Religious children do not exist.

Just as I don't trust some dude whose only credentials are "crazy Jewish carpenter." That gives me confidence and trust to board the plane, so to speak.

I’m sorry to have flummoxed you by not giving you the response you wanted; but generally speaking, ignoring what the other person said and pretending as if they had said what you wanted - is not an intellectually honest way of conducting a conversation.

Like I said; the nature of the facts are completely different. For the plain, the facts are objective and measurable.

We literally see planes take off and landing. We can see the regulations, we can see the physical checklists, we can see the maintenance staff - we can talk to them.

There is no comparable evidence of any theological conclusion of any kind. 

So your argument - pretending convincing people of God is like convincing people of aeroplane safety  is inherently disingenuous.

A better comparison would be this:

Imagine you are walking In the forest and stumble across a metal “kinda” plane - it didn’t look like any plane you’d seen before, the wings looked too small, and you cannot discern its power source.

A group of people tell you that this plane is safe and will definitely fly because they personally know the designer.

You can never meet the designer directly, ask him questions, question his credentials, nor can you inspect the device, or confirm how it works.

All you are given Is a book with some stories in it, some of which may be based on real events, some of it depict magic; and seems more akin to a fantasy novel.

Believing that device flies requires actual faith - there are no discernible objective facts to tell you the plane will fly; and worse, all the simple objective facts that could prove the plane would fly are being withheld from you.

To proudly profess that plane will fly requires stupidity or denial.

My trust in a collection of historically reliable documents about the historical person Jesus is far less ridiculous than the trust of some who claim the universe exists because something came from nothing. And then there are a whole bunch of people that believe life can come from non-life. We also can't forget the individuals who think that the great number of precise conditions that allow for life on earth just happened by chance. And if these claims about the physical world weren't enough, there are great number of people who try to claim moral absolutes while rejecting a moral lawgiver or judge that is higher than humans; in addition to rejecting the lawgiver, they claim that humans are nothing more than meaningless clumps of stardust bumping into other meaningless clumps of stardust in a meaningless universe, then proceed to try and justify some form of ethics.

I find my trust to be more well-placed than these other individuals who think they're operating on what is true.

Ardent protestations about right you are and how wrong everyone else is, is all you actually have.

This is what faith actually is; typified by both what you and fauxlaw are doing.

Adamantly and Vehemently professing how correct you are, and how much evidence you have when you have none.

Like I explained; you have no actual evidence. There’s no measurements of God, of magic, of the divine, of heaven; they cannot be objectively seen or viewed; there’s nothing even close to any ability to verify any of the claims.

The information you mentioned; presumably the best you can think of, are essentially two things.

- Unverified supernatural claims in a book are completely true because some non-supernatural claims match with history.

That’s not evidence, thats nonsensical.

- You are personally incredulous about other explanations.

Also not Evidence.

This is what faith is, you are simply pretending as if this were good evidence, when it objectively isn’t attempting to rationalize the lack of evidence behind exceptionally poor reasoning and whatever argument you can shoe horn.

Compare this to, say, abiogenesis or evolution.

I can show you the incontrovertible evidence that life has evolved from a common ancestor; and I can assuredly talk about all the interesting evidence that strongly indicates it’s possible for life to spring from non life; I can talk about the fun of Montmorillonite, or lipid bilayer vesicles, etc: all evidence and experiment based.

It’s all evidence; and not once would I have to rely on personal incredulity, arguments from ignorance or simply denial to retain the belief.

That’s the inherent difference between faith, and reason: reason follows the evidence and what we can show: faith is defended against evidence that proves it wrong.

Just to be clear, you have never observed abiogenesis, nor can you scientifically verify that it is even possible, yet one of the foundational premises you must believe in your worldview is that life came about through the process of abiogenesis. Is this factually incorrect?

I think faith is part of a (Butler-ean) abstract relation of ideas. For example, self-love is not a belief, it is a faith in which you love yourself and others. It should surprise no one that such idea will never be grounded in empirical facts. There is no easy impression to faith just as there is no easy impression to virtue. I see faith as an impression that demands complete submission to an all powerful deity. A submission to the deity is a simple act of obedience in which you agree to the rules prescribed by the deity. These rules are part of the abstract relation of ideas. Adults legislate undeveloped moral agents (i.e. children) by teaching them to follow actions which they think best fit these rules. Do I find adults unethical when they apply and live their life according to such rules from the abstract relation of ideas? Generally speaking, no.

