Shinjula

Agreeing with warri0r45 completely here, simple question... What exactly is going to limit how much they change? Only the possibilities of the ordering of genes and DNA whilst still remaining functional and that accounts for all life on the planet.

Well you've misunderstood where I'm coming from and no mistake. I'm not proving anything is true. Proving things are possible, that certain properties in the Universe do not preclude these things from happening. The main thing I think looking from your answer is to go over again why absolute truth is not a neccessity. Using the existence of a paradox to imply something else is true only works if it is the only other option. >>>If truth is relative, then the statement that truth is relative is an absolute truth and would be a self-defeating statement by proving that truth is not relative. But, if truth is absolute, then the statement "truth is absolute" is true and not self-defeating. It is true that truth exists. Or it could simply be the case that the only absolute truth is that there is no other absolute truth. Which also works perfectly fine and doesnt contradict itself. Basically you are finding that there is a necessary absolute truth - that three is a least possible absolute truth of "the only absolute truth is that there is no other absolute truth" and assuming a whole bunch of stuff about absolute truth just because a single statement must at the least be true. As for "what makes that one truth an absolute truth among a myriad of non-absolute truths?" nothing makes it. I'm saying it MAY be the case that that is the Universe is that way and since it cant be proven otherwise any further extrapolation that demands more than "among a myriad of non-absolute truths?" is unproven. OK well I cant deal with everything in a single page otherwise it will spin into a myriad bits and no one but us two will have any clue whats going on, or any desire to join in, so starting with the first bit (which actually I think is quite important) You've misinterpreted what I meant here, sorry I mustn't have been clear. my quote of is me saying the correct answer to what created the universe that a scientist would give is "I dont know". So what I was really saying is that to a scientist the question "What created the Universe?" poses no problems at all because I am unafraid of saying "I dont know" and not knowing doesnt imply a creator of whatever sort. And as for the claims in the bible proven true about the formation of the Universe by astronomy, having taken a look at them I honestly cant believe you have the temerity to bring them up as they are laughable. All you've got is god created time, hardly an uncommon theme in creation myths, creator gods usually create time. You do have the word 'spread out' which I can understand could correspond to an expanding universe if you were feeling particularly poetic but its hardly accurate and the number of times its used in the past tense (the expansion of the universe hasnt stopped) preclude it from being an accurate description. The verse taken to imply tectonic activity is nothing of the kind and doest even vaguely day anything other than earthquakes happen, which I can assure you is not a modern invention of geology, people have always known that the landscape changes. "The mountains rose; the valleys sank down" is hardly an insightful description of plate tectonics, its just a colourful phrase any primitive might come up with to describe the creation of his world. The thing is Genesis taken as an allegory is fine. Its interestingly poetic language, but the moment you start attributing meaning to these phrases beyond the poetic you run smack into big trouble, that of the overall view. If there is subtle meaning to the tale why is the obvious meaning of Genesis so at odd with reality. It does clearly describe the creation of all life in under six days. If the subtlety is true why is the obvious so completely wrong? Why does the creation of the stars come after the creation of the earth? The guy has to posit a translucent layer of cloud over the earth to get round that one, and that is also contrary to planetary physics (something I've studied myself). There may tiny things which match up slightly with reality but that doesnt overcome the great problems with the general description which is just wrong.

