Negro genocide

I'd like to draw attention to the following quotes from Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Murdererhood and proponent of Eugenics. Hat tip to Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron.

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." (Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts)

"Always to me any aroused group was a good group, and therefore I accepted an invitation to talk to the women's branch of the Ku Klux Klan at Silver Lake, NJ...In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered." (Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography, P.366-367 )

"Everywhere we see poverty and large families going hand in hand. Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly. People who cannot support their own offspring are encouraged by Church and State to produce large families. Many of the children thus begotten are diseased or feeble-minded; many become criminals. The burden of supporting these unwanted types has to be borne by the healthy elements of the nation. Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to the maintenance of those who should never have been born." (Margaret Sanger: The Pivot of Civilization, P. 279).


For more information...

An evil god

Paul C has thrown out some interesting thoughts on how we'd know it if the God of the Bible were actually evil. I had asked him 5 questions and he has responded.
This vein of argumentation is very similar to the ridiculous arguments fronted by the Pastafarians and even recently on the Jolly Nihilist's blog, where he plugs the Ethereal Cosmic Catfish. I've got a post on that topic rattling around in my head right now, but here's this for now:

Hi Paul C,
Kudos for originality. But demerits for changing the argument.
You are proposing an entirely alternative worldview, one that you made up ad hoc. Automatically, ad hoc worldviews get very little credit, and especially when they are so vaguely and poorly defined as what you have here. You clearly haven't even thought halfway thru this.
Also, you're not even proposing it; you're just arguing from the desire to be argumentative, much like the Church of the FSM. Lame. Defend your OWN worldview. Oh wait, you can't; never mind.

My FP is that TGOTB lives and is not silent. You're asking me, thus, whether The God of Not The Bible lives. No, he doesn't. And one can't pretend like this is part of my worldview, which you are doing.


1) I'm not suffering. In fact, I have a great deal of joy.
Why would I despair when I have so many good things in life already? He has given me a huge amount of blessings.

2) Is it you who are claiming that life is "unremitting misery"? Fine - that's YOUR view, and I'm sorry to hear it. It must suck to be you.
If the next life is even more atrocious and miserable, then why believe that God is evil at all? What good does it do? It's like atheism - if atheism is true, it is completely irrelevant to life. It makes 0 difference. None. Nada. There is NO existential or compelling reason to believe atheism is true if atheism is true. There is no reason to seek for true belief if atheism is true.

3) Based on what do you assert that humans have an "infinite capacity for suffering"? Your ad hoc, made-up worldview again?
And how do you know all this?
Also, since this deity is so evil, please explain how you could be sure that you knew the truth about him. Unless you believe seeking truth is intrinsically evil; in which case, one wonders why you're even arguing.

4) I said: How would you define "good" if God were evil?
You answered:
Subjectively, which is exactly the same way we would define "good" if God were good or if God did not exist.

Facts not in evidence. The former assertion has been disproven over and over again. Although I *am* very glad to see that you agree with me that, on atheism, "good" is defined subjectively, at its base. I won't forget that.

5) Atheism is NOT a viable option if what you're saying is true.
You need practice on this critiquing presuppositions stuff. You have alluvasudden switched back to who you really are - atheist Paul C - rather than continue to defend your fantasy worldview. That's OK - that's what I'm here for. Hopefully you'll take this as a useful lesson.

Flagellating a principle

The Jolly Nihilist has once again provided rich fodder for discussion. Many thanks to him for such thought-provoking comments. The gears were turning in my head, and they feel smoother now. Feels good. Now for a Dr. Pepper (to undo all the good that has heretofore been done)!

I'll divide the discussion into two sections, b/c it's getting a little mixed up. The 1st section deals with the JN's First Principle (FP) - that evidence is the best and most reliable way to know truth and also my FP - that the God of the Bible is there and that He is not silent.
The 2nd section will answer sundry other points that I found interesting enough to respond to.

---1st section---

Hey JN,

I'm not into flagellating deceased equines either... but sometimes bordering thereon can be illustrative. This may be one of those times.

The JN said:
That means I can employ evidence to support evidence’s utility.

