Most people are pretty sure they’re right. Not necessarily about everything, but there are a few things they feel absolutely confident about. I know that I feel free damn confident about most of the stuff that goes up here, and when I’m not I will say so. However, there are two implications to this confidence: either I am really, truly amazing and right about everything I believe, or I am wrong about some things and haven’t heard the right argument yet.
It’s the latter that I find people banking more more and more. Let’s look at some examples:
What are marriage advocates to do? How can marriage—a thorough defense of which requires deep theological reflection or the complex natural law web of anthropological, historical, social, and scientific ideas contained in [Robert George’s] What is Marriage—compete with “all you need is love”? – Eric Teetsel, “On Winning the Marriage Debate”
Not for Hitchens the rich cross-cultural fertilization of the Levant by Helenistic, Jewish, and Manichaean thought. Not for Hitchens the transformation of a Jewish heretic into a religion that Nietzsche called “Platonism for the masses.” Not for Hitchens the fascinating theological fissures in the New Testament between Jewish, Gnostic, and Pauline doctrines. – Curtis White, “Christopher Hitchens’ lies do atheism no favors”
“Either this group is completely ignorant of arguments for and against God’s existence or they’re ignorant of the best theistic scholarship.” – Anugrah Kumar, quoting William Lane Craig, “Christian Philosopher William Lane Craig Calls Atheist Hotline a ‘Wrong Number’” (warning that the Christian Post is particularly annoying with its ads, with video ads that keep restarting if you pause or mute them)
We often see this regarding religious or theistic arguments, but it’s becoming quite popular among people who continue to put forward bad arguments: simply claim that the person who doesn’t buy into them hasn’t heard all the really good reasons why we should buy into what they’re saying. I think it’s a variation on The Courtier’s Reply.
I’ve encountered this before with theists and when I ask them to actually present those really good arguments, I will generally get a form of Pascal’s Wager. Occasionally I will get the Kalam Cosmological Argument and very rarely anything different. Unfortunately, both Pascal and Kalam are very easily debunked. In fact, I took a look at Craig’s ReasonableFaith.org (which is not as cool as a reasonable conversation, let me tell you) and it’s almost all Pascal and Kalam. You don’t have to believe me, go check it out yourself. I fact, if you check out his “The New Atheism and Five Arguments for God,” (for example) you can see that he brings up Kalam, but also the Thomstic Cosmological argument, the Moral Argument, the Teleological Argument (which is by far the most ridiculous and easy to argue against, as far as I’m concerned), and the ever absurd Ontological Argument, which is really just such a joke on the face of it that I’m going to assume it was developed by Dr. Frank-n-furter. Though I will point out that he forgot the Argument from Tigers.
I’ve looked at that site for a while now and see very little that isn’t a variation on these five, so I can’t help but ask Dr. Craig…where are you hiding these “best arguments”? Because the ones you presented are all childishly simple and only really convincing to people who want to agree with the premise.
Oh, and there’s the very popular “it’s a mystery“. That works for a lot of things.
Going to the Teetsel piece, we see basically the same argument being made for conservative principles. The problem is that people just don’t understand the wealth of thought and philosophy that goes into being a conservative, and are instead distracted by pop culture and celebrities. Liberalism, according to Teetsel, is the result of an abandonment of thought to shiny entertainment.
This is even more absurd than the Ontological argument. Teetsel is trying to tell us that the ideology that aligns itself with people who think somebody rose from the dead (several people, actually), the ideology that consistently denies the findings of science, the ideology that has never been right about a social issue since the founding of this country (and not too often before), is the thinking person’s option?
As David Sessions points out in this article for Patrol,
So Teetsel can’t pretend that the gay rights movement won simply by circumventing an intellectual debate. They had the intellectual debate when the religious right so took its own position for granted that it thought it didn’t need to argue; when the right finally started playing catch-up, even the most sophisticated versions of its ideas were too far outside the mainstream for a secular democracy. The right didn’t lose because of the “packaging” of its ideas, it lost because those ideas themselves were defeated in battle. (Similarly, Romney lost the election not because he didn’t get the conservative message across, but precisely because he did.)
