That would make 2 Timothy only be referring to the Old Testament canon. It most certainly does not. The Church father Eucebius affirmed the authorship we use as well as earlier church fathers/ or father. Eusebius freely admitted that lying and inventing evidence was acceptable as a means of converting people - so forgive me for not taking his "affirmation" as proof of anything. No it is not. Most scholars that I know of place Mark at 60-85, Matthew at 80-100, Luke at 80-130 and John at 90-120. You seem to have got your information from apologists rather than scholars. Hint: A scholar is someone who says "Here is the evidence. What conclusions can I draw from it." An apologist is someone who says "Here is my conclusion. What evidence can I find to support it."

Erm... Because that's what an Apologetics forum is for? Because when someone asks you sincere questions it's polite to answer them? Because failing to answer them might make it look as if you can't answer them? Actually, you quoted it in this thread too - last time someone asked questions you didn't want to answer. Well, you did just waltz in with "I don't buy that for a moment" and "as you puport to "have been" " in response to me talking about my past - with the clear implication that I was lying about said past. When challenged about this - you then said that you weren't calling me a liar, the Bible was. Note the absolving of personal responsibility for the accusation there, whilst leaving the accusation that I am a liar standing. And then you presume to tell me what experiences I have and have not had. Don't you get defensive too when people you don't know call you a liar in public? I already did - but according to you God ignored me and let me be deceived (presumably by Satan) instead for a decade or so. So why did God not save me when I sincerely asked him to? According to your OSAS theology, he refused to.

I'm not calling you a liar- the Bible is To be more accurate, your particular interpretation of the Bible is. The majority of Christians do not interpret the Bible this way. Ah - but I forgot - they are obviously not True Christians, are they. Just like I cannot have been a True Christian. So what you are saying is that when I got down on my knees and sincerely prayed, asking the Lord Jesus to save me, he didn't do so - and instead I was merely deceived (by whom? Satan?) into thinking he had... That when I felt him enter my heart and I broke down in tears, that wasn't him.. That during the years that I could feel his presence and had a special relationship with him, it wasn't him... That the 'fruits' of my Christianity were no such thing... That all the times he 'convicted' me and the spirit led me, it wasn't them... So I have two questions for you and your Once Saved Always Saved theology. Why did Jesus not come into my heart and give me salvation when I sincerely begged him to? Why did he choose to stay away from me and let me be deceived instead? If I was able to spend years thinking that I was saved and having a personal relationship with Jesus - but it turns out that I was being deceived for all that time - how do you know that you are not also being deceived in the same way?

Feel free to call me a liar if it makes you feel better about the security of your own salvation. I know that I am telling the truth, so my conscience is clear. Still, if what you say is right, then I am still apparently still a Christian by your standards - simply a Christian who is so "backslidden" that he no longer believes in God or Jesus. Strangely, that would make me both a Christian (because I can not have stopped being one) and an Atheist (because I do not believe in God) at the same time.

Yeah, I've noticed that a few here know an awful lot about the Bible. Makes you wonder why you'd spend that much time on a book that means nothing to you. Don't forget that some of us spent many years as Christians before becoming atheists. From my personal point of view, I continue to study the Bible because - even if I don't believe what it says to be true - many people do, so it is fascinating to study who wrote various parts of it, and how the beliefs that modern day Christians (and Jews) have can be traced back to the (often quite different) beliefs that the ancients had. Not that odd. Academics have done just that.