1) Can you supply evidence for the statement: "I can employ evidence to support evidence’s utility"? What would it be?
2) Then can you supply evidence for the statement answering #1? What would it be?
3) Then can you supply evidence for the statement answering #2? What would it be?
4) Then can you supply evidence for the statement answering #3? What would it be?
5) Then can you explain how, since you're admitting here that your 1st Principle is not self-justifying, you escape the infinite regress as we've seen in points #1-4 here?
6) Then can you supply evidence for your answer to #5? What would it be?
7) Then can you supply evidence for your answer to #6? What would it be?
8) Then can you supply evidence for your answer to #7? What would it be?
9) Then can you supply evidence for your answer to #8? What would it be?


because mathematics cannot appeal to itself to demonstrate mathematics being the sole path to knowledge.

Precisely. You've given away the farm.
Neither can this 'evidential principle'. But my FP - that the God of the Bible is there and that He is not silent - can.

I merely recognize it to be by far our best, most reliable path.

What is your evidence for that?
And, once stated, what is your evidence for THAT?

Rhology said: What's your evidence for that assertion?
Yes, I'm 100% serious.
JN said:
Words have meanings

What is your evidence for that statement?
Again, I'm 100% serious.

If you wish to take that combination of letters and alternately define it, then go ahead.

No, I have no wish to redefine sthg here. Thing is, it's b/c you and I are both using the same standard of intelligibility here - that words DO have meaning and that are thoughts ARE reliably aimed in general at producing true beliefs. But that's b/c TGOTB lives and is not silent; He has provided the grounds for that.
I'm arguing that your worldview, your FP, cannot support this, cannot account for it.

The agreement to which I referred is manifest by the fact that all people—all over the world—make use of relevant facts every day in order to grasp truth.

What is your evidence for that?
Do *I* get to make these general, intuitive appeals to "everyone, everywhere" to substantiate MY FP too? How much would you accept that?


You have just utilized a relevant fact (brake lights) to reach a larger truth (the car in front is slowing)! You have employed evidence!

1) What is your evidence for that?
2) Yes I do, b/c TGOTB lives and has made the world such as it is - where things operate in such a manner that a brake light in front of me means that a collision is imminent unless I slow down. Again, my FP accts for this and yours doesn't.


I require evidence

Maybe I should know better than to ask this, but what is your evidence for that statement?

You declare man must have “saving faith,” but my constitution reviles faith as foolish.

You have (misplaced) faith in your FP! Looks like you revile faith selectively. And surprise surprise, the Bible describes you in exactly that way.


You…who, in your First Principle, seek to start the race at the finish line by presupposing, more or less, the entirety of Christianity.

As if you didn't start the race at the finish line by presupposing the truth of your evidential-oriented worldview. Remember all the times I pointed that out in Aug and Sept 2007? If not, I'd recommend rechecking that.

My metaphysical foundation—which is self-subsisting, by the way

Oh, DO explain that. It would very possibly sweep away many or even most of my objections here.

Your FP…if it could be called such…has no use for argumentation: Your desired conclusion has been neatly gift-wrapped.

1) So has yours been.
2) My FP is far fuller than yours.
3) The argumentation comes in when I check rival worldviews for their internal consistency, which is a prereq. That's why I spend a lot of time blowing up atheism; I find it useful to me personally, helpful to brethren in the faith, and quite illustrative of the bankruptcy of this "most refined" version of Western thinking.


---2nd section---

The JN said:
I meant to show—and, indeed, DID show—that your preferred argument can “prove” the Catfish just as easily as it can “prove” Yahweh. I simply have to define the Catfish meticulously.

And I already explained why that is full of hot air. Let the reader judge whether your simply repeating an already-responded-to point is a good argument.

if you truly believe that the text presents one—and only one—path to “salvation,” then you have deluded yourself.

Oh please. Are you seriously proposing that you are familiar enough with biblical hermeneutics and exegesis to make a serious argument on these grounds?

If one were inclined, one could craft a decent argument with these verses.

Yes, please do. Make it a post on your blog and let's see how well you do.

