Hasn't anyone on this site heard? The possibility of us just randomly coming into existence is almost an infinite possibility altogether.

Read: http://www.creationofuniverse.com/html/equilibrium03.html

Take it as you will. 

I bet you've been waiting for years to jump the first person you hear that states a pterodactyl is a Dinosaur. Seriously, that's hardly the point I was making was it? Congratulations on your 'victory'. Now you just have to requote it a few more times so that everyone on VG can see how you completely pwnd me with your wisdom.

Ok, let me rephrase: There were Ancient flying reptiles. Better? I'll leave the Paleontology to you.

My point was that flight evolved independently in several different species. That is a far more interesting point than the nomenclature attached to ancient reptiles.

EDIT:

And you go ahead to call a one-liner comment from me condescending? You might do well to put down your Dinosaurs toys and look up what the word means: ''Condescending: Displaying a patronizingly superior attitude''

Scape-goat in hand, hatchet in the other...

The truth is, it's hard not to be condescending when one group thinks they are better or smarter than another.

Modern birds are dinosaurs though unless I'm very much mistaken.

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

Your links are so crappy though. Here are two better ones:

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

and

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

You do realize you're just being picky.

Moreover, Dr.Grass' statement mentioned that Dinosaurs all evolved flight. So for instance a Dino could have evolved into a Pterosaurus. He never said Dinos flew.

The only difference between a Dinosaur and a Pterosaur is in the terminology. Dinos by definition are vertibrate with a unique upright stance. That's the only difference. Otherwise for all suits and purposes Pterosaurs are "saurs" and lived the same period as dinos. Dinos and Pterosaurs are reptilian that are dated to the Triassic to Cretaceous period. They are also "terrible" lizards (some can span 10 meters (33ft) across the wings), have a dino-like fossil and are extinct. To understand how wide 10m is for a wingspan, compare that to this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_birds. None exceed 8 point some meters wingspan.

Add to the fact that some birds are classified as dinos, it gets worse for your argument. Even then I don't see what you were trying to disprove in the first place.

But to be fair, I learnt all this post research, and I do apologize for being unnecessarily rash. You're right, I shouldn't assume things and should research before claiming things. As they say, to assume makes and ass of u and me.

Fair enough! :D People will make their own judgment on what was said.

Actually you are right, I should have said "Almost but probably no cigar " as your argument was against player1x3and I can't speak for him but I hope you understand why, when talking about things you cannot prove through experiment and thus have to rely on the word of others, it is better to rely on sources taht you know the person you are arguing with finds authoritative.

Sure but a perfect being should get it right the first time, even if his material is flawed (especially given that he created the material he works with too).

Question of wording. I agree with you that there are requirements beyond morality, I disagree with you that it makes it "supermoral" (more than moral) and think it makes it less than moral.

It is like if you had a driving test where you had to know not only how to drive but also something totally unrelated to driving. It would corrupt and diminish the test as you would then reject good drivers that failed the part unrelated to driving.

Then you do equate morality with god.

So you don't see the god ordered act of violence against the city of jericho as moral? How does that square off with god being either moral or the source of morality?

I can't say that I care much that they took their own life, tragic as taht may be, as they are the primary sufferers of that act. I care a whole lot more that they took other people's life.

And I don't care whether god allows people to take their own life or not, that is none of his business.

I am not falling "a bit" or at all on relativism, I am arguing that claiming that god is the source of morality is moral relativism as you then have two different scales for judging morals, one applying to everybody and the other applying to god. 

Yes, because if religions are not about encouraging and rewarding morality then they are about encouraging and rewarding other things, like belief. I don't give a rat's ass about belief because what is is and what isn't isn't regardless of what you believe or don't but the moral system of religions has an impact on today's world.

If religions didn't claim to be about morality but said they were about rewarding belief (among other things) then I wouldn't care much about them but since they tend to take the moral high ground they open themselves to scrutiny of the morality of their beliefs.

So some sins are not about morality? Well, then being a sinner can't be such a bad thing then, as long as the only sins you commit are the ones not related to morality.

