i'm NOT christian... and proud of it!!!

[rasmack 0]

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OK two sides of the coin is what you saying cause we are not making valid points or producing enough evidence to clear where you have set your bar.

Sorry, but I don't understand that sentence. Words missing?

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Then pls tell me what about all the prophecies that have been foretold and happened exactly like it was predicted...

I am not arguing that there is no God. That is a matter of faith. I am saying that applying the scientific method to observations of geology/biology/astronomy does not support a literal interpretation of Genesis. If you consider these prophecies to be fulfilled by what is in the Bible then fine, go ahead. I will reserve the right to remark that hindsight is 20-20, and that it is pretty easy to edit a book so that it will make a prophecy and later claim it fulfilled.

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The Mathematical Odds of Jesus Fulfilling Prophecy

I'm sorry, but this section is gibberish. I am a physicist and I am acquainted with the "modern science of probability". This makes no sense what so ever. Where did you cut 'n' paste it from?

EDIT: Ahh... exponents. I see. Oh well, it does not change my "hindsight" point above.

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...

[jakee 1,257]

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Cool dude ... fast and on the button !

Thank you. Now about those numbers...

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We find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 1017.

How? How can you possibly quantify the probability of someones life.

What is the possibility that I was born by C-section in a soon to be demolished hospital, have brown hair and blue eyes and grew up to be a glider pilot and skydiver that reads Ancient History? How improbable am I, do you have a number that describes me?

Besides which you state that one of Jesus' improbabilities was being born of a virgin. Now call me cynical but since that is impossible it immediately makes his existence infinitely improbable (barring 'acts of god' which would by their very nature be impossible to statistically quantify). Those quarters will cover Texas to the boundaries of the universe

Now I just need a good brownian motion generator (like a really hot cup of tea) and I'm off to make me a messiah. Or maybe just make the hostesses undergarments jump 2 feet to the left.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[skysaintj 0]

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OK two sides of the coin is what you saying cause we are not making valid points or producing enough evidence to clear where you have set your bar.

Sorry, but I don't understand that sentence. Words missing?

Nope no words missing.

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Then pls tell me what about all the prophecies that have been foretold and happened exactly like it was predicted...

I am not arguing that there is no God. That is a matter of faith. I am saying that applying the scientific method to observations of geology/biology/astronomy does not support a literal interpretation of Genesis. If you consider these prophecies to be fulfilled by what is in the Bible then fine, go ahead. I will reserve the right to remark that hindsight is 20-20, and that it is pretty easy to edit a book so that it will make a prophecy and later claim it fulfilled.

There is ancient scrolls (dating from before Christ)that have exact same prophecy as in the Bible today.

Manuscript Support for the
Bible's Reliability

by Ron Rhodes
Manuscript Evidence for the New Testament
There are more than 24,000 partial and complete manuscript copies of the New Testament.

These manuscript copies are very ancient and they are available for inspection now.

There are also some 86,000 quotations from the early church fathers and several thousand Lectionaries (church-service books containing Scripture quotations used in the early centuries of Christianity).

Bottom line: the New Testament has an overwhelming amount of evidence supporting its reliability.

The Variants in the New Testament Manuscripts Are Minimal
In the many thousands of manuscript copies we possess of the New Testament, scholars have discovered that there are some 150,000 "variants."

This may seem like a staggering figure to the uninformed mind.

But to those who study the issue, the numbers are not so damning as it may initially appear.

Indeed, a look at the hard evidence shows that the New Testament manuscripts are amazingly accurate and trustworthy.
To begin, we must emphasize that out of these 150,000 variants, 99 percent hold virtually no significance whatsoever.

Many of these variants simply involve a missing letter in a word; some involve reversing the order of two words (such as "Christ Jesus" instead of "Jesus Christ"); some may involve the absence of one or more insignificant words.

Really, when all the facts are put on the table, only about 50 of the variants have any real significance-- and even then, no doctrine of the Christian faith or any moral commandment is effected by them.

For more than ninety-nine percent of the cases the original text can be reconstructed to a practical certainty.

Even in the few cases where some perplexity remains, this does not impinge on the meaning of Scripture to the point of clouding a tenet of the faith or a mandate of life.
Thus, in the Bible as we have it (and as it is conveyed to us through faithful translations) we do have for practical purposes the very Word of God, inasmuch as the manuscripts do convey to us the complete vital truth of the originals.

By practicing the science of textual criticism-- comparing all the available manuscripts with each other-- we can come to an assurance regarding what the original document must have said.

