The Glorification and Worship of Torture

Not the kind of torture you're talking about, but there's also the psychological torture of the millions, if not billions, of Christians experiencing terror at the thought of dying and going to hell before having a chance to get right with God.--Percy

You can just feel the love.--Percy

But did you notice he forgot to use carriage return on one line? I think that's a first! --Percy

I agree that I'd like to see something more nuanced.By the way, I reformatted your reply. This is how adults talk. --Percy

If you're like me you come away from some posts thinking to yourself, "Not my best." On the other hand, some members can exhaust the creative juices. Say you've just posted five messages in a row of quality stuff and all of it has just gone right over their head. By that time there's no juices left, plus what's the point anyway, the effort's just wasted.But they're not wasted to anyone else who enjoys seeing you at your best!--Percy

[candle2]
"On a side note, if you use the dBcode used in this forum,
you can quote other users, so if you for instance do
[quote'=zucadragon] I said this [/'quote] without the two '
​
You would get
Zucadragon:
I said this
​
It's a nice tool to make discussion more organised."***I have a Book that tells me the correct way to do it, as
it was from the beginning. And absolutely atheistic scientists
teach the universe came from nothing.
[/candle2]--Percy

There's also a dBCode for suspending parsing of dBCodes, either [np] or [noparse]. So if you do this: Then you'll get this: --Percy

I couldn't guess what's causing the problem, though often a reboot makes many mysteries disappear.Are you entering your message in the message box in a browser window, and it's the browser window that won't scroll? If so, have you tried dragging the scroll bar, which is usually on the right side of browser windows? Does your mouse or trackball have a scroll wheel? If so, have you tried that?--Percy

Who is going to believe this? You, for one. You believe it about all the authors who over an enormous length of time composed all the religious books of all the other religions. Your belief is correct, but about all religions, Christianity included.Kennewick Man, roughly 9000 years old and predating creation according to Christianity, has been found by DNA analysis to be ancestral to the Indian tribes still living in that region of Washington state. The tribe stated the bones were ancestral when they were found and they were right. Their beliefs span a far longer time than Christianity.--Percy

This would be incorrect. The distant galaxies JWST found were very bright, which was not expected because brightness usually corresponds to size, and there should not have been enough time for large galaxies to form. Young galaxies should not be as large as much older galaxies.But as it turns out they weren't as large as the brightness would lead one to expect. Those first galaxies that formed around 450 million years after the Big Bang are much more compact than much older galaxies like the Milky Way, around a thousandth the size with a star formation rate of about one per year. Galaxies about 300 million years later were discovered to be much larger, about a thirtieth the size of the Milky Way with star formation rates of about a thousand a year. This means that the first galaxies were small and bright and then grew at an enormous rate. This is consistent with currently understood astrophysics if black holes formed early, within 50 million years of the Big Bang, leading to early bursts of star formation.Another way in that these early forming galaxies are different from much older galaxies is that their black holes could match or even exceed their stellar mass. In old galaxies like our own the stellar mass exceeds the mass of the central black hole by a thousand to one.Source: JWST’s Puzzling Early Galaxies Bend AstrophysicsActually, triangulation can be applied out to distances of as much as 400 light years. Amazing how accurately measurements can be made and distances calculated, ain't it? Given the enormous difference in the brightness of stars, it's intuitively obvious that what you describe is unworkable. Such measurements are actually made using Cepheid variable stars whose period of variability depends upon brightness. Why do you think that knowledge gained using the scientific method isn't scientific? Is red shift only questionable if God didn't do it? It doesn't rule out a brain in a jar, either. Unless you believe the universe is 13.7 billion years old, they are not compatible.--Percy