It is not so much "why should he not be seen as the truth, path and life" as like you pointed it relies entirely on faith.

It is "why should god be assumed as completely moral when we can judge his moral character from his actions described in the bible".

For the question of his existence, maybe, but for the question of whether he is moral then you can use reason and what he told us about his actions.

First, remember that it only applies if your contention that good people not knowing of Jesus would be saved as otherwise your action or inaction would not change anything.

That said, if he was good then your action put him in a mortal peril and as such you are as guilty if he is damned as a Jigsaw (in the Saw movies) is guilty of the murder of the people he puts in trapped rooms.

If you had done nothing then his salvation would have been his responsability but if you taught him things that damned him by default then you are the one who put him in that damning situation and thus are the one bearing the responsiblity of his damnation.

You are not letting him know of the world. If you did you could perform experiment to explain to him how it works.

What you are doing is trying to teach him of another world that you cannot prove exist. In such a situation it is reasonable for people not to believe you as you cannot support your teachings with the world but only with the words of others.

Maybe you should start by saying "if you listen to me you risk being tortured for eternity". If they still choose to take the risk and listen to you then it is their own choosing and thus their own responsibility.

But if you start talking about how Jesus is the son of god and if you believe in him and love him you will be saved, and then add "by the way, now that you know that then if you don't believe in him you will be tortured forever" then you forced that knowledge on them with no warning and doing so put them in grave peril so their damnation would then be on your head.

Exactly, there are part that do not need belief in a supernatural being to be taught. If missionaries taught about the golden rule and about being compassionate but refrained from talking about salvation until a warning was given and accepted by the listener(s) then there is no problem. But if they don't and talk about it with no warning and no concern of whether they want to hear then their actions deliberately puts them in peril and thus the consequence are on the missionary.

But your claim goes beyond simple feeling into actual knowledge. I don't deny you can feel such a presence, I deny that faith alone gives you knowledge, as opposed to the feeling of knowledge.

This will be my last post to this discussion. I feel (actually rather I know) we wont chnage our opinnions on the mater, and ita quite tiring to answer to posts long as these. And I have to got to vacation in 2 weeks. By th way, which country do you perfer? Greece or Italy?

By ''feeling'' God you know for yourself he is there. I dont expect you to understand or accept this for the reasons I mentioned before, so I'll just leave it here

Love is irrational, or rather, love and faith both have an irrational core that can't be gotten rid of as otherwise it would not be love or faith but a cold blooded calculation.

I also totally disagree with you equating irrationality with stupidity. I pretty much agree with this wikipedia definition of rationality: "Rationality is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately"

Irrationality is the opposite, deriving conclusions without deliberate consideration.

If you go and say "I decide to be in love with that person because of X, Y and Z" that is a rational decision but I wouldn't call it love.

The view that faith underlies all rationality holds that rationality is dependent on faith for its coherence. Under this view, there is no way to comprehensively prove that we are actually seeing what we appear to be seeing, that what we remember actually happened, or that the laws of logic and mathematics are actually real. Instead, all beliefs depend for their coherence on faith in our senses, memory, and reason, because the foundations of rationalism cannot be proven by evidence or reason. Rationally, you can not prove anything you see is real, but you can prove that you yourself are real, and rationalist belief would be that you can believe that the world is consistent until something demonstrates inconsistency. This differs from faith based belief where you believe that your world view is consistent no matter what inconsistencies the world has with your beliefs.For more info, read about this here

Now you will ask how it applies to faith as you can have faith because of Jesus's miracles, Mohammed's divine inspiration or other supernatural occurrence but first you must accept these claims on faith as there is not enough evidence (if any) of those things being supernatural in nature. So at the base there is a foundation that is not based on reason.

What I have faith in is

1.)God exists

2.)Teaching an morals of Christ

For the first thing, the faith can lead me to feel his presence and thus know he is present and exist. For the second, we have full historical evidence that teachings of Chirst occured using both biblical and non biblical evidence. Weather or not, the deity of Christ was real, matters little to me.