Moving on to the other articles you posted and their arguments as to why Christianity is the only possible Religion.... The first one... http://www.carm.org/secular-movements/atheism/why-believe-christianity-over-all-other-religions ...actually offers very little in the way of argument. Theres a couple of refutations against a literal interpretation of the Quran and the LDS scriptures, but I dont think may here would be arging in favour of either of those. And theres the standard argument "What caused the Universe?" to which the answer "I dont know" doesnt equate with "God did it", there are simply many more possibilities, if indeed it atually has a cause which quantum physics is showing more and more these days isnt actually necessary. The second one... http://www.carm.org/secular-movements/atheism/why-believe-christianity-over-all-other-religions I've already shown the argument that there must be absolute truth doesnt have to extend beyond "The only absolutely truths is that there arent any other absolute truths" Religions contradicting each other only implies they cant all be literally true, but it ignores the idea that there could be grains of truth in all of them. It then goes on to argue about prophecy which is something I've never been remotely convinced by. The stories of miracles are easily ignored since to anyone not a Christian doubt in the authors of the bible is quite high. The third one http://www.gospeloutreach.net/whychristianity.html tries to go for logic but the logic is very flawed and falls down quite easily. It dismisses Atheism on the ground that it cannot find the cause of the Big Bang ignoring the possibility that people might prefer the honesty of the physicists who say "We just don't know yet". It acts as though Atheism fails because it doesnt offer an opinion on morality, but the concern of Atheism is not which morality to follow but a simply yes/no on the existence of god, it is not there to make nay further judgements. His repeatedly incorrect use of the law of contradiction is just silly, there are huge possibilities when it comes to the nature and structure of god, that's the whole deal with god/s, you have a potentially limitless number of possibilities because of the supposed power involved. Here's an example "Christianity teaches that when a person dies, that person will go to heaven or to hell. Eastern religions say those who die will be reincarnated. Now a person could go to heaven or hell, or be reincarnated, but he cannot go to heaven or hell and be reincarnated at the same time." Or it could be the case that some people are reincarnated and some go to heaven, depending on actions in their life, or belief systems they hold to. He then argues against some of the other religions but I cant see a single decent argument. He argues against Hinduism because of the irrationality of the truth of all religions (which I've shown to be possible already) He argues against because of the lack of miracles and prophecies and given a religions purpose is to instruct about life and morality I dont see the neccessity of either. Buddhism gets a weird response claiming it doesnt offer answers for life, which it does, that ones it just completely wrong. I imagine the guy just hasnt had any contact with buddhists. He argues against animism saying it is non ethical, which I suppose it is, but that wouldnt make it wrong. He argues against Wicca saying that finding truth in other religions is somehow contrdicting with the Wiccan Rede again as though there cant be multiple truths. He then goes on to argue as though most non christians think Jesus doesnt exist, which is quite untrue, most acknowledge him as a historical figure. It just that most people have played Chinese whispers and know how it works. The gospels werent written at the time of Jesus but some years after. And then we're back to prophecy. The last one http://www.faithfacts.org/world-religions-and-theology/why-christianity is the most ridiculous. Assume a law which would only apply to your own religions followers is true and then show how followers of other religions come a cropper (in some bizarre analogy to jumping out of a plane). It just makes assumptions about what it true. In essence all it says is that if Christianity is literally correct then all followers of other religions are in trouble. And I dont dont have a problem with that statement, but it says nothing about the truth of the Universe.

No, because its in the middle of a whole bunch of stuff hes prophesying (It is the seventeenth chapter theres sixteen more before it and quite a few after it too). The Bible gateway I have as a link gives Isaiah a sub heading of "The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah." I havent read it all (I knew it from other people telling me about it), but from my skimming it looks like at the very least its all got to happen before the messiah arrives. Perhaps a Christian can elaborate a little on the context of the Prophecies of Isaiah.

Which prophets are you talking about and what exactly did they get wrong? Probably my favourite one is Isaiah 17:1 "Behold, Damascus will cease from being a city, And it will be a ruinous heap. " Damascus of course being unusual in an ancient city as having not been destroyed and survived complete to this very day. EDIT Btw, sorry I havent gone into the other links but otherwise we end up with a very disparate conversation with a million quotings. I would like to talk about some of the things in them too, but maybe a little later. But I do think the logical arguments against the other religions are very poor and fall down quickly mostly because the writers are assuming (again) that only two possibilities are possible, showing one is false and therefore assuming the other must be true (as in my example on the previous page) when in fact there are more than two possibilities. So I thought that Bible Prophecy woud be the strongest case for Christianity, if only it were true, and thus taking out that lynchpin would be the best argument against it.

