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I didn't say that.
But if that is how you feel... 
I'm saying that like God, Santa, angels, karma, fate, etc., I see no reason to believe that extraterrestrials have anything to do with our existence.
Making things more complex when there is no need is a way of making things less truthful.
Dies Veneris xiv October MCMLXXXIX
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so long as theirs "god", il keep my alien belief thank you very much
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You go for it.
Dies Veneris xiv October MCMLXXXIX
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Quote
charleroi66 :
so long as theirs "god", il keep my alien belief thank you very much
But how did the aliens come into existence?
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God. Haha.
Dies Veneris xiv October MCMLXXXIX
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religion arguments go round in circles
Youve got to change the world and use this chance to be heard.
18/11/2006 - Sheffield Hallam FM Arena
16/06/2007 - Wembley Stadium
17/06/2007 - Wembley Stadium
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Now Desarenzitic will have to trawl back to page 52 to see jomo87's post. He raised some interesting points....
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well humans then came into existance without any creator.....therefore the aliens could have too ... and then created us.
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That's making things more complicated without any reason to do so.
Instead of just humans, you have aliens --> humans.
It is unnecessary.
Dies Veneris xiv October MCMLXXXIX
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Britney :
That's making things more complicated without any reason to do so.
Instead of just humans, you have aliens --> humans.
It is unnecessary.
Unless there is positive evidence for alien interference, the only reason to believe it is because it is so cool.
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But not cool enough! Sorry, alien conspiracy theorists.
Dies Veneris xiv October MCMLXXXIX
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Kashmir
Now Desarenzitic will have to trawl back to page 52 to see jomo87's post. He raised some interesting points....
I wouldn't worry, really: It's been a while since that post (cheeky linkage  ), so either he took my request to heart and is currently thinking about my points before composing a mammoth reply, or he's buggered off for whatever reason.
Besides, I think it's worth it because I enjoyed Britney's satire, even though it was a bit OTT 
To ask what is the meaning of the universe is like asking what is the angular momentum of Much Ado About Nothing. ~ Steven Poole
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Had to be realistic.
Dies Veneris xiv October MCMLXXXIX
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That was the scary part
At the beginning, when you were being relatively (!) reasonable with your "A perfect being must exist" and "It's true because the Bible says so" arguments, I wasn't so certain it was satire, which is in itself quite depressing really...
To ask what is the meaning of the universe is like asking what is the angular momentum of Much Ado About Nothing. ~ Steven Poole
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Yeah, I'm good. I live in the Bible Belt. And I used to be *whispers* one of them.
Dies Veneris xiv October MCMLXXXIX
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"Your qualms about embryonic stem-cell
research are similarly obscene. Here are the
facts: stem-cell research is one of the most
promising developments in the last century of
medicine. It could offer therapeutic break-
throughs for every disease or injury process
that human beings suffer—for the simple rea-
son that embryonic stem cells can become any
tissue in the human body. This research may
also be essential for our understanding of can-
cer, along with a wide variety of developmen-
tal disorders. Given these facts, it is almost
impossible to exaggerate the promise of stem-
cell research. It is true, of course, that research
on embryonic stem cells entails the destruc-
tion of three-day-old human embryos. This is
what worries you.
Let us look at the details. A three-day-old
human embryo is a collection of 150 cells
called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of
comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the
brain of a fly. The human embryos that are
destroyed in stem-cell research do not have
brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is
no reason to believe they can suffer their
destruction in any way at all. It is worth
remembering, in this context, that when a per-
son's brain has died, we currently deem it
acceptable to harvest his organs (provided he
has donated them for this purpose) and bury
him in the ground. If it is acceptable to treat a
person whose brain has died as something less
than a human being, it should be acceptable to
treat a blastocyst as such. If you are concerned
about suffering in this universe, killing a fly
should present you with greater moral difficul-
ties than killing a human blastocyst.
