Dank, you might find this useful reading:

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

As always, when talking about complex subjects, all kinds of assumptions are made. They are often automatically injected, and the listener (reader), because he is focused on some major point, often misses some little assumption that can have a tremendous impact on the whole.

For example, from the above, linked, Nick Szabo article:

Look at the assumption in the first line of the quote. What is really meant by it? Does the rest of the paragraph really explain it?

Consider. Death is NOT more probable than life, because without life, there would be no death, right? I mean, something that is dead, must have been alive at some time. Otherwise it is simply an inanimate object, right?

So far in the existence that is around us, we haven't found anything that is alive, and will be alive forever. At least not that we know of. So, someone might think that life and death could be equally probable. However, here is where life is more probable than death. There exist MANY, MANY living things that have not yet died. And until they ALL die, we cannot be secure in the knowledge that they absolutely WILL die.

Personally, I do not follow Dawkins. But if he truly thinks that death is more probable than life, he is not thinking clearly. At the very least, he is not expressing himself clearly. Death is absolutely not more probable than life. Death is not even the opposite of life. In fact, life and death have nothing to do with each other except that, without life there cannot be death.



EDIT: If you read the article in its entirety, you will be able to find many places where something is inserted that is not explained. It isn't just once or twice. It is throughout the article. Such insertions may sound right and proper. Yet, because there often isn't any explanation of them at all, and because most of the time they could be explained in many different ways, the interpretation of them is left to individual readers who may have many different ideas about what is being expressed.

The point? The whole article is virtually meaningless. One might have as relevantly said, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, etc.," and let it go at that.

Thanks, Boxx, for your kind words, for your trust in what I have been saying and the way I say it, and for your concern about my mental health. I would have responded like this sooner, but weekends are so hectic most of the time.

As can be readily seen in this forum, people often discuss many topics. People often have many opinions. Sometimes they back their opinions up. Sometimes they don't. So, I want to thank you again, that you think my points are real-world relevant enough that you might want to stop me from expressing them. I don't know why you would want to do this. Perhaps it is that people really don't want to hear something that makes sense, right? The fact that people go to all kinds of goofy sci-fi movies - or watch them on TV - suggests that they might not want the truth, right?

I know not everybody believes in some "magical man that lives in the clouds." Yet quite a few in this forum want to believe in magical scientists that spout all kinds of things as truth that are not... at least by any real evidence that they have to back it up.

Take evolution, for example. The commenter called the joint wants to twist the ideas of evolution into something that isn't commonly understood among folks, just to hide some of the truths about how foolish of an idea evolution is. I mean, who has a time viewer that can take a peek back to see what really happened. Nobody! And when you are dealing with something as complex as the formation of life and species, there's simply no way of outguessing what really happened. Yet that is what modern evolution promoters seem to be trying to do. Just look at all the textbooks that suggest over many pages that evolution is a fact, even though they formally mention in an obscure line or two that it isn't known to be fact for sure.

And look at my comment above yours - https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/737322.msg9625147#msg9625147. Some joker by the name of Nick Szabo is credited with reaffirming some statement by another joker named Richard Dawkins, that death is more probable than life. How silly. Everybody knows that you can't have death except that you have life first. And everybody can see that there are gigantic numbers of living things that are alive, that haven't died yet.

Do people really want to believe death is more probable than life, when they can see all the living things around them that have not, yet, died? How foolish. Can't folks see that death only exists among the things that were living and are not living any more? This makes death and life probability equal among dead things. Life is way more probable because there is so much more of it that death hasn't, yet, affected. What's with the head games? Are they really trying to suggest that life and death have something to do with probability, when we all can see that death only follows in things that are living?

Your little comment about me has me a little worried about YOU. Come on down off your fictional delusions. Wake up and smell the coffee. Of course, if "they" are paying you to test me, I can understand. A person's got to earn a living. In that case, I welcome all the comments about me you want to make. We wouldn't want you to starve, now, would we?

Thanks for your encouragement, BitChick. So far, in this forum, it is really fun to be able to show people the truth. They are basically nice people. Just look at the things S.Boxx has to say. His (her?) encouragement and concern are wonderful, even if he/she is a little backward in the way he says it.

I am happy for your successes in India. I haven't had the opportunity to do something like that... travel with an outreach or medical group. Maybe I simply haven't made my opportunity.

Lots of churches say that you can't receive Jesus without hearing God's Word. Personally, I am coming to believe more and more that it is in the heart through nature that you first hear Jesus... not the Bible. What I mean is this.

If God hadn't held back the destruction when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, everything would have collapsed back then.
We don't know what it would have been like to have children in a sinless state, because it never happened.
Even though little children and fetuses have sin in them (they are physically flawed in their DNA), it is the power of Jesus that they are living in from their start.
In other words, all people hear Jesus throughout their fetal life, and for the first few years as children, even though they are gradually being corrupted by sin, and the hearing is becoming dull.
The point is that ALL hear Jesus, not only those to whom the Bible is read (although most reject who have not heard the Bible because they haven't received the confirmation of God working through His Word, and they have become deaf to their original fetus and little-child training from nature).