You're raising an issue of absolutely no significance. The width of a human hair is about .003 inches, a very tiny number, but that's the same as 4,762,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Planck lengths, an absolutely huge number. So what?What matters is the ratio between the triangulation sides. Under ideal circumstances where the star is directly above the Earth's orbital plane and we have an isosceles triangle then that ratio is around 8×10^-8, which is the ratio between 18" and the distance from Juneau to Miami. Given an object that lies in the same line of sight as the star whose distance we're measuring but that is much, much further away (almost any galaxy would do, though of course distant stars are fine, too - the Milky Way is 100,00 light years across and contains billions of stars far enough away), we can detect a difference in distance in degrees of sky as tiny as .01 arcsec. The diameter of Earth's orbit is too small to measure more distant objects.Why are you challenging this science using just "I find it hard to believe" arguments? Despite learning about spooky action at a distance over a half century ago I still find it very hard to believe, yet I believe it because that's what the science tells us. Why do you doubt that astronomers have equipment that can make extremely accurate measurements of very tiny slivers of sky?A better question is why we're discussing this in a thread titled The Glorification and Worship of Torture.--Percy

I'm replying to this because of all the low hanging fruit. I think the only response to this is, "Your ignorance is still stunning," not to mention that you're exhibiting poor comprehension of what Tanypteryx said. The evidence strongly suggests that the Iron Age began thousands of years later, 1500 BC at the earliest. If you have other evidence please present it. There is no evidence of a global flood. Yes, up until the Bronze Age which began around 2000 BC. It sounds like you've fallen for this absurd creationist claim. The strategy of, "Ridicule scientists for holding absurd opinions that they don't hold," is only likely to work on your fellow creationists. I usually have a pretty good feel for Admin's thinking, and I think he'd find little relationship between what you just wrote and The Glorification and Worship of Torture. The goal, one of them, is to minimize off-topic distractions. Rule 2 of the Forum Guidelines has been around like forever. You agreed to follow the Forum Guidelines when you joined:

2. Please stay on topic for a thread. Open a new thread for new topics.

I've never heard anyone on the side of science say this. Only creationists say this. But science does have a pretty good handle on things like radiometric dating and deciphering geologic formations and provides a great many answers in these areas that creationists often take issue with. Is that what you're really talking about? Limited in what sense? Why something instead of nothing is an ancient philosophical question. I don't think science knows how to even define consciousness, let alone figure out how it began. You'd lose that argument. Science may not know much about consciousness or what was before the Big Bang, but it does know a great deal about the brain and cosmology, something that isn't true of first-graders. You're falsely accusing us of making a claim we never made and then asking for proof when all science can ever offer is evidence strong enough to form a consensus.​--Percy

I'm not an atheist. Moderators are strongly discouraged from moderating a thread in which they're participating, so I usually just remind people of what's in the Forum Guidelines. I have no power here.--Percy

You don't know this. You're just preaching your religion at us. You can believe this on faith if you like, but the rest of us would like some evidence. Yeah right, it's perfect except for the part where it's fictional and doesn't accord with the real world. What do I find evil about making stuff up and lying to people about it? You have to ask? I only know why I don't believe in your God: no evidence. How do you tell the difference between a loving God who visits "evil, pain and suffering" on the world, and an evil, spiteful, vengeful, bloodthirsty God who visits "evil, pain and suffering" on the world. I only see you attempting nonsensical answers. God is nowhere in sight. I don't know about that. "Evil, pain and suffering" doesn't sound much like love. Except God isn't here. It isn't God claiming to tell us the truth, it's only you claiming you're telling us the truth, and you clearly don't know what you're talking about. Fair to everyone? Really? Explain how this is fair: Over and over again, what you say tells us that your religion is exactly what we think: a pack of lies motivated mostly by a desire to appear to be doing good while achieving an unknowable status of eternal salvation.People believe tons of things that aren't true. A third of the country believes voter fraud played a significant role in the 2020 election. Huge portions of the world believe in different forms of a fantasy being who cares for them while at the same time allowing terrible things to happen to them.--Percy

You have still offered no evidence for anything you say.By the way, God lied:

Genesis 2:16-17:

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¹⁶And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

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But they didn't die, did they.--Percy