email debate with Ed (anon) page 4

The infidel guy couldn't even begin to touch Dr. Geisler. He was thourough embarrassed by one of Dr. Geisler's students recently, Alex MacFarland, on Truth Talk Live. I have read him and listened to him and quite honestly, no one I know of takes him very seriously. He seems to be more interested in making a name for himself than for objectively seraching for truth.

I listened to that interview again just this morning. You may think he was thoroughly embarrassed, but I found it to be just the opposite. As Alex tried to pigeon-hole Reggie into making a positive claim so that he could knock him down, Reggie had to continually remind Alex that being agnostic about the issues meant that he had no knowledge to make such a positive claim as Alex tried to get out of him. It seemed to really stir Alex up toward the end that he couldn't set up this straw man for an easy knock down punch.

In addition, Reggie posed several questions and had several responses to Alex's questions that Alex never addressed. Instead, he went to commercial time and again, came back and started in again to try to get that positive claim again out of Reggie.

While no one YOU know is taking him very seriously (yet), we atheists are quite pleased and our number is growing daily in response to his show as more of us discover it and send the link to our friends and family. There are nearly 30 million of us out here in the U.S. and we're pretty tired of being ignored by our legislators and bullied by the fundamentalists in this country. When black Americans started making lots of noise about their civil rights in the early 60's there were only 18 million of them. Like other minority groups in this country, we're about to make ourselves heard. Things like Reginald's show are helping us find each other, have a common place to gather, communicate with each other and to unite us into one strong voice for recognition of our civil rights in this country.

He's interested in making a name for himself for the fact that recognition of our cause is necessary. The more interviews and radio shows he goes on, the more people will discover where they can go to find the rest of us. The easier his name and website and radio show are to remember, the easier it is to get more of us together.

Your opinion on objectivity in searching for the truth honestly is hardly worth a comment, considering that you hold to a basic 'truth' that you cannot support physically or logically with any proof, then build your case around that central nugget of nothingness as a foundation.

Your 'objective truth' can't be objective, as it starts with the basic premise that an un-provable, invisible, supernatural being you call 'god' exists. To be truly objective, you must be willing to accept the POSSIBILITY that you may be wrong.

Buck

I read the debate between Till and Geisler. I can see where you get your style from.

I didn't read Till and Geisler till this morning, so I didn't get it from there. Maybe it's just that we free-thinkers tend to think in similar ways.

It isn' that you really want to discover the truth based on the evidence at hand, it is that you want to find as many ways as possible to discard the evidence.

What evidence? The evidence that everything in our universe seems to have definable physical properties? The evidence that supernatural events do not seem to occur? The evidence that the texts of the bible don't seem to be able to gel together seamlessly? The evidence that your religious beliefs are as real to you as every other religion's followers' beliefs are to them, indicating that it is a psychological aspect of your existence rather than a real-life thing one can hold and touch and see? What evidence would you like to examine?

I suppose that if I wanted to take your arguement, I could deny that there ever was a revolutionary war, and there would be nothing anyone could say or do to convince me otherwise. I simply decide I am not going to believe, regardless of the evidence, and no one can empircally 'prove' to me that it happened.

You may take that position if you like. However, there ARE fundamental differences. We know that war is not out of the ordinary. It doesn't require a leap of faith from the known physical traits of the universe into the realm of the supernatural. We need make no fantastic leaps of logic to convince even the most skeptical that this war could have been and was a real event in history. We don't need thousands of apologetics to dismiss away thousands of inconsistencies in the story line of the war. We can do archeological digs at battlegrounds and produce physical evidence that would lead us to believe it actually took place.

Those are the types of things where god stories fail every time, and have for all of history.

If that is how you are going to accept or reject events in history, how can you possible believe in evolution.

Thousands of people who are very highly skilled and educated, of ALL faiths, including Christian, have come together around the central fact that living things do indeed evolve. It has been gathering documentation and proof for some 2 centuries now, and the evidence for it continues to pile up every single day in nearly every scientific field of research. Even most fundamental Christians now agree that 'micro-evolution' is real. That's it. There's the concession by even the fundamentalists that living things evolve. That they believe they don't evolve MUCH is beside the point; they have now conceded the FACT that living things DO indeed evolve.

