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Originally posted by timothy Clark:
Yes there are wall around the city of Jericho. The city has been destroyed by fire several times in its long history. It is hard to say if it was warfare or by accident/natural. The city had walls because it was in very productive place by the standers of the region.
Quote Suductionzone: Anazil, take a chill pill. I don't think anyone here claimed that evolution disproved the existence of god.

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To me the bible is the word of a god as written by man. It has to be believed its totality not at all.

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Everything else is a copout. This is why I choose not to.

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Originally posted by Subductionzone:
No joy on finding the video. I thought it was by Potholer54, but I may be mistaken. At any rate when mitochondrial Eve as alive she was not the only female, and in fact we are descended from other females of that time too. It is only the matrilineal line that goes back to her. That is only one path that you can trace back through all of your ancestors. Y chromosomal Adam is the same. He was not the only male at the time. It is only our patrilineal line that goes back to him. There could easily have been populations of thousands at the times.

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Originally posted by ziploc:

I know how this is going to end

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Originally posted by Anazil:

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Originally posted by blacke4dawn:

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Originally posted by Anazil:

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Originally posted by blacke4dawn:
Anazil, all I have seen here is how you decide as to what you *think* is the truth, not what actually is The Truth. Just the fact that you say your experiences can't be used by effectively anyone else means it's only the truth in "Your little world".

No, you still don't get it. You just can't grasp that this isn't a math problem, there is no formula I can give you to work out the problem. That is something you have to seek to find, and you won't get it from me or any other person. First you have to accept the possibility that there might be a God, then you have to personally seek to find him.

So you are saying that I can't use facts you and any other believer have recorded (if you all have at all) to support the existence of a supernatural being, even if it's a shared experience like those in the bible or any other "holy book"? If so then what is the point of having a "holy book" and organized religions if everyone's believe is based solely on their own experiences?

I'm not saying you can't use them, I'm saying you won't. From what I have seen so far in this thread, that is an accurate presumption. I will say that it will not be undeniable proof to you. As I said, if god himself showed himself to me, and I told you this, would you believe it? Would you if you saw it for yourself, or would you insist a natural explanation could explain it?

If you would not believe I encountered God in the flesh, or even just first hand, why would you take any other experience as proof? There are plenty of examples of believers documenting experiences, many of them are similar, do you believe them? Have/would you read them?

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Personally I think that saying "find your own evidence" is a cop out for not "pooling" the evidence you do have for your god and show it to the rest of the world.

No, I disagree. As I asked, would you believe the documentation if you read it? Again, there is plenty of documentation of believers experiences with God, non-believers just tend to shrug it off as nonsensical rubbish. Yes/no?

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Really, shouldn't it be easier to prove to others that he exists if you use your collective evidence instead of everyone having to find their own?

Perhaps, but not everyone's experience is the same even if similar, as everyone situation is different. If you want secular unbiased documentation I re-posted a link that has some pretty compelling evidence pointing to a supernatural being, but is not proof. That is the nature of the supernatural. There is some pretty good evidence, but it is up to you to weigh just how compelling that evidence is to you. I can't make that call for you or anyone else. But you can't very well weigh evidence you haven't looked at subjectively.

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You keep harping about that Your personal experiences won't convince anyone, but if perfectly repeatable experience can be produced for anyone then that can be accepted as proof for the non-believers.

The problem there is that this is not science but what you are asking of the supernatural is how we determine scientific conclusions. In many circumstances, there is little need for repeatability in an exact sense. I can put a roll of ASA 400 film in my 35mm Praktina, with the same meter reading I can shoot at F2 @ 1/250th second, or shoot at F4 @ 1/60th second, or any of several other options. I can do those repeatedly, it is science. I can explain that in terms that will apply to anyone with an adjustable film camera. They can repeat and get the same results without error so long as the light meter reading remains the same.

What works as intercession in ones persons life will not necessarily work in another persons situation. How many "Christians" documented intercessory experiences would it take for you to consider it sufficiently documented? How consistent would it have to be?

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The scientific community will of course still try to find a natural explanation for it but if they can't find it they will have to accept the supernatural one eventually (at least until a "better" one is found).

The scientific community would FIRST have to look at it objectively. Anyone taking odds on when that will take place?

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And this is the biggest crux with you (and essentially any believer), you are telling us to accept single-instance personal experiences as evidence for a supernatural being

There you go again, I am not, nor have I told, or even asked any such thing.

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I didn't ask for your aha-moment, I didn't ask for why you decided to fully believe in "God", I didn't ask for all the pieces to your believe. What I asked for was what made you decide that "God" was a better explanation for that particular situation than just random chance, it's a simple question.

And one I have addressed several times.

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I'll leave you with this little piece to think about. Believing in something is one thing, claiming them to be true (a.k.a claiming them to really exist) is something completely different.

What is belief if it is bound by not being able to believe it? It is okay to believe so long as the believer does not claim it to be true? That's not what I would call belief. If I believe something it is simply because I have come to believe it is true. To do otherwise would be blindly ignoring everything that caused me to believe in the first place. So don't tell me to not claim it as true, you have the option to disbelieve, not the option to expect that I will not claim what I believe. Make sense?

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I do not care what you believe in as long as you don't try and foist onto the rest of us, and claiming them to be true is effectively foisting it onto the rest of us.

But it is okay for you to outwardly state your beliefs or disbelief? Stating ones belief is not the problem. The problem is those who want to tell others to not speak out about their beliefs.

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If you claim something to be true then that implies you have some form of evidence you can use to convince the rest us of it's validity

I think we are right back to the need to be able to look at evidence objectively. It is rather impossible to look at something objectively when you are convinced that the evidence leads somewhere else. When that happens, it is just one person biasing what is before them to suit themselves.

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Originally posted by Anazil:
And therein lies your problem. You think you are too smart for God.

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Originally posted by Subductionzone:
If you want to mention supposed prophesies that came true in the Bible to be fair you should mention the false prophesies that are in the Bible too. It does not take too much of a prophet to predict that a city will be beaten some day when so many of them were at that time. But to predict that one will be eliminated from the face of the Earth and it is still there today is a bit on the fail side.

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Originally posted by oldguy1:
Can we use the fossil record line and say that there are gaps that still haven't been filled in yet?

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Originally posted by ziploc:

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Originally posted by oldguy1:
Can we use the fossil record line and say that there are gaps that still haven't been filled in yet?

Absolutely! And the reason creationists get so excited when any new fossil is discovered it that it create two new gaps.

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Originally posted by ziploc:
Not a clue. I'm going to say a bunch.

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Wouldn't that be n + 1?

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Absolutely! And the reason creationists get so excited when any new fossil is discovered it that it create two new gaps.

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Originally posted by ImageItEverywhere:

Lets stick with the old gaps.

1. the origin of the species. The gap is the run-up of life before the cyanobacteria. More and more the modern theory is that bacteria fell from the sky fully evolved.

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2. cambrian explosion. The fossil gap from the cambrian explosion can be documented as a line in the fossil record. One day no animal life, the next an ocean teaming with a vast diversity of life. By darwins estimate, this is a gap of at least 600 million years.

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3. The advancement of the humans species. There are 35 million gene between man and the chimp. Many of the changes are in highly conserved genes, where man is the only mammal with the unique variation. All living humans are direct descendants of 1 man and 1 woman.

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Originally posted by ImageItEverywhere:
What a bunch of nonsense. Is the narrator that guy from ancient aliens? No, if you put enough inflection in your voice, it does not make it true.