I didn't say that, Doc. I said that this argument is based on an assumption that God is real. Therefore, the Bible can be used in the debate. If it wasn't, then you could've told me that.
No it is not. Even operating on the assumption which God is real (which most of us seem NOT to be) the Bible would STILL have to be verified as accurate before it could be used as evidence for either side. The only way we can use the Bible as a reference is if we are addressing ideas specific to the Bible, such as Biblical contradictions.
I just want to feast on my chocolate Jesus, Christians, leave off.
I want sooooooome!!
Sorry, it's just kinda annoying if you hear the same debunked statements again and again. But you're right.
Trust me, I know. I've been addressing these issues for going on 14 years now and I have yet to find any truly new arguments for God. However stooping to name calling and other such behavior only halts any sort of productive conversation.
If you can't keep your cool then go outside, take a breath, and come back when you're calmer. This goes for everyone, myself included (cause I get heated from time to time as well)
History is told from the dominate social party, so yes, historical some things are false, but we have to choose for ourselves what stories to believe.
Fortunately when we are speaking of such historical events we stick to things which we can verify independently of personal stories. We look for archaeological, geological, and other verifiable and testable evidence.
The other problem is the last part of your post. Certainly we CAN choose what we want to believe, but we need to be certain that what we believe is accurate. That is where many of the problems arise.
I, for example, change many of my beliefs on a fairly regular basis. This is because as new evidence comes in, and we gain a better and more correct understanding of things we often find that our previous ideas were not entirely accurate.
As one example, I used to believe in the closed universe model in which the universe expands to a point and then collapses on itself again in a 'big crunch', creating a cyclical universe. However relatively new information in the fields of astrophysics have shown that this is impossible and so I quit believing that and built my ideas around the new evidence.
I could go on believing what I did before, but I would be forced to dismiss the evidence and hold to an impossible idea. I had to do the same with my religion. I let go of my ideas and chose to believe the facts, no matter how inconvenient and uncomfortable they may be. That is what scientists do, and I would contend that is how anyone who actually valued truth would behave.
