Ask the Atheist

Hi Maroun, welcome to the party at last.

According to Christianity, are we God's favoured creations or not? It's a nice bonus that the conditions which allow us to thrive also allow other creatures to exist alongside us (and possibly aliens, when you consider the universe as a whole), but the point of the design argument is that we are the desired end result of the universe, and the principal instruments of whatever great plan is in place. That's why Jesus, for example, was supposedly sent to Earth in particular. It's all about us, apparently, and that's licence to be very self-centred.

Of course there are arguments advancing various gods as the right one, but not by way of the design argument. If you do convince someone using apparent design that there must be a god, you then have to use additional arguments to convince the person that it's your god. That's exactly what you're now doing when you launch into your spiel about Jesus and the Bible.

Modern astronomers find that evidence points to the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, but whether that was a starting point or just a major event in a continuing history is still up for debate. Regardless, every creation myth has to choose either a beginning or an eternity. It's not very impressive if it gets it right, since there's a one in two chance.

The Bible does have a lot of authors, and the message is consistent. That's because the 66 most consistent books were edited together out of a field of over 400, including several excised Gospels. The later authors had in general read the work of the earlier authors, so like a scriptwriter writing a sequel, they knew how to maintain continuity.

Where was Jesus' crucifiction documented by non-Christians?

As I said, and as you said I said, "to assume design in the presence of alternative theories supported by substantive evidence is putting one's head in the sand." The "theory" of intelligent design is not supported by substantive evidence, so dismissing it is just sensible.

I read your Evolution Hoax link.
- There is no recorded history before 4000 BC because literacy itself emerged at about that time. Before then, all the evidence, even for humans, is archaeological. Nevertheless, there is scads of it. On this page is a list of all the cilivisations which existed in the 5th millennium BC or the years 7000-6000 BC. That's the thousand years before the world was supposedly created.
- There are no primitive languages still spoken because they were superceded by the well-structured languages we speak today. Think of the academic affort required to maintain scientific use of Latin, now that nobody speaks it anymore. Without all that documentation, it would have vanished. Primitive languages pre-dated literacy, so there was no documentation. They're lost to us.
- Languages are disappearing now because communication between people is constantly increasing. New languages used to form when groups were cut off from one another by distance. Modern communication is destroying diversity in this small way.
- Innovation and advancement increases exponentially. As communication improves, minds can collaborate more efficiently and each great leap forward is made on the back of the last. There is not simply a sudden acceleration after the supposed time of Moses. Even before that, humans had advanced more in the last five thousand years than in the previous hundred thousand.

I also read your Evidence for a Young Earth link.
- The Earth is a busy place, and some layers of the Geologic Column do not appear everywhere or are disturbed in places. Tectonic plate movement will do that. However, the Column exists in its entirety in North Dakota in the right order.
- Polystrate fossils, or those which penetrate several layers, are created during periods of rapid sedimentation, such as a flood or mudslide. Floods and mudslides happen, obviously, so we would expect to see some polystrate fossils. If they were all created by Noah's Flood, on the other hand, not only would we see them all at roughly the same level but all fossils at that depth worldwide would be polystrate. Neither is true, at any depth.
- Fossilisation might be able to happen rapidly, I don't know. We don't know that fossils are millions or billions of years old just because they're fossils though. We know because of radiometric dating. These dating techniques are based on an independent principle of radioactive decay and do not depend on circular reasoning, for example using the rocks and trees around them. We simply use the surrounding material to check the results for obvious errors.

The anthropic principle is valid despite your objection. All places are not made for humans, for instance the vacuum of space or the bottom of the sea or the surface of Mars. We could not emerge in such inhospitable places, because our ancestors would have died instantly, so we haven't. While finding another hospitable planet would refute the "Privileged Planet" argument conclusively, it is impossible to say that Earth is the only such planet without knowing that all other planets are inhospitable. For that, you'd need to be omniscient.

Cheers for the links, they're good fodder.

I'm pretty familiar with what you believe about the universe. What you need to do now is back it up with more evidence than was in The Privileged Planet (and not debunked elsewhere on the Web), and instead you're recounting the Bible story. That's only useful among those who accept the Bible in the first place.

Do you understand what one does by praying, Maroun? One does not search for a god, one assumes that there is one there to talk to. If unbelievers pray enough, it will become natural enough to temporarily assume this that they may forget that it is an assumption at all, and guide themselves into believing full-time without any evidence at all. This, in my opinion, is how sincere prayer creates belief, not because it actually catches God's ear. It's close to a form of brainwashing.

Regardless of what you think of my opinion, the fact remains that an atheist, by definition, cannot sincerely pray. I prayed as sincerely as I possibly could, but I could not simply forget that I was likely talking to nobody. For me, and for any atheist, truly sincere prayer is self-deceit.

The "lost books" weren't lost, as you say. They were edited out. As the link says they were not included in the Bible because, among other things, they contained historical inaccuracies that could not be explained away. This means the Bible was deliberately assembled from the available material to be as credible and as internally consistent as possible, which was my point.