Then what were people like Pope Damasus I, or the people at the Synod of Carthage, or St. Jerome, if they weren't part of the Catholic church? I assume that the Bible you use still has Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation in it - all books that were in the Catholic canon but were rejected by the Protestant movement when it started... Contrary to what conspiracy theorists like Jack Chick think, there was never a secret bunch of "true" Protestants keeping the "true" Bible canon alive. The Protestant Bible canon is a direct modification of the Catholic canon. Which brings us back to 2 Timothy 3:16 - in that you can tell what is "inspired" because it is "useful", rather than having a blanket statement that a named set of books is inspired. Most of the current New Testament fails this test, or is of unknown authorship and therefore cannot be tested with this criterion. Again, most of the current New Testament fails this test, or is of unknown authorship and therefore cannot be tested with this criterion. And how can you test this? This criterion simply means that any books that agree with your presupposed theology are considered inspired and any that disagree with it aren't. After all, how can you tell whether a book tells the truth about God, when all can you tell about what the truth about God is, is from the books? Once again, how can you test this? Well, that rules out the entire New Testament, then. Here is a question for you. Do you use those guidelines to decide which religious writings to keep and which not to keep, or do you simply pick up a copy of "the Bible" and assume that everything in there is inspired and everything not in there is not inspired? "Heretics"? How can you tell that they were heretics? - I know, it is because the Catholic church declared them as being such. By the way, many of these "obviously false" writings made it into the New Testament canon... For example the Catholic church, and through them the Protestant church when it formed. What about it? I never mentioned it.

No problem. Strangely enough, they also have doubts about your faith. To quote one of them... "I have strong enough faith that I can accept that the Bible is man's best guess - inspired by God but filtered through man's fallibility - without damaging it. I feel sorry for those who who's faith is so fragile, and who's need for a comforting "absolute truth" is so bad, that admitting the fallibility of the Bible's text would bring bring their faith to ruin." I have three things to say about this. Firstly, the verse as you write it there is badly translated from the original Greek. The Greek for this verse is: πασα γραφη θεοπνευστος και ωΦελιμος προς διδασκαλιαν προς ελεγχον προς επανορθωσιν προς παιδειαν την εν δικαιοσυνη This is transliterated word-for-word into English as... All writing God-blown and useful for tutelage... However, such a simple word-for-word transliteration does not take into account the differences between English grammar and Greek grammar. The Greek text could be translated into English in two ways, each of which is an equally valid rendering of the original. All writing is inspired and is useful for teaching... or All writing that is inspired is useful for teaching... As it happens, a quick survey of English Bible translations shows that both these alternatives are used about equally. However, they have very different meanings. The first explicitly saying that all writings are inspired and therefore useful (although this leaves us with the question of which writings - All writings? The Old Testament writings? The Old Testament writings and all the New Testament writings up until this point? The Old Testament writings and all the New Testament writings and any new writings that will be declared canonical by the Catholic Church but excluding any writings that the Church deems to be non-canonical? All of a particular but unspecified set of writings?) The second is saying that only writings that are inspired are useful for teaching - or vice versa, that if a writing is useful for teaching then it can be considered inspired. So which of the two alternatives was the intention of the author? We must look at the context. The context (as given in the preceding verses) shows that the passage that this is taken from is warning us about dangers of false teachings. As such, which is more likely - as a paraphrase of the passage. "You should beware of false teachings. All writings are inspired and useful." or "You should beware of false teachings. Only writings that are inspired are useful." I think we would all agree that when taken in context, the second translation is far more likely to be the author's intended meaning than the first. So, given that it appears that the second meaning is the intended one, the translation you use is wrong and misleading - especially since not only does it use the first meaning, it also translates "writings" to "Scripture" - adding an implication that the verse is specifically talking about the collection of writings that makes up the Bible. This is an implication that is not present in the original text - indeed, when the text was written there was no such canonical collection. Secondly, even if your translation were the correct one, this would not mean that the Bible must be true and without error. It says that it is inspired by God, not that it is the direct and infallible word of God. As my Christian friend has pointed out, if God inspires fallible humans, one would expect their fallibility to be reflected in the result. Thirdly, your logic is circular. Even if we grant both your translation of the verse and your interpretation of that translation to both be correct, it proves nothing. If the Bible is without error, then we can trust a Bible verse that says it is without error. If the Bible is not without error, then the verse could be wrong, so we can't trust what it says to be true. Your argument leaves us no way to distinguish between these possibilities, therefore it does not work as a proof that the Bible is without error. It makes as much sense as for him to leave it so ambiguous that the various denominations of Christianity (not to mention other religions based on the same text, such as Islam) can all come to different conclusions. If God cared enough about a 100% true message to not allow the fallible human hands writing the Bible to make errors, why would he be happy to let the fallible human hands that translate it and interpret it make errors? Either we should expect a fallible and ambiguous (but potentially inspired) Bible and lots of denominations, or an infallible and unabmiguous Bible and only a single denomination. Since we see various interpretations of the Bible (demonstrating its ambiguity) and we see lots of denominations and religions based on it, then it would appear that we have the first of those situations. Okay. I'll start a new thread; but not this weekend - I have the wife's in-laws (i.e. my parents) visiting...