Ooh those are terrible arguments. Firstly using the existence of a paradox to imply something else is true only works if it is the only other option. >>>If truth is relative, then the statement that truth is relative is an absolute truth and would be a self-defeating statement by proving that truth is not relative. But, if truth is absolute, then the statement "truth is absolute" is true and not self-defeating. It is true that truth exists. Or it could simply be the case that the only absolute truth is that there is no other absolute truth. Which also works perfectly fine and doesnt contradict itself The prophecy stuff completely falls down because of the bible itself. Forgive me if I get any of this wrong but I'm no bible scholar however one thing I do know is that most of the bible prophecies were all supposed to come from one source (leaving aside the arguments about when those prophecies were actually made). There is I believe a specific passage which states that "You can tell a false prophet because a prophet who is from god will never ever get it wrong" And whilst some of them might be right, every prophet in the bible gets it wrong at least once. Therefore they must be false prophets. And quite why the rest of the article should imply Christianity is better than any other religion I dont know.

The problem comes from people claiming the bible is inerrant in every form because it is the word of god (I dont know whether or not you subscribe to this idea, but others do) and that means that a translation error occured and in the original it was 'things which fly including blah, blah, blah and bats' and became 'birds including blah, blah, blah and bats' which is clearly an error occurring in a supposedly inerrant source. Even if it's a translation error, that's still an error, bats are not birds. You can see why some atheists might have a lot to say about that.

Not knowing the cause doesnt stop us knowing it happened. It IS one of the very intriguing questions of the Universe we live in. And it is a good place to put your faith in some god-like being should you choose. However (and I dont assume this is you, but others do this) it is completely unscientific and illogical to assume because we dont know the answer to that question that in some way that invalidates the evidence for the Big Bang.

I wouldnt have a problem marrying someone who was HIV at all I would have a problem marrying someone who thought it appropriate to delay telling me until such a time where I was under a large amount of pressure and financial inducements to go through with it.

Um I actually had to take measurements of the red shift and use it to calculate the age of the universe for an astronomy class, so that why believe in the big bang. I think what adrenal is really wanting to know is how many people believe in the big bang because they trust a scientist and how is that better than trusting the bible, but I dont think hes taking into account the nature of the scientific method. That actually people are trusting a system which contains balances and checks. A peer reviewed system which allows for repudiation of faulty theories. Which I think is a fairly good reason for trusting it over the system under which religion operates, which is basically a text book which isnt supposed to change.