Regarding prophecies, it's simple enough to fulfil individual prophecies as brief and vague as "His acquaintances fled from Him" by writing as little as one line in the New Testament, whether or not it was true. If modern apologists can make lists of important prophecies like those you've provided, so could the authors of the NT. I sure as heck would have, if I knew I had to establish a character as divine.

The most reliable secular sources your link gives for the crucifiction of Jesus are Josephus and Tacitus. Rook Hawkins has tackled Josephus right here on this site. Tacitus, Josephus and Lucian are all covered in this more general article on the main RRS site.

Your Kennedy argument using the link is that the apostles writing that Jesus was God is like someone today writing that JFK was God. The first Gospels came out at least 30 years after the supposed crucifiction, which in those days was more than the average life expectancy. Almost everyone who might have seen Jesus in person was dead when the Gospels were finished, and most left alive were illiterate and couldn't write contrary accounts. The authors waited long enough.

I can't prove that there are other life-friendly planets until we find aliens, but I'm not trying to prove that. You can't prove Earth is the only habitable planet without a complete catalogue of all planets in the universe. Your argument is a positive claim that Earth is unique and therefore designed, so you do need to prove it. My argument is merely, "Not necessarily."

Some civilisations never figured out the wheel. The Australian Aborigines never developed it, because they never needed it. (They went straight to the aerofoil, which makes boomerangs fly.) For a related example, the Romans invented steam locomotion but never bothered to put it to practical use. Once it WAS put to use in the 17th century, it set off a mountain of other advances. Same with the wheel, wherever it turned up. Inventions beget inventions.

Nobody uses the existence of ancient wheels to date the beginning of humanity, and the guess of 8000 BC is openly acknowledged as a guess. Stone tools from up to 10000 BC (the Stone Age), on the other hand, are positive evidence for the existence of human tools in antiquity. Before that, we have bones. Radiometric dating gives us ages for human relics, and I'll defend that later.

A bit convenient for the world according to the Bible to begin a tiny bit further back than any written history that might otherwise contradict it, don't you think? (The Biblical age wasn't calculated officially until 1650, by Archbishop Ussher.) Strange coincidences don't often bother me. As an ongoing phenomenon, they're commonplace and far from strange.

Your Ackerman link about polystrate fossils does not address either of my criteria. The fossils are isolated, and not all level.

Not all divisions between strata are sharp. Even if they were, are they explained any better by a constant Flood depositing random crud non-stop? No, the strata are different because the sedimentary medium is different each time (tranquil water, water with algae, mud, etc.) Whatever geological events replace one medium with another do not need long to occur: a flood (the ordinary kind), an earthquake, a volcano thousands of miles away, whatever.

The Hualalai dating failure is explained here. The point of the experiment was to test the potassium-argon method (one of almost 20) on volcanic rock. Rich argon deposits from deep underground peppered the rock, so some parts had too much of it and some had none. Thus K-Ar dating is no longer used on such rock in favour of other radiometric methods. The experiment improved the accuracy of radiometric dating.

Carbon-14 dating, another of the many methods, is only accurate for objects less than 50,000 years old due to the half-life of carbon-14. It's therefore useless for dinosaur bones, as the scientists found, so other isotopes are now used. Horses for courses.

If something from our personal correspondence is relevant, Maroun, post it here in the open.

Even Hindus thought that the turtle holding up the elephants holding up the Earth was floating on nothing, so it's not as if the idea of a floating Earth was new. Atlas didn't hold up the Earth, he stood on it holding the heavens. Isaiah mentions the "circle of the Earth", which probably meant a disc rather than a sphere.

Claims that the Bible predicts modern science are vastly outnumbered by claims that the Quran does the same thing. Similar to my position on prophecies, I might believe one or the other when someone actually obtains a useful, as yet unknown scientific advance from either book and then confirms it using conventional science.

Some prophecies, by oblique interpretations, have come true because once a prophecy is made, it has an unlimited amount of time in which to come true. Wait long enough, and those which don't require the impossible will eventually come to pass. These Biblical prophecies took 2000 years plus.

My opinion on prayer is simply that, my personal opinion. It's also my experience, because remembering that I don't think there's a God, I would have to trick myself in order to pray sincerely to Him. Asking to nobody in particular whether there's anyone there, I can do sincerely. Believe me, I have. No answer.

Who decided which books were inspired of God? Humans. Was historical accuracy a criterion for deciding whether a given book was inspired? Probably. How did they "make" the Bible historically accurate, without changing the supposed word of God? By removing all the books with obvious mistakes. Importantly, there were books with obvious mistakes, so if people thought they were writing God's infallible word, some were wrong. How did the others therefore know they were right?

If I were writing the Bible in order to delude, I would try to be historically accurate, but chances are I would make mistakes. That appears to be just what happened. This Bible has a good list of the remaining contradictions.

The 10 prophecies about Israel and Jerusalem were almost foregone conclusions given that Jews would always value both locations and work to protect and improve them. (Not a single mention of the Muslims, though.) The 100 other prophecies are partly along the same lines, and partly about Jesus. As for those, if you really want to know why the Messianic prophecies might not apply to Jesus, I'm not the one you need to talk to. Go see a rabbi.

If you won't read the work of Rook Hawkins, fine. Wikipedia has the same objections, and so do many other sources. Rook didn't write the other article on Jo, Tacitus and Lucian. It's by todangst and it's based mostly on published works.

