Nobel winner slams Bible as 'handbook of bad morals'

Thales wrote:

<quoted text>
Sorry, Hitler was not Catholic, and he actually hated the Catholic Church. Many priest and religious were sent to the concentration camps. What Hitler was, was a notorious liar. He might have used some Christian rhetoric to try and gain Christian support, but it was a ruse. If Hitler had a religion it was a mix of paganism and nationalism.
"Dachau also served as the central camp for Christian religious prisoners. According to records of the Catholic Church, at least 3,000 preachers, deacons, priests, and bishops were imprisoned there."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentra...
St. Maximilian Kolbe was killed in Auschwitz by injection of carbonic acid. He volunteered for execution in the place of another man, because the other man had a wife and children.

Right. Hitler was not even a Christian. He worshipped nothing but he did believe in Teutonic dieties and for a while even practiced the occult.

Gillette wrote:

>>>keltec 9mm
Oh wow, might have?
>>>Gillette
Yes, the truth is that no one really knows at this time.
>>>keltec 9mm
In religion that is called faith.
>>>Gillette
And in science that is known as intelligent speculation based on the empirical evidence we already have and the behavior of the universe as we currently know it. Eventually, that understanding will progress to the status of a hypothesis and eventually to that of a full-fledged scientific theory.
>>>keltec 9mm
Abiogenesis is the creation myth of a culture with no need for God.
>>>Gillette
Abiogenesis is the scientific study of the origins of life from chemical precursors, based on the knowledge we have of such reactions today, plus what we know of the makeup of the early earth based on geological and other records.
Many of the scientists studying abiogenesis are religious people, quite a few devout Christians, as you yourself have pointed out. Debate against yourself much?
>>>keltec 9mm
Gee, look at that simple cell working like a computer with enough info to fill the Encyclopedia Brittanica and it' might have' happened by banging two rocks together. Maybe, or maybe "God did it!"
>>>Gillette
Argument from Incredulity. "Gee, it's all so COMPLICATED. It HAD to be Jesus saying Poof!"

It is all guesswork, certainly not empirical evidence.IF there was empirical evidence we wouldn't have so many different hypothesis for abiogenesis. No one knowns for certain what the conditions were when life supposedly formed from non living organisms because no one was there.

"Belief in a primeval soup on the grounds that no other paradigm is available is an example of the logical fallacy of the false alternative..."

Yockey, Hubert P. 1992. Information theory and molecular biology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 336.

See you really got to have faith.


"The origin of life is a science writer’s dream. It abounds with exotic scientists and exotic theories, which are never entirely abandoned or accepted, but merely go in and out of fashion ."
Horgan, John. The end of science. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. 1996,( p. 138).

Exotic theories also passed off as intelligent speculation based on the empirical evidence we already have and the behavior of the universe as we currently know it which of course go in and out of fashion because they are pure guess work.

In religion those kind of beliefs are called faith. As to the complicated cell it sure wasn't random dead things banging into each other. That only works on Halloween.

Gillette wrote:

>>>Thales
In story of Adam and Eve much of the language is figurative, poetic, and representative. The principles are true, e.g. there is evil, evil tempts man, man has a fallen nature, God created the world, men and women have an eternal soul which differentiates them from animals, etc.
>>>Gillette
Yes, and if God gets tired of you and the rest of his "creation," he will brutally kill you off, so watch out.

I don't remember ever hearing of God getting tired of his creation then deciding to kill them off? Where did you read that?

Gillette wrote:

Also, God will set you up for temptation, even though you are innocent and cannot tell the difference between good and evil. He will give you a situation in which he and ANY parent) KNOWS you will fail, plus allows the personification of evil, Satan, into the garden to come in and tempt little old innocent you.
And when you INEVITABLY fail, having no ability yet to discern good form evil, he will banish you forever and expose you to suffering and pain (nice Dad!) and moreover will damn all future generations to suffer torments and hard, suffering filled lives.
Al this because of one piece of fruit .
Yes, the "figurative, poetic, and representative" principles are certainly there for you Catholics to really know a lot about that God of yours.:)

First of all, man was created as a free moral agent to either choose to sin or choose not to. If you understand the concept of sin, it depends upon willful action which we ultimately have a choice in. It is true God could foresee the fall, but that doesn't mean he wished it upon mankind or made it as an inevitable course.