Re: The statement that Homosexuals have a much lower lifespan than heterosexuals This comes from a study in 1994 by Cameron, Playfair, and Wellum who counted obituaries in various gay community publications and claimed to be able to use them to calculate the average life expectancy for homosexuals. It's an interesting idea but it has some serious flaws. It leaves out large groups of homosexuals (i.e. those who didnt have an obituary) This includes groups such as gay men and lesbians who were not involved in the gay community gay men and lesbians who were in the closet about their sexual orientation gay men and lesbians whose loved ones or family didn't want their homosexuality to be known gay men and lesbians whose loved ones or family simply didn't think of sending an obituary to a gay community newspaper gay men and lesbians whose loved ones did not write an obituary for some other reason (e.g., they were too grief stricken) gay men and lesbians who died without leaving anyone to write an obituary for a gay publication (e.g., those whose loved ones and relatives died before them) . An accurate estimate of the life span of gay men and lesbians would have to count such people. By restricting their analysis to obituaries in gay newspapers, however, the Cameron group systematically excluded them from the sample. It could be argued that these wouldnt affect the figures much however it can easily be seen that they actually did. In their obituary study, the Cameron group claimed that the average lesbian life-span is similar to that of gay men who do not have AIDS ("under 50 years" versus "mid-40s," respectively). But if this is true, and if obituaries are indeed a valid source for this type of data, the ratio of gay male obituaries to lesbian obituaries should be about the same as the ratio of gay men to lesbians in the population. From their survey data, the Cameron group has claimed to know the number of gay men and lesbians in the population. If we believed their numbers, we would set the ratio of gay men-to-lesbians at about 1.6-to-1 (or approximately 2.6-to-1 if bisexuals are omitted). But the ratio of gay male-to-lesbian obituaries in the Cameron group's study is quite different – approximately 6-to-1 if AIDS and violent deaths are excluded, 32-to-1 if they are included. Thus, at least one data set has to be wrong. Either the obituaries data do not include a representative sample of lesbians, or the Cameron group's population estimates based on their survey data are invalid. An observer with training in research methodology would most likely conclude that both sets of data are fatally flawed. Oh and it turned out it was funded by the Family Research Institute, the conservative Christian Colorado Springs-based think tank that proclaims as its "one overriding mission: to generate empirical research on issues that threaten the traditional family, particularly homosexuality, AIDS, sexual social policy, and drug abuse." Dr. Cameron serves as chairman of FRI. Personally what I think has happened to the data is simply that before the eighties it was uncommon to be out of the closet whereas those of us who grew up after the stonewall riots were increasingly happier coming out of the closet. That would mean there are a lot more out younger gay men than out older gay men (which I think is fairly accurate from what I've seen from the scene). Which would mean on any given day whilst there may be a normal distribution of deaths, it would be skewed towards the younger generation when it comes to them being given an orbit in a gay newspaper.

Aw, sweet, thanks :)

Yey, that totally stopped the debate :)

Scam, combined with seriously nasty cult.

Someone mentioned on the previous page not understanding where the flamboyance of the Gay Pride Parades came from? It's not an arbitrary thrusting of our sexuality in your faces, it actually comes from our culture. The theatre and circus cultures were the only places where homosexuality was even remotely accepted at the start and throughout the first half of the twentieth century and its where a lot of gay culture comes from. So we celebrate that part of ourselves which is flamboyant. I don't really get why this part of our heritage is particularly offensive. I understand that it may not be the way you behave personally, but for the most part heterosexual culture in the media is at least as sexualised as a gay pride parade. How many times in TV have i seen T & A used to sell products, both in as extreme manner and in more subtle ways. It is present in drama and in life too. Part of why the flamboyancy appeals to us is the concept of coming out of the closet. There simply isnt a comparable heterosexual ritual in western culture, but in homosexual culture one must face up to oneself, and strip away the external perceptions and replace them with something born from within, dedicating ourselves to revealing at least one truth about ourselves. Having something like gay pride once a year (and do bear in mind this is only a once a year event, hardly the most bothersome thing in the world for anyone not involved) allows us to reaffirm our decision to come out of the closet in a joyful and celebratory way together with similar people. It's a fun and vibrant activity and is meant as harmless entertainment. At least in the city I live (Newcastle Upon Tyne), it adds local colour, where I am is a tolerant place and the pride march adds local colour and increases tourism, a march through the city which finishes in a festival in one of the cities parks. Many of us dress up to the nines for this event, and romp around playing silly beggars with the local shoppers all of whom take it in great spirits. It actually occurs to me that part of the origins of this go back even further in time, we are all taking upon ourselves the archetype of the fool for day which has a very functional utility in a culture. Not sure whether anyone might have any interest in discussing that though.

In no way allow your parents to push you into something you really dont want to do. As someone suggested above, check out government sponsored housing projects. And good luck.

I saw a documentary which said the cut off point is about 4-5 years. If a person is blinded before reaching the age of about 4 or 5 they are unlikely to have a visual element to their dreams.

OK, Fair enough, the reference was just lost on me I'm afraid

Yes man? I've not heard of it. You sound disbelieving, well frankly I really can't see why I should care if you believe me or not. Nuff said.

