It's disappointing to see your increasing snark and disresepect. I had high regards for you as one of the more thoughtful theists. You are smart enough to have known that i was referring to the content of the Gospels that aren't known to be true.
That's a strawman, and trying to repeatedly shift the conversation onto that topic, after repeated reminders, deserves disrespect. I grant respect by default, and then revoke it when warranted.
Which lacks evidence as being true, namely the supernatural elelments that no thinker can take seriously.
Not true. A materialist is a limited thinker. You're not talking about ALL thinkers, you're only talking about a subset. Great minds have contemplated these issues and found them plausible. They simply aren't limited thinkers.
What you fail to see is, the unqualified comment is an insult. And it's the same when you make there claims about critical-thinkers and contrast those claims immediately with either "theists" or "believers". I totally expect it. And it doesn't hurt. I simply point out the hypocrisy.
So those complaints about disrespect are ignored.
But it implies Santa does, and the fooled child goes to bed.
The child asking the question doesn't necessarily believe in Santa.
If critical thinkers are something you suspect don't exist, then how do you qualify your own thinking?
I didn't say they didn't exist. My opinion is the people who make the most noise are usually the most guilty. Then comes the whisle-blower. That's me.
Are you as flawed as the so-called "critical thinkers", and your posts as easy to dismiss?
No, because I actually bring reasons, and I will show in detail where the data comes from, and I will present both sides. Someimes it takes a lot of words to do it. And most of the critics ( not actual critical thinkers ), completely ignore what's said and interpret, "This is a religious person trying to convert". See below:
So you are working to bring people back to religious belief?
I repeatedly stated my position was a moderate, "I don't know and the absence of historical records are not conclusive of anything."
But you somehow leaped to... You want to bring people back to a religious belief.
You show more contempt for questions critical thinkers ask, and these are typically in response to what believers claim, so fair game. You seem to be feeling less comfortable with these questions.
Not at all. I answer the questions. My contempt is when the question is not a real question, it's a challenge. And then when the challenge is met, and overcome, the challenge is changed. Bait-and-switch. No one likes a bait-and-switch.
But, like I said. We're in a public space, and people have a right to get real answers to these questions. Someone posted a video in another thread, I thought was interesting. First of all, the speaker of the video admits that they were once an evangelical, an preached to people trying to convince them to accept Jesus. And now, here they are, still preaching. This time for the anti-religious movement. The "deconstruction" community. Like I said in this thread. Old habits die hard.
The next thing I though was interesting, is the person who posted the video claimed: "Christians cherry pick." But..... that's exactly what the video does. It cherry picks. It's obvious to me, because I've studied these issues, and I know the arguments. They skip over the verses that say a rapist is killed, like 2 or 3 verses ago, and instead focus on another verse that, in their english translation, completely contradicts that death sentence. So, yeah, Christian's cherry pick, and this speaker/preacher for the deconstruction movement is still basically a Christian, assuming the poster is right about that. They're still preach'n and still cherry-pick'n.
Then that leads me to the third thing that's interesting. The assumptions. And critics do this, a lot of Christian's do this. They assume that the english translation is correct. They ignore that there are people that know these verses much much better than they do. And they're simpy not asking the right people, and honestly, even using english translations there's enough in theres to show that the conclusion that Deut 22:28-29 is a rape is highly dubious. The preacher on the video had problems with this idea, naturally, and ays they went to their pastor and the pastor couldn't answer satisfactorily, and that was it. They stopped questioning after that.
Why stop there? Probably because they never really considered that there could be an answer. They assumed it must be evil men who wrote the bible, but they never considered it was men who translated their bible. In a way, they're right, but that wasn't the original intention.
So, I answer those questions from critics that are *actually* non-questions because some person out there might really be struggling, and they deserve to get both sides of the story.
Bad thinking here. Critical thinkers may ask questions of theists assuming their assumptions about a God. Challenging this assumption is fair game if the answer also assumes a God exists. You are smart enough to known this.
No.... if the question assumes that God exists, if the questioner challenges the assumption in their own question, then they are arguing with themself.
This is all a rather casual discussion, and many things I say is common knowledge. You seem to be griping about anything these days.
Sure, it's common knowledge that the bible-critics who come onto forums to argue are rarely critical thinkers. They are just overly critical of others, and overly permissive of themselves.