This is also a lot like Penny Nance’s preposterous assertion on Mike Huckabee’s show that conservatives on college campuses are being “bullied” because they can’t explain their opposition to things like same-sex marriage. The sad truth is that they are able to articulate their positions just fine.
So, here’s the deal: we’ve heard your arguments, and they suck. I’m sorry, I don’t know if you’re just really invested in these things being true that you miss the obvious flaws in what you’re saying or what, but these arguments are truly awful. Fortunately, you don’t have to feel awful for having had them: you can change your mind. In fact, that would be great.
But if there are arguments that you’re hiding from me, ones that suddenly make it plausible that a wizard who lives on a cloud is up there mucking about with our lives, or that magically makes welfare queens a reality, or that convinces me that I’m a bad person for a propensity to not only be attracted to men but also act on it, now’s the time to break them out. Seriously, I don’t know what you guys are waiting for. Isn’t it time, after all this joking around, to break out the real “best arguments”? These are the gag arguments, right?
Right?
Reasonable Conversation 
I’m… not opposed to the concept of the “you’re not actually hearing the good arguments, just the skewed soundbite versions” idea. After all, I’ve expressed my frustration with bumper-sticker debate before, and “you have to keep reading” is one of my personal catchphrases (right up there with “it’s actually more complicated than that.”) So I get how very very irritating it can be to feel like your opponent is essentially strawmanning you – taking a simplistic, skewed version of what you actually believe, and arguing against that and going “See, I win! Nyah!”
And… not to put too fine a point on it, but I HAVE seen a LOT of atheists (Dawkins springs IMMEDIATELY to mind) do this precise thing. Not all atheists – I haven’t seen you do this, at least not often. (But then, we don’t usually get into the religion topic with each other, probably because we know too well where the other person stands!) But it happens often enough and publicly enough that I don’t blame religious people one bit for feeling like “You’re not actually addressing or even listening to what we actually believe! You’re making up a story about what you THINK we believe, and then mocking us because you’ve decided that story is silly!”
Does that mean there are no atheists who actually engage actual beliefs? No, as you’ve pointed out. Most of the strongest arguments in favor of religion HAVE been addressed at one point or another, and found wanting. But those don’t make good theater, so they don’t get the spotlight – the assholes do. And when some of the loudest public voices for atheism shamelessly engage in strawman arguments and ad hominem attacks, you’re going to get those accusations.
Which is a fair point. There are a number of atheists that engage in the strawman arguments that people like Craig complain about. I think that sometimes it happens by accident, since I know I’m tempted to oversimplify my opponents’ arguments when I’ve answered them in detail time and time again. It is endlessly frustrating to have to explain the same thing to people who think they’re being original and clever, so it’s pretty easy to strawman people. That being said, it’s important to own up to it and demonstrate why the real argument still doesn’t hold water at that point.
However, it still doesn’t change that I have yet to hear one of these great arguments that doesn’t just fall apart the moment you think about it too much. I’m still waiting for people who make this claim to actually trot out their awesome arguments that make all the sense in the world. Where’s the claim for god’s existence that is so good I don’t need physical evidence to support it? Where is that awesome argument against same-sex marriage that doesn’t boil down to “I read it in a book”? I suspect I will be waiting a long time.
FWIW, when it comes to my own argument for faith – I realized a long time ago that there AREN’T any good arguments for what someone ELSE should believe. Because the only things that can really, truly convince someone of the existence of God or any other “spiritual” belief are not logical (or pseudo-logical) debate – they’re subjective experiences, things you can’t prove or show anyone else. They may be sufficient to convince YOU to believe, but you’d have to be incredibly arrogant to think they’re a good enough reason for someone else to believe too.