You are also equating ignorance with innocence. Adam and Eve were innocent but not ignorant. They did not know good and evil, but they knew what it meant to have that sort of knowledge. It meant that they could be their own God, and they choose that route. Because of that and because of this new found knowledge of good and evil they were immediately at odds with the world around them. God's curse was not a punishment, like something He inflicted upon humanity, but more of a declaration of the consequences of their new found mental capacity and position amongst creation.

What the proverbial piece of fruit did was allow man to be self-conscious. Man now sees himself as "I". This means that man, and we can all relate to this, sees everything as relating to himself. If someone throws a rock at you, you do not just feel pain, and move on as an animal might. You say to YOURSELF, why did he throw the rock at ME? Am I being victimized? Why is this happening to ME? All these feelings are unique to man. This is what suffering is, this is our curse.

this crazy witch hunt wrote:

<quoted text>
You are either lying or misinformed.
D'Souza:
The show went well and despite the format, the issues were engaged. I argued that it is reasonable to ask scientifically about the cause of the universe. Effects require causes, so what is the cause for which the universe is the effect? It seems unreasonable in the extreme to say that even though nature had a beginning, somehow nature is the cause of itself. So God is the name we give to the supernatural being that is the cause of nature as a whole.
Dawkins responded this way:
"This leaves open the question of where did the creator come from?" Since the creator is this great big complicated thing, what good does it do to invoke one complex thing to explain another? "If you postulate a designer you haven't explained anything."

Great, was that exchange that you posted with no references in 1990, 1992, 2001 2006?

Here’s what D’Souza says of Harris:“Some atheists have emailed me asking me if I've accepted Sam Harris' offer to a written debate. A few months ago Harris proposed such a debate, and I agreed, but also proposed to Sam that we have an oral debate in the classic format. Written debates strike me as a bit wimpy, since both debaters can get advice and assistance from various experts. The advantage of a face-to-face encounter is that it compels each side to think on its feet and make its best case before a live audience.

Having himself proposed the written debate, Harris hasn't responded to my counteroffer.” D’Souza, of course, never got a response from Harris. D’Souza finally wrote:“Is there any doubt why Sam Harris seems to have changed his mind about debating me, and why Richard Dawkins is still hiding under his desk? How come these ‘brights’ seem to have fled into the cover of darkness? Do any of the atheist organizations offer an annual Wimp award?”
http://christianity.blogtownhall.com/

Pat wrote:

<quoted text>
Prove Mother Goose ain't first.

That is silly, every goose has or had a mother.

Christianity enslaves,Islam destroys so live free but be vigilant and beware of those who speak of peace with swords in their hands smelling like a slaughter house.

this crazy witch hunt wrote:

<quoted text>
It was.
Haven't you ever been to a car dealership.
Your argument failed the moment you removed "people" from "nature".
We're a naturally occurring species on planet Earth.
Our species makes cars.
Some of those cars have the Mercedes brand attached to them.
Many can be found in parking lots.
Some parking lots are full of only Mercedes brand cars made by humans.

Just what are you trying to say? You admit that all those Mercedes were created by intelligent design (people} and not by a random accident but when it comes to a simple cell which is vastly more complex you seem to want us believe it was created randomly by undirected chemical processes.

"There are no nonliving things that even come close to the internal complexity of a single living cell. While ranging in size from only 1 - 100 micrometers (millionths of a meter), a cell greatly exceeds the internal complexity (number of parts and their interactions) of even the most complex man-made device or purely physical systems such as a star, rock or planet."

http://dbs.umt.edu/courses/sci226/lab3_cells....

The internal complexity of a single living cell exceeds the internal complexity of the most complex man made device. Again, we know the most complex man made device is not a product of random chance but intelligent design so why would you believe the first simple cell was not created by intelligent design.

