TrueIntentions wrote:

> "Why? Because you know deep down in your heart that evolution has never
occurred, however you most probably believe in it nevertheless."
>
> At this point you're crossing the line between disagreement and insult. It's one
thing to say I'm wrong, but quite another to speculate about what I believe and to
insist that I am in some sort of denial over it. No, I really am quite certain that
evolution occurs and I'm equally certain that Christianity has nothing more going
for it than Hinduism or Greek mythology.

Then you research is poor to say the least. Are elephants or creatures holding up
the earth, is a man carrying the earth on his back? Is dead matter or clay
spontaneously springing to life as we speak? What say you?
You’re quite certain that evolution occurs, you believe. I'm quite certain God
exists, I believe.

>If you're just going to say I'm lying and am not really that certain, go ahead, but
that's where our conversation will have to end since I don't talk to people who
don't listen.
>
> "You would never be able to prove without a shadow of doubt that Jesus never
existed on earth."
>
> The fact that you can't disprove Vishnu or Brahma doesn't mean that you have
to believe in them. Generally the wisest policy is to avoid believing in things
unless you have evidence that they exist.

The wisest policy is to always weigh ALL the evidence for and against something
from BOTH sides of the fence with an honest mind, without confirmation bias.

>
> "You know about Christ but refuse to believe he existed even though you
cannot refute the historical records."
>
> What historical records? No historians ever made any mention of Jesus
outside of the Bible itself until hundreds of years later, and the New Testament
can't be considered historical evidence because it was written lifetimes after
Jesus allegedly died by people he'd never met in parts of the world he'd never
been.

Well, of course how dumb of me, you must be right. No point historians writing
historical records or accounts unless they've had a face-to-face conversation with
the topical person. Eye witness accounts or records just won't do, neither will
thousands of manuscripts. Historians may as well pack up their tents and go
home.
You state "any mention of Jesus outside of the Bible itself until hundreds of years
later". Note "UNTIL", so you admit historians recorded Jesus' existence as a real
person in history. You have refuted your own argument. Do you think historians
make this stuff up? Or are they perhaps completely inept at record keeping and
researching? You have no idea when the NT was originally written, your
argument is against 2000 plus manuscripts and historians and I'm supposed to
take your argument seriously?
As I said, you would NEVER be able to prove without a shadow of a doubt that
Jesus never existed, and you've just proven this.

>Even Paul, its earliest author, never met Jesus in real life. Paul said Jesus
appeared to him in a vision after he'd been resurrected, and Paul never
mentioned anything that happened in the Gospel stories because those hadn't
been written yet.

So what? Paul was in contact with the eyewitnesses of Christ before and after
His death and resurrection, which included Jews, Romans, Greeks and the first
Christians including the Disciples.

>
> The Gospels, like the concept of Hell, are based on earlier mythological stories
- Dionysus, Osiris and Horus were all local gods worshipped in the Greek-
speaking world and all of them were born of a virgin in a stable, with a god as
their father, had a mass of followers, were put to death and buried in a tomb and
all of them rose from the tomb after three days and ascended into Heaven.
Sound familiar? None of those things originated in the Gospels. Those stories
had been around for hundreds of years and the Gospel writers just incorporated
them into Christian myth the way they'd been incorporated into Greek myth.
There is no more historical evidence for either.

Well of course the mythical Greek gods are the correct and original accounts
while accounts of Christ aren't... wrong again! There are plenty of copycat
saviours in various cultures, these actually lend credibility to the records of
Jesus. Jesus is recorded in historical documents as a tangible person and
recorded in thousands of ancient manuscripts. Again, you presuppositions force
you to go against logical reasoning.
Dionysus was a Greek god [they were all Greek gods], not a real person, Christ
was a real person seen & verified by eyewitnesses and historians. Did anyone
see Dionysus walking around, talking, eating, etc? No of course not, comparing
apples with oranges is silly.

>
> "On the subject of storytelling, evolution takes first prize! The whole story is
based on philosophical and metaphysical assumptions & beliefs. Can you
present any empirical scientific evidence that the first LIVING functioning cell
came from DEAD matter?"
>
> To begin with, evolution does not describe how the first life-forms came about.
That's a misconception that only someone who'd never studied the theory would
have. Evolution doesn't describe the origins of life, only hthe process by which
existing life-forms change over generations,

No misconception, just word games used by evolutionists over and over.

Chemical evolution [abiogenesis] describes how life came into existance from
dead matter. Call it what you want.

>and yes, there's a lot of empirical evidence that it happens - mountains,

actually.

Then you should have no problem presenting at least one piece of empirical
scientific evidence for "biological" evolution: how life evolved and diverged from
an ancestral cell to the complex life forms of today?

>As for how the first life-forms developed, that is addressed by the theory of
abiogenesis, which is a separate theory altogether. Abiogenesis was duplicated
in a laboratory many decades ago and the experiment has been repeated
countless times.

Do you have any references? One would be good.

Was a living cell created from dead matter? This is what abiogeneis claims does
it not?

>It's proven fact that when certain mixtures of basic elements combine
(primordial soup), they begin to form more and more complex organic molecules.
It only took two weeks in a laboratory for amino acids, the building blocks of life,
to form themselves from a mixture of unstructured base elements. As time goes
by, they get more and more complex until a chain of proteins as complex as DNA
is created, and you have life. It's been demonstrated. It's fact.

Really? Is that so? Molecules are NOT living cells. Where is your evidence of
"life" for your following claim "and you have life. It's been demonstrated. It's a
fact."?? Where is it a fact? Where did the DNA code originally come from? How
did the first base pairs increase to over 3 billion found in humans today, what is
the mechanism? It took intelligent human beings [not monkeys on typewriters]
years to DECODE the genetic code, did it not? How then pray tell did this code
get ENCODED in the first place. Do you have any empirical scientific evidence
for this?
Amino acids are not living functioning cells, were not these experiments done
using intelligent human intervention in a manipulated environment? In the end no
living cell was created. Can you see that you've failed to provide the evidence?
>
> "There is no such thing as separation of “church” and state. If the Christian
“church” is removed the atheist “church” or something else like Islam or another
religion replaces it."
>
> There is a separation of church and state - it's called the First Amendment.
There's a reason it's the very first. Our Founding Fathers had experienced
firsthand the persecution that comes from mixing religion and politics under the
Church of England, a mistake which, due to their foresight, will never be
repeated on our shores. There is no 'atheist church', so quit your whining.

Go to any natural history museum and you've entered the atheist "church" [more
like temple], where "everything made itself by chance" and "you little kiddies
come from pond scum" is preached DAILY as fact.

>I don't know a single atheist who is trying to put "There Is No God" on our
money. Removing a reference to your deity does not mean that our "religion" is
superimposing yours. It means that the government cannot give preference to
any religious view whatsoever and must remain NEUTRAL on matters of religion.
That is an essential part of any free society, and the fact that you'd prefer to tear
it down is, to me, shocking.

Whatever. There's no such thing as a "free" society. In reality, religion and politics
are always mixed; no government can remain neutral or unbiased. A government
void of preferences to religion is impossible. From an atheist view, the state is
only neutral when it's free form religion; naturally their atheist religion is always
excluded from this process and is therefore the only one that remains in
government. Replacing a belief in a deity with a belief in no deity IS the replacing
of one religion with another, end of story.