So what you’re doing is pretty typical of those who don’t have a valid position; in that you’re ignoring almost everything I’m saying in order to deflect onto a single small point in what appears to be an attempt to drive the conversation off the rails so it is never brought back to the point you can’t really defend.

So let’s recap:

Faith is a form denial, it’s training yourself to maintain a belief despite lack of evidence or even evidence to the contrary. I’ve summarized this quite a few times. No one seems able to defend faith against this claim. Odd!

You attempted to falsely conflate faith, with justified trust - they’re not the same thing as I showed - and faith in religion is inherently silly if you use the same nature of what is believed by religion on something we see in real life.


You then attempted to argue that you don’t really have faith, but you’re simply convinced by the evidence. Which is odd, as it seems that denying your religion is faith-based implicitly concedes that faith is not a valid way to determine truth. You can’t have it both ways.


Obviously, that claim wasn’t true either, as the best evidence you suggested would be terrible if you needed to use something similar in real life; as I mentioned above


Indeed, your defence of faith in religion, is not showing that faith has any relevance of benefit: but really trying to argue your position is not one of faith but mine is.


Let’s bring this conversation back before we go on: faith has not provided any invention or innovation. In 3000 years of Abrahamic religion there has been no widespread cure of disease, no discoveries and no useful revelation that came about due to faith. In 500 years of evidence driven modern science, we’ve cured diseases, discovered how our bodies work, harnessed the electron, the atom, fly around the world and walked on the moon.

Methodological naturalism is responsible for every thing you see around you; in a fraction of the time it has taken faith based approaches to reveal absolutely nothing useful.

Moreover; in many cases, faith itself has been a barrier stifling innovation, thought and understanding - because that’s what faith is, a mechanism to push back against contradictory information. If the facts show a belief is wrong - faith is how people maintain that belief.


Now, you imply that I have faith in abiogenesis. If that were true, it wouldn’t change how baseless your faith is, nor would it change how successful not having faith has been; it would simply mean in one respect, I am as deluded as you.

However, that’s not the case; and we can take abiogenesis as the example.

Let’s look at the top level. On the one hand you have religious texts telling me life was created by supernatural means.

These religious texts don’t match the observed facts - we can tell there was no global flood, we can tell the order in which organisms were created is incorrect, and the evidence definitively proves life has evolved from a single ancestor; invalidating most religious claims.


The claims that don’t fail are not even testable - there is no test one can make on divine creation that could prove it correct (t


So on the one hand, we have religious claims invoking a deity we can’t prove even exists, using a mechanism we have never observed to create life in a way we can’t show and can’t prove, and the only justification for this is a book that says it happened that we know is wrong.

On the other hand, it could be caused by some sort of a natural process. We can show natural processes forming everything around us, we can tell that a natural process formed life as we know it from a common ancestor, and we know that there isn’t really much else to what we see in the creation of life than chemical processes.

So even without any other evidence, the natural process argument is much more reasonable and valid. 

Science deviates from religion by being unsure, and specifying that we don’t really know how - as we don’t; as opposed to simply loudly asserting that we are correct without evidence.

Abiogenesis is simply vastly more likely given the observations we’ve made so far than magic.

But saying that, you should take a look at the evidence.

Observation shows that in plausible environments amino acids and nucleobases can be created, lipid bilayers and RNA strands can self assemble; that bilayers are single direction permeable by RNA, and if trapped in a lipid bilayer; osmotic pressure drives division.

We know in the right configuration RNA can catalyze it’s own division; not to mention a vast array of other examples where we have been able to show more
Complex chemistry being generated from less complex chemistry. 

We also know; that once we have self
Replicating molecules subject to selective pressure - everything else is mostly explainable by evolutionary processes.

There’s no reason why any of these things have any reason to be true if life hasn’t come about naturally - which means that each discovery continues to lend credence to the hypothesis that it did.

Even then, science is not religion, it doesn’t have faith: and so it doesn’t pretend it’s proven, or definitive: it is simply the current best explanation of the origin of life. Which is true.

Your objection is really patently false in many ways, but the extremity of the demand for full proof or clear evidence before one can draw conclusions is inherently dishonest:

It’s only the religious who profess that no human between now and the end of time, will ever know enough or experiment enough to be able to finish that end to end process; based on that same denial.


Your fundamental objection to sciences position on abiogenesis, though, is predicated on the projection of your own false conviction about the origin of life.