Come on…do you think I am so invested in the outcome of an internet tête-à-tête that I would lie in order to win a “point”?

No, rather I think you're self-deceived. But that kind of self-deception has a shelf life shorter, probably, than your physical life on this earth. With that in mind, I pray for your eventual repentance and salvation.

The notion of justice, at its root, and when applied to people, means that an individual’s behavior should influence how he is treated.

It "should"? What is your evidence for that?
Why can't you keep your hand out of the cookie jar? You talk out of both sides of your mouth. You yourself say there is insufficient methodology to make this kind of moral judgment, but you make them all over the place.


1. A deity is nothing more than a god or goddess. Therefore, this objection is flatly wrong.

You seem to be responding to a different point than the one I was responding to and thenceforth made.

The point is, Christian conversion experiences are lumped in Christian regions, whereas Hindu conversion experiences are lumped in Hindu regions. This is curious.

Well, I was agreeing. :-)


If Christianity were something other than an elaborate fairy tale, then brushes with Yahweh would be equally common in Hindu territories as in Christian territories.

1) Whoa, whoa, whoa. Huge leap of logic here. What is your argument for that statement? Why would we expect that?
2) I recommend Don Richardson's "Eternity in Their Hearts" for a rear naked choke on this argument, even if I grant it in principle.
3) Do you realise that there are more born-again Christians in China than in the USA? That there is a very significant missionary movement in India by Indians? That S Korea sends more missionaries overseas per capita than any other nation?
You seem to be a product of Western-centrism, more than you realise.


The nature of these “encounters with the divine,” such as specious Virgin Mary sightings, tends to be largely determined by the culture and geography of the deluded “witness.”

Of course, and I didn't deny that. And I use the quotation marks here like you do. ;-)

The following passage (Matt 24:25-35), which has the same gist, does not reference the transfiguration:

Oy vey. This is exactly what I mean. You jump from Matt 16 to Matt 24 and hope no one will notice! Did you even try to read ch 17-23 before jumping all the way to Matt 24? Why not just go whole hog and insist that I apply the same hermeneutical principles from the genealogy of Matt 1 to Matt 24?

The prophecy was failed and no effort of yours, however strenuous, can obscure it.

Well, since you didn't offer a counterargument nor present an exegesis of this Matt 24 psg, one can only guess at how you came to that conclusion. As it is, you come across as an atheist fundy - you just KNOW all this is nonsense and you don't NEED to prove it. It's OBVIOUS. To EVERYONE. Except MORONS and FLAT-EARTHERS like you who don't believe it!

nor am I solipsistic enough to imagine a creator

I think you're misusing the term. But I could be wrong.

Given all this, god easily could ensure each human ends up in heaven—or, at least, out of hell.

This is another attempt at entering into my worldview's turf to tell me how it should be.
What is your biblical argument for this statement? Your logical argument?

His idolatrous fetish for free will is crippling enough to undo all his loving intentions? Pitiful.

1) Cookie jar. Again.
2) How is it "idolatrous"? Make your argument.
3) What do you believe are His loving intentions? Where do you get that? A song you heard on the radio or something?

Why does that scare you so much?

Paul C has unwittingly graced us with a further clarification of the horror of atheism's logical conclusions that I've been exploring.

My words are in green, his in purple.

So, raping and murdering little girls is only wrong for a person b/c he doesn't like it, not b/c it's Wrong with a capital W.

Why does that scare you so much?

And, on atheism, there's no point to life. At all.

Why does that scare you so much?

And as an added demerit, you can't say that raping little girls is objectively wrong, and that's just straight up horrible.

Why does that scare you so much?

I guess the source of all your attacks on atheism is fear, isn't it? Not fear of atheism, obviously - that would be silly - but fear of the world. Why do all these things scare you so much?


If you have to ask, my friend, I don't know what I can say to help you understand. But at least the clarification of the difference between our two worldviews is proceeding on schedule.

A thought experiment

As this combox is winding down, I found myself asking a question.
Given that we've seen, over and over again, that a worldview system based on an atheist worldview cannot provide an objective basis for morality, why be an atheist?