You have never observed macroevolution in any lab anywhere in the world at any point, not even once. Yet it is taught and believed as a fact. And that, contrary to the lack of evidence for its proof.

You should study it a bit more, and with an open mind. What do you think 'macro-evolution' is? It is simply the result of long periods of micro-evolution. A LOT of small changes (millions of changes) over long periods of time (millions of years) will show BIG differences between the first and the last in the series.

The only people disputing it as a fact that this happens are the fundamentalists desperate to hold on to the cosmology of Genesis. But hang on to your hat, cause it's going the way of the flat Earth and our planet being at the very center of the universe spinning around us. It's going the way of tiny pinpricks of light called stars affixed to the dome of the sky; a dome with windows god would pour water through to cause rain.

Conceding 'micro-evolution' is the first step in the process of redefining biblical cosmology yet again, as it has had to time and time again through the ages as science proved it wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt. As an apologist, you might as well start working out the details of making the text fit this new cosmology now, because it's coming. Might as well try to get a jump on it.

Buck

I guess you simply don't get it.

Same to you. You're welcome.

The question is this....which worldview is the most reasonable?

That's a subjective question. To me, mine is. I'm sure to you, yours is.

If you don't know if God exists, then you must admit that He could.

You don't know if invisible poodles with gills exist at the bottom of the ocean that care deeply about your sex life. So you must admit that they could, right?

I contend that if one really examines the evidence we DO have, it is more logical to conclude that HE does exist.

I have examined it, and I don't come to that conclusion. I'm not alone in this. There are 30 million more like me in the U.S. alone.

How do you logically conclude HE does exist? What is the evidence? How do you logically conclude that it's a "HE" rather than a "she" or an "it"?

Your view that something came from nothing without a cause is absurd. It is unreasonable to make such a claim. I am shocked that someone who actually claims to engage logic would posit such an irrational view. From nothing, nothing comes. IF you can believe that something came from nothing without a cause, what is so hard about believing that God exists. There is not a shread of evidence anywhere that anything has ever had a beginning without a cause.

Once again, I never stated something came from nothing without a cause. That's 3 times now that I've told you this. Try to keep up your end of the conversation, please. Your continued use of this straw man you keep trying to set up so you can easily knock it down just isn't working. Sorry. Get over it and move on.

Everything that we see can be traced to a cause, everything! Therefore, it is most rational to conclude that the universe, which we know had a beginning also must have had a cause.

For the 3rd time, I agree; it had a cause.

Let us also make clear that every known thing in the universe can be detected by some means. Therefore, it is most rational to conclude that what absolutely cannot be detected probably does not exist.

For now, lets just deal with this issue. Once we clear it up, we'll move on to some more difficult ones. You are telling me that you have no good reason to believe that God exists, and yet, despite the fact that you have several good reasons to believe that the universe was caused, you choose to believe otherwise.

No, I don't choose to believe otherwise. I tell you yet again, I believe the universe was caused by something. I simply believe that the cause was mechanical and physical and non-intelligent, rather than intelligent and magical and undetectable the way you do.

What is good for one view Buckster is good for the other. This places you in a most perplexing position. You apply one set of rules to deny God and ignore them to posit how the universe came to be.

How do you figure that?

One view works equally for both God and the universe? Is that what you're trying to say? Let me try to clarify my views.

Universe: PHYSICAL. NATURAL. all the physical material, attributes and time that surrounds us. It is a physical thing that can be defined, seen, detected and measured in countless ways. It's physical attributes point to an event in it's past when all the material, etc was in a single place, defined as a singularity. Why it ejected from that singularity precisely when and how it did is UNKNOWN AT THIS TIME. However, I postulate that whatever the 'why' is, it is a natural, physical reason, based on my understanding that EVERYTHING examined thus far in the universe has a plausible, natural, mechanical explanation that does not require supernatural aspects to make it work. Possible causes are UNKNOWN AT THIS TIME. However many theories have been put forth and many experiments are ongoing for determining attributes and characteristics of the universe and physics that may eventually lead to an answer. One of the possible causes, proposed by theists, is that an intelligent supernatural being called 'god' did it. Of all the proposed theories, this 'god' theory seems to have the least possibility of ending up as the final answer, as it cannot be tested and steps outside the boundaries of the natural world. My personal favorite theory is that the singularity is the result of the universe before this one collapsing in upon itself; an event that is cyclic in nature and has been happening forever and will continue to happen forever without intelligent intervention whatsoever.

