***Don't worry. I have outgrown that ridiculous and sophomoric postulation of evolution.
{ insert emoji of eyes wide open and the jaw dropping to the floor -- not an option in our Smilies Table, but kind of like this, , though with the jaw drop added }
You actually finally learned something?IT'S A MIRACLE! Shazam! Go-o-olly!
Please testify about your repentance and redemption, Brother! How did you finally come to realize that the creationists had been feeding you nothing but lies all this time? Please describe the experience when the scales fell from your eyes and you could finally behold the truth!
But wait. A mere two minutes after telling me that you had forsaken creationism (which is entirely different from The Creation, which creationism opposes), you posted this, Message 3841, to Taq:
Taq, you are in the cult of evolution. You waste you life on this pathetic concept. Grow up.
So to me you say that you have outgrown creationism, but then a mere two minutes later you revert back to SPOUTING STUPID CREATIONIST BULLSHIT LIES AGAIN!
And to make it even worse, Taq had made absolutely no mention of evolution in his Message 3838. YOU HAD DELIBERATELY CHOSEN TO INSERT THAT SPECIFIC STUPID CREATIONIST BULLSHIT LIE ABOUT EVOLUTION ALL ON YOUR OWN.
So you never repented. You never learned anything at all. You lied to me, AGAIN! You fucking lying piece of shit!
And fuck your stupid god, The Father of Lies, too!
I think this SMBC explains why Candle3 believes such ridiculous nonsense. SMBC
All the more reason to reject his stupid lie-filled religion.
I left Christianity because I started reading the Bible and realized that I quite literally could not believe what I was reading. Of course, I was proceeding from a naïve assumption that I was supposed to take it literally, which my church, mainstream non-denominational Protestant, most likely did not require. Also, I only made it about half-way through Genesis, though perhaps not quite that far since I don't remember reading about Lot's daughters getting him drunk so that they could take turns raping him (Gen 19), not something that should escape the notice of a teenage boy.
Then I learned about the long bloody history of Christianity filled with persecutions and atrocities committed by Christians against others (and even amongst themselves), which did little to recommend it. But that part is incidental.
Then circa 1970 there was the Jesus Freak fundamentalist movement which formed the basis of many megachurches, Calvary Church in particular. Whereas my assumption of biblical literalism had been a naïve mistake, it was now their central dogma. While that doctrine of literalism reinforced my initial rejection of Christianity, my further studies (I started out as a language major, primarily German, though also Koine Greek using the New Testament) exposed its impossibility as well as presenting a plethora of problems for it. Basically, conversion would have required I get a lobotomy followed by a complete mind wipe.
Then 1981 I encountered creationism again. I had first encountered it briefly, two vague claims, through the Jesus Freaks in 1970 and rejected them as ridiculous (one was about the NASA computer that found Joshua's Long Day, which was so blatantly false). Now a decade later I was surprised that it was still around, so I said to myself, "Self, maybe there's something to this after all." So I looked into it, started checking out its claims, and found them to be completely and absolutely false. Indeed, in subsequent just-under-half-a-century of researching and verifying countless creationist claims, I cannot think of a single one that turned out to be true, nor even remotely valid. Instead, every single one has turned out to false, and the vast majority of them stupidly so. Add onto that manure pile the creationist practice of gross dishonesty and constant lying. All of which is required to believe in order to be part of that religion.
So in order to "be saved" I would be required to sell my soul. Is that supposed to be some kind of Zen koan? Rather, I consider myself to be saved by having rejected all that stupid claptrap and all that stupid claptrap has vaccinated me from ever making the mistake of converting to that false religion.
In contrast, the poor souls who have been perverted by creationism (or should we call them "the soul-less"?) are lost and refuse to be found. Their need to join their false church has led them to reject reality and ever reject Christianity. Which brings us back to your SMBC point.
I keep forgetting whose signature block repeats this quote:
quote:“You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.” ― Jonathan Swift
I would quibble slightly.
Yes, conversion to a religion rarely, if ever, is done for rational reasons, but rather for irrational reasons, ranging from simple traditional belonging needs (eg, you were born into it or married into it) to strong emotional needs. Belief is almost never a conscious decision, but rather held for largely emotional reasons -- an illustration of this is the experience of deconversion during with one tries desperately to hold onto one's beliefs but cannot.