The literacy rate of citizens in 1st century Israel was close to 3%. The average life expectancy worldwide was under 30 years. That's why, 30 years after the supposed Crucifiction, most or all witnesses would be dead or illiterate.

The last Lee Strobel argument I tackled was the the very issue of followers dying for a lie. In short, it's plausible.

We are indeed going in circles regarding radiometric dating. The first link concerns an issue with uranium dating on magma with variable uranium, and the second has the already-answered one about K-Ar dating on rocks with variable argon. If an isotope is subject to change in an area, the dating method which uses that isotope should not be used in that area or on those rocks. These results prove that. Radiometric dating as a whole is now more reliable as a result.

The actual topic of this thread is the argument from design. If you want to keep going, please try to focus on that, otherwise pick other questions to comment on.

Turns out the Hindu turtle, Chukwa, swims in an infinite sea of milk. That's not what I thought, but since there was no concept of the vacuum of space in Biblical times the sea is equivalent to the infinite atmosphere that others thought surrounded the Earth. It is still floating.

If you don't know where Isaiah got the idea of a disc-shaped Earth, go up a mountain and look around. The Earth looks not only round but flat.

Biblical "science", in order. (5-10 minutes for you, maybe, but a longer slog for me.)
- The universe as space, time, matter, motion and force was the idea of 19th century philosopher Herbert Spencer. Any actually scientific global view like this would have included energy, and expressed force as a function of matter.
- What, they couldn't get the idea that the building blocks of matter are invisible from watching a dead rat decay to nothing?
- When you stretch out a curtain or tent-curtain, you stretch it out so far and then stop. This is not ongoing expansion, this is a wide expanse which just sits there.
- We've been over the floating Earth thing.
- And the circle of the Earth.
- "It" could be the dawn as easily as the Earth. If the Bible always said the Earth rotates, why did Galileo have so much trouble when he said as much? And why still the geocentric view?
- Luke 17:34-36 doesn't say anything about daytime. Night falls, and the women are still grinding.
- Of course the earth and the heavens shall perish. They're destroyed in Revelations anyway, so nobody had even considered an eternal universe.
- Job 38:34 is a rhetorical question that says we humans can't send speech by lightning. That we can now do so proves God wrong.
- The morning stars singing together was apparently an event in the past. It shouldn't still be happening.
- The lights tell us that days and nights have passed. Seasons and years are multiple days and nights. There's no evidence for Moses, but if he existed, he knew how to count.
- Is it too much to ask that the fact that there always seems to be more water would suggest to people that it comes back around somehow?
- There were boats and sailors before 800 BC. They had to know about currents (even if they didn't understand them) to navigate and survive, creating literal paths for themselves.
- Those same sailors, using nothing but a plumb bob, would have known the vast changes in sea depth that occur once you're out there.
- They already knew people bled to death, they saw it on the battlefield all the time. There was such a thing as a bandage. The doctors' aim was to bleed out the disease while leaving the patient with enough blood to survive. When they failed, they knew why.
- If Semmelweis had taken the Bible's advice, the staff would have washed solidly for a week. Instead, he worked out hygiene was the issue through process of elimination.

The rest are just summary quotes.

You're missing the point, Maroun. Prophecies and predictions linked to things which have already happened will not convince me, because 1. there are more likely explanations for, or flaws in, all of them so far and 2. as I've said, anyone pushing a prophecy can do it and not just Christians. It's confirmation bias in action to link prophecies to established facts, because we humans like nothing more than to spot connections and patterns. What might convince me, as I say over and over, is a new prediction made from a prophecy which comes true afterwards.

Do you realise that every generation of Christians from the first one onward believed the Rapture would occur in their lifetimes? That means that each generation believed this in spite of one more generation that was wrong. What makes you think you're right when 2000 years and hundreds of generations of other Christians weren't? Why the heck do you place any value in a supposed prophecy by the pagan Mayans, anyway? They are the source of the 2012 date; it's when their calendar runs out.

I am indeed open to the possibility of a God, but that doesn't stop me from thinking there aren't any. I don't think I'll be struck by a meteorite tomorrow either, but I can't be sure it won't happen. I prayed just like you said, Maroun, AGAIN, and got nothing. The problem with this is that as long as I get no reply, you will never believe that I prayed correctly, so you'll be asking me forever.

If you didn't know George Washington was the 1st President and not the 42nd (say, if you were from Chad and didn't have the internet), you might very well write it down thinking it was a message from God. It's an obvious mistake, but it wouldn't be obvious to you. That's more like the case of the books which did get in, warts and all.

I don't need the CD replying to the whole Skeptics' Annotated Bible, because the site posts Christian responses right there with the contradictions. It's happy to do this, in order to show the contortions people have to go through to justify these errors. You didn't read the SAB very much, or at all, or you'd have spotted that.

See how quickly you dismiss the idea that the Bible predicted Muhammed? See, by contrast, how long it takes Tony Costa to debunk that same prophecy? That's how I see the rest of them.

Look, you know my position on prophecies. If the Bible were the only one making them, and being declared right by believers, it might be an easier sell. But no, anyone can get by on self-fulfilling prophecies and interpretative links to past events. Predict the future, and you've got a chance.