God: NON PHYSICAL. SUPERNATURAL, a supernatural, non-physical entity that cannot be defined, cannot be seen, cannot be detected. As it is completely out of range of any method of detection, it falls into a category of probable mythical creatures that are similarly undetectable because they probably do not exist at all.

Hope that clears it up a bit.

Buck

Look, why don't you address some of my questions and quit with the dodging.

What are you talking about? I've tried very honestly to answer all your questions. What have I dodged?

Meanwhile, all you HAVE are questions, and NO ANSWERS yourself.

I keep asking, "What evidence?" and you keep ignoring it. Then you accuse me of ignoring the evidence you have yet to produce or define.

I'll be happy to address any direct question you have in the most direct way I can. If I have somehow failed to do this, I apologize. In re-examining our emails back and forth however, I can not see where I have dodged any of your questions or statements. I have taken each of your statements and questions in the order you have written them, and then replied immediately after each in a different color to make it easier for us both to follow.

I notice you have yet to address those responses to your questions and statements with any consistency or directness yourself. Neither do you counter, comment or defend; you simply gloss over them and ask more questions of me, usually the same question worded in different ways, as though that changes it. I have replied to your question about causes for the universe several times now, and at much length, yet you do not even acknowledge my responses, preferring instead to ask the question yet again. I'm sorry if you don't like my answer, but I AM being honest in my replies to it. If you have reason to dispute my reply, feel free to do so.

Buck

No one has ever been able to prove, conclusively, or even reasonable, that evolution ever actually occurred.

Sadly, you disregard the mountains of evidence that have been collected over the last couple of centuries from tens of thousands of sources by tens of thousands of able, learned, distinguished scientists who are simply looking for the truth. Many of these scientists are Christians themselves who would no doubt love to proclaim to the world that they have found some nugget of evidence that the Genesis cosmology is real and that evolution is a farce. Just the opposite has happened however.

I noticed also that you used the term 'macroevolution' which indicates that you accept 'microevolution', at least to some degree, which indicates that you DO understand that living things DO EVOLVE, at least to some degree, as defined by creationists as 'microevolution'. Yet, you are unwilling to state so plainly. Why don't you just be intellectually honest about it and just acknowledge that, at LEAST, small changes do occur to living organisms over time? Can't do it? Does it hurt too much to be honest and say yes, evolution occurs? Sorry about your luck.

In fact, the amount of bias that comes out of the associations against creationist is incredible. Facts or not reported, stories are surpressed, and I could go on and on.

You COULD go on and on, but you would be in error. Facts in the scientific community are just that: FACTS. If a creationist would hold to the rules of objective, critical thinking and analysis in proposing some means of the diversity of life on Earth other than evolution, write it up, submit it to the scientific community for thoughtful dialogue and examination, it could be substantiated or refuted in the exact same way that all other theories are presented and debated in that forum. They do not do this. They have yet to publish.

You seem to think there is a HUGE conspiracy and cover up of the truth within the scientific community over this issue, but you can show nothing to substantiate that claim. Instead, CHRISTIAN scientists intent on finding the truth about their God's creation end up where all the non-Christian scientists do: The truth and facts of evolution producing changes in living organisms over time.

The only 'bias' comes from an understanding of the evidence that has been looked at by tens of thousands in the scientific community, who have reached undeniable conclusions based on that evidence. That's not 'bias', it's a truthful attempt at understanding the evidence presented. Just because it is not the conclusion you STARTED with, that special creation by the hand of a god is the answer, does not make their opposite conclusion any less true or real. They didn't START with a predefined conclusion the way you do, they reached a conclusion through examination of the evidence.