You may be convinced beyond question that God created the universe, despite no evidence (and in some cases contradictory evidence), and no technical explanation of how. But I’m not, nor are any scientists I have ever heard about.

So please refrain from projecting your own false confidence onto me. 

From all the explanations I have seen, I have simply concluded based on the balance of evidence, probability and general observation, life arising naturally best fits all the facts. Nothing more. 

I am able to justify that logically, with evidence and without faith of any kind.

Well it seems religion is a bit of a sore spot for you. But since I didn't get a clear answer, I just want to make sure I'm understanding you. You have reasons and evidence to believe that life came about through abiogenesis, but you - nor anyone else - has ever actually observed life coming from non-life through natural processes, correct?

You don't have to compare your beliefs to mine. I already understand how silly you think I am. I'm just looking for a simple answer.

You seem to be disinterested in a discussion; I can tell by the way you’re ignoring everything and defending nothing; you’re just asking a disingenuous questions, drawing a whole lot of false equivalences then deflect when you don’t get the answer you wanted.


If you paid attention in the last post - I answered the issue of abiogenesis in detail; I covered how we have confidence that is correct; and I drew your attention to all the examples of observable evidence that help us conclude it’s probably valid.

That should cover, any honest question you have about the evidence supporting it.

If you wanted to compare abiogenesis with faith; as I pointed out that abiogenesis is not believed without question or without reason; and as I pointed out, this is unlike much religious conviction. So any honest question on that front is covered there too.

You could be wanting to compare the evidence for abiogenesis with that for God; for which I broadly covered in my response too. Specifically that there is still direct objective measurable evidence in its support, for which an equivalent theistic evidence doesn’t exist.

As I’ve covered every honest reason you could have asked the question, the only reason I can think of that you would continue to ask a question that implicitly rejects certain types of evidence as valid in a discussion that is revolving around evidence, is as a deliberately loaded question that wants to exclude some types of objective measurable evidence because they harm your argument.

I don’t bite on obviously loaded rhetorical questions like that, that are not asked for honest reasons.

Now if you take issue with any of my framing of evidence; or you want to actually make the argument that you would have made had I answered the question, rather than relying on this type of silly disingenuous tactic, feel free to do so.

Just because you don't like the reason for my faith, or because you don't agree with the reason for my faith, does not mean I don't have a reason. It just means you are not convinced by my reasons. If I don't agree with the reason you have for believing abiogenesis is how life came about, does that mean you don't have a reason? I already stated that the Bible is a reliable collection of historical documents. Whether you think that is a good reason or a bad one, you cannot say it is "without reason."

If you are so confident in your position, you should be able to defend your answer from any false equivalence I may or may not assert. I am just making the point that you have never observed abiogenesis, but I was hoping you would confirm I was not misrepresenting you with a simple yes or no. I would also make the point you have never observed an instance of one kind of animal evolving into another kind. Bacteria may change into different bacteria, sparrows with small beaks into sparrows with large beaks, but never a lizard into a bird. Unless you are aware of an example that I have not seen of course.

You can assume my motives as you will. I don't think it is a ridiculous thing to point out when someone has observed an effect, then made a conclusion about the cause without ever having observed the cause that supposedly produced the effect.

Firstly, pointing out your disingenuous questions is exactly what I’m doing, and have been throughout.

If you recall from your opening post, you have drawn false equivalences, failed to defend your statements and claims, and have been systematically evading any argument presented and simply moving onto something else each time.

You suggested flying on a plane required faith.

When rebutted, Instead of defending the claim; you then moved on to suggesting you had evidence to support your position.

When that was shown to be false, you ignore it and simply moved onto attacking abiogenesis.

When that was defended; you complained I didn’t answer the question.

When I pointed that out; you’ve simply moved onto suggesting that your belief is valid and attacking evolution.

You seem to be just changing the subject, adding a new question, moving on.

This does not appear to be the behaviour or actions of someone who has any interested in any sort of intelligent discussion.

I am questioning your motives; because your engaging in a pattern of dishonest conduct; and given my experience, you are doing so because this is all you have.

As I said earlier, loudly professing how reasonable you are being, or how much faith works does not make it so: and given the pattern of behaviour above, claims that you’re being rational or asking reasonable questions is really just p***ing on the thread and telling us it’s raining.