Perhaps you think that the crucial differ-
ence between a fly and a human blastocyst is to
be found in the latter's potential to become a
fully developed human being. But almost every
cell in your body is a potential human being,
given our recent advances in genetic engineer-
ing. Every time you scratch your nose, you
have committed a Holocaust of potential
human beings. This is a fact. The argument
from a cell's potential gets you absolutely
nowhere.
But let us assume, for the moment, that
every three-day-old human embryo has a soul
worthy of our moral concern. Embryos at this
stage occasionally split, becoming separate peo-
ple (identical twins). Is this a case of one soul
splitting into two? Two embryos sometimes
fuse into a single individual, called a chimera.
You or someone you know may have developed
in this way. No doubt theologians are strug-
gling even now to determine what becomes of
the extra human soul in such a case.
Isn't it time we admitted that this arith-
metic of souls does not make any sense? The
naïve idea of souls in a Petri dish is intellectu-
ally indefensible. It is also morally indefensible,
given that it now stands in the way of some of
the most promising research in the history
of medicine. Your beliefs about the human
soul are, at this very moment, prolonging the
scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions
of human beings.
You believe that "life starts at the moment
of conception." You believe that there are souls
in each of these blastocysts and that the inter-
ests of one soul—the soul of a little girl with
burns over 75 percent of her body, say—cannot
trump the interests of another soul, even if
that soul happens to live inside a Petri dish.
Given the accommodations we have made to
faith-based irrationality in our public dis-
course, it is often suggested, even by
advocatesof stem-cell research, that your position on
this matter has some degree of moral legiti-
macy. It does not. Your resistance to embry-
onic stem-cell research is, at best, uninformed.
There is, in fact, no moral reason for our fed-
eral government's unwillingness to fund this
work. We should throw immense resources
into stem-cell research, and we should do so
immediately. Because of what Christians like
yourself believe about souls, we are not doing
this. In fact, several states have made such
work illegal. If one experiments on a blastocyst
in South Dakota, for instance, one risks spend-
ing years in prison.
The moral truth here is obvious: anyone
who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just
might supersede the interests of a child with a
spinal cord injury has had his moral sense
blinded by religious metaphysics. The link
between religion and "morality"—so regularly
proclaimed and so seldom demonstrated—is
fully belied here, as it is wherever religious
dogma supersedes moral reasoning and genu-
ine compassion."
- Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris
I highly recommend this book. Sam Harris easily gets to vaild points that I have difficulty explaining myself.
Ive got a stranglehold on this decision,
All those opposed can rot in hell
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Sorry to disappoint you jomo87 but your comments are not quite enough to rock my faith and therefore abandon this thread.
I am not denying that Mithraism existed as a “cult” or that it predated Jesus but you seem to have completely ignored my explanation of how it would not have influenced Christianity so before you advise me to read all of your posts carefully even though they are huge how about you do the same?
Obviously we are coming at this from different ends of the spectrum, I believe the Bible to be the Word of God and the Truth, and you don’t believe in it at all and think it is full of inaccuracies. I believe there are answers to all your questions but unfortunately I don’t have them all but I will still try to answer any question anyone has regarding my faith because I like to stand up for my faith.
1 Peter 3:15 Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.
We have all been guilty of not replying to every sentence of everyone’s reply at some point and this is because we want to concentrate on what we believe most strongly, what we are most interested in or what we feel we can defend strongly. Obviously those three points follow on from each other.
Also a lot of points get repeated over and over so maybe people ignore those points and try to move the conversation on a bit. I do read all your posts no matter how long but I don’t always choose to reply to every single point, I haven’t got the time at the moment.
As regards to genealogies I don’t think you got what I was trying to say probably because I didn’t explain clearly enough (I was rushing to get an answer in). Please go herefor a better explanation as to how Jesus is the True Messiah.
This explains in detail how we account for the two separate genealogies and how Jesus is both biologically descended from David and the legal heir to his throne.
To Kashmir I don’t regard evolution as observable but we have been all through this previously so I’m not sure if you want to go again?