I know that I have opened up a lot of folks in this forum to alternative ideas. It's evident from the way some of them pick on me. Oh well. They are the ones that have to live with themselves.

Thanks, again. And blessings on YOUR work.

I know, I know. I should have PMed her. Sorry about that.



Having 100% faith is different. So is knowing something for a 100% fact. One hundred percent faith is blind faith. One hundred percent fact is no faith at all.

The reason that God gave us the Bible is that most people can't live on 100% faith. Life is based on cause and effect, at least the way we perceive it. Simply living throws us out of faith some, and into looking for facts to back things up. If we were required to have blind faith in God, we would all fail.

Nobody knows anything as 100% fact. Sometimes we think we do. But we take even the most factual things in life on faith at least a tiny bit. In many of my previous posts in this thread, I have pointed out why evidence for God is way stronger than evidence for there not being any God. So, what's the big deal about 100% true (fact)? Our knowledge of such doesn't exist.

One of the primary reasons that anyone spreads his truth is as you say. We'd have a lot of lonely evolution scientists out there if they couldn't spread their "truth" to other lonely evolution scientists.



While I am interested in reactions, I am also interested in people knowing the truth. Part of the way to get people to know truth is getting them to react and respond on something.

Consider kids in school. School isn't very interesting when all the professor does is profess. There needs to be interaction, often so that the professor can learn exactly which area of his expertise people need to know about more so that they get a better picture of the truth.



That's probably a very big truth. God doesn't want people preaching a bunch of nonsense around the world. That's why I and a few others sit tight and study... just so that there are a few of us that know the bottom-line truth.



And you have a really hard time understanding that the real reason people pick on my responses and myself is, that they don't really have any logical responses for my arguments.

It hurts to be wrong, and to know that someone has showed you up. And it hurts even more to know you are wrong, but to NOT know WHY you are wrong... to feel like you have had your very base ripped out from under you. And that's the exact thing I have done to the atheists in this forum who have thoroughly read my comments here.

What else can they do than to fight back any way they know how? After all, they don't have any God who teaches them any morals (they think). So they are allowed to make their own morals, or to have none, if they so desire. So, they act like the beasts, and fight back, rather than to simply lick their wounds, and try to remain friendly.

A few of them like S.Boxx remain cordial, maybe even friendly.



It's kind of sad to see how many people accept the alternative ideas of things like evolution, big bang, and atheism... ideas which are alternative to the truth.

So much BS in this I couldn't help but make a giant response

You still have blind faith in the bible, there is absolutely no way to know the accuracy of what was written.  Every religion has a holy book, what makes yours valid and theirs not?
Actually, there are many things we know as 100% fact.  We know we're not going to go floating away because of gravity, we know that cause has effect, we know that mass x velocity = force, etc...  If we didn't know anything for sure the computer you're typing on right now wouldn't exist

Actually they spread it because we're trying to evolve as a species and understand our universe better, unlike religious people trying to stay in the dark ages.  Everything we have found so far points to evolution, and nothing towards the christian idea of intelligent design.


No, there's so few of you that are stupid enough to believe in a book of fairy tales that contradicts everything we have observed

Oh man, this is rich.  You haveno/ logic whatsoever, every post you make is full of fallacies, false information, and straight up ignoring facts.  I've read through all of your comments, and they're moronic.  There is nothing convincing in them, nothing that hasn't already been debunked, and the majority of it was just preaching about your sky-daddy.

I love how you're pretty much admitting here that without your holy book you would probably act like a beast.  We have morals because we're decent human beings, because of societal rules, and because jail sucks.

These ideas are not alternative to the truth, yours are.  There is no evidence whatsoever for your beliefs and a ton for ours.  

Cooldgamer,

I know your comments are directed to BADecker, but if you don't mind I will share a few thoughts. (And if you do mind you can just ingore me. )

Blind faith?  I guess you can can see it that way.  What is really strange, and even supernatural if you will, is that the Bible says that God will "Open the eyes of the blind."  In a way a person cannot see things spiritually until this happens.  Many people have said that the Bible made no sense to them until they accepted Christ and then it was like they could "see" things that they never saw before.  There have been times in my life where I have "seen" sins that a person is struggling with with the sole purpose of just praying for that person.  I have "seen" visions.  I have "seen"  several people that I recognized were demon possessed just by feeling their presence in the room and then looked that direction and saw that they "saw" me too!  A bit creepy but at the same time it just proved to me that I can "see" things in a spiritual way that many cannot.  The Bible is even said to be "foolish" to those that do not have the eyes to see.  Instead of judging others for not seeing I should be saying that I would not expect anything less.

There are some things in science that are 100% fact.  Evolution has not been proven as 100% fact.  It is taught that way now.  This is a huge problem with the scientific community today.

