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i don't believe this, but playing devil's advocate. but i am beginning to believe we should overthrow iran. i do believe tthis argument is why john bolton should be on trump's military team.... just to have the someone willing to push this option so all options are on the table.
i dont know what the odds are that iran would get a nuke and funnel it to terrorists and then not take responsibility. but it's possible if not likely.. it's a realistic situation given the way iran currently behaves. what are we suppose to do if they have nukes after theyve been arming terrorists? mutual assured destruction only works in theory, in practice it can prevent a bad actor like iran from being stopped in that sort of situation. this means we should use force if necessary, to prevent them from getting nukes. but how much force should we use?
would bombing them if they dont let inspectors in or make too much fuel that isn't easy to monitor fix the situation? (if they won't let inspectors in or are making more fuel than they need, their intentions cannot be good) if we don't over throw them, it would probably just delay the inevitable if iran really wanted nukes. the reason it's inevitable, is because we will have weak presidents eventually, and iran will just take advantage of the situation. then we are at the point that they just funnel bombs to terrorists. as was argued for a reason to not bomb them, bombing them might just increase the odds of an attack from iran. so if that's a possibility, and if we might have weak presidents, that's all the more reason to overthrow them while we still can.
here are some tactical considerations: our military is as big as the next ten countries combined, and we have thousands of nukes and iran has no nukes and is small in comparision. that's why no one wants to mess with us. their GDP is only half a trillion whereas ours is twenty five trillion. but, their GDP is rising exponentially, which would give them the means to fund terrorism. after all, iran was doing exactly that during the treaty that obama negotiated. they were also insisting on three or four weeks notice for inspections, which would mean they have bad intentions because there's no good reason to not allow inspectors. why would we do business with iran, at the same time we are fighting terrorists? the money they get is going directly to terrorism, so we are just shooting ourselves in the foot. better to just overthrow the current regime than to let that happen, if them getting nukes and being a bad actor is inevitable.
as i said, i think iran might have decent intentions at the moment, so i don't believe the above argument is best. but if we think them getting nukes is inevitable, we should do something about it now, while we have the chance. i just dont know the odds they are going to try to get nukes so this question is my main sticking point.
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• The amount of sedimentation that would need to have been mixed into the water to account for all the sedimentary layers being laid down at once would kill virtually all marine life. And most of the remaining life would have died from the radical changes in water salinity.
• After the flood, the water covering the entire Earth’s surface would have had to go somewhere, but there is no mechanism for getting rid of anywhere near that much water.
• After spending a year in cramped quarters without exercise, the animals would have had to travel up to many thousands of miles across often inhospitable terrain and vast oceans to reach their natural habitats. This includes all the animals that move extremely slowly or can only survive in limited environments.
• Almost no land plants or their seeds can survive immersion in water for a year, so after the flood the land would have been barren, providing no food or habitats for the newly released animals.
• And just eight stone-age humans would have had to repopulate their former lands across the world, reviving all the lost languages, writing, religions, professions, technologies and other unique societal developments of their former cultures, without showing any interruptions in their historical records, nor mentioning anything about a global flood AT ALL. And those eight people would have had to reproduce so incredibly rapidly that in just 150 years (fewer than eight generations) they would have had enough people to build Stonehenge, the pyramids and numerous cities mentioned in the Bible, as well as populate all of Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, China, and the Americas with MILLIONS of people. All this while experiencing war, disease and global famine during a migration across the entire planet. Even using a global growth rate TWICE as fast as the most rapid ever recorded in human history, there would be fewer than 5,000 people in the entire world in those 150 years, which is nowhere near the MILLIONS of people required to match even the most conservative historical estimates.
The realization that the ark described in the Bible would be orders of magnitude too small to fit millions of species and their supplies—even if only young, small specimens were brought on board—has caused many creationists to conclude that new species can evolve after all...at least up to a point. They define the biblical “kind” at the genus or even family level in an attempt to bring the number of species on board the ark from millions down into the thousands. The idea is that there was a single cat kind, a single antelope kind, a single beetle kind, a single two-legged carnivorous dinosaur kind, and so on, and that AFTER leaving the ark they all rapidly evolved into multiple species to account for the tens of millions of species seen both in the fossil record and alive today.