“The argument has been repeatedly made that given sufficient time, a genetic instruction set and language system could have arisen. But extended time does not provide an explanatory mechanism for spontaneously generated genetic instruction. No amount of time proposed thus far, can explain this type of conceptual communication system. It is not just complex. It is conceptually complex.”

Biologists J. T. Trevors and D. L. Abel

Irish Wolf II wrote:

Christianity enslaves,Islam destroys so live free but be vigilant and beware of those who speak of peace with swords in their hands smelling like a slaughter house.

Atheists killed over 110 million people when they were in power. Is that the smelly slaughterhouse you are referring to?

this crazy witch hunt wrote:

<quoted text>
Maybe Dawkins was merely waiting for William Lane Craig to stop hiding from debates with Lowder and Krueger...

I doubt he is hiding from any atheist who wishes to debate him.

This is from an atheist website.

William Lane Craig is a prolific Christian philosopher, apologist, author, and public debater. He is the best debater – on any topic – that I’ve ever heard. As far as I can tell, he has won nearly all his debates with atheists. When debating him, atheists have consistently failed to put forward solid arguments, and consistently failed to point out the flaws in Craig’s arguments.

I’m not the only one who thinks Craig has won nearly all his debates. For some atheists, it is rather maddening.

http://commonsenseatheism.com/...

Pat wrote:

<quoted text>
No, it was quite accurate. Holding beliefs based upon nothing but your wishful thinking is narrow minded to say the least.

There you go again, bringing up the subject of abiogenesis.

this crazy witch hunt wrote:

<quoted text>
You are either lying or misinformed.
D'Souza:
The show went well and despite the format, the issues were engaged. I argued that it is reasonable to ask scientifically about the cause of the universe. Effects require causes, so what is the cause for which the universe is the effect? It seems unreasonable in the extreme to say that even though nature had a beginning, somehow nature is the cause of itself. So God is the name we give to the supernatural being that is the cause of nature as a whole.
Dawkins responded this way:
"This leaves open the question of where did the creator come from?" Since the creator is this great big complicated thing, what good does it do to invoke one complex thing to explain another? "If you postulate a designer you haven't explained anything."

Not sure if you are lying or misinformed but no links, no dates at all throws up a red flag. This is from D'souza.

http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2008/07/07/r...

1942 speech excerpt: "As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler
He also never stopped paying his discretionary church tax. He's one of yours, deal with it. <quoted text>

keltec 9mm wrote:

<quoted text>
I believe the saying is, "Remember the game ain't over til the fat lady sings."
Isn't Christopher Hitchens one of yours??
But hey, let's try another atheist site in case Hitchens is really a closet Christian. LOL
"Once Hitler had gained power, he began to see Christianity as a threat to the National Socialists' domination of Germany. After 1935 his speeches and writings became more and more virulently anti-Christian; he argued that Christian worship was a sign of weakness, and that it should be replaced by reverence for the nation and the state, and of course for the National Socialist Party. However, he retained his belief in reincarnation, and his conviction that there was some supreme creative force whose will he was enacting."
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew...
Hitchens accurately called him a pagan polytheist.
Hitler was already excommunicated ipso facto under the canon law of the Catholic Church for his numerous sinful crimes. He could only have returned to the Catholic faith, even assuming that he would ever have wanted to, by having his excommunication removed by the Pope himself. The lifting of such excommunication is reserved to the Pope, latae sententiae.
The fat lady just finished singing.