The defense of Josephus you gave me tries to predict the actions of a Christian with more occurrences of the word "likely" than it predicts the behaviour of the Jewish author. It does not seem to take into account the fact that the possible Christian writer would be trying not to write as a Christian. In short, I don't buy it.

It is indeed convenient that the apostles were literate and lived so long, isn't it? That's partly why I don't think the apostles themselves, if they existed, even wrote the Gospels. It's such a stretch to assume that they did. I'll argue only so far assuming they did, and at some point I have to remind myself that it's a dodgy proposition.

I don't know if you do know my argument for the apostles dying for a lie. If their object was to spread Christianity, simply because they thought it would help people, they knew they'd still be tortured. Brave soldiers in WWII have shown us that it is physically and mentally possible to die slowly and horribly while maintaining a falsehood, when that falsehood might help someone. The actual Christian argument here is that the apostles (again assuming they lived, and wrote first-hand accounts) could not possibly have died for a lie, and therefore the Resurrection happened. Sorry, but it's just not impossible.

Keep going here if you want, but the idea is supposed to be to put separate arguments in separate "questions". Ultimately, ALL the questions are concerned with the existence of gods.

And off we go again.

I'm glad I learned about the real Hindu myth (it's not as close to Discworld as I thought), but finally, a geocentric view of the universe requires an unsupported Earth. We watch the Sun and Moon pass underneath it, and the stars roll around. There must be space underneath us for it to travel.

"Circuit" and "compass" (the navigational tool or the drawing instrument) are words used when talking about flat circles, not spheres. A disc is an actual, circular place, which you can sit on in two ways: sit comfortably on the flat face, or perch on the rim. Whether a man sits on a flat stone on the ground or on an upright wheel, it makes perfect sense to say he's sitting on a circle.

Columbus knew the earth was round, but because of sailors who had already found this out, not because of the Bible. It's a myth that he had to convince anyone of it. All he didn't know was that America was between him and India.

Think what you like about why I look at these "prophecies" the way I do. In these cases, as you demonstrate by going on and on about which reading makes more sense, it is only by an act of retrospective interpretation that each of these passages is applicable to the modern world. How could a god insert such obscure references to the minutiae of modern science and then have the authors write explicitly that the Sun was created after the Earth, and in one day? Is modern science right, or wrong? Or is it only wrong when it contradicts the Bible?

Science "predictions":

- If there are more than one way to look at the components of the universe, how can you say that this one list of five "elements" has it exactly right and must be divinely inspired? All it matches is the list of one 19th century philosopher who was then superceded.

- What you've said is exactly what someone watching a rat decompose may deduce: that the flesh which disappears has converted to something we cannot see, like air.

- Again, a rotating Earth contradicts the idea that everything travels around it.

- If the passage is talking about the Rapture, it's a prediction, not a statement of the current state of affairs. Nevertheless, women might very well have ground corn into the night at harvest season, to make up time. Know much about agrarian societies?

- God in Job is talking about how powerful and all-knowing he is, and how Job is in no position to question Him. To illustrate that point, every other feat God describes is meant to be absolutely impossible, not just to Job but to any mortal. Why not this one?

- God was indeed talking in the past tense, along with other one-off events such as the sons of God (angels?) shouting for joy. It was a time of great fanfare all round. It says nothing about whether it continued.

- Again, the sky looks like a dome. It appears to be the same distance away in all directions, and the stars appear fixed to it.

- Anyone who's been caught in a riptide or rapids has some idea of water current. Any becalmed vessel will still experience some slight lateral movement, and the current determines the direction. Just dropping a hat in the water will tell you the same thing. Maury may have thought as you do that God was instructing him, but all that is necessary is that the author had been to sea.

- A plumb bob is only accurate if vertical, but if it suddenly goes down twice as far as it did before, you're going to know there is some kind of a drop.

- The gaping holes killed people because they leaked blood. Either you staunched the bleeding, or people died. It was an incompetent battlefield medic that did not deduce this. Diseased patients bled to death despite the doctors knowing well that blood loss could kill. They reasoned that the disease was too strong to be bled out, and therefore had defeated them by forcing them to risk over-bleeding the patient or try other methods.

- Two points: Firstly, again, some measure of experience can have informed the cleansing passage, as those who were wounded and dirty would die before those who were wounded but clean. Secondly, Semmelweis was definitely not taking advice from the Bible. Among the other variables he tested besides cleanliness was religious practices. He hit upon cleanliness because it works, not because the Bible says so.

I do indeed get curious when I read about a supposed miracle, or an old text appears to predict present knowledge. Everything you've sent me makes me extremely curious. But when I'm curious, I don't just sit here and think, "Wow." I satisfy my curiosity by going out and looking for natural, rational explanations. Since I've had some practice at this, I find at least a possible explanation quite quickly, if not the complete story. For anything like this to be an actual proof of God, there would have to be no possible alternative, not just no plausible one. If I find any possible alternative, then I find it more likely than the idea that a god did it.