Let's make this a bit more of an existential question than a strictly intellectual one, for now.
We shall presuppose that atheism is true, for the purposes of this thought experiment.

::Deep breath::

OK, I'm an atheist.
A well-adjusted one, that is. I don't want to kill anyone, I think it's swell to get along with everyone as much as reasonably possible, I don't like war, I am a male attracted to attractive females, I like hamburgers and sushi and rock music. I'm chillin'. I'm honest.

Also, I have never claimed that my vision of morality is somehow objective, in the words of jdp.
Thus, the consequence of that is that, while I don't like raping and murdering small children, indeed, find it detestable, it's just a DEscriptor. That statement "I don't like raping and murdering small children and find it detestable" describes my personal convictions. I agree with jdp - it has no bearing whatsoever on what others do, should do, or should not do.

Finally, I am confident that death is the end for me and for everyone. There are no consequences beyond this life. My life has value inasmuch as I peremptorily assign it value.

Thus, I must ask myself: Why be an atheist? Why not a Christian?

----
If I'm a Christian (and again, atheism is true here), then I'm deluded that I have a supernatural friend, creator, and Savior. And I believe that raping and murdering little children is objectively morally wrong. That is, it's wrong for everyone at all times, everywhere, under any circumstances. And when I die, I cease to exist.

If I'm an atheist, then I'm right about there being no supernatural. And while I find raping and murdering little children personally detestable, I recognise that there's no reason to try to prevent others from doing it, though I might do so, thus acting inconsistently with my stated beliefs. But there's certainly no way nor call to say that it's wrong for everyone at all times, everywhere, under any circumstances. And when I die, I cease to exist.
--/--

As a Christian, I actually get to act consistently with my stated beliefs when I condemn raping and murdering little children for everyone at all times, everywhere, etc. The atheist may do so but acts INconsistently. And we're both going to die and rot. Maybe I'll go with the worldview that actually allows me to condemn atrocities like this. Life's too short.

Just the usual

Another day, another atheist posting little more than repeated question-begging assertions. Ho hum...

Rhology, with all due respect:

Buy.A.Dictionary.

They are cheap, and they are much more efficient (and reliable) than I am.

However, rather than define words, let's try a thought experiment and see if this gets through to you. Imagine there is a tribe of American Indians, ~1000 A.D. Your god hasn't visited them for whatever reason (please don't bother trying to provide me with one.) One tribesman (let's call him Chip on Shoulder) decides that he is entitled to attack his fellow tribesman brutally every time someone gives him "a look." There are already 3 tribesman permanently wounded. These indians are harmed, and suffer negative undeserved consequences. They are harmed because they can no longer move well. This = bad because they can't hunt, and their ability to feed their families is impaired. (I can't believe I just wrote those sentences) The tribe meets, and based on their group instincts of self preservation, decide that these violent outbursts cannot be tolerated. This behavior would eventually destroy the tribe. Also, they recognize that this type of lopsided retaliation is ALWAYS wrong, and create a law. What you should find amazing (and what I don't) is that they managed to figure all of this out without Jesus having to appear to them at all.

My response will be posted after it is moderated:

jdp,

Wow, you proposed that I buy a dictionary.
Let me try to explain again.

My contention is that atheism lacks an objective standard by which to measure good and bad, beyond the personal subjective "I like it" and "I don't like it".
If I'm right, you have no justification to make any more far-reaching statement than "I don't like it when children are raped". You can't say it's "bad" or "wrong" - you need to define how you know what is bad or wrong. You didn't say merely "I don't like it", so you're expressing a value judgment that refers to sthg outside of yourself. I want to know how you know what that is.
Saying "Well, duh!" isn't an answer.
Saying "Harm is BY DEFINITION bad" isn't an answer, unless you can tell me why.

So you're begging the question all over the place. Tell me how you know these things are bad, are negative, are harmful.

They are harmed because they can no longer move well.

So? What is your argument for the statement "Not being able to move well is harmful".

This = bad because they can't hunt, and their ability to feed their families is impaired

What is your argument for the statement "Being able to feed their families is good"?