You are indeed right that you have your reasons for your belief: the ones you have already gave are objectively false - the book you cite has been shown to be false on a number of supernatural claims relating to a global flood and the origin of life; and the idea that a book being correct about mundane facts means unverifiable supernatural claims are true, is terrible and incredulity is not a valid reason for believing anything.

This is the entire point I am making about faith; your reasons do not boil down to evidence or the type rational justification any regular belief - such as flying on a plain - has; but in a form of denial where you are forced to reject lack of evidence - or contrary evidence in order to maintain your belief; and thus sort of evasion is EXACTLY what you’re  doing here.

The way you are jumping around in the argument; asking disingenuous questions, engaging in intellectually dishonest tricks - such as framing questions in a way that allows you to unilaterally ignore any evidence you don’t like, like you just did again is really just proving my point.

I could continue to answer your questions: for example by pointing out that arbitrarily demanding only one type of evidence; even though other evidence may proof the point - is intellectually dishonest; or by pointing out that not a single organism in history has ever “turned into a different kind of organism”, because that’s not how evolution works; or pointing out that we have dozens upon dozens of examples of organisms turning into something else that I’m sure you will arbitrarily reject using a no true Scotsman argument; or pointing out that any method or mechanism of determining if two organisms are related, and how related organisms are; all show that they are, and all broadly agree in how much - to the point that common ancestry is provable beyond any reasonable doubt - I can do that,  but I have no reason to suspect you will not simply ignore the response and ask a new question.

This is the inherent issue; you’re not looking to engage or discuss, you’re trying to ignore everything I’m saying and find some chink of issue you can exploit to say “aha I am right!” after ignoring the dozen or so examples of having been proven wrong.

I am more than happy to have a rational discussion with you, but I strongly suspect you’re doing this because you don’t have the ability to defend the things you’re saying.

I am not jumping around. You are just rapid-firing "rebuttals" (which basically consist of you just stating things are objectively false) and then accusing me of dishonesty and dodging because I didn't respond with a 10-page paper addressing them all in detail. Do you really think that I haven't ever considered the issues you're raising?

I started by addressing the definition of faith and I don't think getting into a scientific debate about a global flood is necessary to do that. Nor do I feel like taking the time to do so. If you feel that is the only way to resolve that issue, great. You can consider this a win for yourself then.

Yes. I am a child but love my religion, but because I am a child, I am not religious.

Your logic is inaccurate

Clearly you do not get the memo. Of course “religious children” exist, but the term should make you flinch as much as the term “Marxist children” does. The term “religious children” is about as accurate as “Nazi child” in that both are indoctrinated to believe incorrect principles.

I’ve explained where and how you’ve jumped around - how you’ve made an argument, dropped it, moved on to the next, dropped it, moved on to the next, dropped it; etc.

You’ve done it again right here.

What I’m doing, is explaining why you’re wrong at each point, I’ve used examples, analogies and more detailed explanations to show why.

At each point you’ve dropped what you’ve said and moved onto another point; indeed the only reason the conversation has moved where it has, is because you’re pushing it there with your deflective questioning. Blaming me for you moving the line of questioning is just the same sort of dishonesty you’ve been displaying throughout.

If you recall, in the posts you’ve ignored; I have been continually trying to pull the conversation back to talking about faith.

This is the main issue with your slippery deflection.

The whole premise of faith, is that every single definition of faith, from technical to theological, is about believing something more strongly or with more strong conviction than the evidence allows. As per my previous posts, where I explained it.

It’s trust without foundation; it has generated to knowledge and from its failure to deliver anything objective is certainly not a valid epistemological position. 

Indeed, as I alluded to previously; it’s a form of denial, when you compare religious where faith is strongly encouraged to scenarios of actual denial they are astonishingly similar.

I will go further though: while this doesn’t necessarily apply to all religious people by any means; but for biblical literalists, creationists especially, but many type of fundamentalist religious groups find thus; when you get to a certain point you are forced to confront a decision of whether to remain religious, or whether to remain honest. It’s not possible to be both.

There’s a building over there into which you’ve expressed no interest in entering, and never have, yet you claim to know all about it. There is no elevator; the building must be mounted floor by floor, by each step. It is a lasting commitment of scaling this building, the view from which you will never experience without following the necessities. 