But for that to work, all the surviving animals would need to have evolved at a MASSIVELY accelerated rate right after the flood. Just to give one example, the basic “cat kind” would have had to evolve into lions, tigers, leopards, snow leopards, cheetahs, caracals, mountain lions, wildcats, lynxes, bobcats, jaguars, jaguarundis, ocelots, servals, saber-toothed cats, domestic cats, and the rest of the 13 cat genera, 40 cat species and hundreds of subspecies...and do it quickly enough to show up as mummified remains, artwork and written historical records all within a few hundred years of the flood. Ironically, that pace of evolution is FAR faster than evolutionary theory predicts.
Not only that, but before splitting into multiple species, each “kind” would have first had to breed up to thousands of groups to then send to all their new environments, some of which were many thousands of miles away. Only THEN could they have evolved into the tens of millions of species that exist today and in the fossil record. And all this supercharged evolution would have had to happen within a few hundred years...only to then abruptly slow WAY down to the pace we see today. So why isn’t there any historical or other evidence of tens of millions of animal groups suddenly appearing, migrating all over the globe, and then temporarily evolving at an incredible rate into a huge variety of new species? Clearly there are some serious problems with this “limited evolution” creationism.
So clearly the Noah’s flood story is just a myth.
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this link is full of examples of all the holes in the story of noah....
i particularly liked this person's response
Just SOME of the more serious problems include:• A handful of people somehow used stone-age tools to build a large wooden ship in which to cram potentially MILLIONS of animals, along with their many specific dietary and other requirements for an entire YEAR. That much cargo would have sunk the ship immediately. Not only that, but even with today’s advanced tools and engineering it would be impossible to build such a large wooden ship without it immediately breaking apart in rough flood waters.
• Most animals would have had to travel IMMENSE distances to get to the ark, including many like termites, snails, sloths, koalas and penguins that have limited mobility, or that can only tolerate a narrow range of environmental conditions, or that have highly specialized diets.
• Supposedly there was a single, 18” window in the ark, which would have been entirely inadequate to provide ventilation, resulting in the quick suffocation of all the animals.
• ALL the many diseases and parasites specific to each species would have had to be carried by at least one of each animal. Tens of thousands of diseases affect humans alone. I wonder which of Noah’s family members carried all the venereal diseases exclusive to humans....
• For nearly all existing fossils to have been created by the flood, right before the rain started falling there had to have been an average of over 2,000 vertebrate species—ranging in size from tiny shrews to massive dinosaurs—for EVERY ACRE of land on the planet. That’s not even counting the more than 90% of species that are invertebrates.
• If the rain came from a vapor canopy, it would have had to be superheated. If it came from ice falling from orbit, it would have become superheated upon entering the atmosphere. Add to that the water coming from the “fountains of the deep,” as the Bible describes it, which from even just a mile down would be boiling hot, and there’s easily enough heat to have vaporized the oceans and destroyed virtually all life on Earth.
• The seismic activity pulling the continents apart, forcing up mountain ranges, and causing nearly all the world’s volcanoes to erupt at the same time would have poisoned the atmosphere, generated enough heat to vaporize the oceans, and once again destroyed virtually all life on Earth.
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@Mopac
"He is simply a windbag full of rhetoric, devoid of substance."
i love the accurate description. it's amusing to watch him rant. he looks unhinged though, someone with mental health issues. but yeah, i usually just read a few bits of his diatribe and move on.
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@Dr.Franklin
1. link to me some examples of the fossils. you can't, by the way, but i'd enjoy a laugh as you try or find an excuse as to why you can't
2. why aren't those mass casualties and the global flood accepted as factual events and accepted by the scientific community? is it some sort of far fetched conspiracy? that's usually what nuts like you say when scientists don't accept their bullshit
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@Dr.Franklin
why is there no evidence of these fossils, when there's ample evidence of all kinds of other mass extinction fossils and such?