I read the response from the conservative Christian scientist and this is exactly my thrust, he would rather believe man who is sinful by nature than the God of the Bible who is infallible and has been there throughout history.
If I go and ask a scientist, who already believes the Earth is old, about radiometric dating it won’t do me any good because he believes the earth is old and looks at things from that presupposition. The Talk Origins (which I would hardly call independent) page you directed me to quotes Charles Lyell as providing the basic principles of geology. As we know from previous discussions the same Charles Lyell had a hidden agenda, which was to rid Moses (and therefore the Bibles account of our true history) from science.
So he started to popularize the idea that the Earth was very old based on the idea that things we see going on today have always gone on at the same rate (uniformitarianism (sp?)) which I don’t agree with.
 Nats Isabelle Jessica
last.fm
Run run the past is gone, it cannot be undone
Run run the future is here, our fate is drawing near
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GENEALOGIES:
I read your points about genealogies and most of that page you linked to. However I still don't understand how you seem to think that one of Matthew or Luke is about Jesus' ancestors through his mother's side. How can Joseph be the son of Jacob and the son of Heli (when god doesn't miss out generations as we have already established). The article seems to be saying that one passage is about Mary's ancestors and one is about Joseph's, but I don't see what this claim is based on! You seem to have completely avoided the issue if I am not mistaken?
THE NATURE OF SCIENCE:
Regarding science you have turned off your brain. Seriously. Science isn't about one man's personal beliefs or goals. Any scientific paper and theory is subjected to rigorous review and repeat experiments/observations until it is accepted. Science is bigger than one man, the concept is of truth through evidence. Even if the brain which creates a theory later rejects it or admits that they just guessed at the answer, this doesn't matter because it will only be accepted if the scientific body studies it and verifies its accuracy.
This would be like discounting theories on lightning just because the men who set out to explain it scientifically, wanted to stop the myth that lightning was a bolt from God. If you take this attitude then you must surely despise Christian Scientists who set out with the motive of proving the Biblical version of events and disproving the rationalist worldview.
Extrapolation is the only sensible way to think, uniformitarianism sounds like the default position. That is, we should believe that things have always happened at the rate they are occuring presently unless we have positive reasons to think otherwise. You have a very simple view of science. You seem not to realise the immense amount of research and papers which go into seemingly simple theories. You seem to try to refute theories based on the simplified version and not understand the mountain of evidence and work supporting them.
Radiometric dating:
Your argument against radiometric dating is ridiculous. By your reasoning, if I want to learn or understand about Christianity I can't go to a Christian because they presuppose that Christianity is true. Basically you are saying that you can't go to anyone with knowledge on a subject because they presuppose their knowledge to be true (in the case of a scientist, they suppose their knowledge to be true because they have studied and verified it). So you don't trust me when I try to explain why you misunderstand radiometric dating, you don't trust a scientist who tries to explain it to you either. You are starting to show signs of paranoid delusion or some other mental illness.
I am starting to think you just have a bone to pick with science and the scientific method. I guess if you don't trust scientists then you will have to learn about radiometric dating yourself. I am of course joking, you won't do this, instead you will continue to refute the truth based on nothing. Fair enough, as long as you don't start trying to get creationism taught as science. Oops...
You can't refute science with emotive and ad hominem arguments.
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Sorry to disappoint you jomo87 but your comments are not quite enough to rock my faith and therefore abandon this thread.
Hehe I know, I was just kidding ;). Besides, we’ve already established pretty firmly that no amount of evidence wil shake your belief, but I’m finding this debate instructive nonetheless
Quote
We have all been guilty of not replying to every sentence of everyone’s reply at some point and this is because we want to concentrate on what we believe most strongly, what we are most interested in or what we feel we can defend strongly. Obviously those three points follow on from each other. Also a lot of points get repeated over and over so maybe people ignore those points and try to move the conversation on a bit. I do read all your posts no matter how long but I don’t always choose to reply to every single point, I haven’t got the time at the moment.