The Jerusalem prophecy is a perfect example of the contortions required to justify these things. A mathematician points out a simple error in the arithmetic of a supposedly fulfilled prophecy. The Christian responds by changing the length of a year (twice), adding an extra period from a different book (Jeremiah), allowing a few weeks after a date for a city to fall over and so on. There's still an error: the line is, "And after all this, if you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins," meaning there are 8 punishments in total. Cramer only multiplies by 7.

Regarding 2012, I still think the Bible interpreters are cribbing from the Mayans rather than the other way around, but let's just wait for 2012 and see if you vanish.

Regarding prayer, good, that's that, except that now either God's hiding himself from me, or the truth is that He's not there.

You're making my point for me about bad history. You haven't denied that it's possible for uninformed people to think God told them something which turns out to be untrue, at least as they're writing it. The unused books had more obvious errors, which the editors of the Bible (who, if not the internet, at least had a big library) were able to detect. Errors they would not have known about, like descriptions of insects with four legs (Leviticus 11:20-23), stayed in.

I don't need the CD because as I said, there are links to replies to the SAB provided IN the SAB. Here's another example of a contortionist apologist: Does God want some to go to Hell? Click the response from LookingUntoJesus.net.

"None of the verses supplied indicated that God wishes to send men to hell." How does John 12:40 support this? It was a case of "those who had no concern for His way". Yeah, precisely because "He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart". Perhaps these people brought Hell upon themselves, but John says it's because God made them that way. Does He bear no responsibility for that? Why harden hearts?

You're right about the Muhammad prophecy, because as an atheist I often forget that religionists don't reject texts for the same reason as I do. I reject them because they have alternate and more likely explanations. You reject them because they contradict your beliefs, and the texts you've already accepted. Like you say, Costa attacks it with the Bible, rather than history. It only has to contradict his text, not any universally accepted one.

You've actually captured my attitude toward lying for Jesus pretty well. Jesus may have been against lying, but if it takes one lie to stop people from lying altogether, that's a venial sin many believers will bear. It still happens, like in the Dover intelligent design trial: Christians lied about the religious nature of the ID proponents' fundraising in order to bypass the separation of church and state and challenge evolution in public schools. If it worked, they thought, more children would believe in God.

I don't have to have faith in the fact that something is possible, if I see a way it might have happened. The whoooooole movement from 2500BC to 33 AD didn't have to lie about Jesus, just those four people who wrote his story. And they wrote it so late, they probably didn't even know him. All everybody else had to do was believe it.

Come Sunday morning, if you believe anything about the story, the tomb was open and the body was gone. By the time news of the resurrection was out, the Jews had nothing to show. There was either a resurrection or a grave robbery.

What we have in the pastor's story is a man giving him the impression that he's liable to kill somebody. Your pastor tries to "save" him, and fails. He then goes and does exactly what he looked like he'd do. Are we atheists supposed to see ourselves in this bat-wielding maniac? Do you see why we don't?

Hi SmartLX,

"I'm glad I learned about the real Hindu myth..."

I am glad you are learning about the falseness of Hinduism from now, that is a step in the right direction.

"Circuit" and "compass" (the navigational tool or the drawing instrument) are words used when talking about flat circles, not spheres. A disc is an actual, circular place, which you can sit on in two ways: sit comfortably on the flat face, or perch on the rim. Whether a man sits on a flat stone on the ground or on an upright wheel, it makes perfect sense to say he's sitting on a circle."

Regarding Circle, it's funny (maybe not funny at all actually) on Dictionary.com one of the meanings uses the words of the bible (from Isaiah 40:22) and describes it as a sphere or orb:

"16. a sphere or orb: the circle of the earth."

Regarding Circuit (from dictionary.com again) one of the many meanings if you scroll down you will see interestingly enough along with the Isaiah quote:

"4. A round body; a sphere; an orb.

It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth. --Is. xi. 22."

Regarding Compass (from dictionary.com)

"4. Extent; reach; sweep; capacity; sphere; as, the compass of his eye; the compass of imagination."

"9. A circle; a continent. [Obs.]

The tryne compas [the threefold world containing earth, sea, and heaven. --Skeat.] --Chaucer."

Stop looking at things to suit your argument alone and look at them fully and with an open mind...I will speak more of this in my second post below.

"Columbus knew the earth was round, but because of sailors who had already found this out, not because of the Bible."

Regarding this, whether or not Columbus knew from the bible or not, please read the below, more places where a round earth is shown in the bible before the greeks knew about it:

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c015.html

"Think what you like about why I look at these "prophecies" the way I do. In these cases, as you demonstrate by going on and on about which reading makes more sense, it is only by an act of retrospective interpretation that each of these passages is applicable to the modern world."

Regarding interpretation, again I say Stop looking at things to suit your argument alone and look at them fully and with an open mind, especially when it is about something so important.

"How could a god insert such obscure references to the minutiae of modern science and then have the authors write explicitly that the Sun was created after the Earth, and in one day? Is modern science right, or wrong? Or is it only wrong when it contradicts the Bible?"

The bible is the story of what happened, if you read the story, you will reach the parts revealing our modern science.

God is GOD! He created the earth first and then the sun...do you think that is too hard for God? Yes he created the sun and moon in one day, do you think that is too hard for him? Quite frankly I think God could have created everything at the same time easily just by speaking it, but he chose to do it the way he did for a reason. He can do anything! He doesn't want to mess with free will though...