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@Dr.Franklin
you blow my mind and it's contemptible at how much of a heretic you are
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@Dr.Franklin
where is the evidence of mass casualties of all the dead animals?
i'll start with that one.
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the idea that there's a literal noah story is a heresy that is based on idolatry. placing the bible above God's truth
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@Dr.Franklin
address these questions when you debate, or now if you prefer
the noah story is literal just because the bible says so, and God can do anything?
when miracles occur, i believe there is evidence for it. with the story of noah, it's not just the lack of evidence, but evidence exists that actively discredits the story.
if the story of noah occurred within recent history or thousands of years, how are there so many cultures who look like they evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, when supposedly they were all wiped out recently?
how did all the fresh water fish and life survive when all the water combined with the ocean?
how did kangaroos and island animals get to the ark?
why isn't there any fossils of the mass casualties of life on earth?
why wasn't there any imbreeding with only one of each animal?
how did they fit so many animals on one boat?
why doesn't our genetic history show we came from a family from the middle east? they can trace our genes like that, so itd be evident if it was true
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@3RU7AL
i prefer a zero percent chance at millions annihilated when it comes to someone with iran's history, whereas you prefer a non-zero percent chance. doesn't sound too rational to me.
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@TheRealNihilist
what if iran gets nukes and wipes out israel, which they said was their intent?
what if israel does what it said it'd do a few years ago and attacks iran because it won't let in inspectors? we shouldn't get their back?
what if iran arms terrorists with nukes and wipes out washington DC, and it may or may not be clear that iran was responsible? you said you'd only act if it was officially iran. how naive and stupid can ya be?
what if iran wipes out a few usa cities? and any retaliation would be met with more nukes going off in the usa? it's easy to think tit for tat would be implied, but to someone as crazy as iran, they might not see it that way and want more pot shots in than the usa gets. assured mutual destruction works well in theory, but isn't full proof.... assured mutual destruction might happen.
what if iran gets hundreds of nukes and holds the human race hostage? it only would take a hundred nukes going off just right to bring a dooms day situation because of the environmental effects globally.
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@TheRealNihilist
what about all the death to america chants their people do? what about the fact that they are religious fanatics who might be okay with sacrificing their people to get a few good shots in at israel or the usa? you seem to be suggesting an iran with nukes isn't a problem. i dont know what rock you are living under, or if you are taking your crazy meds properly
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@TheRealNihilist
what's your breaking point? if iran doesn't let inspectors in, should that warrant force? what if they are making more nuclear fuel than they would need for energy? what if i am correct in my understanding that even with the deal we had to give them notice to inspect, thus making it possible for them to hide the fuel if they are openly making more than was agreed, which they said they would?
you dont think it's okay for them to have nukes do you?
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@Snoopy
i would have kept the obama negotiation in place. i can respect trump getting out, but only if he's willing to back up the fall out with force, if necessary. the bottom line is that there iran cannot have nukes. the red line needs to be whether or not inspectors are let in. and them making too much fuel perhaps should be a red line as well, cause the inspections weren't very ironclad. that is, i think we had to give iran like three weeks or so notice before we could inspect. it's a glaring hole in the agreement.
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there's no good reason for iran not to allow inspectors look at their nuclear program. once that is cut, it's time for an attack. israel would be totally justified in attacking as they had been planning seven years ago. and the usa would have to get its back, and should do it regardless of who joins in.
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as was said in the article, israel wouldn't want to teke even a ten percent chance of one hundred percent annihilation, and the usa doesn't want those odds at millions annihilated. getting a deal to have inspectors would be ideal, but if that doesn't happen, the bottom line is that iran cannot be trusted to have an unverified nuclear program, let alone have nukes.
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here is an article from seven years ago. it talks about iran stating it intends to expand its nuclear program and wipe israel off the map.
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@zedvictor4
you don't care if iran gets nukes? are you mentally challenged?
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i think it's inevitable that iran gets nukes. eventually we'll get a pacifist president for something like eight years, and iran can just get em then.