So are you saying children can't be religious because they can't think for themselves? I am just confused on why those can't co-exist if a child genuinely believes in the religion he practices

Five years ago, scientists created a single-celled synthetic organism that, with only 473 genes, was the simplest living cell ever known. However, this bacteria-like organism behaved strangely when growing and dividing, producing cells with wildly different shapes and sizes.
Now, scientists have identified seven genes that can be added to tame the cells’ unruly nature, causing them to neatly divide into uniform orbs. This achievement, a collaboration between the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Bits and Atoms, is described in the journal Cell. Identifying these genes is an important step toward engineering synthetic cells that do useful things. Such cells could act as small factories that produce drugs, foods and fuels; detect disease and produce drugs to treat it while living inside the body; and function as tiny computers.

I am saying that the chances for a toddler being indoctrinated into a faith is much higher than them actually picking up their text, analysing it, comparing it to science and coming to an informed conclusion. Like how you should flinch at the term “Hitler youth”, you should flinch when you here “Christian child”. 

As I said, as long as you're unwilling to enter the building, nothing will happen. That's no trope. that's as real as a brick on the head. Tell me, have you sat at a telescope all night to observed the moons of Jupiter in transit across its face? Is that a trope, too? I have, bud. Personal commitment. That's no trope, either.

Apparently this wasn't good enough for you. Well you obviously don't approve of the supernatural events found in the Bible. And you love stating things are objectively false. But I am curious, do you know what the essential beliefs of the biblical Christian faith actually are?

Actually yes, I’ve seen Ganymede transit from a mid size observatory. I’ve observed Jupiter, from a home telescope - it’s pretty easy.

Why you bring up things you can see, and we can observe is a little odd.

Here’s your problem.

If I decided to try and have faith that I will win the lottery some day, I would be able to convince myself that it was true.

If I convince myself using faith that Satan exists, and he’s a cool dude, every day, I would end up believing it.

If I convince myself using faith that Zeus was real, I would end up believing it.

I have literally no doubt, that with enough effort, I could enter that building, I could convince myself of many things.

I would feel that I was correct, I would feel like I had all this knowledge. That I had secrets that no one else had.

That truth, that fact, that feeling is simply self delusion. It has no factual basis, reveals no objective knowledge, and indeed helps prevent you from understanding or appreciating the truth.

What you’re talking about as a magical building that one must enter is simply the human capacity of self delusion and denial, to convince oneself of things that are not true.

That is not a virtuous thing, that building of self delusion should be avoided at all costs.

Going into it will lead to you doing stupid things; like convincing yourself that the faith produces knowledge; despite having not a single example of a piece of objective knowledge coming through faith

If you’re interested, a single global biblical flood, population bottlenecks that result, post flood diaspora, single creation even of all animals at once, would be imprinted in every facet of geology and genetics top to bottom. 

They’re not, clearly refuting a biblical flood; in addition, given that if life was created, it was created as protocellar life and then subsequently evolved - which contradicts the biblical account.

This clearly shows the testable supernatural claims in the Bible are absolutely false. 

Either way, believing the bible on the basis of some Historical events being accurate is like believing that a Nigerian Prince is going to give you money On the basis that Nigerian princes can exist....

Or even more accurately: believing that there was a real magic man with supernatural power who lured children away with a magic flute that cast a spell on rats and humans On the basis that there was some recorded Tragedy in Hamlyn.

I thought I’d reiterate this, as I absolutely love saying things are false, almost as much as I loved following it up with short explanations of why. 

You seem to omit this, and pretend as if I’m doing what you do; which is simply to assert my position. If you scan back, you will see a fairly detailed explanation on almost every time I’ve suggested something you’ve said was wrong.

You seem to have ignored all of them; in order to simply throughout another question, and refuse to defend what you just said.

I’ve told you this is what you’re doing for the last 48261 posts - and you deny it, only to drop everything you just said and asked something new - as you’ve done again.

The answer is no: because there doesn’t seem to be an agreed set of central principles to Christianity - other than a general acceptance that Jesus was the son of God. There’s simply a fractured set of denominations that all have substantial variations in how they pick and chose the parts of the Bible they agree with and don't; and variations on how large the inconsistencies in their beliefs are. 

Either way; even if I hadn’t got a clue - it isn’t even relevant to anything we’re saying, unless you’re again trying to divert the conservation away from talking about faith 

How is the content of faith, the essential beliefs that make up that faith, not relevant to a discussion on faith?

I did not respond to much of your last post because you misrepresented what make up the essential truths of the biblical Christian faith.  Would you like to know what they are?

Perhaps the two of you would like to, when complete, vote on me and fauxlaw's debate, THBT: The God of the Christian bible likely does not.