Imaginos1892 wrote:Tenshinai wrote:"DDHvi-]with the caveat that atheism should also be ranked as a religion."
That´s just stupid. Rejection of dogma is by default NOT dogma.
I think he refers to those atheists who have crossed the line from not believing in gods without evidence, to an affirmative belief that gods do not exist, without evidence. They commit as great an act of faith as the True Believers, and seem determined to prove they can be just as annoying as any other breed of fanatic.
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It takes two to make peace. It only takes one to make war.
Exactly correct
On variations: most variations people bring up are not in the original languages. I compared about a dozen chapters in Greek from: the Alexandrian group of manuscripts, the Byzantine group of manuscripts, and an accepted modern Greek NT. Almost all the variations were in spelling, I found none that damaged a basic doctrine. Others have spent even more time and report the same.
Eyewitnesses: we have contemporary writings on the fate of the twelve apostles (including Matthias who took Judas Iscariot's place). Seven have good quality accounts of their deaths, and only John (of Revelation) seems to have died of old age. There are three choices: They were insane as a group; they were willing to die for something they knew was a lie; or their claim to be eyewitnesses of His resurrection was worth dying for.
To quote C.S. Lewis, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
Personally, I think the Old Testament evidence is even more interesting than the New Testament evidence. The Dead Sea Scroll discoveries gave us BC copies of almost all the OT books, which refutes the Islamic claim that the scriptures were changed after Christ. In Daniel 9:25-27, the word weeks literally translates as "sevened." There is a small uncertainty as to the first date, but only a matter of a few years. Counting the sevens of years brings us to the time of Jesus Christ.
Or take the trio of Psalm 22, 23, 24. Ps 22 is the first thing I remember noticing in the Bible that hadn't been taught to me first. The first verse was the critical clue.
I won't bore you with discussion of the hundreds of fulfilled prophecies.
You might enjoy "The Harbinger" by Rabbi Jonathan Cahn. It is fiction, but I checked out the historical events alluded to, and suspect it is the kind of fiction Nathan used when confronting David about Bathsheba.
It is easy to say there is no evidence without discussing the details. It has been a long time since I studied logic, but there is a name for that kind of fallacy, even if I can't remember it.
I don't accept quantum physics because it sounds interesting, but because of the subatomic particle slow interference experiments.
I don't accept any of the theories on supernovae because they sound interesting, but because of the observations. It would be nice to have a more recent such event in our own galaxy (As long as it isn't too close!)
I don't accept relativity because I understand the math behind it, but because of the experimental and observational results.
BTW, concerning Mercury, which provided some of the early evidence for relativity theory, a creationist scientist (D. Russell Humphreys) produced a model with numbers for planetary magnetic fields.
The resulting model accurately predicted the magnetic field strengths of Uranus and Neptune, as well as the declining strength of Mercury's field.4
That compares the Mercury data from the mid 70s flyby and the 2008 flyby. (4% decrease in roughly 30 years)
They used to talk about the "God of the gaps," meaning that apologists had to look at places science hadn't yet tested. Given the results of recent decades, they should talk about the "atheism of the gaps." We now know the function of the appendix; we now know the function of some of the junk DNA; we now know that protoplasm is
functionally intricate. But I'm probably boring you again - apologies. Or annoying you!