Listen, I know that time doesn’t always permit a full reply, but that’s not what I was expecting of you. Dropping one issue completely to concentrate on another isn’t a crime, and in fact I think I did just that a couple of posts back. The only thing I was objecting to was the way you responded to Kashmir while debating radiometric dating.
By replying to his point on the subject, you chose to continue the discussion. But rather than dealing with the scientific point his analogy was trying to make, you homed in on the analogy itself and, to a certain extent, took it out of context in a one line reply. In short, what I mean is that it’s fine to drop a topic completely and move on, but if you decide to reply to a point on, say, radiometric dating, deal with the point in its entirety rather than picking one sentence. Sorry if I offended you .
Quote
I am not denying that Mithraism existed as a “cult” or that it predated Jesus but you seem to have completely ignored my explanation of how it would not have influenced Christianity so before you advise me to read all of your posts carefully even though they are huge how about you do the same?
I assume you’re referring to this passage:
"The Old Testament predates Mithraism, and since the New Testament is based on the Doctrines of the OT, then it doesn’t need any outside influences."
It seems to me (correct me if I’m wrong) that your logic here is: “OT predates X and X predates NT. NT is based on OT, therefore it cannot also be based on X.” Leaving aside the muddy logic of this statement, the reason I didn’t reply to the explanation you’ve given here is that the OT’s influence or dating is irrelevant to the specific argument I was trying to make.
The reason the OT is irrelevant is that I’m only talking about the similarities between Mithra and Jesus which can’t be explained using the OT. Granted, certain facts about the Mithra story, like his virgin birth, his resurrection and so on can (conceivably) be exlained by saying they stemmed from OT prophecies.
But I’m not talking about the Christian doctrines which can be traced to the OT. I’m talking about the aspects of the Mithra story which aren’t mentioned in the OT. (I used this list of OT prophecies for reference.) For example, in the story of Mithra, he had 12 disciples; he had his principal festival on what was later to become Easter, at which time he was resurrected; his sacred day was Sunday; as an infant, he was visited by three Persian Magi bearing gifts , etc...
These are all features of Jesus’ life which, unlike the messianic prophecies, are not mentioned in the OT (to my knowledge). Therefore, since you accept that the Mithraic story predates Christ’s, then either the similarities are coincidental, or you must conclude they betray some unoriginality in the life story of Christ depicted in the Gospels.
Quote
As regards to genealogies I don’t think you got what I was trying to say probably because I didn’t explain clearly enough (I was rushing to get an answer in). Please go here for a better explanation as to how Jesus is the True Messiah.
Sorry to be dumb, but I have to agree with Kashmir. I read the page and I couldn't find their reason for concluding that Luke's genealogy referred to Mary. As far as I could see, the page went straight from saying "admittedly, these both look like genealogies of Joseph" to stating that one was a lineage of Mary.
It also seems like the reason for saying this was "the lineages don't agree, so they just can't both be of Joseph". This works if one already believes the Bible to be inerrant, but from the neutral hypothesis i.e: "the Bible may or may not be true", it rather implies errors in the Bible, not different lineages. Apologies if I didn't read the page carefully, but can you point out where it shows that Luke's lineage refers to Mary?
Interestingly, there are some agreements between Matthew 1 and Luke 3. Most notably, Joseph's grandfather is Matthat/Matthan in both, and Zerubbabel and Shealtiel are found in the same order a few generations back. These partial similarities actually make it even more implausible that they are the lineages of 2 different people!
(Sorry for my ridiculously long post; term starts on thursday but till then I have some free time, so I'm really getting into it...)
To ask what is the meaning of the universe is like asking what is the angular momentum of Much Ado About Nothing. ~ Steven Poole
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As you said how can Joseph be the son of two men? He can’t but he can be the son of one and the son-in-law of another (in this case Heli, Mary’s father). The most probable answer is that Heli had no sons to be his heir so Mary took that position.
It is my understanding that women could not be directly placed in a genealogy without the “presence” of a male so Mary was placed “in” Joseph (or under him, I don’t know how best to word that).