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@TheRealNihilist
llll...
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here is an article that says if iran opts out of the treaty, and doesn't let inspectors in, it may become impossible to tell if they are working on a bomb
i think that article also talks about how they plan to enrich more than is allowed under the plan, unless they get economic relief from sanctions. just google words like iran and enriching to find out more on that.
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@zedvictor4
enriching too much fuel is almost surely about getting nukes. they shouldn't be allowed a nuke. the reason, is because they are the biggest state sponsor of terrorism out there. basically, they are the bad guys. why do we not allow criminals to have guns? the same logic applies to not allowing them to have nukes. iran's leaders have talked about wiping israel off the map. we dont want to give them the capability to do so.
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@Greyparrot
it's in no one's interest for iran to have a nuke, so that should involve the usa. and, a localized war might not be sufficient without the usa. i guess israel has nukes, but things might get out of hand without the usa. plus it would take only a country with balls to pull the trigger for a strike.
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i'm not saying that america should invade iran. just bomb them. if iran was stupid enough to wage a retaliatory war, they'd be blown away. after all, the usa's military is bigger than the next ten countries in the world combined, with iran puny in comparison, and the usa has thousands of nukes, which iran has none. it's clear iran is one of the largest sponsors of terrorism in the world, and given nukes, they would get worse and be able to hold the world hostage. we can't let that happen.
iran said it's going to probably go past the limits of nuclear fuel that was set by the treaty they were in, so it's becoming clear punishment will probably be in order.
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@Zeus4ever
all hail zeus! and hail his messenger, Zeus4ever!
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reconciliation means a budget bill can be passed with just a majority vote. the republicans had control of all three branches of government in trump's first two years. do you think it's more lip service that they are the party of fiscal restraint? in fact, if you look at the last forty or fifty years, the deficit went down more during democratic presidents than republican. probably because republicans can get democrats to agree on some restraint, but repubilcans don't want to be retaliated against for restraint when they are in charge.
republicans don't have a lot going for em. if they dont have the fiscal restraint thing, it's a pretty bad situation.
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@Dr.Franklin
vox is just reporting on it. the study was in epidemilogical review a few years ago. this is a literature review, more than just this guy said this and that guy said that.
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places with more gun control have less murder
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@Mopac
i like your exposition above
i wouldn't mind asking you questions or engaging about orthodoxy, but it's unrelated to the posts you've been making in this thread
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@Mopac
yes i'm christian.
who is jesus? i answer it the same way peter answered.... "you are the messiah, the son of the living god".
the good news is that jesus defeated death and teaches a kingdom of love, and we can participate in the resurrection and the kingdom if we have faith and cooperate with grace.
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@Ramshutu
how would your analysis change if we were to presume that there exists an objective purpose to reality?
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@Ramshutu
the objective purpose could be that God wants to save us from a reality with problems in it. you insist you're not being subjective, but it's just one man's opinion that the purposes of God are not being met by that scenario.
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@Ramshutu
do you think there's an objective purpose to reality? why or why not? do you think if it exists that it's possible to know what it is, or know that there exists such a purpose? why or why not?
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@Ramshutu
"reality isn't as i like, therefore God doesn't exist"
sure, doesn't sound subjective at all? i hope you can at least understand our skepticism at such kind of thinking.
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@Stephen
you must have missed the point. the point isn't whether non christian religions have people who have NDEs. it's whether the NDEs show distinctly non chrisitan elements, like visiting Muhammed or something like that.
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@Ramshutu
another thought. if there can be an objective purpose, it would make most sense to think our reality is most best expression of that, given reality is objective. you are subjectively calling reality inferior to some subjective purpose.
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@Stephen
did you even watch a little bit of htose youtube videos? they are about a muslim who had a NDE and converted to christianity.
the near death link you posted just explains muslim beliefs but doesn't show any credible NDEs. im sure there's a story or two like the experiene of muhammed that could be made up. i'm talking about modern time examples.
if there are hundreds of examples, where are any? and im sure they experience it, but do they have islamic experiences in their NDE?