Then again, I follow a faith that a) does not believe there is only one right answer, and b) doesn’t believe in Hell or any other eternal punishment for getting it wrong. (We do believe in, for lack of a better term, “sin,” but it’s not like… hrm, you know what, there is no way to explain THAT particular can of worms in a brief comment, so imma let it go for right now.) So I have no real need to convince anyone else to believe what I believe. As long as it’s good enough for ME to believe it, that’s all it needs to be. (I do, however, need other people to not claim that I am crazy, stupid, lying, or deluded for believing what I believe, but that’s just common goddamn courtesy.)
I think your argument for state recognition based on arbitrary marriage redefinition ‘sucks’ – the problem being – the whole ‘marriage equality’propaganda is a farce.
The whole debate is absurd and should have amounted to –
“Marriage should be defined as what based on what?”
“What?”
“Exactly – lets move on!”
What we really have here is a purposefully arbitrary failure to actually redefine marriage in any meaningful or consistent way, leaving the door wide open for endless consequence and confusion.
http://www.westernjournalism.com/liberal-word-manipulation-and-mind-control/
Thank you for that link. I hadn’t had my full quota of mindless paranoia today. I especially love the Birther stuff toward the end, and the fact that it decries the use of catchphrases by basically cobbling together a word salad of meaningless catchphrases. Oh, and you see those blue words up top in my post? Those are called “links” and they bring you to evidence to support my position. You’ll notice that the article you ironically linked to has exactly zero of them. If you’re trying to prove that there are conspiratorial nutjobs on the internet, you succeeded.
Now, if you’d like to explain what some of this “endless consequence” might be, specifics please, I would be happy to hear. Similarly, if you’d like to please let me know what standard we should have a “definition” based on, by all means let me know. I think I can guess what you think would be appropriate, but I try not to beg the question.
Instead of addressing any of the points in the article you ridicule – first you answer – what is marriage and why?
I ridicule because what you linked to is ridiculous.
As to me answering first, you made claims. Support them.
Mindless Paranoia – have you been keep up with current events??? This admin breeds mindless paranoia – you freakin kiddin me??
Yes, mindless paranoia. If you think the president is secretly foreign and spent millions of dollars to fake a birth certificate, you should seek professional help.
Why does the president spend so much on a lawyer to keep his records sealed? Why does he wave a SSCard issued from CT? Why hasn’t anyone in Hawaii ever actually seen his long-form birth cert including the liberal gov? What about all the stories about his sexuality? The media covers for him – and that few unbiased journalists are threatened – have you been living under a rock or just in denial?
The first three things aren’t true. The stories about his sexuality are both specious and irrelevant. I am neither living under a rock nor in denial, I simply live in reality.
Now, we are done going off topic. Please support your earlier claims and answer my questions.
I believe it is the responsibility of those who look to redefine marriage to actually redefine it – that’s my statement – you could either attempt to conclusively or even loosely define it or respond in some other fashion of you may simply choose to tell this crazy birther to take hike – I could really care less 🙂
Oh for the love of all the gods.
“Define” marriage? Okieday, I’ll take a shot at it.
Marriage is the union of two souls. Marriage is an expression of love. Marriage is two adult people, willingly coming together before their community and the authority of the land, to pledge their love and devotion to each other and to create, out of two individuals, one family. Marriage is said authority recognizing and respecting these vows, and acknowledging and supporting the creation and existence of this new family by respecting the bond between them and making it easier for them to support and care for each other.
(Note: a “family” may involve the biological children of both parties, it may involve the biological children of only one party, it may involve adopted children, or it may involve no children at all – just like all families throughout history.)
Is this a redefinition of marriage? Depends on who you ask. It’s pretty much the same definition I used when I married my husband, and the same definition my mother used when she married my father, and the same definition her mother used when she married my grandfather. So from where I stand, it’s not exactly radical. It’s actually pretty traditional.
Extending marriage to same-sex couples, using the above “traditional” definition, is no hard thing. It’s only a problem if you somehow believe that two men or two women cannot love each other, devote themselves to caring for each other, or form a family unit. And if you believe that, then I must conclude that you are bigoted, ignorant, or both. (Because, spoilers: they can. I can point you to examples within my own family to demonstrate this.)