Fact: it has never been observed. It cannot be reproduced in a lab. The fossil evidence stacks up against it.

You are obviously ill informed in these matters, taking the word of fundamentalists who have yet to make their case to the scientific community. You claim objectivity repeatedly, yet do not apply it in matters of science. If the evidence was overwhelmingly negative against evolution, that would be the conclusion, not the opposite. You really should do a more thorough examination of the many thousands of evidences examined, rather than start with the conclusion that it's all bull and there's a massive conspiracy, world-wide to keep the truth hidden.

The number of times evolutionists have had to back up on a so-called break through is laughable.

While you're laughing, perhaps you could cite examples, rather than just try to pass off open-ended statements without support. I look forward to laughing about your lack of knowledge in this area along with you.

Yet, not one shread of acrheological evidence has been shown to disprove the bible or even cast doubt.

That statement alone shows just how incredibly out of touch with reality you are. A little real research on your part will go a long way. I suggest you try it for yourself, rather than take the word of a preacher with an agenda to hide the truth.

I suggest you spend about a year going through the archives at: http://www.talkorigins.org/ for a more thorough understanding of these issues. Do try to be objective in your search for the truth, rather than dogmatic in your preconceived conclusions.

You believe what you believe because you don't want to accept the rule of God.

How can I accept the rule of an entity I do not have reason to believe exists? You continue to treat the matter as though I know that god is real and simply reject him. This is like me accusing you of knowing that the tooth fairy is real and that you're just rejecting that knowledge. Do you understand at all that your god is nothing more than a mythical figure, the same as the tooth fairy, to me?

You want to do your own thing. Well, there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who say to God, thy will be done, and then those, who in the end God says, thy will be done. Which one are you?

I am the one you have not yet defined; a third kind, if you will. I am the kind that recognizes that there is no way to have either of those conversations with a fictional being that has yet to be clearly defined or even shown to exist at all.

Your question is tantamount to me asking which type of person are you? The kind that says to the tooth fairy, "thank you for the dollar - enjoy the tooth" OR are you the kind of person who, in the end, is confronted by the tooth fairy and must explain why you never believed in the tooth fairy? Which one are you?

I have the luxury of being wrong without consequence. You on the other hand, do not. I am not taking any chances, you my friend are rolling the dice on your soul. If I thought the evidence for God was very weak, I would still believe because there is simply too much at stake. But the evidence is overwhelming.

Suppose you are wrong, and you picked the WRONG god? Suppose, in the end God says to you, "I told you in the first commandment you shall have no other gods before me, yet you chose to follow and worship a MAN named Jesus because some idiot named Paul had a vision that this Jesus was god. He's not, and you're going to burn forever for willful violation of the first commandment." OR suppose the Hindus are right? Or the Buddhists, or the Muslims, or the Jews, or any of a thousand other religions that have existed throughout the history of the world? How can you KNOW?

Your choice in accepting one religion over all the others is as much a crap shoot as my decision to choose none, for in ALL of them, accepting the wrong one is a ticket to hell. I simply state, I don't KNOW, but have yet to see any evidence to make an informed decision. If there is a god, based on ANY of the religions of the world, he must surely recognize my intellectual honesty in that regard. At the very LEAST, I did not choose some OTHER god over the real one.

In the meanwhile, I do my best to lead a meaningful life filled with love for my family, friends and fellow man. I do my best to be helpful and caring and to leave a legacy I can be proud of; to leave a mark on society that is exemplary, to the best of my ability.

Do you believe that Alexander the Great existed. What about the Pharoahs of Egypt. How about the Roman empire? If so, why?

I do indeed believe they existed. Why? Because the documented, empirical evidence for them is convincing to me AND because they are all within the realm of the natural laws of our universe. I need make no leaps of logic to make them believable, they can stand on their own completely without apologetics, they do not require supernatural explanations outside the bounds of natural laws to be believable, and EXPERTS AGREE that they are real. There is no argument, that I am aware of, that these things might simply be the figment of someone's imagination. I have no logical or physical REASON to doubt them, as there is nothing unbelievable about them.

Buck

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