Let us suppose we have five manuscript copies of an original document that no longer exists. Each of the manuscript copies are different. Our goal is to compare the manuscript copies and ascertain what the original must have said. Here are the five copies:
Manuscript #1: Jesus Christ is the Savior of the whole worl.

Manuscript #2: Christ Jesus is the Savior of the whole world.

Manuscript #3: Jesus Christ s the Savior of the whole world.

Manuscript #4: Jesus Christ is th Savior of the whle world.

Manuscript #5: Jesus Christ is the Savor of the whole wrld.

Could you, by comparing the manuscript copies, ascertain what the original document said with a high degree of certainty that you are correct? Of course you could.

This illustration may be extremely simplistic, but a great majority of the 150,000 variants are solved by the above methodology.

By comparing the various manuscripts, all of which contain very minor differences like the above, it becomes fairly clear what the original must have said.

Most of the manuscript variations concern matters of spelling, word order, tenses, and the like; no single doctrine is affected by them in any way.

We must also emphasize that the sheer volume of manuscripts we possess greatly narrows the margin of doubt regarding what the original biblical document said.

If the number of [manuscripts] increases the number of scribal errors, it increases proportionately the means of correcting such errors, so that the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is not so large as might be feared; it is in truth remarkably small.

The New Testament Versus Other Ancient Books
By comparing the manuscript support for the Bible with manuscript support for other ancient documents and books, it becomes overwhelmingly clear that no other ancient piece of literature can stand up to the Bible. Manuscript support for the Bible is unparalleled!

There are more [New Testament] manuscripts copied with greater accuracy and earlier dating than for any secular classic from antiquity.

Rene Pache adds, "The historical books of antiquity have a documentation infinitely less solid."

Dr. Benjamin Warfield concludes, "If we compare the present state of the text of the New Testament with that of no matter what other ancient work, we must...declare it marvelously exact."
Norman Geisler makes several key observations for our consideration:

No other book is even a close second to the Bible on either the number or early dating of the copies. The average secular work from antiquity survives on only a handful of manuscripts; the New Testament boasts thousands.

The average gap between the original composition and the earliest copy is over 1,000 years for other books.

The New Testament, however, has a fragment within one generation from its original composition, whole books within about 100 years from the time of the autograph [original manuscript], most of the New Testament in less than 200 years, and the entire New Testament within 250 years from the date of its completion.

The degree of accuracy of the copies is greater for the New Testament than for other books that can be compared. Most books do not survive with enough manuscripts that make comparison possible.
From this documentary evidence, then, it is clear that the New Testament writings are superior to comparable ancient writings. "The records for the New Testament are vastly more abundant, clearly more ancient, and considerably more accurate in their text."

Support for the New Testament from the Church Fathers
As noted at the beginning of this chapter, in addition to the many thousands of New Testament manuscripts, there are over 86,000 quotations of the New Testament in the early church fathers. There are also New Testament quotations in thousands of early church Lectionaries (worship books).

There are enough quotations from the early church fathers that even if we did not have a single copy of the Bible, scholars could still reconstruct all but 11 verses of the entire New Testament from material written within 150 to 200 years from the time of Christ.

Manuscript Evidence for the Old Testament
The Dead Sea Scrolls prove the accuracy of the transmission of the Bible.

In fact, in these scrolls discovered at Qumran in 1947, we have Old Testament manuscripts that date about a thousand years earlier (150 B.C.) than the other Old Testament manuscripts then in our possession (which dated to A.D. 900).

The significant thing is that when one compares the two sets of manuscripts, it is clear that they are essentially the same, with very few changes.

The fact that manuscripts separated by a thousand years are essentially the same indicates the incredible accuracy of the Old Testament's manuscript transmission.
A full copy of the Book of Isaiah was discovered at Qumran.

Even though the two copies of Isaiah discovered in Qumran Cave 1 near the Dead Sea in 1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscript previously known (A.D. 980), they proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text.

The 5 percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling."
From manuscript discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls, Christians have undeniable evidence that today's Old Testament Scripture, for all practical purposes, is exactly the same as it was when originally inspired by God and recorded in the Bible.

Combine this with the massive amount of manuscript evidence we have for the New Testament, and it is clear that the Christian Bible is a trustworthy and reliable book.

The Dead Sea Scrolls prove that the copyists of biblical manuscripts took great care in going about their work.

These copyists knew they were duplicating God's Word, so they went to incredible lengths to prevent error from creeping into their work.

