Messages

286

Off Topic / Re: What are your reasons for believing whatever you may believe about Christianity?

« on: October 12, 2015, 06:40:26 PM »

because i've been forced to sit through plenty of church services, countless "biblical" studies over how men should be slave drivers to women or about doomsday conspiracies (the EU is secretly satanic, either putin or some dragdi dude is the antichrist, pope francis is the false prophet), sat in on plenty of sunday school services full of old people believing that the government will execute christians for not marrying gays, gone to enough youth services full of teenagers trying to disprove dinosaurs and adults saying fingerprint identification is the mark of the beast, etc etc. also they think they're the most persecuted people group in the world and simply adore the slippery slope fallacy.

my dad (a very solid christian) doesn't believe in mental illnesses or psychiatrists/therapists, either. he thinks that all mental/emotional issues should be handled by the church family and god and no one else. and i also got death threats because one time i accidentally left "under god" out of the pledge at school.

so yea that's why i'm not a christian and generally think they're a little cuckoo. i know some are worse than others but yknow.

yeah they're pretty crazy. it's mostly old white people who go there, but the one who led the 6 or 8 week "study" on the "biblical man and woman" was pretty young and gave stellar ideas like these:

the man should be a slave driver to the women of the house
women should not be allowed in leadership positions and should give them to men
women should not be allowed to work and should stay at home making babies
women should follow their husband's orders
if the woman works, all of her money should be given to the husband
if the woman earns more than the man, then the man is failing in his duties as a "godly husband"
the man always has final say, and if he gives up his position as "head of the house" then he's failing as a "godly husband"
women should not be allowed to teach in church, unless they're teaching young children
women may not preach or be deacons
women that are raped should not be allowed to fear other men but should be forced into groups of men

there was a bunch more and it was all sickening and i had to tune most of it out bc it made me feel physically ill to hear it

That's pretty sad. I am a Christian and don't believe any of that is true. Especially the part about no mental illness. That church sounds like a bunch of extremists who are so caught up their ways they just kind of make crazy stuff up as they go along. Their interpretation of the Bible is heavily based on their opinions, which is the case with a lot of "out there" versions of Christianity. It saddens me that you have given up on your faith based on that.

287

Off Topic / Re: What languages do you speak? V.2

« on: October 12, 2015, 01:22:31 PM »

I know English of course and I am currently in Spanish II. I passed Spanish I with a 98% and didn't forget all the words over the summer so I guess I can say that I partially speak Spanish.

learning japanese I think I'm learning japanese I really think so

Be careful. You might start turning Japanese too.

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Off Topic / Re: What are your reasons for believing whatever you may believe about Christianity?

« on: October 12, 2015, 01:16:42 PM »

-snip-

I don't trust it. I don't really agree with this either but some people claim that carbon levels have recently skyrocketed, therefore making carbon dating extremely inaccurate. I know nothing about this so I'm not about to try to act like I know what I'm talking about. Just something I've heard.

Completely lost my faith in Christianity once I heard of that bullstuff burning bush story.

If you have read the Bible and studied it you would see that God was on a much more personal basis with people in many New Testament books (B.C. years). I wouldn't go as far to say that He is "out of touch" with us now. He just doesn't really physically speak with us anymore (as far as we know). Just because He talked to Moses either through the bush, or just used the bush to prove to Moses that He was actually there, doesn't make it a "bullstuff" story. There are many other incidents similar to the burning bush story in the Bible.

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Forum Games / Re: you nostalgia you lose v1990

« on: October 12, 2015, 12:36:13 PM »

This was the first OS I remember using. I had Driver, Midtown Madness, and Midtown Madness 2 to name a few games

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Off Topic / Re: What are your reasons for believing whatever you may believe about Christianity?

« on: October 12, 2015, 12:23:05 PM »

It's closer than you think. You seem to be saying that distant light was created instantly by a creator, along with Old Tjikko, the entire fossil record, and anything else scientifically proven to be more than 6000 years old. To test your faith, I suppose.

The exact same logic applies to the 5 minutes ago theorem. Everything was created, by the creator, 5 minutes ago. Memories in your head, light from distant galaxies placed near us, Old Tjikko and the fossil record and everything else placed there just to test your faith. The exact same logic applies, the only difference is how long ago it's supposedly made. The same exact properties apply as well, such as it being unverifiable. There is no way to prove that the universe was made 5 minutes ago, and there is no way to prove that the universe was made 6000 years ago. It's also unfalsifiable. Anything scientifically proven to be more than 5 minutes old can be hand-waved away by saying "Put there to test your faith" or "By the will of the creator." The purpose of it is to show that it's ultimately a pointless unprovable belief that's not worth discussing and has no practical value, which I am being a total hypocrit by discussing it in the first place.