Story on life saving please *sits down* Talked a guy down off a bridge who was gonna suicide. To be honest I couldn't tell you precisely what I said to him. Mostly it was on the lines of "Other people dont like you ? [bleep] em." In my opinion those sort of things dont really translate into words without sounding like gibberish, but I've taken LSD many many times and almost always had fun. I do tend to recommend it for anyone who considers themselves stable and curious if they've got somewhere they'd be happy doing it.

I started off with a list of ten, and I'm working my way through them. What I have left is Go parachuting Live in a cave for a month Meditate for a week Live as a monk for a year I'm 36 now and I've only got 4 left, so I think thats quite good going, here are the six I've completed so far. Travel round the world Save a life Try LSD Start my own business Get a degree Hold an art exhibition

Here's mine I dont mind where

Um because it appears that you want to stop us gay folk marrying the loves of our lives (amongst other things)? Theres loads of reasons why people think that religion is a bad thing and that it should be replaced. One of the big ones for me is the attitude that people are in someone 'not animals'. This separation between man and animal inevitably leads to a sense of arrogance on the part of people. I also find the idea that beliefs in some way matter to Christians quite repellent. I have beliefs of my own, as does everyone on the planet. But I dont act on those beliefs in regards to other people because they are just that, beliefs, and they could (obviously) be wrong. I think beliefs are fine when they just dictate how you live your life, but the moment they start interacting with other people you are in trouble. And i think you'll find we have LOADS of problems with Islam, but there arent Muslims on these forums to debate with. Welll, I never told you this, so you don't know but. I have absolutely no problem with hoomosexuality at all, and have many gay friends. And I think you're problem is with the Christian Church, not Christianity. Just my opinion. And I do agree with your stance about enforcing other peoples morals on people. Almost, my problem is with certain individuals, often includes people who call themselves Christian. I never have a problem with an idea, just someone who holds an idea and then does anything about it. Well thats a clear case of someones beliefs interacting external to them, and then I have a problem with it. Actually I dont have a problem with abortion though, because I'm a man and will never have an abortion, and even more, as a gay man I will never have a partner who will have an abortion, so my morals have no reason to interfere with anyone elses choices.

Um because it appears that you want to stop us gay folk marrying the loves of our lives (amongst other things)? Theres loads of reasons why people think that religion is a bad thing and that it should be replaced. One of the big ones for me is the attitude that people are in someone 'not animals'. This separation between man and animal inevitably leads to a sense of arrogance on the part of people. I also find the idea that beliefs in some way matter to Christians quite repellent. I have beliefs of my own, as does everyone on the planet. But I dont act on those beliefs in regards to other people because they are just that, beliefs, and they could (obviously) be wrong. I think beliefs are fine when they just dictate how you live your life, but the moment they start interacting with other people you are in trouble. And i think you'll find we have LOADS of problems with Islam, but there arent Muslims on these forums to debate with.

Well, back in those days you were either born into wealth or born into poverty. You didn't work hard to become rich like how it mostly is today - you just got it handed to you. The poor were the hard workers and the rich were the ones who sat on their butts eating grapes all day. I can see why they would say the more spoiled a man is, the harder it is to follow the path of God. You wouldn't really need God if you were treated like one yourself, but as for the poor who have to work to death just to survive, believing God and having hope would be very useful to them. Then the same should apply to homosexuality. Today's homosexuals are (for the most part) responsible members of the community in loving relationships. If being rich was considered 'immoral' back then because the rich guys were jerks, then its understandable that the depictions of homosexuality in sodom and gomorrah were so looked down on (what with them raping angels and all) and the relationship between that and the modern gay lifestyle bear as much resemblance as the relationship between the rich back then and the rich now. And then we are back to the idea that it is not homosexuality which is a sin but homosexual immorality (and indeed and kind of sexual immorality) which is the sin and nopt homosexuality itself.