Now, of course, there have always been other definitions of marriage, and anyone who subscribed to those will consider my definition, above, a “redefinition.” If you see marriage as primarily an economic transaction, where one’s daughter is sold to whoever can provide you with the most cows, then yeah, my definition is a pretty radical departure. If you see marriage as a way of social climbing, of charming a pretty rich young thing into joining with you to grant yourself a higher status, my definition will be alien to you. If you see marriage as a political alliance between families or houses or nations, same thing.
And certainly, if you believe that marriage is an institution where one woman joins together with one man, to be his cheerful servant – oops, I mean helpmeet – and broodmare all the rest of her days, and if you therefore discount any marriages in which traditional gender roles do not play a part and in which the couple either chooses not to or is unable to have children, then sure, you’ll probably see my definition as a departure from tradition. But please understand that that definition is NOT the universal one. Marriage has meant different things in different cultures and at different times all throughout history. And in today’s society there are currently many, many marriages (and many families) that do not match what conservatives (falsely) claim is the “traditional” definition. And yet, they ARE marriages, and they ARE families.
I don’t actually consider my definition to change anything about marriage in any meaningful way. And if it does change anything, then I think it was likely something that drastically needed changing.
I meant to write :
‘OR you may simply choose to tell this crazy birther to take A hike – I could really care less
And your beliefs are fairly meaningless. The way debate works is that the person who makes a positive claim has the burden of proof. You made two positive claims. Show your evidence, or bugger off, but your beliefs on how debate works bear absolutely no weight.
That being said, nobody is looking to “redefine” marriage. We didn’t “define” it to begin with. It’s a legal concept, subject to change to serve the common good.
Hello kristycat –
So your concept of marriage follows the ‘traditional one’
Where did the traditional one come from? What was that about?
KN believes marriage is merely a legal concept – does KC agree?
AC – I think you’re positing a false dichotomy.
Marriage is many things. It’s a tradition; it’s a religious sacrament; it’s a communal agreement; it’s a social arrangement; it’s a deeply personal declaration of love. It’s ALSO a legal concept.
I’m absolutely not arguing with Kaoru about marriage being a legal concept. I think it’s more than that, of course. (And I think you’ll find, if you scroll up a couple inches, that Kaoru himself never claimed it was ONLY or MERELY a legal concept, simply that it WAS a legal concept.) However, when we argue in favor of same-sex marriage being made legal, we are talking about the laws, and therefore it is the legal concept of marriage that is the most pertinent.
As for where the “traditional” one came from (quote marks because, again, we’re working with more than one tradition here), well, it came from many, many different sources over many many centuries. It came from societies that encoded marriage into law and from individual lovers who proclaimed their own understanding of marriage and everything in between. It’s a dynamic and changing institution, and anyone claiming otherwise (or trying to pin down One True Definition or One True Origin of said definition) has a very shaky understanding of human history.
AC, I don’t know what you’re going for here. It almost sounds like you’re trying to play Socrates and draw us into a trap by asking innocent-sounding questions, except that if so, you’re going about it rather hamfistedly. (And such a manipulative ploy would destroy any semblance of good faith you have going on.) So – what is your purpose in asking these questions? Why are you starting from the assumption that we’re trying to redefine marriage, or that what we’re trying to define marriage as is somehow flimsy? Why are you quizzing us on the origins of marriage traditions? Is it because you don’t know and honestly want to know what our stance is? Are you trying to prove that we don’t know, and thus make us look foolish? Do you honestly want an open debate – because if so, you’d do better to be more open about what, exactly, it is you’re intending to prove. This “but why won’t you just answer the question?” technique is not inspiring anyone to engage you in intellectual conversation, because whether you are or not, it makes you look like a troll. And what consequences, precisely, do you keep alluding to that you think “redefining” marriage will lead to?
Be patient my dear –
I am just saying there are certain elements of ‘marriage’ you are taking for granted:
– Two
-Souls
-Love
-Union
-Adults
-Public Testimony
So there is an origin there or some type of accepted precident or standard – should procreation be in there somewhere or is that just an inconsequential and/or secondary aspect of such a union?