The scribes carefully counted every line, word, syllable, and letter to ensure accuracy.
God's Preservation of the Bible
The Westminster Confession declares: "The Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek, being immediately inspired by God and, by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them."

The Westminster Confession makes a very important point here.

The fact is, the God who had the power and sovereign control to inspire the Scriptures in the first place is surely going to continue to exercise His power and sovereign control in the preservation of Scripture.
Actually, God's preservational work is illustrated in the text of the Bible.

By examining how Christ viewed the Old Testament, we see that He had full confidence that the Scriptures He used had been faithfully preserved through the centuries.

Because Christ raised no doubts about the adequacy of the Scripture as His contemporaries knew them, we can safely assume that the first-century text of the Old Testament was a wholly adequate representation of the divine word originally given.

Jesus regarded the extant copies of His day as so approximate to the originals in their message that He appealed to those copies as authoritative.

The respect that Jesus and His apostles held for the extant Old Testament text is, at base, an expression of the confidence in God's providential preservation of the copies and translations as substantially identical with the inspired originals.
Hence, the Bible itself indicates that copies can faithfully reflect the original text and therefore function authoritatively.

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The Mathematical Odds of Jesus Fulfilling Prophecy

I'm sorry, but this section is gibberish. I am a physicist and I am acquainted with the "modern science of probability". This makes no sense what so ever. Where did you cut 'n' paste it from?

EDIT: Ahh... exponents. I see. Oh well, it does not change my "hindsight" point above.

If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it

[mr2mk1g 10]

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How improbable am I

Monkeys with typewriters. There have been a hell of a lot of monkeys.

[rasmack 0]

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How improbable am I, do you have a number that describes me?

0

There is probably at least one parameter describing your life that falls in a continuum (say, your height). By definition any single value for such a probability distribution is zero. Now if you integrate over an interval it's another story, but any single set of parameters will always have zero probability. Sorry bro. You don't exist.

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...

[mr2mk1g 10]

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There is ancient scrolls (dating from before Christ)that have exact same prophecy as in the Bible today.

The Dead Sea scrolls (representing the oldest of all ancient scrolls even remotely related to Christianity) are dated to AD60. After Christ.

[skysaintj 0]

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There is ancient scrolls (dating from before Christ)that have exact same prophecy as in the Bible today.

The Dead Sea scrolls (representing the oldest of all ancient scrolls even remotely related to Christianity) are dated to AD60. After Christ.

were not putting that sentence into context

here :The Dead Sea Scrolls prove the accuracy of the transmission of the Bible.

In fact, in these scrolls discovered at Qumran in 1947, we have Old Testament manuscripts that date about a thousand years earlier (150 B.C.) than the other Old Testament manuscripts then in our possession (which dated to A.D. 900).

.

The fact that manuscripts separated by a thousand years are essentially the same indicates the incredible accuracy of the Old Testament's manuscript transmission.
A full copy of the Book of Isaiah was discovered at Qumran.

Even though the two copies of Isaiah discovered in Qumran Cave 1 near the Dead Sea in 1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscript previously known (A.D. 980), they proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text.

If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it

[jakee 1,257]

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Sorry bro. You don't exist.

Son of a B...
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[rasmack 0]

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OK there are two sides of the coin is to what you are saying. cause we are not making valid points or we are not producing enough evidence to clear where you have set your bar.

Do I read it like this then?

If so, I would say that the two are identical. My problem is that any (person claiming to be a) scientist who works exclusively to prove one hypothesis over another because the conclusion is seen as a given has abandoned the scientific method.

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There is ancient scrolls (dating from before Christ)that have exact same prophecy as in the Bible today.

Manuscript Support for the
Bible's Reliability
...

Please stop throwing other people's writings in your posts. A link will do just fine. The text in question to me merely argues that the Bible is an old book. I do not dispute this. It furthermore postulates that it is a better book than other old books. This you have the right to believe.

To say it clearly:

I have no beef with you being a christian. That is your choice to make

I was making the point that ID is trying to read the Bible way too literally

I sincerely think that ID proponents are not conducting science

You can stop throwing "references for the unbeliever" at me. They won't work.

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...

[rasmack 0]

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Quote

Sorry bro. You don't exist.

Son of a B...
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And Jakee disappeared in a puff of logic...

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...

[mr2mk1g 10]

There's only one document in the Dead Sea Scrolls that has been linked to Christianity. That document is the fragment known as 7Q5. The only whole word this document contains is the Greek word "and" along with a number of other word-fragments. This for some is enough to link it to the gospel of Mark.

