Thread: When Will Christ Return?

Originally Posted by Keeper

is anyone changing anyones views here?

honestly, you to need to talk face to face to get this straigtned out
[/b]

I am sorry, but no christian I met in person has, and quite likely they never will, made me think more positive about religion. However, they have changed my view somewhat. By talking to some extremely close-minded Christians I began to think of religion as 'something is is ok, but unlikely' to 'religion sucks major balls in alot of cases'.

Sorry Tsen it took a while for my reply but the holidays are approaching and my little girl want's everything under the Sun with no exceptions. So I've been a tad busy. On another note Stay away from Taco Bell in Utah. Okay now let's continue. I may have left some things out or probably cut out some of your's due to rushing but if so please point them out to me and I'll get on top of it. C-ya!

[on why the tree and original sin is illogical][/b]

We'd still have the incentive, it just wouldn't be hovering in front of our faces where we'd be tempted to take it "against gawd's will".
And it still doesn't answer why gawd intentionally placed them in a situation where he knew the outcome would be negative, hence ultimately your gawd is STILL at fault for making life so crappy.

Yeah, yeah, free will.

But he kind of killed the whole free will thing by holding us all responsible for something we didn't do—eating the "forbidden fruit".

Another thing to note is that "free will" is kind of a nil point, since your gawd knows the outcome already.

So basically, by creating things the way he did, he was ensuring a specific outcome—hence the choice would really be an illusion.

Okay let's focus on temptation. Tsen have you ever took anything that didn't belong to you? No matter what age. Let's say this is true, then would you blame the person who it belonged to for you taking it? And free will is not lost. You are a prime example of true and concise free will. My God has given you free will to choose your own path, you are not entitled to worship him, you are not entitled to worship anyone this is your own choice of free will.
Adam began life as a perfect human. Therefore, his children could have enjoyed perfect everlasting life. However, Adam sinned before he fathered any children. The entire human race was still in his loins when he received the sentence: "In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return." (Genesis 3:19) So when Adam sinned and began to die as God said he would, all mankind was sentenced to death along with him. I know Tsen that is not fair."We did not choose to disobey God—Adam did. Why should we lose our prospect for everlasting life and happiness?" We know that if a court of law were to put a son in prison because his father had stolen a car, the son could rightly complain: "That is not just! I did not do anything wrong."—Deuteronomy 24:16.

[on the supposed problems passed down to successive generations because of the "original sin"][/b]

So why couldn't their children get back on the "path to righteousness"?
Why couldn't they just be good people, and BAM! Be problem-free?
Now, again, you could say "free will".
But once again, your gawd KNEW what would happen.
So he was creating circumstances with known outcomes, therefore KNEW that humans would be incapable of making the right choices, and he STILL created them that way.
Also, note that fixing this does not necessarily violate free will—if your gawd simply gave people a better capability to rationalize choices by looking at consequences, then the whole thing would be averted.
But he didn't, therefore I can only conclude that your gawd must have WANTED us to suffer.

No that's not true. I've already explained how contradictory it would've been if he decided to disregard the actions or fix them completely. If God's works are just then why would he feel the need to start from scratch again? Besides God giving the first couple an edge up on rationalization skills wouldn't make them susceptible toward Satan. They were the first man an woman how much rationalization could they really posses? How much rationalization does an infant posses? I know what you're getting at but if God had given them every possible tool of avoidance for this action that has past then the outcome is obvious there will definitely not be free will our desires and our actions will be limited only to what is standard for the epitome of rationalization.
By inducing the first man and woman to sin, Satan may have concluded that he would place God in an impossible situation. The Devil struck very early in the history of the human race—before any children had been born. The moment Adam sinned, an important question was, What will Jehovah do about the children that Adam and Eve will have? Adam's sin does not take away our opportunity for everlasting life on a paradise earth. Consider the solution God laid out in the sentence he pronounced on Satan the Devil. Jehovah said to Satan: "I shall put enmity between you and the woman [God's heavenly organization] and between your seed [the world under Satan's control] and her seed [Jesus Christ]. He will bruise you [Satan] in the head and you will bruise him in the heel [Jesus' death]." (Genesis 3:15) In this first prophecy of the Bible, Jehovah alluded to his purpose to have his heavenly spirit Son come to earth to live as the perfect man Jesus and then die—be bruised in the heel—in that sinless state.

the killing of the children in 2 Kings][/b]

And?

By killing them, your gawd was removing their opportunity to repent later on, therefore violating their free will.
Also, it is important to note that psychologically, children are incredibly likely to follow in their parent's footsteps—the majority of people retain the same political, religious and social mannerisms and opinions as their parents.