What is the essence of marriage? Is it arbitrary? Cultural? Progressive? Too complex and/or varied to pin down?
Is there a historical foundation?
I believe thus far the discussion/debate has been an emotional one, or a civil rights one – in which by pass some basic, fundamental realities.
How have you come to your understanding that marriage consists of
-2, souls, in love, form a union, are adults, make a public testimony- how were these ‘truths’ established? where does the state come in? & was gender a distinct part of the equation?
I don’t think you can have it both ways – marriage is a divine, defined institution or a fluid, progressive, man-made one –
I don’t see how it can be both
My bottom-line question to you is-
Does God change with the times or is He absolute?
Obviously, God tolerated polygamy – even incestuous relations for a time if we are to render a literal understanding of scriptures – I’m sure you would at least acknowledge the concubines…..but according to scriptures a traditional union was ultimately the favored/ordained standard as per Jesus declarations on the matter when speaking on divorce
And there we go.
The bottom line is that god is a fictional creature and your imaginary friend gets no say in public policy. Sorry, but there is no reason to make other people miserable by denying them legal civil marriage because you’re pretty sure you read in a book that a magical wizard in the sky doesn’t like it.
That’s fine – marriage is now & an arbitrary 1 size fits all institution then
First of all: I am not your “dear.” Nor am I a child. Your condescending tone is inappropriate and unwelcome. Stop it.
Second of all: as was implied by my original conversation with Kaoru, I am a Pagan. The Judeo-Christian God can declare that men must marry elephants, for all I care. Marriage is older than the Hebrew tribes in which his worship first arose, and I’m certainly unimpressed with the “improvements” he’s put on it since then. Furthermore, the idea that the civic, legal definition of marriage should be determined by a god I don’t even worship (and whose followers can’t even agree half the time about what he thinks/wants) is insulting, offensive… and actually rather sickening, to someone who loves her country and its founding principles.
As for my own gods, their thoughts on the matter are as wondrously varied as they are. Happily, they value competence and intelligence in their followers, and would be terribly disappointed in me if I simply took their word for anything rather than thinking it through and coming to my own conclusions. They gave me a brain for a reason.
Third of all: I don’t think either of us ever implied marriage is/should be anything BUT a fluid, progressive, man-made institution. The definition I gave above isn’t set in stone; it’s what has emerged through centuries of human refinement as the best version we’ve come up with so far. We can go through the list if you like.
Two – honestly, this is simply the number that currently works the best, and which our laws are currently set up to support. It’s not universal, even today; historically, polygamous marriages have had a dreadful imbalance of power that make them fertile grounds for abuse, but then, historically, so have monogamous marriages. I would be open to considering changing the number, but that’s not what you asked. You asked how I currently define marriage, and I told you.
Souls – this is a poetic way to describe thinking, rational beings. A spiritual” soul,” if it exists, cannot be measured or proven, but a person’s mental and emotional capacity to enter a binding commitment can be.
Love – generally speaking, the people who want to be joined together are people who love each other. When people who don’t love each other are joined together, the results are unhappy.
Union – …I don’t even know how to address this one. Marriage is a union because people want to unite under certain circumstances (usually, but historically not always, involving love), and created an institution to allow them to do so. That union is at the heart of what we call “marriage”; it’s what marriage was originally created to provide. The rest are details and refinements (albeit important ones.)
Adults – see “Souls,” above. Children do not have the capacity to enter binding commitments.
Public testimony – no one needs a marriage to be in love, but those who marry tend to want to give their relationship the weight of commitment and permanence. Humans always consider vows more binding when made publicly. Hence, marriage is made official the same way other oaths are made official – by making the oath before the whole community.
Fourth and finally: did you seriously just come to an atheist blog and ask about God’s stance on marriage?? I mean… is that honestly what you were going for this whole time?