Hitler won nearly all of his debates too. Doesn't make it true.

keltec 9mm wrote:

<quoted text> I doubt he is hiding from any atheist who wishes to debate him.
This is from an atheist website.
William Lane Craig is a prolific Christian philosopher, apologist, author, and public debater. He is the best debater – on any topic – that I’ve ever heard. As far as I can tell, he has won nearly all his debates with atheists. When debating him, atheists have consistently failed to put forward solid arguments, and consistently failed to point out the flaws in Craig’s arguments.
I’m not the only one who thinks Craig has won nearly all his debates. For some atheists, it is rather maddening.
http://commonsenseatheism.com/...

keltec 9mm wrote:

<quoted text> I doubt he is hiding from any atheist who wishes to debate him.
This is from an atheist website.
William Lane Craig is a prolific Christian philosopher, apologist, author, and public debater. He is the best debater – on any topic – that I’ve ever heard. As far as I can tell, he has won nearly all his debates with atheists. When debating him, atheists have consistently failed to put forward solid arguments, and consistently failed to point out the flaws in Craig’s arguments.
I’m not the only one who thinks Craig has won nearly all his debates. For some atheists, it is rather maddening.
http://commonsenseatheism.com/...

Thanks to you and your post 9mm - I just spent the last hour on youtube watching William Lane Craig video's......well worth it though. Thanks.

Thales wrote:

<quoted text>
No, I think I understand your point quite well, and it is a weak one. Atheism is only natural in children because they don't know anything. According to your reasoning illiteracy is natural as well...so what. What is your point? What does this mean for you? That atheism is right because it fits this category?
Are you saying because someone needs to be taught something then that thing is not natural and therefore bad? Instead of espousing your fantasies of how wicked Christianity is, try developing your points a little better.

You are the one here that can't conceive of human progression or education except under the umbrella of theism. Our natural state is progression that means learning, gathering facts and using what we learn to move to the next step, religion puts the brakes on that immediately. christianity doesn't need me to point out how wicked it is, what it needs is spin doctors to keep the adherents from thinking it through and discovering that they are being played.
Just this one concept is enough to back a child away (god will save you from god) until you explain that god made you perfect and some woman about a billion eons ago did what a talking snake told her to do, so that makes you guilty kid. Then tell the child but god sent his own kid to save you, now you have brought the kid a reprieve .... all the while he is thinking "good cause I did not do it".
Now explain that god set it up so his own kid would be savagely killed, that's putting fear of god in there so the kid will always be afraid to question anything the spin doc says, anyway god lets the bad people go on and kill his kid (you have just undermined the parents ability to protect the child from this god) then just to save you god brings his own kid back to life so you will not have to pay for the sins of the bad lady who believed the snake.
Put together that insane bad, bad daddy story, with the tale of zombie godlet and a talking snake who managed to be the only one telling the truth and feed that stinking pile into the innocent child's mind and you are committing child abuse. When you've got the formerly rational child sucking down that swill. Feed him a dose of now we gonna eat us some dead jesus and we gonna play vampire and drink some of his blood "Yum Yum Yummy" but only if you are worthy.
I know that you can't see anything but sacrilege in my post, but I promise you it is not meant as such. It is an attempt to let you and the other godsimilies see yourselves as we see you. As scared and deluded children.

>>>>keltec 9mm
“The argument has been repeatedly made that given sufficient time, a genetic instruction set and language system could have arisen. But extended time does not provide an explanatory mechanism for spontaneously generated genetic instruction. No amount of time proposed thus far, can explain this type of conceptual communication system. It is not just complex. It is conceptually complex.”

Biologists J. T. Trevors and D. L. Abel

>>>Gillette
I found this online abstract of the Trevors and Abel study:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...

As you can see, it costs $31.50 to read the whole thing and see what they are ACTUALLY saying, not what you lying Jesus Freaks CLAIM they are saying.

But notice in the outline of topics for their study that it lists these two items:
9. Did genetic instruction arise by “necessity”?
10. Did the genetic code arise by “chance”?

If we actually read their study in toto, we would probably find them saying that "extended time" does not account for the arising of more and more complex information, but rather BIOLOGICAL NECESSITY, however they would describe that.

In other words, what we probably have here is yet ANOTHER instance of biologists debating each other over the fine mechanics of the mechanisms by which life arose, not WHETHER life arose from earlier chemical precursors.

But we'll never know, will we? Because it surely isn't worth $31.50 of my money to prove you are a lying Catholic a$$hole. I know that already, don't I?:)

>>>keltec 9mm
Atheists killed over 110 million people when they were in power. Is that the smelly slaughterhouse you are referring to?