This behavior would eventually destroy the tribe.

What is your argument that destroying the tribe is bad?
*I* have an answer b/c my worldview provides an objective basis for morality. Yours doesn't, and your consistent question-begging is only reinforcing that conclusion.

What you should find amazing (and what I don't) is that they managed to figure all of this out without Jesus having to appear to them at all.

My worldview provides for recognition of the fact that
1) God has placed innate knowledge of right and wrong within every person
2) God provides different amounts of light and revelation to different people groups
3) People usually do act morally in many areas.

You must have forgotten that I already said:
And to reiterate my constant refrain for those of you just joining us - my argument is not that atheism precludes the possibility of having a moral system nor that atheists are all immoral.

I look fwd to more answers and less question-begging assertions.

Peace,
Rhology

Richard Dawkins' Inbox

Feeling lazy, so here's some satire that I didn't write.

----
To: Dr. Richard Dawkins
Subject: Panspermia and exogenesis

Dear Dr. Dawkins,

I must begin my letter to you expressing how you are such a great encouragement to myself and many other intellectuals out here living in an irrational, superstitious world. You have demonstrated outstanding courage as a beacon of reason and logic in a society whose citizens are beholden to tribal deities and witchcraft. Your example only moves me to being a more aggressive "evangelist" for the atheist "gospel."

I recently returned from a showing of that movie Expelled. I only went because I wanted to be able to refute the non-nonsensical propaganda that belches forth from the sewage container dishonestly called "the Intelligent Design" movement. Ben Stein is a let down which is to be expected from a creationist goon like himself.

I must say, however, that your interview with him was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise odious film. It was alone the price of admission. You could tell he didn't know how to respond to your brilliant answers, and when you suggested to him that the first self-replicating molecule could have very well been brought to our planet by extra-terrestrial, intelligent life, the look of incredulity on his face just showed me what a moron Ben Stein truly is. Has he never heard of exogenesis before? Or panspermia? It is probably one of the most legitimate theories to explain the origins of life on our planet! He seemed to carry on as if he had never heard of it before. Has Stein never heard of Dr. Fred Hoyle or Dr. Francis Crick or Richard C. Hoagland? I mean, almost every night a person can hear leading experts on the subject talk about panspermia for a couple of hours on Coast to Coast AM.


Well, the theory of panspermia sirred up a question in my mind I wanted to ask you, Dr. Dawkins. Do you think the aliens who seeded are planet billions of years ago expects anything from us? I mean, they are in a sense our alien overlords, those who "created" us, as it were. Perhaps they want us as humanity to be living at a particular standard of conduct. Of course, our first inclination is to think they would want us to be striving for world peace, but I remember seeing this Twilight Zone episode - from the newer series in the 80s - where these aliens had sped up evolution so the human race would strive - not for peace - but for making better weapons. Who saw that one coming!? And imagine if the only reason aliens seeded our planet was to turn us all into a big human processing plant to cook us up in alien TV dinners!

These are just things we need to keep in mind as we consider the theory of panspermia. It may even be helpful when we are forced to debate these ID yahoos.

Thanks Dr. Dawkins,
Keep up the good work.

Ryan Harris

Susanna and Jephthah

I recently went out for a discussion with two naturalists I know who live in my area and with whom I'd been communicating via email.
Our discussion was lively and liberally sprinkled with disrespectful and sometimes downright rude remarks from their side as well as multiple evasions of my questions, but it was expected.
During the conversation, one of them mentioned two interesting and kind-of related questions.
1) The story of "Susanna, the daughter of that Israelite judge, being sacrificed to the God of the Old Testament", and
2) Him: Does the Bible present Yahweh as the only god?
Me: Yes.
Him: Then why does Judges 11:24 say, "“Will you not possess what Chemosh your god gives you to possess? And all that the Lord our God has dispossessed before us, we will possess." ?

I only had my wife's smaller-print Bible with me, I was a bit nervous, I wanted to answer and continue, and I couldn't find the tiny quotation marks in the context so as to discover who was speaking, so I told him I'd have to get back to him on it.