See, this is what I mean when I say you ought to be honest about your intentions from the beginning. If you had opened with “do you think marriage is a divine institution or a man-made one?”, we both could have answered “man-made” and called it a day. And if that’s what you ultimately wanted to debate, sure, we could have debated that once we knew what the debate was.
By hemming and hawing and otherwise dicking around until this big reveal, you aren’t acting like you want a debate. You act like you’re wanting an excuse to insult and condescend to people who don’t share your beliefs. If that’s the game you want to play, sure – we can play, it’s a fun game. But don’t pretend it’s the same thing as debate.
…how, HOW do you go from “this is a reasoned analysis of what has worked well/best for humans throughout history, and what has been shown to make society more stable and individual people happier” to “it’s an arbitrary one-size-fits-all institution”?
“God said so” and “everything is arbitrary” are NOT the only two options in the world. If you believe they are – if you think nothing has meaning or importance unless a deity told you to do/think/believe it – then you live in a very sad world. I prefer reality, where we use our brains.
Ok – one last serious question – then I will call it a day (unless you like having me around 🙂 ? )
Should there be a distinction made between male-female unions with natural procreation potential & other non-traditional unions? Just curious – not really going anywhere with this question (no planned follow-up).
Thanks & sorry if I offended – I can be pretty feisty
AC
Sorry ‘people IN power’
I don’t KC, I have seen some crazy policies, decisions & manipulations from people on power in my 39 years of existence – but I’ll try to keep the faith
‘Dicking Around’. …lol
So the Christian origin & truth perspective is out of bounds – gotcha!
No discrimination there….. But that’s fine – Christianity offends your sensibilities – in this crazy world I see Jesus as the only thing that does not offend mine 🙂
It’s not that it’s “offensive”, it’s that there is no way of knowing whether it is true and with all other things the default position is to disbelieve things that are unobserved and unobservable. The Christian perspective is welcome if you can demonstrate why I should take your particular fairy tales seriously and not anyone else’s.
That’s why we don’t make laws based on religion: because there is no way of knowing that any given faith is correct. Instead we make laws based on what would be best for real human beings that we know exist and aren’t the creation of largely illiterate desert nomads from what was one of the least educated parts of the world at the time.
…Hokay. I’ll answer these in the order I saw them.
First of all, no, I don’t think that a distinction should be made between couples with “natural procreation potential” and couples without it, for a number of reasons. One big one is that it privileges families that include children – and biological children, at that – over all other families. It would make families where one or both partners is infertile (or where they are infertile with each other due to a genetic quirk), families that formed after the onset of menopause, families that have stepchildren from other relationships but do not choose to have more, families that adopt children, and families that simply have no interest in having children automatically less than families that include the biological children of both partners. By placing such a heavy emphasis on the potential for biological children, whether you mean to or not you send the message that anything other than that is not good enough. That is harmful to individual people, individual children, and by devaluing many, many families, harmful to society as a whole. We want to build up the family unit, not tear it down by declaring some as more worthy than others.
I have a friend who is genetically incapable of having a child with her husband. They, as a couple, have no “natural procreation potential.” And any attempt to classify her marriage differently than mine, or imply that her family is not as important as my family, would not only be harmful in the larger societal sense, but also very, very morally wrong.
(And yes, I know you weren’t intending to talk about infertile heterosexual couples – you were drawing a distinction between heterosexual couples which most people presume can have children, and homosexual couples, which most people presume cannot. I am attempting to demonstrate that reality is More Complicated Than That. There are many heterosexual couples that are not able to procreate. And, because transgender people exist, there are some homosexual couples that theoretically could. Even without that, there are many, many same-sex couples who are raising children together – biological children of one partner from a previous relationship, or adopted children. And those adoptive or step-parent/child relationships are just as real and just as important as biological parents.)
*****
And no, Christianity does not offend my delicate sensibilities. I know a good many Christians whom I love and respect, and with whom I can have very productive and respectful conversations about our differing beliefs.
What does offend me is someone bringing up what their religion preaches in a conversation about changing secular laws, as if one should have any affect on the other. Because I’m not a Christian. And I highly, highly dislike laws that would force me to live as though I were.