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@Mopac
jesus complained of the jews, because he said he performed miracles, and even then they wouldn't believe. so i wouldnt discount miracles completely. but i have sympathy for the argument to not make it one's whole faith or only reason for believing.
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@Mopac
what do you think of those orthodox who say the official teaching is "no one outside the orthodox faith can be saved"?
what does it say about the orthodox faith that you guys can't even agree on a basic teaching like that? who has the final word and why, in this specific dispute?
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saved by grace, through faith. sounds better than saved by grace, through faith and cooperation in works. i do like the catholic idea of not calling a pile of crap anything other than a pile of crap though.
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@Mopac
how would you say the orthodox idea of theosis fits into the framework i argued above?
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what do you faith and works christians think?
if you look at st paul in the bible he says abraham was justified by faith. st james says abraham was justified by faith and works, and added that we are not saved by faith alone. if you look at jesus, he sounds like a faith and works kinda guy. but if we are to reconcile all these tensions in the bible into a coherent whole, i think i would go with faith alone, properly understood. after all, as st paul later said, "it is by faith that we are saved, not of works, lest any man should boast". i take that, along with jesus' words that say to trust in him, and near death experiences which describe an unconditional love of God, and my own psychology that cannot see relying on myself to be saved even if its ultimately through grace and must rely completely on Jesus for salvation.
after all, as martin luther said, we are saved by faith alone, but faith is never alone. there must be good works in a true chritian, but that doesn't mean they save you. we are rewarded by the good we do though. and even the catholic faith doesn't mandate a calculus for how much works one must have, as does not protestantism.
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@Mopac
i know you don't like to base faith or other things on miracles, but how do you view miracles that happen to the non orthodox?
do you think non orthodox christians can be saved? are you like modern day catholics who say other christians can be saved, but only if they are mystically united to their / your church? or are you like old traditional catholics who say no christian outside of your religion can be saved?
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@Ramshutu
i think it boils down to you can't say your position is any better than anyone else, so why should we base our assumptions on an ideal that says everything has no greater meaning beyond what we ourselves impart? u assume things are cause and effect and basically pointless. if that's not true, then there must be a greater explanation. maybe we are being punished by God in this reality, at least as argued by fundamentalists? i like to think there's a deeper meaning than punishment, but at least i can agree there's a deeper thing going on.
here is a comical bit that explains why i reject your underlying premises....
"ATHEISM: the belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason what so ever into self replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs. Makes perfect sense."
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@Mopac
we've discussed the orthodox faith before, and i told you i have some strong affinity for that religion but didn't have enough of a reason to be orthodox. so we have exchanged ideas before.
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@Mopac
i'm just meeting ram on his level, and telling him not to get hung up on bad arguments like your ultimate reality rant. you do have some brilliant points though, sometimes, don't get me wrong.
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@Ramshutu
if it's any consolation, as a theist, even i find mopac's rants about the ultimate reality to be circular. i wouldn't even engage that sort of fluff after a post or two.
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when i think of a reason to be a theist or christian i look at things that look supernatural. here is a link with more on that....
so we see lots of christian near death experiences, seeing a being of light as Jesus and such. where are all the examples of non christian NDEs? i saw one once where a guy thought some shadowly figures were hindu gods, but i don't know of many others like that. that could have been just an interpretation that is wrong of an experience. where are the other examples? i see lots of christian, but non christian is lacking. i know at nderf.org the founder of that research said he only has less than a hundred examples of non western NDEs, so it's not like there's a lot to go on. should we just take it on faith that there's a bunch of NDEs going on that are anotehr religion? id ask about atheist NDEs but i know they happen to them too, as most atheists come back believing in God.
and of course even if there are examples, it's far fetched to think there's some hallucinatory story embedded in our brain that manifests itself when we're almost dead to the point of no return.
also, i see lots of things that look like christian miracles. where are the other faith miracles? i see lots of examples that turn out to be scams, where are the authentic examples at? and why don't things that look supernatural like the things that happen to theists, happen to atheists? where's that evidence at?
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