Here is my answer on both issues, sent via email:

Hello ____,
I thought I'd grace you with a little bit of info on your inquiry regarding Chemosh.
I could be wrong, but such questions as these appear to have been pulled out of, say, the Skeptics' Annotated Bible or some other silly source like that. I could be wrong, of course, but that's the impression it gives. If you want to propose sthg that is intended to demonstrate some kind of contradiction or inconsistency in the Bible, best go elsewhere.

Here is a link to the chapter in question, Judges 11 - v. 24

This is a quotation from the messengers of the Israelite judge Jephthah, replying to the king of the Ammonites (not to be confused with Amorites). v. 20 - the msgrs recount how Sihon had not trusted the Israelites to pass thru his territory though they had requested that passage, had mustered his army, and had been defeated (v. 21-22).
Now the msgrs ask the king of the Ammonites what right he has to take land that the Lord had given to the Israelites. They then appeal to his sense of justice to a polytheist's mind - if YOUR god enables you to take land, do you want someone else to horn in on it? He's engaging the Ammonite king's own moral standards on the Ammonite king's own terms to help him understand. It is similar to when I enter into the atheistic viewpoint, take it to its logical conclusion, and then call into question your ability to reason based on the logical conclusions, the foundation. The structure collapses b/c its foundation is faulty.

These msgrs don't believe that Chemosh is really a god - the daily recitation for Hebrews was and is Deut 6:4-6 - God, the Lord, is one God. Monotheism is one of the fundamental themes of the Old Testament.
What makes this argument so pitifully weak is that, even if I granted that these msgrs from Israel really did believe Chemosh was a god on par with YHWH, the author of Judges does not commend that idea. He is simply recording what took place.

You also made an effort to bring up Jephthah's daughter and confused her with "Susanna", who is a character in a Deuterocanonical (Apocryphal) book.
As for critiquing the book in which Susanna appears, which is a later addition to the book of Daniel known as "Susanna" or "Susanna and the Elders", I don't accept it as part of the Bible for a myriad of reasons. You might try asking the next Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox you meet about it; I'd join you in pointing out its flaws.
But the story of Jephthah's rash vow regarding his daughter appears also in Judges 11 - the same chapter, ironically.
Here is an article on that, if you are interested.

Peace,
Rhology

Sam Harris' standard of proof

I saw this in The End of Faith and it was just too good to not put out there.

We know that no evidence would be sufficient to authenticate many of the pope's core beliefs. How could anyone born in the twentieth century come to know that Jesus was actually born of a virgin? What process of ratiocination, mystical or otherwise, will deliver the necessary facts about a Galilean woman's sexual history (facts that run entirely counter to well-known facts of human biology)? There is no such process. Even a time machine could not help us, unless we were willing to keep watch over Mary 24 hours a day for the months surrounding the probable time of Jesus' conception (The End of Faith, p. 76, emphasis author's).

That will work though - we can play this game forever. No evidence will suffice to prove to me that the variety of organisms we see today are descendants of a single ancestor and that their variation is accounted for by natural selection acting on mutation.
Shoot, no evidence will be sufficient to prove that Sam Harris even exists.
I wonder if any other quotation of these New Atheist books displays the beast of presupposition more clearly. No argument, no evidence will sway him. The inductive reasoning he has employed to come to his decision is final and unquestionable.

Gone, ephemeral, is any claim he could make to impartiality.
Badly needed is the Holy Spirit's renewal of his mind. I thank God He changed mine.

Overhauling science

Unheeding of the danger, he forged ahead, knowing all too well that he hadn't posted anything for a week or so.

For Rintintin:

A few further thoughts on your comment.

What necessarily makes this your God any more than some random deity?

The impossibility of the contrary.
It comes down, basically, to examining the alternatives and discovering whether they contain internal inconsistencies. Depending on their severity, this leads to their rejection.


It's interesting what you are willing to attribute to supernaturalism given that we don't know if a supernatural realm even exists.

Naturalism is false. The converse is...?


3. If the supernatural can come and act in our world, how does it bridge the gap between natural and supernatural - can I observe this taking place? Whereabouts does it happen?