>>>Gillette
Playing fast and loose with the figures and the motivations of the 20th century dictators, once again. Honesty isn't your strong suit, is it?

However we KNOW just how much blood and suffering covers the hands of the Catholic Popes, bishops kings and queens of Europe in the middle ages and beyond (in either directions).

Imagine putting into THEIR hands the 20th century means of death that later dictators enjoyed: machine guns, bombs, chemical weapons, railcars, gas chambers, etc.

Any doubt that the followers of Jesus would have employed THOSE means to more efficiently exterminate Jews, un-believers, "witches", Muslims, the indigenous people of the new world, etc. all in the name of glorifying their precious Jesus?

Imagine this little sweetheart, the (supposed) Vicar of Christ on Earth, in possession of 20th century means of death:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Paul_IV

Quote

In 1555 he [Pope Paul IV] issued a canon (papal law), Cum nimis absurdum, by which the Roman Ghetto was created. Jews were then forced to live in seclusion in a specified area of the rione Sant'Angelo, locked in at night, and he decreed that Jews should wear a distinctive sign, yellow hats for men and veils or shawls for women. Jewish ghettos existed in Europe for the next 315 years.

"As it is completely absurd and improper in the utmost that the Jews, who through their own fault were condemned by God to eternal servitude, can under the pretext that pious Christians must accept them and sustain their habitation, are so ungrateful to Christians, as, instead of thanks for gracious treatment, they return contumely, and among themselves, instead of the slavery, which they deserve..."
– Paul IV, Cum nimis absurdum, 1555

End quote

Hmmm, I wonder just where Hitler got many of his "best" ideas?

Thales wrote:

<quoted text>
That's a touching and insightful story, thanks for sharing it. I think you are right about new ideas altering our course of thought and decision making.
I don't blame you for feeling the way you do. It seems crazy to hold a child of 3 to anything they say. I wouldn't even hold a child in Junior High to what he says he wants to be when he grows up. I wanted to be an archeologist in high school, and now I am an artist.
Unfortunately, Christianity has suffered many schisms throughout history, and some groups and denominations have strayed far away from the true teachings and lost perspective on right Christian virtue and charity, even to their own children.

My grandmother was always a scared little child so afraid to be human, her fear of hell and the whims of a evil little god gave her a lifetime of hell on earth. She could not divorce her love of her family from her love of god even though her god would accept nothing less.
Even so her dissapointment in my choice of profession is not the reason I am atheist, the reason is that at age 7, I was punished for questioning the bible, and my punishment was to read the bible a couple of hours each day for a year. Well that reading lead to more questions that my family couldn't answer but it scared the hell out of them because I asked, and the leaders of the church wouldn't answer them. My need to know and understand persisted and caused everybody some problems, I was being talked about and people were scared that my proximity would get them struck down when the lightening bolts started.
Well, eventually they did have to deal with me. The prayers were not working. My little brain continued in its quest. Their solution was to exorcize me, a long and horrible ordeal starting on a Friday night at 6:00 and ending the following Sunday at about 11:00 p.m. It left me emotionally and physically exhausted but mentally the same.
At age 15, I made a public announcement at the alter I said "I am hungry, I am tired, I have soiled myself and I am hurting, every part of what I am is in pain but the demons that I brought to this alter are with me now". A lot of things get revealed in that kind of marathon vocal praying. I turned and walked out of that church knowing that I was the one that was sane, my demons intact. I treasure them still they are the demon of questions, the demon of acquired knowledge, the demon of rational thought and the demon of human progress. I will never turn my back on them.

Coolmind wrote:

bible , babble , myth and superstition.. ghost stories and fairy tales
I like Deut 23:1

http://www.biblegateway.com/pa ssage/?search=Lev21:20;22:24 &version=NASB

check out Lev21:20;22 cross referencing can be so much fun. Unless you are a dwarf John Bobbitt

Coolmind wrote:

bible , babble , myth and superstition.. ghost stories and fairy tales
I like Deut 23:1

sorry I posted the wrong numbers that should be Lev 21:17-21