I should point out here that Joy In The Journey's "challenge" was deliberately an unfair one. Why should my polite declining of a deliberately unfair challenge be considered to be "getting upset and leaving"? Of course, Joy In The Journey can point out that the original challenge by Inti was equally unfair - and would find no argument from me on that point. I have never claimed that Inti's challenge was fair. The "entire Christian faith" will not crumble if 1% of the Bible is proven to be incorrect. Most Christians I know will readily agree that large portions of the Bible cannot be taken as literal truth. This is fair, providing the Christian side of the challenge also agrees to take the plain reading of the texts at face value and not alter (or as you call it - "twist") their meaning and intent to fit their personal beliefs, either - so no claiming that something was "fulfilled spiritually" if it didn't physically happen as the Bible says, for example. After all, what's good for the goose is good for the gander... Fair to an extent - except that because of the differences in languages, it is not always possible to give an exact literal translation. Sometimes there just isn't an English word that exactly matches the Hebrew or Greek word. Strange, then, that I can think of at least a dozen errors off the top of my head... Surprisingly enough, many people (like myself) have gone the other way - studying the bible as Christians, and finding it harder and harder to believe that it is true the more we actually study it (rather than just accepting what apologists tell us) until they give up Christianity and become atheists. Just wanted to give you a "heads up" too... Right then. Before we begin: 1) What will be considered the standard of proof? Are we looking at a legal-type "beyond reasonable doubt" proof, or a logical proof? If we go for a legal-type proof, then I can predict now that no matter unlikely or convoluted the situation would have to be for something to be true, you will say that it is not "beyond reasonable doubt". Your opinion that the Bible has "never once been found to have anything errant in it" shows this. If we are to use "beyond reasonable doubt" as a standard, then we need to have some guideline as to what is and is not "reasonable". On the other hand, if we go for logical proof then it means that as long as you can come up with some way of rationalising what the Bible says - no matter how unlikely or convoluted or unreasonable , to the point where you could start talking about time travel and aliens - then you can claim that it has not been "proven" wrong. Do you have a reasonable (pun intended) solution to this dilemma? 2) Since I am in the minority here, once we start doing this every post I make will be swamped by responses and I will not be able to keep up. So I suggest that we do this more formally. The site I moderate at has a section for formal debates, and I am happy to go through this issue there. I see that this site also has a "soapbox" forum which I assume to be similar in that we can go through this one-on-one there too without everyone else interrupting. I'm happy to do either. 3) 1% of the Bible is a lot of material. It will probably take us weeks to go through that much. Since your claim is that none of the Bible can be demonstrated to be in error, why is 1% the magic value? How do we even estimate what constitutes 1% ov the bible? Surely we can save a lot of time by setting the threshold as a simple "X" errors. So what would you consider an acceptable value of X? From your post, it would seem that anything other than 0 would prove you wrong.

I just don't see how you can take that passage to mean that John is the author. The author talks about John in the third person. He even goes out of his way to say that John testified things and wrote them down, and that we know that his testimony is true (of course, it doesn't say how the author knows that John's testimony is true...) That specifically excludes John from being the author! The author is explicitly telling us that he is working from what John wrote down. Anyway, the point of this was that Christians often claim that there are lots of eyewitness reports of Jesus - but when examined, it turns out that these "eyewitness reports" turn out to be hearsay of the same "this happened to a friend of a friend of mine..." quality of most modern day Urban Myths.