The document was dated to between 30AD and 60AD. Again - after Christ.

This represents the oldest Christian document (assuming that "and" really is from the gospel of Mark of course).

It doesn't matter what other documents were there - they only support the content of the documents of which they are earlier copies.

Their mere existence does not evidentially support the content of a separate document allegedly from 1000 BC which when translated purports to depict a crucifixion.

[skysaintj 0]

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OK there are two sides of the coin is to what you are saying. cause we are not making valid points or we are not producing enough evidence to clear where you have set your bar.

Do I read it like this then?

If so, I would say that the two are identical. My problem is that any (person claiming to be a) scientist who works exclusively to prove one hypothesis over another because the conclusion is seen as a given has abandoned the scientific method.

Quote

There is ancient scrolls (dating from before Christ)that have exact same prophecy as in the Bible today.

Manuscript Support for the
Bible's Reliability
...

Please stop throwing other people's writings in your posts. A link will do just fine. The text in question to me merely argues that the Bible is an old book. I do not dispute this. It furthermore postulates that it is a better book than other old books. This you have the right to believe.

To say it clearly:

I have no beef with you being a christian. That is your choice to make

I was making the point that ID is trying to read the Bible way too literally

I sincerely think that ID proponents are not conducting science

You can stop throwing "references for the unbeliever" at me. They won't work.

Science will prove alot as we go along and so will the prophecies that still will be fullfilled .. i will never judge you , we can always learn , that's why i paste food for thought only ..not for changing you

Cool bro

If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it

[rasmack 0]

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Science will prove alot as we go along and so will the prophecies that still will be fullfilled .. i will never judge you , we can always learn , that's why i paste food for thought only ..not for changing you

Cool bro

Hey, that's cool. If we didn't debate we'd never understand each other.

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...

[kallend 1,635]

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yawn... yet another Christian Mouthpiece quoting the same tired unsupportable assertions and basic misconceptions...

of course the lack of original thought and critical thinking skills is revealed in the failure to qoute the source for their simple cut and paste 'thoughts'

You comment on the general post/reply instead of giving some valueble input concerning questions asked etc....

ps - easier to copy and paste than to type it all

WHEAT! A whole new genome appeared around 7,000 years ago. Explain that with your creationist theories. Evolution explains it very nicely.

And then there's H5N1 - where did it come from?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[GTAVercetti 0]

Oh boy.

Here we go again. Can we get 80 some pages out of this thread?

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[jakee 1,257]

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Oh boy.

Here we go again. Can we get 80 some pages out of this thread?

As long as we build it around H2G2 quotes instead of silly numbers then yes we can.

Although I don't exist so you probably can't read this.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[GTAVercetti 0]

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Oh boy.

Here we go again. Can we get 80 some pages out of this thread?

As long as we build it around H2G2 quotes instead of silly numbers then yes we can.

Although I don't exist so you probably can't read this.

Did you just say "silly" numbers?!?!/

Even if you do exist, you are dead to me.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[jakee 1,257]

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Did you just say "silly" numbers?!?!/

Even if you do exist, you are dead to me.

Ok, maybe we can have some.

But only so far as they relate to improbability factors, telephone numbers and the relationship between the two providing structure to the universe.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[rehmwa 2]

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But only so far as they relate to improbability factors, telephone numbers and the relationship between the two providing structure to the universe.

Strangely enough, someone called my telephone number the other day while we were out.

It startled my cat, who then puked on the carpet.

The puke was cleaned up and put in a small bag that eventually fell out of the garbage truck onto an intersection.

A bicyclist hit that bag and fell down in front of a car startling the driver into spilling coffee in his lap.

When he turned around to go home and change his pants, he ended up avoiding a huge accident which would have killed him and scared a two ducks and one passing goose.

His license plate was the same as my telephone number. The goose's name was Homer.

coincidence? I think not.

Homer is what all geese are named, so it's not that strange at all.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[jakee 1,257]

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A bicyclist hit that bag and fell down in front of a car startling the driver into spilling coffee in his lap.

Cool story, but please do not bring mention of bicycles to this thread, it takes me to a very dark place right now.

I think it's the same people stealing from me as in all my past lives. I may have to build a cave system inside a volcano and spend my time carving grotesque effigies of them.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[billvon 2,416]

> We don't know exactly what happenned.

Of course, and we never will. We don't know exactly what happened in 1776 either, but we still think the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are valid documents and not forgeries made a few years ago.