It is hard for me to grasp how something as complex as a human cell could be thought to happen by chance and knowing the complexity of even a single celled organisms structure and ability to work could have just happened from nothing.  The odds of even a single cell evolving are beyond belief and could even be said to be mathematically impossible. Order does not come from chaos.  This is impossible and has not been observed.  It seems that the desire to prove evolution no matter what the evidence shows has blinded most from what I can see.  

Morality should not be based solely on societal norms.  Throughout history there have been things that society says is "OK" that changes based on whatever the culture decides is good or bad (for instance, right now our culture is fine with abortion and under God's law that is murder for example)  God has given us His laws and these laws are the standards in which we should judge ourselves by.  If we have even broken one of His commandments then we are held guilty under those laws and will need to pay the price for breaking those laws.  The penalty is eternal punishment.  However, God out of His great love and mercy has given us the option of repenting and He even paid the price for our sins (Jesus' death on a cross then resurrection) if we are willing to accept that free gift.  However, many do not even think that they need a savior.  

I guess the thing that I would mention, in regards to your point that the Bible is not true or it is just our "truth" is the question of why are so many people hostile to it?  If it wasn't so revolutionary why is it still banned in so many places?  Why has the Bible changed people's lives so much?  Why have people been willing to give up their lives for the "truth" in it, especially if it was not important?  Sure there are other religions that people give their lives for willingly, however, the one thing that separates Christianity from all other religions is that Christianity is the only religion that is not about earning our way to God.  In fact, it is all about realizing that there is no possible way to earn salvation at all.  It is about realizing that we are in need of help.  It takes humility and an open heart that prays and ask God to forgive us and "open our eyes" if you will to see things from God's perspective.  Then God, out of His great love, comes in and helps us to see not only ourselves, but others in a different way.  He helps us to love ourselves and others. He helps us to forgive, have joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control.  He give us the gift of His Spirit in our hearts and then we are able to do good things because of His love, not because we are trying to "earn" our salvation but because we are so thankful for what He has done for us.  

I'm going to keep this as short as possible.

I've come to the realization that I am not an atheist. I am actually antitheist, since I am repulsed by the thought of there being a god character responsible for bringing things like suffering, horror and despair into existence. A god capable of creating any existence could have created it to be perfect or 'heavenly' in the first place. Therefore I find the god character loathsome and despicable.

Even the (agnostic) uncertainty of god's existence and intentions is in and of itself taxing, like a form of cancer. This is why people of faith believe without question. Yet a god wanting to have a relationship with its creation obviously wouldn't be so ambiguous.

So you see, the idea of there being no god is by far more preferable to me than the idea of there being one, since if there is one I could not despise it more.

Have a nice day. 

This is an age old question.  How could a loving God allow suffering?  

It is a valid question and one that many people, myself included, have had to wrestle with.  There is of course the question of God giving us "free will" which allows us to make choices.  We can choose to do good and love others or we can choose to sin and harm others.  We live in a "fallen" world where sin is around us all of the time and we have these choices to make on a daily basis.  Sure, God could just hit the "smite button" from heaven and kill us all when we sin.  There would be no one left on earth if that happened.

But from God's love for us comes a great opportunity.  We have the chance to extend love and forgiveness to others.  We have a chance to repent of our mistakes.  We have to realize that God is not in heaven looking down in a cruel way and laughing at our suffering.  He chose to become one of us.  He came to earth as a baby and even suffered greatly and was killed, as an innocent man on the cross, in one of the cruelest and most painful deaths a human could endure.  Why? Because He wanted to show us that He loved us that much.  Did He have to do that for us?  Instead of being grateful for that, instead we yell at Him.  We throw our fists in the air and say, "if there is a god I could not despise it more."  If a friend was willing to give up his life for you so that you could be saved from suffering is this the way to treat him?  In the same way this is how we are treating Jesus when we do this to Him.  

I for one am forever grateful that God out of His great love for us, chose to come and live with us to understand our pain and suffering and then gave His life for mine.  

Of course I am not a fan of pain and suffering either, who is really?  But my question then is why would God then choose to suffer with us?  He did not have to do that either.  It becomes more a question of trusting Him in spite of the pain and suffering we are enduring during our short time here on earth and allowing Him to use that pain.  Diamonds can't shine unless they have been polished.  Flowers can't grow unless they have had rain.  We all have long roads and long journeys in our lives but God can help us see that there can be treasures hidden in the painful things we go through, if we just let him use those things!  I like to say that the greatest treasure in my life came through pain and suffering,  the pain and suffering Jesus endured on the cross for me.
 
Also, there is something miraculous in how God is able to use our suffering for good.  In fact, He even promises to "work out all things for the good of those called according to His purpose."  Regardless of how much I dislike pain and suffering, I trust that God has a plan and He does promise that He will wipe "all tears from our eyes" someday.