The reason I don't see irrationality as being stupid is because both rationality and irrationality are tools and whether using them is stupid or not depends on the context.

Agree

Using rationality to decide who to fall in love is stupid IMO, using rationality to help you decide if you believe in god or not is not, but the last leap of faith between rational thought and belief/disbelief is not rational. So you could say that I think the only rational religious beliefs are agnosticism as it does not seek to answer the question that reason cannot answer and apatheism because it deems the question irrelevant.

So going by that, you also agree that atheis is irrational and that, your disbeleifs is irrational too?

I don't as I don't see irrationality as inherently stupid, only its application in the wrong domain.

My understanding of your claim was that faith alone was enough to gain knowledge (know through faith). If you add the requirement that it be correct or true faith then you still cannot gain knowledge that way as you would first need to know that your fait his true.

The true faith is actually quite simple and its this 2 simple rules : 1) Beleive in God, 2.)be a good person This goes for ALL people and followers no matter what religion

In other word, your claim is "my faith is true therefore I can know god". Seems like a pretty clear cut of begging the question as you assume the truth of your faith to support your ability to know through faith.

For you to got to heave you need to have ''true faith'' in God (see above). Please understand, that true faith isnt neccessarly a true religion. In my opinnion, there is no such thing as true religion, only true religious teachings. Todays religions consist mostly and divide themselfes only  by SYMBOLS AND CULTURES, but they all bear same message.

Sure it's a belief. Agnosticism is a lack of belief in both the existence of god(s) and in the non-existence of god(s) whereas atheism is the belief in the non-existence of god(s).

So to go back to your question, atheists will find exactly what they excpect in afterlife: absolutely nothing, because thats what they believed in. So, they will be correct in thier knwoledge trough faith, but not on universial level, as people who had correct faith shall findGod in afterlife

If you restate your claim to be "faith can make you feel god" then I agree. We will of course disagree on whether the feeling is of a real entity or purely in one's mind but faith certainly can give one such a feeling. So we only disagree about the "for real" part (as in, a real entity, not a real feeling).

Skipped this reasons mentioned above.

Oh yeah, I was thinking of that before you posted.

The bottom line is, if you have faith, you believe such a feeling is a feeling of a real entity, if you don't have faith then you believe such a feeling is psychosomatic*.

* I don't want to imply that it is a disease by using this word but merely that it is a state of mind (faith) affecting the body (the feeling of beatitude permeating the body), in this case in a positive way.

Okay than, as this will be my last post to the discussion (on the matter of faith and rationality), so we can agree

We were talking about atheists (or those accused to sympathise with them) and their reception in society a few centuries ago and how you claimed they had it coming; my point was that this is no excuse.

They had it coming? Who had it coming? That works both ways actually. Christians had it coming for burning atheists on stick or atheists had it coming for constantly disrespecting the beleif of majority and insulting God which wasnt tolerated in the slightest back than. But I was talking about atheists today, and how they spend more time insulting religious and religious people (Christianity, over any other, they seem to have some bias towarss Islam and Budhism) instead of actually,you know, not spending anyie thinking about it, as they dont believe in any of it.

It was a joke, and no, Hitchens isn't dead yet (if he is it is recent), though he is battling cancer.

Are we talking about Cristopher Hitchens?I looked it up and it looks like he really is alive, but not for long from the looks of things

Or come out as a deist?

Yes, of course, deists, i dont know why I forgot to mention deists as well.

Diderot was an atheist, and I am sure there are a few more, but by and large people were accused of atheism more than expressing themselves as atheists. That comes close to the point I was trying to make earlier and retracted (though I expressed it very poorly) .

I should not have said that a lot of deists were closeted atheists as it implies they were atheists and did not say it. I should have said that I felt a lot of deists at that time show (IMO) signs of going toward atheism but could not make the final mental leap towards it so instead of denying the existence of the god of the bible they replaced it with an even more abstract divinity. I still can't prove it so I am just putting it here to try to better explain what I was trying to say back then (though in your sentence you seem to hold a view similar to my own).