Science is about coming up with the best possible theories as to how something happened, testing those theories, and then discarding the ones that are proved false. If you can't prove it false (i.e. "god did it") then it's not science, it's faith. And there's nothing wrong with faith - but it's not science, any more than science is morality, or morality is history.

>There is very respectable scientists and clever people on both sides
>of the argument.

I've been studying this phenomenon for about five years now, and I have come to the conclusion that there are very respectable scientists on one side of the argument, and very clever religious proponents on the other. Neither side is dumb, but they have different goals. One wants to understand what's going on; the other wants to advance their religion.

>I'll tell you what I do believe and have found from my own
> experience. I do believe in a spiritual realm that influence this
> realm. I have tried and tested the theory of what you do comes
> back to you. I have been a bad person and found that things go
> wrong in my life and that I am somehow empty and depressed.
> When I realized what was going on and turned back to God my life
> turned for the better.

And that's great! There's nothing wrong with that. But surely you would not try to convince your toaster to turn itself back to God; that would be silly. Toasters are not people. They are two completely different things. Similarly, science is not faith. It is entirely possible to live a life of faith and be a good scientist, but you have to first realize that the 'magisteria' of faith and science do not overlap.

Lately I fear that many people see creationism as a club to batter some religion into people. If they can teach God in schools, then more people will believe in God and that's a good thing. I am very much opposed to this; as you state, everyone has their own personal relationship with God, and that should be their business, not the government's (or the school's.)

[GTAVercetti 0]

Like I keep saying: 99% of the scientific community support the ideas that have come from evolutionary theory and they go about their business quitely. Its that 1% that do not supported it and shout the loudest, making people think that their is some great schism.

And that is all I have to say billvon. We can basically see our same posted in 4,234 other threads.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[billvon 2,416]

> Darwin said something 140 years ago and boom that's law in a
>matter of seconds...

Took years for him to prove it out, and about two decades to enough evidence to accumulate that most scientists believed it. Nowadays we are finding new evidence of it every day. From molecular clocks to new transitional fossils to better understanding of vestigial organs - all are now comprehensible through the framework of evolution. Evolution to biologists was what Netwonian mechanics was to early astronomers, a fundamental set of principles that helped them better understand the universe they lived in.

>talking about community lapping up a theory
>scientifically proven more wrong than right.

The only place that it's been proven wrong is in the 'creationism for dummies' websites that abound nowadays, that contain hundreds of quotes from other creationists as 'proof' they are correct.

>If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.

Ah. Perhaps I will become a duck, then! Ducks are cool. I could even get my own website with all these important and supposedly smart people saying "I firmly believe billvon is a duck." "What are the odds that a creature with orange wings, that flies through the air, isn't a duck?" Once I have, say, 100 quotes, other people could start quoting THAT website. Then I could say with conviction "hundreds of people all over the world think I'm a duck! The skydiving community is quite divided on the issue; so why not be honest and admit that I could be a duck or a human?"

[rasmack 0]

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Ah. Perhaps I will become a duck, then! Ducks are cool. I could even get my own website with all these important and supposedly smart people saying "I firmly believe billvon is a duck."

Your wish is my command.

If anyone wish to share the reasons why billvon is a duck I invite you to send me an email or a PM.

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...

[kallend 1,635]

Quote

> Darwin said something 140 years ago and boom that's law in a
>matter of seconds...

Took years for him to prove it out, and about two decades to enough evidence to accumulate that most scientists believed it. Nowadays we are finding new evidence of it every day. From molecular clocks to new transitional fossils to better understanding of vestigial organs - all are now comprehensible through the framework of evolution. Evolution to biologists was what Netwonian mechanics was to early astronomers, a fundamental set of principles that helped them better understand the universe they lived in.

>talking about community lapping up a theory
>scientifically proven more wrong than right.

The only place that it's been proven wrong is in the 'creationism for dummies' websites that abound nowadays, that contain hundreds of quotes from other creationists as 'proof' they are correct.

>If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.

Ah. Perhaps I will become a duck, then! Ducks are cool. I could even get my own website with all these important and supposedly smart people saying "I firmly believe billvon is a duck." "What are the odds that a creature with orange wings, that flies through the air, isn't a duck?" Once I have, say, 100 quotes, other people could start quoting THAT website. Then I could say with conviction "hundreds of people all over the world think I'm a duck! The skydiving community is quite divided on the issue; so why not be honest and admit that I could be a duck or a human?"

Can we call you "Ducky"?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.