Let me give you a rather silly example. Pretend I’m a Pagan woman who worships Bast. (This much is true.) Pretend furthermore that I’m a crazy cat lady. (This is not true… mostly. Kaoru, you hush.) Now, say that because I love cats so much, I want to make it a capital offense to hurt or kill a cat. And I want to convince the local legislators to make that a law. You with me so far?
If I tell my congressmen that they need to pass this law because cats are sacred to Bast and therefore killing them is a sacrilege, that is not a good enough reason to pass this law. I can take a personal vow to harm no cats for my own religious reasons, but I can’t force other people, who do not worship Bast and do not believe cats are sacred, to live according to my religious beliefs. To do so would be unfair and wrong. If I want to convince my congressmen to pass this law, I would instead have to bring arguments to prove that harming a cat is terrible enough to merit the death penalty, without resorting to a religious argument. If I can’t prove that the law should be passed for purely secular reasons, then it shouldn’t be passed. Does that make sense?
So when we are seemingly having a discussion about the laws concerning marriage and how changing them may affect society, and after quite a bit of back-and-forth on the issue, you suddenly come out with a religious argument (“Does God change with the times?”) as if that is at ALL pertinent, as if everyone in the world automatically shares your beliefs – THAT is what I consider dicking us around. Wasting our time. Pretending to be having one conversation, when in reality you were simply waiting for a chance to segue into a completely different one.
THAT’S what is out of bounds. (And it’s not because it’s Christianity. If I came on this blog arguing that everyone should support same-sex marriage because the goddess Inanna loves gay people – hint: She totally does; – Kaoru wouldn’t put up with that shit either, and rightly so. The fact that Inanna considers gays and lesbians her particular favorites has absolutely zero place in public discourse, and we should not be making laws based on what ancient Babylonian deities have to say, any more than on what ancient Hebrew deities have to say.)
I will try to say this with love & respect – Well DUH – I argue that our natural (& spiritual) realities are indicative of Christianity as the one and only well-grounded, verifiable, spiritual form of truth – unique and transcending in scope, claim, adherents, presentation, and influence.
Look up Hugh Ross – he’s an astrophysicist who looked thru all of the religious holy books & ultimately the Bible was the only credible source of historical truth but not only that it exposed numerous natural realities & phenomenon yet to be confirmed till centuries later – I argue you are merely taking Gods creation for granted & making it your own
http://hughrossstory.com/hughs-story-page-2/
For Centuries AD none of these things were even questioned – now you enlightened ones are gonna whitewash all the history – your arrogance & self righteous indignation is off the charts.
…you are just precious.
And on that note, I have zero interest in continuing any sort of conversation with you. You are laughably lacking in perspective or even basic knowledge of history, and you do not have enough facts to make any sort of discussion worthwhile for either of us. Good day, sir.
That is so cute. You don’t know what the words “verifiable” and “credible” mean.
These things have been questioned for as long as they have been claimed. It’s just that when Christians (or any religious authorities, really) are in charge of things, they tend to slaughter heretics, so people often kept quiet. It’s the problem with theocracies of any faith.
I see while you tell me to look up Hugh Ross, you haven’t. He has been caught out in lie after lie and engages in pseudo science regularly. He is a liar for Jesus and holds no credibility in the scientific community. Just because somebody holds a degree doesn’t mean that they always engage in good science. That’s why there is a peer review process, and also why Hugh Ross hasn’t had any of his nutty ideas published in respectable journals, only pop science books to make gullible people feel secure in their current beliefs. Watch videos where people ask him where he found the information for his extraordinary claims and suddenly he will get very vague and avoid actually answering the question.
As to my arrogance, you think that you not only know how the universe works but the all powerful creator of everything takes a personal interest in your happiness and behavior. Yea, I’m the arrogant one.
I think we’re done here. Been a blast, but since you never even tried to support your initial claims, it’s pretty easy to tell you aren’t arguing in good faith, which is about what I expected.
Goodbye, AC.