A Challenge For You Atheist Apologetics

[Joy in the Journey]

Off the top of my head I can think of several beliefs on the origin of the universe/life. So why is abiogenesis and subsequent evolution the right choice?

My challenge to you in atheists here in the Apologetics Forum is to prove why these other beliefs are incorrect. Now I bet you're thinking that

[Token Atheist]

Off the top of my head I can think of several beliefs on the origin of the universe/life.  So why is  evolution the right choice?

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.

[Joy in the Journey]

Off the top of my head I can think of several beliefs on the origin of the universe/life.

[Token Atheist]

Ok....now that that's cleared up, can you get back to the point please ?

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.

[Joy in the Journey]

Ok....now that that's cleared up, can you get back to the point please ?

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.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Then don't "play" with me then TA- I never addressed you anyway Funny how you waited until I clarified my question to include "abiogenesis" to get all defensive on me though

I did a search on you and in the " Chimp vs human " thread you support evolution and you support teaching it as fact; so I really don't know what your complaint with my thread is

[ted]

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.

Well, there's one down.

Anyone else?

The rules concerning both threads seem equal enough.

t.

[Guest compmage]

Main Entry: evo

[sinnersavedbygrace]

I would like to add something if I may. Seeing how this is only a day old post, it would be unfair to say that no atheist/evolutionist wants to accept your challenge, but seeing how TA was so quickly upset and left, I would like to pose another challenge. For all you atheists/evolutionists/anti-Christians out there. If you are tired of us Christians annoying you with our "tit-for-tat" games and claims to absolute truth. My challenge is for anyone of you to simply prove 1% of the Bible to be wrong. If you can do this, then the entire Christian faith with crumble upon itself and we Christians will have to eat our words and should apologize.

The rules of this challenge are as follows:

1) You can use any methods you desire,except one (peer-reviewed journals, text-books, quotes, etc.) the one method I ask you to not use, is to take the Bible out of context or twist a passages meaning and intent to fit your proposed error with the Bible.

2) With Biblical passages in question, please go back to the original language in which it was written (Hebrew/Greek) and use a literal translation, especially when dealing with New Testament material. Reason: Greek is far more complex then our English language. In English translations some errors may appear, but will be discredited when studying passages in the orginal language. This is fair in my view. Does not allow for the "telephone" effect as reason for invalidating the Bible.

FOREWARING: Despite the Bible being under scrutiny by the greatest minds our world has ever known for hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds if not thousands of years, the Bible has never once been found to have anything errant in it. Neither historically nor scientifically. Also many people that have set out to disprove the Bible such as Josh McDowell and several archeaologists and scientists have found the Bible to be true and have converted to Christianity. Just wanted to give ya a heads up.

[Bread_of_Life]

That

[Token Atheist]

I would like to add something if I may. Seeing how this is only a day old post, it would be unfair to say that no atheist/evolutionist wants to accept your challenge, but seeing how TA was so quickly upset and left, I would like to pose another challenge.

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.

For all you atheists/evolutionists/anti-Christians out there. If you are tired of us Christians annoying you with our "tit-for-tat" games and claims to absolute truth. My challenge is for anyone of you to simply prove 1% of the Bible to be wrong. If you can do this, then the entire Christian faith with crumble upon itself and we Christians will have to eat our words and should apologize.

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.

The rules of this challenge are as follows:

1) You can use any methods you desire,except one (peer-reviewed journals, text-books, quotes, etc.) the one method I ask you to not use, is to take the Bible out of context or twist a passages meaning and intent to fit your proposed error with the Bible.

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...

2) With Biblical passages in question, please go back to the original language in which it was written (Hebrew/Greek) and use a literal translation, especially when dealing with New Testament material. Reason: Greek is far more complex then our English language. In English translations some errors may appear, but will be discredited when studying passages in the orginal language. This is fair in my view. Does not allow for the "telephone" effect as reason for invalidating the Bible.

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.

FOREWARING: Despite the Bible being under scrutiny by the greatest minds our world has ever known for hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds if not thousands of years, the Bible has never once been found to have anything errant in it. Neither historically nor scientifically.

Strange, then, that I can think of at least a dozen errors off the top of my head...

Also many people that have set out to disprove the Bible such as Josh McDowell and several archeaologists and scientists have found the Bible to be true and have converted to Christianity. Just wanted to give ya a heads up. 

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.