The only role that reason plays in religious belief is the use of apologetics et al. to rationalize one's beliefs. Apologetics arguments are used and useful in making a believer think that his beliefs are reasonable, but they are virtually useless in convincing a non-believer; eg, quoting the Bible to support a belief could convince a Bible believer, but not a non-believer who finds other sources of wisdom more convincing. That causes proselytizers no end of frustration and confusion when their "sure-fire" arguments that they and theirs find overwhelmingly convincing leave their targets unimpressed (and even left laughing in the proselytizers' faces); as one creationist told me when I asked why he kept using such unconvincing stupid arguments: "That's because you're not convinced already." I also found that to explain why they could not care less when a creationist claim proves to be false, since all that matters is whether it sounds convincing. And, as per your SMBC point, the only way that those false claims can continue to sound convincing is for you to refuse to examine them too closely, or fail to maintain your carefully guarded ignorance.
However, it is not true that one cannot be reasoned out of a religious position. The only proviso there is that a second person will not be able to reason you out of your beliefs because you will resist his efforts. Rather, it will happen when you yourself start to examine your own beliefs to test whether they make any actual sense. Once you start to pull on loose threads of your belief system, ones that don't make sense or seem contradictory other threads/beliefs, you stand the risk of unravelling the entire tapestry of your belief system, AKA "deconversion" and the forementioned watching helplessly as your entire faith system crumbles before your eyes.
Apologetics is supposed to prevent that from happening. As I learned it (and as I seem to recall), apologetics serves two purposes:
Dealing with contradictions by demonstrating that they are not actual contradictions but rather only "apparent contradictions", and that conflicting beliefs and ideas do not actually conflict. Id est, it explains contradictions and conflicts away arguing that they do not really exist.
Demonstrating that "irrational" beliefs are actually quite "rational" and even reasonable. Id est, it explains away nonsense by "explaining" that it actually does make sense (even when it really doesn't).
Apologetics is often presented to believers as tools to use in proselytizing to non-believers, but as already noted it does not work very well for that purpose, mainly because arguments that believers find convincing appear foolish at best to non-believers. Rather, apologetics is most useful for believers as it helps them protect their faith from unraveling, which is does as already described by rationalizing nonsensical beliefs as sensical and explaining away conflicts and contradictions. The apologetics term for those functions is harmonization, something which every practicing believer needs to use; the alternative is to avoid thinking about your religion which would entail not practicing it -- having a religion that you do not practice is worse than useless (for a number of reasons).
A term I've been seeing more and more on YouTube is deconstruction. Most of those videos are by Christian ministries whose main message seems to be that deconstruction is a threat to faith (a "slippery slope" that will lead one into atheism) and must be avoided, whereas the first video I saw (and recommended to Phat in Message 66) criticized ways of and reasons for avoiding deconstruction while offering a "smart way" to deconstruction that would not endanger one's faith. As I described it in that message to Phat (which includes her embedded YouTube video):
Try watching this YouTube video, The LOGICAL reasons people deconstruct | 5 strategies Evangelicals use to NOT deconstruct by Deconstruct & Level Up:
In the comment section she's addressed as "JC" apparently for "J.C. Lamont". She appears to be a Christian, possibly evangelical, who is trying to guide Christians suffering from cognitive dissonance caused by conflicts between things they've been taught to believe and hence entering into deconstruction, but they fear that that will lead to atheism (which it can do, especially if they are stupid in their deconstruction or just plain fall into the booby traps set by their religion). She's preparing a course which I seem to recall is called "Door #3" -- she presents examples of the problem as a list of three options with the third one being what she would recommend.
Basically, her approach is similar to what I've tried to do with creationists. Their theology teaches them that if creationism's lies turn out to be false (which they are) then that would disprove God and they should become hedonistic atheist axe murderers (that may seem a bit hyperbolic, but there's actually what some creationists have told me).
Rather, the point I try to make to creationists is that their theology is Man-made and hence fallible, so when their theology turns out to be wrong about something then it's the theology that's at fault, not "God", and that having something disprove a part of their theology only affects that theology and not "God". Instead, creationism presents its theology as infallible and teaches that disproving that theology is the same as disproving "God".
My attitude towards theology is the same as my attitude towards science: if a theory is wrong about something then correct the theory, so likewise if a theology is wrong about something then correct the theology.
However, JC points out that evangelicals would view that situation as part of a slippery slope that will slide them down into atheism and hence would one or more of the five strategies she describes for avoiding deconstruction. I see that fear reflected in your " ... I will be left in the dark."