If your modern science says the sun was here before the earth, or at the same time, then yes, that it wrong. And yes, if it contradicts the bible it is wrong, because it is going against the TRUTH of GOD. Regarding the scientific proves shown in the bible, if they are proven true and /or evidence is shown that they are true, why don't you believe/at least look into it being correct about other scientific facts such as the sun being made after the earth? Below is a great link for Genesis. With great links at the bottom.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/could-god-have-created-in-six-days

By the way that link says something great about the brain. Read it.

Regarding your rebuttals to http://www.kwbc.org/biblescientificfacts:

- You had mentioned energy, and out of time, space, matter, power, and motion, like I said "There are more than one ways to look at those five things regarding this". Power and Energy go hand in hand.

- How could someone think something disappears because it became air? Or how could a rat be made of air? “The things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” Hebrews 11:3 This is clearly talking about atoms, if you don't want to take that even in "maybe" context, then open your mind more for truth and stop trying to only defend your opinion.

- "Again, a rotating Earth contradicts the idea that everything travels around it."

I don't understand what you are saying here...that is what I and bsf are saying. This is showing from Job 38:12-14 that the geocentric view is wrong, and that the earth is rotating.

- "If the passage is talking about the Rapture, it's a prediction, not a statement of the current state of affairs."

It is a prediction, showing knowledge of a rotating earth with night and day at the same time.

"Nevertheless, women might very well have ground corn into the night at harvest season, to make up time. Know much about agrarian societies?"

I did not see one place that says women might have ground corn into the night in an agrarian society. secondly, going by your thinking that Jesus was lying/insane/misquoted/made up (because you don't believe he is God yet) and that there were people who grinded, and other people in a field at night when other people are in bed...do you think Jesus would have talked about those people here? How much are you going to twist things to try to go with your opinion?

- It is not true that every other feat God describes is meant to be absolutely impossible, especially now. Look at Job 38:39 & 41, Job 39:1&9, and there are probably more if you would like to take the time and look.

- Ok, so me saying "I was happy yesterday" or "The sun gave its light yesterday", does that mean that those things could not have continued?

- "Again, the sky looks like a dome. It appears to be the same distance away in all directions, and the stars appear fixed to it."

Already discussed spherical earth, but regarding your comment, you think the earth looks the same distance away North, West, South and East ok, how about up? It looks like the same distance away? No because Amos 9:6 mentions the heavens too. When talking of a dome over the earth here it is obvious the writer is talking of a rounded top/he knew this is a spherical earth.

- Moving in the water, and being moved certainly does not prove or show that there are continuous currents. The things you mention can be viewed as happening because of other factors such as wind and waves. Those things certainly do not necessitate "...paths of the seas." Psalm 8:8.

- You're missing the point. It would have taken something extremely long (including a plumb bob) for the sailors to be able to go that deep...deep enough to see there are mountains on the bottomof the ocean floor, not hills, mountains...think about it.

- "The gaping holes killed people because they leaked blood. Either you staunched the bleeding, or people died. It was an incompetent battlefield medic that did not deduce this. Diseased patients bled to death despite the doctors knowing well that blood loss could kill. They reasoned that the disease was too strong to be bled out, and therefore had defeated them by forcing them to risk over-bleeding the patient or try other methods."

If the bleeding was stopped the person could surely still have died from a number of factors such as destroyed body parts, internal bleeding, poisoning, infection and perhaps more. Before we gained our current medical knowledge it would appear from this "bleeding" tactic that people did not know that “For the life of the flesh is in the blood.” Leviticus 17:11 If they knew this they would never have tried "over-bleeding" or bleeding in the first place...as I put before, How many people had to die this way for them to finally know why?

- "Two points: Firstly, again, some measure of experience can have informed the cleansing passage, as those who were wounded and dirty would die before those who were wounded but clean."

We are talking about running water verses otherwise such as dipping your hands into the same bowl of water here, secondly we are talking of people cleansed of their discharge talking of washing with running water which is the key here. People who were wounded and dirty back then could very well have been washed with water from a bowl or something like it instead of with running water.

"Secondly, Semmelweis was definitely not taking advice from the Bible. Among the other variables he tested besides cleanliness was religious practices. He hit upon cleanliness because it works, not because the Bible says so."

Wow, how in the world do you know this?? Even if you are right and he didn't do this because of the bible, the fact that the bible talks of washing with running wateris still there, another place it is shown is Numbers 19:17.

"As it happens, I and others had a chance to answer the "Bible called for hygiene first" argument again on Ask the Atheists (plural; no relation to this site). This time I looked at the chapter (Leviticus 15) as a whole, and it appears even less credible when one does so."

Really? Please lets get the opinions of some medical professionals if you are willing to ask them about Leviticus 15. Or if you want just e-mail me what you think is "less credible" about it whenever you want and we can discuss it. (I will tell you why e-mail in my next post).

The following website is good, lays out things already mentioned above, but has other things as well:

http://church-of-yehovah.org/bihealth.htm

"For anything like this to be an actual proof of God, there would have to be no possible alternative, not just no plausible one. If I find any possible alternative, then I find it more likely than the idea that a god did it."