A book is written. It is anonymous. You claim it is written by someone called "John" - who is talked about in the third person (and never talked about in the first person) throughout the book. And you say that the burden is on me to prove that it was anonymous? If it was not anonymous, show me where the author tells us who he is. I have already dealt with chapter 21. The author does not claim to be anyone in particular. He claims that he is telling the story told to him by the "beloved disciple", but does not claim to be John. He does not claim to be anyone in particular. And there is no John 35!

The book of "John" is anonymous. The first Christians who started using it and quoting from it treated it as being anonymous and did not connect it to any particular author. What is your evidence to connect it with the apostle John?

What internal evidence? What external data? Come to think of it - what eyewitness accounts of Peter? I hope you are not referring to the 2nd century Pseudographia that bear his name - you will be hard pushed to find a scholar who dates them before the Gospel of "Mark". Well, as a quick example, the story about the miraculous catch of the 153 fishes was originally told about Pythagoras (he's mainly remembered for his contributions to mathematics, but he was a philosopher and theologian too who had quite a following and many stories about the miracles he performed). The number 153, of course, had significance in the original Pythagorian miracle story - since it is a triangular number. By the time the story had been retold with Jesus as the main character rather than Pythagoras, the number 153 no longer makes sense. In general, a good majority of the words attributed to Jesus in the synoptic Gospels are taken from the philosophy of the Cynics. I would argue that all the spoken text attributed to Jesus in any of the Gospels falls into that category. Don't forget - the author of "Matthew" has him ride into Jerusalem on both a donkey and a colt at the same time. The author has misunderstood Zechariah 9:9, which uses a standard Hebrew form of repetition for emphasis, and has instead made Jesus ride two animals. This is a clear indication that the story was written specifically to make it look as if "prophecy" was being fulfilled, rather than the recording of historical events. It is not the only time that "Matthew" gets his Hebrew Scripture wrong, leading to Jesus doing or saying embarrasing things in order to "fulfil" it... I'm out of time here - sorry but I'll have to come back and answer the rest later...

Once again, we have no claim to be an eyewitness account. Merely a claim from an anonymous author that the anonymous person who told the author what happened was telling the truth. Well, according to the story, that's what happened.

Why should I? Your post was a complaint about Inti's thread-starting post, and an extreme exaggeration of his post redirected towards atheists. Since I have never claimed to agree with Inti's post, why should I play your tit-for-tat game? You are generalising horribly between: "Inti said..." ...and... "You atheists say..." ...as if Inti is somehow a spokesperson for all atheists. If Inti wants to play with you then he can. I feel no need to.

It isn't the right choice. Only someone who doesn't understand evolution would claim it has anything to do with either the origin of life or the origin of the universe.

Almost certainly. The site is run by British republicans who are anti-monarchy. The references to "Liz Windsor" and so on on the "pledge" page (and such things as the pledgee agreeing to always be a "second class citizen") mark it as obvious satire. I'm no republican. I support the monarchy. I grant you that. No-one ever remembers the verses about "Crushing rebellious Scots", though...

Well, for a start, the text of 2 Peter is written in fluent educated Greek, using formal Greek rhetorical devices and so on. The apostle Peter (assuming he existed at all and is not just a character in the Jesus story) was an illiterate Galillean fisherman. If Peter had got a scribe to write for him, that might explain the fluent Greek - but would not explain the idioms used. We would see Peter's Aramaic idioms translated into Greek, not classical Hellenistic idioms. And that is just the barest start of why it could not have been written by Peter. There is much, much more evidence (certainly much more than I have time to post).