In other words, my take is that in every system of ideas, both religious and non-religious, we can accumulate ideas that are wrong (AKA "bad") along with good ideas, so there is a need to examine one's ideas in order to find and weed out the bad ideas. The problem that believers can have is that they tend to think that all their religious ideas are vital to their faith when that is not actually the case. I feel that JC's smart deconstruction approach is intended to promote ways to perform such examination and weeding out without endangering one's faith.
However, in many cases deconstruction of one's religious beliefs leads to too many questions which leads to the forementioned analogy of pulling on loose threads that lead to the entire cloth coming unraveled, basically throwing out the baby along with the bath water.
So, to try to wrap this up, it is indeed possible to reason oneself out of something (a religion) that one hadn't reasoned himself into. I would think that many cases of deconversion are examples of that in which the believer started examining his beliefs and found that they didn't make any sense.
I also would think that this explains the fierce, even angry, opposition to discussing one's beliefs (as I have tried with creationists by asking what they are talking about, what they think evolution is, and why they think there's any conflict between evolution and God). They are afraid that if they look too closely at their ancillary (ie, "bad" or "junk") beliefs then they would lose their faith.
Which reminds me that I should complete that topic I created for you, Radiocarbon Dating Discussion with candle2. Even though you will just continue to refuse to even look at it, let alone read it, but others can learn from it.
***I have replied to you multiple times about dating techniques. Any reasonable individual would dismiss them.
There are too many assumptions made with dating methods.
For example, evolutionists assume that the decay rate has been constant for hundreds of millions of years. There is no way to know this, not even with a modicum of certainly.
Evolutionists state that their samples have always been in a closed system. They insist that outside elements could not, and did not, add or subtract radioactive isotopes.
Evolutionists claim that the parent-daughter elements of original sample is always knows.
Whenever dating methods and techniques disagree with their assumed then they say that the sample has been corrupted. They want it both way, whichever supports their assumptions.
Evolutionists insist that the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere has been constant. There is no way to know this. Science cannot test this.
The half-life of C-14 is roughly 5700 years. After 50,00 years, (no, I'll be generous and give evolutionists 100,000 years) samples should not contain C-14; at least not in a detectable amount.
You seem to be an intelligent individual, Dwise, but you are wasting the talent God gave you.
Some are studying and working in order to be ready to rule with Christ when He returns to set up His kingdom.
Evolutionists are wasting their life on garbage. It makes me sad to witness it.
Paulk, you say that you understand the Bible. I don't what your faith is.
The world has so many religions. About a third call themselves Christian. Butt even Christianity has hundreds of denominations.
Why? If the God of the Bible is God of all, why do so many people not even know of Him? Billions of people lived and died before Jesus even came to earth.
Acts 4:12 states that there is no other name under heaven that can save us except Jesus.
Jesus stated that He is the way, the truth, and the life. John 14:6.
Jesus also said that no one could come to Him unless the Father who sent Him draws him. John 6:44.
Is this fair to all those who have never heard of Jesus? Is it fair for them to suffer eternal death? It is not their fault that they never heard of Him.
Jesus' Church is always described as a "little flock." All humans were made in the image of God, not just some.
Romans 8:29-30 and Ephesians 1,5, 11 states that those who draw close to God were predestinated (proorizo-limited in advance.
Jesus taught in parables. It is commonly believed that Jesus used parables to make His meaning clearer. But, the very opposite is true.
Mark 4:10-12 and Matthew 13:10-15 plainly states that Jesus taught in parables in order to hide the true meanings.
Isaiah 25: 7 records that God drew a veil over the eyes of the whole world, it covered all nations.
John 12:40 "He ha blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, Lest they should see with their eyes, Lest they should u/s with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.
Jesus wanted only the elect, the predestinated, to understand the spiritual meaning of His parables.
Jesus is not trying to save the world at this time, in this age.
Percy, those who are called by God during this present age have to overcome the world and the present ruler of it.
This is their only opportunity for eternal life. If they falter, or if they don't live up to that calling, they are no different than the angels who rebelled against God.
Hebrews 6:4-6 states that for those who fall away it is impossible for them to gain repentance.
God knows that the predestinated knows that He exists, and that they have been called. They are as sure of this as they are about anything. This is why God condemns them if they fall away.
For them this is the most pressing thing that could happen to them. It is not a game.
***I have replied to you multiple times about dating techniques. Any reasonable individual would dismiss them.
And I have replied to your utterly and incredibly stupid bullshit lies about those dating techniques in which I explained in detail why your stupid bullshit lies are indeed stupid bullshit lies. Many times! And you repeatedly refuse to even look at them. Which is why it pisses me off so much that you continue to post your utterly and incredibly stupid bullshit lies.