In the case of Christian theism, God created the universe and thus apparently has a way to move in the natural.
But it's a category error to state that, since you can't examine them scientifically or whatever, such actions thus do not actually occur.


4.You've simply asserted what natural mechanisms can't account for without really explaining why.

B/c your brain, on naturalism, is molecules in motion, a vat of chemical reactions.
So is a can of Coca-Cola. If I shake up your brain and a can of Coke, each will fizz out gas - CO2 and brain gas.
Alternatively, your liver secretes bile, and your brain secretes thoughts. I've not yet seen a rebuttal that accounts for why I would ask a brain for true thoughts about the world but couldn't trust the liver's emissions on the same topic.


5. Your variant of supernaturalism includes talking snakes and plants, neither of which possess the cognitive ability or anatomy to talk

1) Naturalism is false and self-defeating; you don't get to analyse things like this from the standpoint of naturalistic presupps as you have. On theism, this is perfectly reasonable since such would be accted for as miraculous.
2) And it's not sure at all that the serpent in the Garden was literally a snake.
3) Demons can take the form of physical entities when they desire to do so.
4) So can God - the BUSH wasn't talking; God was.
That's what Steve meant when he chided you for neglecting to perform any exegesis. If this is the best kind of thing you bring to the table on the topic, I'd recommend you stay away from throwing Bible "contradictions" at people. I'm trying to help you keep from looking really foolish.

is there any reason I should take this viewpoint any more seriously than I do Scientology's ludicrous tales?

B/c Scientology is false, and Christianity isn't.


How can one utilise things like logic as a tool if the world potentially will not behave in a logical fashion 10 minutes from now dependent on the whim of a God,

You're confusing words here. On theism, it IS perfectly logical when God intervenes. The world may not behave in its USUAL manner all the time, but that's not the same as LOGICAL.
And on naturalism, there's no way to acct for laws of logic AT ALL, so theism is still way better if your objection holds.

Under your worldview, you can't realistically make the assumption that things will not be radically different 5 minutes from now

On the contrary, I *CAN* b/c God has told us that it will. And He has made certain things about the future eternal kingdom will work.
On naturalism, your objection holds, definitely. You're on the right track!


First of all, science employs methodological naturalism as opposed to proving that naturalism is the be all and end all.

The flavor of this post has been an objection to precisely that kind of talk that issues from the scientific/new atheist community. Dick Dawk doesn't speak as carefully as you did here, and he's alot more well-known than you.


Go on a facebook discussion page on Cre vs Ev

Oy. I don't have the patience for it! And too few Creationists take the presupp position I do, so I find myself screaming at my computer screen. :-D


So God has given us tools such as inductive logic

Which extent naturalists abuse, as you did in your comment "you can't realistically make the assumption..."
Use it all day, great! Just don't take it further than it can take you.


I assume you are also firing off letters to the judiciary as we speak demanding that all murderers that weren't witnessed in the act be released since this type of science apparently isn't valid?

Humans weren't around even close to the time that the Big Bang, the formation of the earth, or the (apparent) abiogenesis of life occurred. They were when the murder occurred. Big difference.
This is the same point made by one of your own - Henry Gee In Search of Deep Time.


The sheer volume of fossils works against a young Earth:

1) No telling how many animals were on earth before the Flood/in the Garden of Eden.
2) I don't see a problem with God having put the fossils there.
3) Yet it's probably a better explanation to think that they really were animals and that naturalists, in your truth-suppressing ways, have misinterpreted the data given your limited knowledge, limited patience, limited presuppositions, limited methodologies, and limited instrumentation.


is it realistic to say that the world is only a few thousand years old?

Naturalism is false, so evolution is right out.
The Bible doesn't really support an old earth; so yes, it's realistic.

I think we can see here how RTT has made an idol out of naturalistic approaches to science.
You think it can tell you the age of stuff, what happened millions of yrs ago, etc; things that science cannot repeatably test. You're thus already stepping out of the realm of pure science; what's to stop you from taking a further step and using science to tell me any number of other things?