But isnt that just an assumption? Not an historical fact?I am not saying that you are wrong, you could be right, but there realy is little to no proof of that

Anyway, I don't disagree that it shows in their writing, hence why they were accused of atheism, but by and large they defended themselves of such accusation and as such cannot be counted as openly expressing themselves as such. The 'openly' part is important as atheism then was viewed as something morally disreputable and to be hidden, which is my point: its legality is not enough .

But we cant argue that they were atheist that were affraid to go out, because its an insufficient asumption. Atheism was a social tabu back than, but it was legal and lot of things that werent accepted in socitey still made their presence know back than.

So you would be in between me and padib as you probably accept more christian moral precept than me and also accept some of their spiritual claims but don't accept all of them.

I accept ALL christian morals, as for spiritual claims, it depends what they are yes. The problem is, that lots of spiritual claims from a religon came of symbolics from pagan religion and the culture from which it was born.

underlined: yeah, I kinda noticed over the last few posts . A few centuries ago you would probably have been labelled an atheist.

Probably, but not neccessarly. Was Galileo considerd as an atheist back than?

Not if it was divinely inspired. And if it was not then it holds no more inherent moral value than other books reflecting on morality.

Exactly, in my opinnion it doesnt. It only holds more value because it connects people with God and teaches them about him.The thing about Bible is, you have to read it and STUDY it REALLY CAREFUL to undestand it. Its truley an amazing book.If th other book that teaches same values and morals as Bible than yes, its just as good and amazing

I would agree if you replaced "all" with "most" as I would disagree with what most claim is its main purpose.

Well, there were quite the few people of the church that abused its main purpose.

He holds that only one without sin can cast the first stone but why didn't he cast it himself (Jesus is without sin, isn't he?) if he doesn't contradict the old testament?

Why would Jesus Christ hurt another person by throwing rocks at him? Dont you know who he was? Besides, he was making a point, not givng an order. He meant that no one is sinless and no one should judge anyone.

Anyway, it seems more like a classical case of a lawyer getting his client off on a technicality than anything else to me.

I think it is quite a leap to say that masochists are not sane as you would be including everybody that enjoy being spanked during sex (a mild form of masochism).

Well, thats a fetish, and the true macoshits enjoys pain  and pain is no fetish. Pain harms a person and it can not be considerd normal nor good. And people that enjoy spanking, enjoy it because of what represents on the outside, they dont enjoy the pain that creates. (I DONT SPEAK from expereince)

Anyway, my point was that not everybody would enjoy me doing to them what I would enjoy them doing to me so what is important is the spirit of the golden rule, not the exact wording.

I am afraid that you are wrong. If you were right that one merely needed to accept Jesus' teachings to be saved then there would have been ZERO need for him to die on the cross. That act was him paying for our sins in christian belief but it is not enough as otherwise even those not accepting him (like me) would be saved. The other part was specifically believing in him as savior, not merely in his teachings (though if you believe in him you will believe his teachings too).

Jesus Christ sacrificed himself to show people the rigtheous ways of life and let people to heaven and remove the burden Adam has put on mankind by tasting the apple from the tree of knowledge (from the Bible) Christianity teaches us, that in order for us to be in Heaven with God, we must be free of sin, and since all humans are under sin by nature, the only reason/cause/we get to heaven is because Jesus Christ died for our sins. Of course, one needs to be a good person of free soul to even be able to live in Heaven, I hope you know what I mean/you understand what I ean

But if moral persons go in there simply due to their lack of belief then it does not make it any more moral.

It was their choice to believe in what they want. Its not immoral if you choose that way yourself. I do not know weather or not God shows them the way in afterlife, but I beleive he doesnt. While my knowledge on christian theism is decent (not my words, so I was told) it is way far from perfect. So i am not able to answer that with more detail.

Glad there is something we agree on.

Off the top of my head I disagree with the part of the new testament that says that slaves should be obedient to their master. I can understand why a slave would be obedient from a practical perspective (to avoid getting beaten) but I cannot see how it would be a moral precept.