And yes, it's been scientifically proven that the light is from 13 billion light years away. This is due to something called redshift. Basically how it works is as the universe expands as light travels through it, it causes the lights wavelength to get stretched out a tiny bit. Over 13 billion light years, it gets extremely redshifted, and you can calculate how far away it was (And hence how old it is) using how much it was redshifted from the original. You know what the original would have looked like because they use things with very predictable light output like quasars.

I don't put all my trust in carbon dating. I have heard from numerous Christian scientists and some non that it is very unreliable. Any comebacks about how, "their opinion is biased because..." I don't really know how to answer, nor do I want to. You can fight bias with bias but it doesn't really get you anywhere. Yes, distant light, the fossil record, and old Tjikko were created. But I don't believe they are as old as people think.

I must say, you do seem to have a knack for science. I'm not looking to get into a heated argument or try to "convert" you. I'm just trying to have an intelligent discussion.

291

Off Topic / Re: What are your reasons for believing whatever you may believe about Christianity?

« on: October 12, 2015, 11:57:00 AM »

It's called a comparison. What you stated is similar in concept

No, he said,

What you've created is also known as the "5 minutes ago" theorem.

He didn't say "is similar to". He is saying that its the same thing as what I said.

292

Off Topic / Re: I've reached 800 posts

« on: October 12, 2015, 11:53:47 AM »

I'm a little over 4,700 combining both accounts

293

Off Topic / Re: What are your reasons for believing whatever you may believe about Christianity?

« on: October 12, 2015, 11:51:53 AM »

What you've created is also known as the "5 minutes ago" theorem. It states that the entire universe, existing light and physical objects and memories all placed in your head 5 minutes ago. What you ate for breakfast? Just a memory placed in 5 minutes ago. Same with everything else. It's fundamentally equivalent to that, the only difference is the time span. You see how pointless it is? It's completely unprovable and not only that, holds absolutely no practical value. It's not even worth discussing in the first place.

No, I don't remember saying anything close to this.

For example, there's the problem that light from 13 billion light years away would take, at minimum, 13 billion years to get here. That blows away the 6000 year figure

I'm not really understanding what you're saying here. Light was created on earth and throughout the universe. How does faraway light that isn't going to reach us mean anything? Are you saying that all light was created 13 billion light years away?

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Off Topic / Re: What are your reasons for believing whatever you may believe about Christianity?

« on: October 12, 2015, 11:31:29 AM »

For example, there's the problem that light from 13 billion light years away would take, at minimum, 13 billion years to get here. That blows away the 6000 year figure, and there's absolutely no way to fix it.

God created time and could have made that faraway light appear in an instant, without any intention of it ever reaching us. I'm not really on board with this one

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Off Topic / Re: What are your reasons for believing whatever you may believe about Christianity?

« on: October 12, 2015, 11:25:55 AM »

I have been a Christian all my life and I think my main reason for constant faith is the seemingly unlimited amount of intricacy in our world. I seriously have no idea how the big bang theory and evolution make any sense at all. IMO, there is absolutely no way that the universe just accidently came into existence. Life didn't just happen. Even single-celled organisms have such complicated DNA  (just to name one piece of it) that no accident could've resulted in its creation.
Another reason (even though some people find contradictions or don't understand them) is the prophecies in the Bible that line up very well with historical facts and events. The prophet Isaiah even talks about the earth being a circle, which nobody had really recorded or considered as far as we know. There are also things like the great flood, which we can find evidence to form theories of how some of our surroundings were shaped by it. For example, the moon being marked up and having craters could be the result of water erupting out of the atmosphere. Sea fossils found in the middle of continents nowhere near the ocean does prove that the world was once covered by water. I also believe that Pangea may have existed. The great flood was supposed to have come partly from the ground when it "opened up". This could have been a separation of the continents.
Another thing, God supposedly gave us different languages and possibly altered our races in the Tower of Babel story. This for me is a sign that man didn't evolve from something else all across the world. But rather man was created and later tweaked by God to create our separate (although equal in almost every way) races.

I'm no scientist and most likely never will be. Those are just a few strong points of my faith that I wanted to share with you guys.

296

Off Topic / Re: getting tooth out

« on: October 11, 2015, 10:15:18 PM »

I'm going to need my wisdom teeth out pretty soon. Not looking forward to it...

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Off Topic / Re: Worst movie you've ever watched?

« on: October 11, 2015, 06:11:11 PM »

Most movies with talking animals in them were really stupid. Not all, but most.

298

Help / Re: Server cannot verify ID

« on: October 11, 2015, 05:30:52 PM »

Many people have been having this problem lately, including me. Never figured it out

299

Off Topic / Re: Worst movie you've ever watched?

« on: October 11, 2015, 05:29:25 PM »

Home alone 4

This and probably Gordy

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Gallery / Re: A City Build - WIP

« on: October 11, 2015, 02:33:28 PM »

I remember this! I was there