I even created a new topic, Radiocarbon Dating Discussion with candle2, specifically for this discussion. THAT IS WHERE WE NEED TO TAKE THIS, though you will continue to refuse to do so. In that topic, I have explained in detail how radiocarbon dating actually works.
You seem to be an intelligent individual, Dwise, but you are wasting the talent God gave you.
Not at all. I have exercised my intellect all my life and am always eager to learn. I am constantly thinking things through and analyzing ideas that arise; I tend to treat all subjects raised as an invitation to an intellectual exercise. That is also why I abhor brain-dead mindless pursuits like watching sports (especially football) or trying to follow Trump's stream-of-unconsciousness meandering lies.
You, on the other hand, exert great effort to avoid learning anything. Even to the point of refusing to even look at a reply using the flimsy and lame excuse of [voice=whiny little bitch baby]"My phone's screen is too small to read anything! Waaah!"[/voice]. That anyone would be so absolutely determined to zealously remain so utterly stupid is entirely alien to me.
LEARN SOMETHING, you fucking moron!
Evolutionists are wasting their life on garbage. It makes me sad to witness it.
You are projecting again. The garbage is creationism, a pack of lies that opposes the Creation (and hence also the Creator). Arguably, creationism is the product of the Father of Lies, whom Christian doctrine (which you might have heard of once in your life) identifies as "Satan", and whom you obviously serve and worship through your incessant lying.
Even if the supernatural does not exist after all, it is horrible to see fools such as yourself totally waste their lives on creationist garbage. Especially when they could experience the joy of experiencing nature (which most definitely does exist) instead of huddling in the darkness frightened of everything and seeing "demons" everywhere.
"Sad" does not even begin to describe how we feel seeing you [pl] wasting your potential. Complete disgust comes closer.
We know that everything you say, including what you bloviate about "God" is a lie. We know that because everything you have said that we can verify has turned out to be a stupid lie. Why, then, should anyone expect what you say about things that we cannot verify to be any different; obviously and logically they're all nothing but lies.
You and your lies are the embodiment of what WC Fields said:
William Claude Fields:
There comes a time in the affairs of men where you have to grab the bull by the tail and face the situation.
And I have replied to your utterly and incredibly stupid bullshit lies about those dating techniques in which I explained in detail why your stupid bullshit lies are indeed stupid bullshit lies. Many times! And you repeatedly refuse to even look at them. Which is why it pisses me off so much that you continue to post your utterly and incredibly stupid bullshit lies.
I even created a new topic, Radiocarbon Dating Discussion with candle2, specifically for this discussion. THAT IS WHERE WE NEED TO TAKE THIS, though you will continue to refuse to do so. In that topic, I have explained in detail how radiocarbon dating actually works.
First, a quick repeat of the same refutations to your bullshit lies that I have already provided far too many times, this time with links to the pertinent messages in Radiocarbon Dating Discussion with candle2 -- OBTW, that is an example of a link; observe and learn for once in your miserable benighted life.
For example, evolutionists assume that the decay rate has been constant for hundreds of millions of years. There is no way to know this, not even with a modicum of certainly.
Bullshit! Refer to Message 6. Extensive experimentation and testing has shown that decay rates are very highly resistant to external forces. The only cases where decay rates were found to be affected either required very highly extreme conditions (eg, pressure and heat many times greater than in the center of a star) or only affected the decay rates of very light isotopes (eg, beryllium-7) with half-lives so short (eg, minutes or seconds or fractions thereof) as to be completely useless for a dating method. And even then, the effect is only a very small percentage, commonly less than the margin of error in determining the decay rate.
Evolutionists state that their samples have always been in a closed system. They insist that outside elements could not, and did not, add or subtract radioactive isotopes.
Bullshit! Only stupid lying creationists would say that!
Refer to Message 8 for the truth, especially the part where the isochron method detects such an occurrence.
Evolutionists claim that the parent-daughter elements of original sample is always knows.
Bullshit! Only a stupid lying creationist would claim that because they rely on an extremely over-simplistic misunderstanding that completely ignores actual practice.
Again, refer to Message 8 for the truth, especially the part where the isochron method compares and depends on the ratio of radiogenic and non-radiogenic isotopes of the daughter element.
Whenever dating methods and techniques disagree with their assumed then they say that the sample has been corrupted. They want it both way, whichever supports their assumptions.