You have to undestand that back when that was written, slavery was still considerd normal. I believe what Jesus meant is that slaves should respect thier masters. And I dont beleive that goes not only for slave-master relations but for all kind of authority relations. After all, jesus teaches us that all men are equal.

Fair enough, it goes back to you being mostly a deist with a christian flavour rather than a christian.

We agreed to somewhat agree, somewhat disagree on what led to that (at least I did earlier in this post) so let's not go back in there. A schizophrenic person probably wouldn't know these were hallucinations before being diagnosed though.

Chasira in my example is NOT real. For the rest, see above about agreeing to disagree.

Excellent.

Souls are generally taken to be the essence of one's being so atheists believe that their "soul", that is their being, is destroyed wehn they die. You might see it as terrifying but even if it is what happen to my "soul" after death then it does not terrify me any more than it terrified Mark Twain:

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

You had no soul before God decided to grant you a gift of life - thats an theistic view. You had no life before you were born, you had no karma, you had no choice nor free will. Afterlife is much different that ''beforelife''(is that even a word?). You did not exist before you were born, but you existed before you died and thus your life can effect your afterlife.

First, it is not the case as most of Leviticus is God giving laws directly to the people (the 10 commandments are simply the most important ones), and part of deuteronomy is god giveing laws through Moses (see Deuteronomy 11:27 were Moses specifically state that the commands he is about to give come from god).

You raise a good point, Ill have to look up to it, than I'll come back to it

Second, even some of the ten commandments' infractions are punishable by death. For example see Leviticus 24:13-16 for the punishment against breaking the 3rd commandment (blasphemy):

"13 Then the LORD said to Moses: 14 “Take the blasphemer outside the camp. All those who heard him are to lay their hands on his head, and the entire assembly is to stone him. 15 Say to the Israelites: ‘Anyone who curses their God will be held responsible; 16 anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. Whether foreigner or native-born, when they blaspheme the Name they are to be put to death."

God condamns blasphemy as well as all bad and evil acts, there is nothing wrong about that. Altough the death part was taken from pagan religions i assume, as said so in Documentary Hypothesis (the thoery on authorship of Thora). Judism is solely based on correct laws and behaviour and it its main focus, while Christianity focuses on correct and othodox faith and that the morals Jesus Christ and God himself

And where do they cite extra-biblical sources of either eyewitness accounts or records of jesus? Using the bible's claim that there was a man called Jesus as proof that there was a man called Jesus is like using the Wizard of Oz to prove that Kansas or Dorothy existed; it might be true or not but it provides no proof.

Here are non biblical evidence fo the existance of Jesus Christ of Nazareth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrRQqYGf4O0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqlFkGaDV_M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qUcXXbde4w&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qUcXXbde4w&feature=related

Well, there is also Mark 16:16:

¹⁶He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

If belief in his teachings was enough then why the need for baptism?

Again, I dont reckal that I said beleive in his teachings only will get you to Heaven, in fact Christianity teaches us that NO ONE is too good for heaven no matter how much of a good person he is.Of course a bad person has no chance of getting into heaven at allBaptism is important in Christianity becaue it marks a new born peron as a christian. But that wasnt said by Jesus Christ, was it?  You have to understand that jesus Christ, unlike his followers DIDNT want to start a new church nor religion. he simply wanted to show the people righteous path and right orals. His followers that founded a whole new church and religion and as such, needed to adopt or creat some of the rituals and customs from pagan religions, (such and cross, which orgin from egyptian pagan religions I believe), when you look at things, Jesus Christ had nothing to do with cross (except being crucified on it, just like thousands of peole before him) and yet that symbol is the primary one for his religion

In the end we will have to agree to disagree on those points too as they are different interpretations of the bible. I much prefer your interpretation to that of mainstream christianity even though I am not convinced by it.

Oh, I think you'll find that interpretetation of Christianity is much more mainstream that you think :) And I am glad we can end this, as I am going to vacation in 2 weeks, either Greece or italy, both have rich history of christianity btw :)