Most animals contain the working gene. Since it codes for a specific protein, it is identical in all these animals. Any random "damage" to it in the form of mutations will stop it working - hence the animals in question will probably get acute vitamin C deficiency (a.k.a."Scurvy") and not survive long enough to breed. Hence, only animals with an undamaged version will survive. Hence, we can see the undamaged version in most animals, even after millions of years have passed. Apes were lucky - their fruit rich (and therefore vitamin C rich) diet means that they could survive the loss of the gene. Once the gene was damaged by the retrovirus, any further mutations would make no difference - so they would stay. Hence, we can see how many mutations have happened by simply comparing the gene to that of an animal in which it still works and counting the number of differences. (It is slightly more complex than that, but you get the gist...) They have. All cells (except the most primitive viruses) have lots of junk DNA. However, in this case the DNA is specifically that which serves a function in other animals, but serves no function in apes because it contains damage in a specific place from a specific retrovirus. The Bible says nothing about wholescale changes across the animal kingdom when Adam is thrown out of the garden. But anyway, this is why Creationism can't be considered science. Science consists of theories that make specific predictions which can be tested. If the predictions succeed, the theory is considered stronger. If the predictions fail, the theory is either modified to take into account the new information or it is abandoned as wrong. The Theory of Evolution is a good example of this. Despite the propaganda of creationists, it has made thousands of predictions and has never failed. In scientific terms it is a very successful theory. Creationism, on the other hand, makes no predictions. You can't say "If Creationism were true, X would be the case. We can examine the world and look for X. If we find X then our belief in Creationism is strengthened. If we find not-X then we must abandon Creationism or modify it. By its very nature - the answer to every question is "God chose to do it that way" - it makes no such predictions, and as such cannot be considered to be science. That is why Evolution should be taught in science lessons. Even if it later turns out to be wrong (like Newtonian physics turned out to be wrong), it works. It is the basis behind most modern Medicine and Biology, and it is an excellent example of good science. Creationism, on the other hand, is a theological position with - as I have pointed out - no scientific credibility as a theory. I have nothing agains people being taught Creationism - they should just be taught it in theology lessons, not science lessons.

No - but I saw one of his films. It changed my attitude towards Gun Control... Equally, just because YOU accept the authenticity of the Epistles doesn't mean they are authentic. "Concrete and irrefutable"? None - the nature of the topic is that there is never such a thing. "Acceptable beyond reasonable doubt"? Far too much to put into a post. Perhaps we could discuss it in a new thread (I seem to be saying that a lot these days...) I can think of many respected scholars who conclude that the letters are pseudographia. I can think of no respected scholars who accept their authenticity - only literalist apologeticians. You yourself have just downgraded him from "eyewitness" to "hearsay witness". "Would have been there"? "Would have been there"??? Does he say he was there in any of his letters? No. He doesn't. Does anyone else say he was there? No. They don't. Is there any indication at all that he was there? No. There isn't. So why should I believe that he "would have been there"? No. "Luke" says. He says he is reciting a story handed down to him from the original witnesses. If he was a witness he would have said that what he was telling what what he had personally seen. They are also historically inaccurate. Besides, the Gospel is anonymous. Assuming that its author was the "Luke" is merely following Catholic tradition. Once again, the Gospel never claims to be an eyewitness account and never claims to have been written by John. You are merely following Catholic tradition. Then you believe wrong. You are the one who is making up claims with no evidence (Paul "would have" witnessed the crucifixion, for example). You are the one asserting that the Gospels were eyewitness accounts written by the apostles - when the Gospels themselves say no such thing. All my claims are backed with evidence. I have invited you to open a new thread to discuss the claims. I have nothing to fear - no "making claims with nothing credible to back them up" here... Care to go mano-a-mano in some kind of formal debate? It's been a while since I did one of those, but I am sure I have not lost my touch. No, I don't. On the contrary. At least in my country, if a judge asks for a witness, and someone appears and says "There were 500 witnesses to the event - and I had a vision about it afterwards" then that person would be laughed out of court. Of course, if we actually had the testimony of these alleged 500 witnesses then that would be something to work with... but alas we don't. I choose to stick with the facts, as I have done so far.