And perhaps this is part of the reason why God is not answering your prayer, I will go into that in my next post. And again, why is it that all these prophecies have and/or seem to be coming true? What possible alternative do you give to that? They have a broad range of possibility and alot of time? What about the ones that dont have a broad range? What is alot of time? They have been coming true, and are still coming true. What else do you want?

"The Jerusalem prophecy is a perfect example of the contortions required to justify these things. A mathematician points out a simple error in the arithmetic of a supposedly fulfilled prophecy. The Christian responds by changing the length of a year (twice), adding an extra period from a different book (Jeremiah), allowing a few weeks after a date for a city to fall over and so on. There's still an error: the line is, "And after all this, if you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins," meaning there are 8 punishments in total. Cramer only multiplies by 7."

You do realize that people make mistakes right? Happens all the time. I'm not a mathematician and I dont think you are, correct me if Im wrong, and I certainly dont think you've studied the bible enough to make an opinion about the math in this case...again correct me if Im wrong...but isn't just Israel becoming a nation again and the recapture of Jerusalem good evidence for you? Or "Oh well they were probably gonna take it back anyway..." Why didn't the Jews get taken out in the holocaust? They came back to take Israel and Jerusalem. Why didn't something else happen? Look at Israel's enemies! Here is a link http://depleteduranium.blogspot.com/2006/08/eight-enemies-of-israel.html

If you think Guy has made a mistake, and you are looking for the truth, by all means contact him and I am sure he will be happy to answer you.

"Regarding 2012, I still think the Bible interpreters are cribbing from the Mayans rather than the other way around, but let's just wait for 2012 and see if you vanish."

You're wrong, and I hope you know that I am not basing my faith on the rapture being in 2012. I know Jesus is real because if what he has done in my life and those I know and have heard of. But I do think the rapture is in 2012, and I hope I am right.

Regarding prayer will answer you in my next post.

"You're making my point for me about bad history. You haven't denied that it's possible for uninformed people to think God told them something which turns out to be untrue, at least as they're writing it."

How am I making your point for you? I was writing in the point of view that you think may have happened, which is the writers of the bible did so to delude people. And again, if you wrote something to delude people you would make it as acurate as possible. Being closer in time to history than those who came after them would make their history more accurate than those who came after them.

"The unused books had more obvious errors, which the editors of the Bible (who, if not the internet, at least had a big library) were able to detect."
Again, us with our internet and libraries, certainly do not know more about days of old than the people who lived during, or right after them. This is assuming the people who wrote our current bible were not inspired of God. However, I know God is real, and because of that I highly doubt he would have let something not of him be in the bible.

"Errors they would not have known about, like descriptions of insects with four legs (Leviticus 11:20-23), stayed in."

Regarding Leviticus 11:20-23, please see
http://www.scripturessay.com/article.php?cat=&id=403

Besides, the bible is an accurate historical source:
http://www.s8int.com/page34.html

If you want you can google more.

""None of the verses supplied indicated that God wishes to send men to hell." How does John 12:40 support this? It was a case of "those who had no concern for His way". Yeah, precisely because "He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart". Perhaps these people brought Hell upon themselves, but John says it's because God made them that way. Does He bear no responsibility for that? Why harden hearts?"

You should listen to that and I will explain in a second but first I just want to tell you I went through a very difficult time because of things like this, and I asked about them and was informed. If you ever have questions about this please e-mail me.

Anyway on to your question, with John 12:40 it does not say that as a result of that those men/women went to hell. With every person other than yourself, you do not know the thoughts and feelings and communication between that person and God, all you know is about yourself. There have been times in my life when I have humbled myself and asked God for help, and he has helped me many...many times. These people of whom John 12:40 is speaking, you do not know if they went to heaven or hell.

In addition with John 12:40 and all the other quotes, you have to remember two very important things.
1) Everyone has a free will, and 2) God KNOWS everything that will happen. He KNEW the end from the beginning. He LOVES everyone, but He will not force them to come to him, and He certainly does not want anyone to go to hell. We cannot know every motive of God, but I do know he does not take pleasure in the death of anyone (Ill put quotes in a little bit.)

Regarding Proverbs 16:4, He did not make them wicked, they chose to become so of their own free will. And it does not say the day of evil is the day of judgment. Hopefully these wicked will turn and follow the Lord after this day of evil.

Romans 9:18, does not say as a result anyone went to hell. In addition I like this quote I found:
"At which point I would ask, “How do you propose that we determine the truth about what motivates the heart of God? Will we base our conclusions on our own feelings about what seems right? Or will we base our conclusions on what God Himself says in the Bible to be true about what motivates Him?”"

Regarding 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12, the answer from http://www.lookinguntojesus.net/ata20040411.htm is correct.
"The text in 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 is much the same as this from John 12:40. Notice, in verse 10, these were deceived because they did not receive the love of the truth. Verse 12 reveals that rather than believing the truth, these would rather have pleasure in unrighteousness. Thus, God left them to their own devices (compare Romans 1:24, 26, 28)."

Read 2 Thessalonians 2:7-12.