Contamination is always a problem, as I will cover in Part VI. Indeed, there is always a background amount of C-14 that cannot be eliminated, so scientists have to test a sample that contains no radiocarbon, like a diamond to determine that background amount in order to eliminate it from the actual measurement. By analogy, consider weight flour on a kitchen scale: first you put the empty container on the scale and press the "tare" button to eliminate its weight from the measurement of the flour's weight.
Evolutionists insist that the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere has been constant. There is no way to know this. Science cannot test this.
No, scientists do not assume that, but rather through testing they discovered that the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere is not constant and they have worked out methods to account and compensate for that variation. Only stupid lying creationists claim otherwise, as you yourself just did YET AGAIN! You fucking lying moron!
I will cover that in Part VI.
The half-life of C-14 is roughly 5700 years. After 50,00 years, (no, I'll be generous and give evolutionists 100,000 years) samples should not contain C-14; at least not in a detectable amount.
That would only be true of C-14 in organic samples that was of atmospheric origin, and not recently formed C-14 from other sources. As I have explained to you countless times already. Why are you so willfully stupid that you are incapable of learning anything?
Also, I have repeatedly demanded that you explain why you would ever expect recently generated C-14 of non-atmospheric origin and which was never a part of the food chain should have anything to do the radiocarbon dating method. Countless times have I asked and demanded that and each and every time you refused to answer! You dishonest piece of shit!
In the meantime, please pull your head out of your ass.
CAVEAT:
That topic is not yet completed for a couple reasons; eg:
I got diverted by other matters that required my limited spare time.
You are so stubbornly willfully stupid that you would never ever bother to even look at it. I would be extremely surprised if you clicked on it even once -- though if you were to say that you did, I couldn't believe you since you incessantly lie about everything.
I am breaking up my general reply into several parts in order to keep each part short. Here is the general breakdown:
Message 1, Message 2, Message 3, Message 4 -- copying the discussion from the thread that you were pulling off-topic with your bullshit along with replies both from myself and from others. That was to pull all pertinent material into one place for efficient referencing.
Message 6, Part II, Reply to candle2's False Claim: "Decay Rates are not constant" -- Refuted this bullshit lie of your using the article on the subject, Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective, by Dr. Roger C. Wiens, a Christian and a physicist and a member of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA -- "a Christian religious organization of scientists and people in science-related disciplines and whose stated purpose is 'to investigate any area relating Christian faith and science.'").
Message 7, Part III, Some Basic Chemistry -- since you have demonstrated abysmal ignorance of even the most basic scientific knowledge, this is a quick review of 1960's high school chemistry using the Bohr model of the atom. I also review what makes an atom a particular element and what an ISOTOPE is.
Message 8, Part IV, Reply to candle2's False Claim: "We don't know the starting amount of the daughter element" -- I review the basics of radiometric dating methods, in particular contrasting the overly simplistic approach which is prone to error (and hence is misrepresented in creationist lies as the only method) with the highly reliable and largely self-validatingisochron dating method, which incorporates testing the ratio between radiogenic and non-radiogenic ISOTOPES of the daughter element (which explicitly takes into account the initial amount of the daughter element). This method also detects whether parent or daughter elements had migrated into or out of the sample; that is part of its self-validating feature.
Message 9, Re: Part IV ... by Taq -- in which he posts the graphics from Chris Stassen's Isochron article which I could not.
That last dated from more than two years ago (18-Nov-2022). I had planned out and started on the further installments to my reply, listed here:
Part V, The Radiocarbon Dating Method -- I describe the formation of C-14 from nitrogen atoms being hit by radiation and how only C-14 of atmospheric origin plays any part in radiocarbon dating, and how C-14 from subterranean radiation sources does not. I also cover the reservoir effect which is the source of many creationist lies.
Almost completed and ready for posting.
Part VI -- Here I plan to examine in more detail the various factors that can affect results and how they are accounted for. This is important since typical creationist claims are based on the total fiction that scientists are a bunch of blithering idiots who blindly apply a simplistic method completely ignorant of the "serious problems" that the creationists point out in their claims. In reality, those creationists got those "serious problems" from the very same scientists they are trying to "expose as incompetent and deluded". Scientists know their methods very well, have studied and tested them thoroughly, and have catalogued all problems along with methods for detecting and dealing with a problem. Clearly, scientists are not the idiots, but rather it is the creationists who are the idiots.
Part VII -- I plan to enumerate Candle3's "serious problems for C-14 dating" and address them directly on the basis of what we have discussed in Parts I-VI.
, though with the jaw drop added }
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