Why would I despise Christian Scientists that are seeking to provide evidence to back up the fact that the Bible is the True Word of God? I don’t despise science just the way it is sometimes applied and the way certain evidence is interpreted.
I am not denying their knowledge and I’m not saying radiometric dating cannot give useful results; it just needs to be carefully applied. Maybe I didn’t word that too well and I apologise for that. You believe that things have gone on forever as they do now and I suppose that is a fair enough assumption IF you don’t believe the Bible, but I do and the Bible says there was a GLOBAL flood about 4,500 years ago. If you could suspend your disbelief of the Bible, as jomo87 encouraged me to do (but vice-versa), then what kind of effects would a global flood have on the Earth?
What conditions are required for fossil formation? What would a global flood do to the landscape? What effects would it have? What evidence would it leave behind?
I am also not mad or delusional but it is clear that we are at an impasse – neither one of us is going to convince each other but I don’t need to convince you the Holy Spirit will do that, I just pray that you hear Him.
I’m glad you think I’m mad or foolish because that is exactly what my Bible tells me the world will think, it speaks about so much of this kind of thing – people abandoning the truth for their man-made truths, people gathering teachers around them to tell them what they want to hear I could go on and on. So the more we “debate” and the more you call me mentally ill, delusional or foolish the more scripture you back up and the stronger my faith in Gods Word becomes.
This bit is added on to reply to some of jomo87’s points (I wrote the above bit last night). Do we know when these aspects of Christ’s ministry appeared in Mithraism? It is my understanding that elements of Mithraism only appeared after Jesus had been crucified and resurrected, so is it possible that Mithraism was borrowing from early Christianity as well as the Old Testament its doctrine was based upon?
In regards to genealogy (other than the points mentioned above) I have found two further sites here and here that seem to back up my claim that there is no discrepancy.
I too am finding this instructive because I have to find answers to stuff I hadn’t considered before and next time someone asks me I will be ready.
Nats Isabelle Jessica
last.fm
Run run the past is gone, it cannot be undone
Run run the future is here, our fate is drawing near
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Genealogies:
So Mary and Joseph have some common ancestors, wouldn't that mean that they are both decended from David and Nathan?
Also, perhaps someone can verify this, if one step in the lineage can be in-laws, then what is to say that another step isn't an in-law and then wouldn't that ruin the whole blood decent chain? I can't think about this because frankly I don't care enough...
Irrelevant points and closed mindedness:
I would also point out that every major religion has some kind of story which warns believers that there will be those that will try to refute their beliefs. There will be unbelievers and those who think ye mad. Well duh, delusion isn't delusion if you really believe your unsubstanciated claims and paranoid people are only that way because the world is out to get them.
In my opinion, you are clearly not mad or delusion in the conventional sense. However I would say you are poorly informed on the nature of science and the intricaties and technicalities of scientific concepts such as Evolution and radiometric dating. For this reason I would urge you to actually try to understand these ideas before trying to refute them. Try to understand concepts formulated by people far more intelligent than you or I, and do so without falling back on the old: "I don't trust men because men are fallible and too confident in their own intelligence".
Creationism vs Science:
About the flood, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that a global flood could have caused any of the natural phenomena present today. Canyon's aren't carved quickly, try it with a high strength hose and see how you do! Now if you were to say that a divine flood can do anything then fine, but then you are outside of science and outside of rational reasoning. I could say that aliens terraformed this planet and cut canyons with lasers, it's possible (they could have the technology) but there is still no evidence for it.
The important issue is your terrible problem with science and the creationist fallacy of character assassination of particular scientists in order to try to defeat their theories. This doesn't work because Science isn't about the man but about the work. This work is reviewed and independently tested, if a theory is convincing and uncontradicted by the evidence whilst also explaining a phenomenon, then it is accepted. So I guess I was right, you're not going to investigate radiometric dating from the necessary places?
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anything is possible for he who believes
but also, here's my addition to that quote:
anything is probable for he who equates
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Kashmir
if one step in the lineage can be in-laws, then what is to say that another step isn't an in-law and then wouldn't that ruin the whole blood decent chain?