Read Romans 11:33-36

Now, regarding the death of the wicked:

"23(A) Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?" Ezekiel 18:23

"32(A) For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD;(B) so turn, and live."" Ezekiel 18:32

"11Say to them,(A) As I live, declares the Lord GOD,(B) I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live;(C) turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?" Ezekiel 33:11

"You're right about the Muhammad prophecy, because as an atheist I often forget that religionists don't reject texts for the same reason as I do. I reject them because they have alternate and more likely explanations. You reject them because they contradict your beliefs, and the texts you've already accepted. Like you say, Costa attacks it with the Bible, rather than history. It only has to contradict his text, not any universally accepted one."

Actually as I said above, the bible is an accurate historical source. In addition for some reason the site I gave you about Tony Costa has been replaced with a new one (I guess it changes monthly), but if I remember correctly he was taking historical information as well as biblical information.

"You've actually captured my attitude toward lying for Jesus pretty well. Jesus may have been against lying, but if it takes one lie to stop people from lying altogether, that's a venial sin many believers will bear. It still happens, like in the Dover intelligent design trial: Christians lied about the religious nature of the ID proponents' fundraising in order to bypass the separation of church and state and challenge evolution in public schools. If it worked, they thought, more children would believe in God."

If born again Christians do lie, it is a sin and they must repent. If they do not repent from this and other sins, and continue sinning despite the prodding of the Holy Spirit to repent, the following may very well happen to them:

"19"(P)Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

20"So then, you will know them (Q)by their fruits.

21"(R)Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.

22"(S)Many will say to Me on (T)that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?'

23"And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; (U)DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.'" Matthew 7:19-23

I highly doubt the Christian writer we were discussing lied. Ultimately, prayer is the way to find out if God is real or not.

"I don't have to have faith in the fact that something is possible, if I see a way it might have happened."

Yet you don't think the bible is true...interesting.

"The whoooooole movement from 2500BC to 33 AD didn't have to lie about Jesus, just those four people who wrote his story. And they wrote it so late, they probably didn't even know him. All everybody else had to do was believe it."

Yes because people will believe anything, be fed to lions, burned alive, etc etc for something they just believe in without evidence.

The whole movement didn't have to lie about Jesus in your thoughts? So all the prophecies they wrote about him and fullfilled can be true, and only the part about his apostles is fraudulent?

Ask yourself how Christianity has survived from a fledgling faith to what it is now? Look at how Christianity kept growing with all the opposition against it. Gamaliel said it well:

"33But when they heard this, they were (AU)cut to the quick and intended to kill them.
34But a Pharisee named (AV)Gamaliel, a (AW)teacher of the Law, respected by all the people, stood up in (AX)the Council and gave orders to put the men outside for a short time. 35And he said to them, "Men of Israel, take care what you propose to do with these men.
36"For some time ago Theudas rose up, (AY)claiming to be somebody, and a group of about four hundred men joined up with him. But he was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing.

37"After this man, Judas of Galilee rose up in the days of (AZ)the census and drew away some people after him; he too perished, and all those who followed him were scattered.

38"So in the present case, I say to you, stay away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or action (BA)is of men, it will be overthrown;

39but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them; or else you may even be found (BB)fighting against God."

40They took his advice; and after calling the apostles in, they (BC)flogged them and ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and then released them.

41So they went on their way from the presence of the (BD)Council, (BE)rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame (BF)for His name.

42(BG)And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and (BH)preaching Jesus as the Christ." Acts 5:33-42

"Come Sunday morning, if you believe anything about the story, the tomb was open and the body was gone. By the time news of the resurrection was out, the Jews had nothing to show. There was either a resurrection or a grave robbery."

It was a resurrection :O) . Regarding grave robbery http://everystudent.com/features/faith.html?gclid=CNm-5KaO7pYCFQETGgodfUt_rA

"What we have in the pastor's story is a man giving him the impression that he's liable to kill somebody. Your pastor tries to "save" him, and fails. He then goes and does exactly what he looked like he'd do. Are we atheists supposed to see ourselves in this bat-wielding maniac? Do you see why we don't?"

Your explanation of it really upsets me, how it seems you try to take any explanation that will disprove the existence of God. You think my pastor knew that this guy was going to KILL (seriously...specifically KILL?) someone by the way he looked?

Like I told you before, when you are born again, many times the Holy Spirit lets you know things. That is what happened in this case.

"Are we atheists supposed to see ourselves in this bat-wielding maniac? Do you see why we don't?"

Have you ever imagined yourself in a fight with someone? They did something you didn't like for example, or they called you a name, or they made fun of you, whatever, and then you imagined yourself beating them? Well I have. If you hated that person you committed murder in your heart:
"Everyone who [Matt 5:21; John 8:44] hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that [Gal 5:20; Rev 21:8] no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." 1 John 3:15

Will continue below.

There's honestly nothing here I think needs a direct reply. If anyone else thinks there's a good point somewhere, let me know and I'll address it for you, but I think we're too far into semantics and non sequiturs to get any lasting sense out of this particular exchange. Besides, I'm really beginning to upset Maroun, and though I'm not afraid to do that if necessary, it's not my goal.

I'll just say that my newest Great Big Arguments post is relevant to all the claims of scientific and historical foreknowledge in the Bible.