Quite true, I hadn't thought about that. But of course, that doesn't outright disprove the bloodline, it just means that the genealogy as given can't be taken at face value.
Secondly, as Kashmir also said, the presence of common ancestors casts some doubts. For example, both lineages have a Shealtiel and a Zerubbabel several generations back. Either these are the same Shealtiel and Zerubabbel, in which case the lineages should match from Shealtiel upwards but don't, or it is a massive coincidence, where both genealogies have a separate Shealtiel who fathered a Zerubabbel.
I find the first scenario more likely, and that's why I lean towards the theory that these are both lineages of Joseph stemming from different oral traditions, rather than lineages of Joseph and Mary respectively. (I say lean because I've seen reasonable evidence on both sides, but on balance, the evidence against is more convincing in my opinion.)
Finally, Mithraism did indeed continue beyond Christ's lifetime, so elements could have been borrowed from early Christianity not the other way round. However, my source (which I read ages ago, and was non-internet so I can't remember it I'm afraid) said that this wasn't the case. I mostly raised the issue as a point of interest, and I certainly didn't expect it to go on so long, but it's been fun
In any case, you raise interesting points, but I don't think we can know for sure in this instance, and I don't think this is a strong argument against anthing anyway. So for now, I'm going to follow Kashmir and stick to talking about science and scientific methods. I don't have anything to add to his last post just yet , so I'll just wholeheartedly agree with these particularly insightful sentences:
Quote
Try to understand concepts formulated by people far more intelligent than you or I, and do so without falling back on the old: "I don't trust men because men are fallible and too confident in their own intelligence".
Science isn't about the man but about the work. This work is reviewed and independently tested; if a theory is convincing and uncontradicted by the evidence, whilst also explaining a phenomenon, then it is accepted.
To ask what is the meaning of the universe is like asking what is the angular momentum of Much Ado About Nothing. ~ Steven Poole
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Neither of you believe that Noah’s global flood happened, I do and I believe that it is the reason for much of what we see around us today.
There is evidence to support this but you do not want to even consider what evidence a global flood would leave behind if it happened.
There is evidence of recent rapid canyon formation, for example when Mount St. Helens erupted, among others but again if I point you to a website you will ignore it because it is from creation scientists.
So I ask again what evidence would a global flood leave behind? How do fossils form? In what conditions?
Nats Isabelle Jessica
last.fm
Run run the past is gone, it cannot be undone
Run run the future is here, our fate is drawing near
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Response to your post (hint hint...):
We will ignore Creation science because these people don't submit scientific papers, don't do their work properly and their crackpot ideas aren't supported by anyone with a proper scientific training. Seriously, most scientists would be glad to discover anything novel, but they get pretty upset when people spout rubbish without being able to back it up.
I am seeing now that you must believe in a scientific conspiracy to conceal the truth. Or you think that the entire (99.99%) scientific community are idiots.
I am getting very tired of your asking us what kind of evidence a global flood would leave behind. I've said before that: in the first instance we should look at the evidence first and then decide what it implies, and secondly you should be putting forward why you think there was a flood rather than asking us to imagine evidence which isn't there. It's like asking me to imagine what evidence there would be if there were a heat resistant leprechaun at the centre of the sun, imagination is powerful but it has its limits!
In case you didn't get my subtle hint, I found your "response" very disappointing. You have seemed to ignored almost everything Jomo and I have said...
Radiometric dating:
Basically your whole argument is refuted by radiometric dating which is reliable. How do you account for isotopes with half lives of millions of years? How do you account for samples which are found with half the amount of a certain isotope as newly formed ones? It just baffles me that you even try to claim that the evidence supports your worldview.
As all too often you just gloss over my points let me suggest what I think your view may be on this (in the hope that you will correct me). You may actually think that radioactive decay could have occured faster in the past despite there being no reason to believe this, other than to mold the facts to fit in with the dogma. Well...?
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