That's a simple fact.
So, wouldn't that mean that your gawd created people with that tendency, hence was at fault?
The scriptures you quoted go against you as well, especially the one on discipline—since the prophet's "discipline" was fatal, there was no opportunity for the children to learn any lesson from the encounter.

Yeah it was tragic event. And I'm not going to try and sugar coat it or spice it up in no way because no matter what, your view will always be negative on that issue just as mine was when I was younger. What you're missing is that they were a generation of misfits derived from a generation of misfits. Pass times gave them ample enough opportunity to get their act together. One thing which holds true to God is the legacy of blood pass down from one generation to another. The blood is a lot more important than you realize. Besides their free will wasn't violated. Violated in what way? The children could've just went on about their marry way and not have made a comment at all but instead they took another route. Everyone no matter what age will suffer consequences one way or another for whatever actions we make. Turn -around time would vary. Beside God obviously didn't see any repentance coming from them in the future. Their free will was just that to make a mockery, it's not like someone pointed an object to them and told them to do it or they die. They made the choice and they were not as young as you would think. They were obviously old enough to be liable for their on actions.

the flood's killing of all people with no credible warning][/b]

But why DIDN'T your gawd give them a credible warning?
It was certainly in his power, wasn't it?
I also refuse to believe that the entire world's population was evil.

It links back to Christianity's pessimistic view of humankind, one that I do not share.

Maybe Noah is not as credible to you, but to me I feel a God fearing Man is pretty credible and I respect that no matter how much he may drink. He was obviously the most righteous man in the world and the only one who walked with God. He had excellent morals and followed a righteous path in God's [eyes] And you as well also have a pessimistic view of humankind which includes it's make up. You've talked about certain parts of the body that you felt were inaccuratly made which I would conclude that you don't agree with, making those statements negative and pessimistic. So I guess it's just human nature eh?

[I never for once seen you ask the question of why is Satan doing this to us?][/b]

For one simple reason:
If your gawd is all-powerful, why can't he stop satan from doing all that?
Or why couldn't he just snap satan out of existence?

Why couldn't he snap satan out of existence you ask? Because You need the opportunity to prove yourself as well I and every other human being on this planet. Now lets talk about satan for a moment. God is showing patience "because he does not desire any to be destroyed but desires all to attain to repentance." (2*Peter 3:9) God's will "is that all sorts of men should be saved and come to an accurate knowledge of truth." (1*Timothy 2:4). It doesn't mean he cannot just snap him out of existence which by the way he did mention he was going to do, giving Satan only a limit amount of time to try and prove that he cannot turn all of humanity away from the Almighty Father. This is an Old score that needs to be settled from Job's circa. Satan hasn't been here on earth causing chaos on Earth for as long as people think. This has all transpired within the last century. Satan had Access to the Kingdom of Heaven for quite some time and was able to cross dimensions up until the last 100 or so years. Satan objective is to show God how faulty we are as humans and that this creation of humans is worthless. There is also a jealousy factor in play as well. Satan didn't like the fact that God has put humans above angels for they have to govern us, and is subjective to us. The mission at play is just this- Deter all of humankind away from God to prove that no one in the world will show faithfulness we are looked at as a disease and we are not worthy.

[on the size of the Colorado River delta][/b]

1.******** The Colorado River delta itself is quite extensive. It covers 3,325 square miles (Sykes 1937) and is up to 3.5 miles deep (Jennings and Thompson 1986), containing over 10,000 cubic miles of the Colorado River's sediments from the last two to three million years. The sediments that were deposited by the river more than two to three million years ago have been shifted northwestward by movement along the San Andreas and related faults (Winker and Kidwell 1986). Sediments have also accumulated elsewhere. Some were deposited in flood plains between the delta and the Grand Canyon.
2.******** Wind is a major erosional force in parts of the Colorado River basin. Some sediments from Colorado and Wyoming were blown as far as the Atlantic Ocean.
3.******** Much of the strata exposed in the Grand Canyon are limestone and dolomite. These rocks eventually simply would have dissolved.

No there is no way the strata would've just evaporated or dissolved. The eastern portion of the Colorado River, northeast of the Utah-Arizona border, behaves like a normal river, having its origins at high elevations and finding the easiest path toward the ocean. The area near the present Glen Canyon Dam, which forms Lake Powell, is at an elevation of some 5,000 feet. But the region to the west, near the beginning of Grand Canyon, rises in the vast uplifted Colorado Plateau stretching for hundreds of miles. This is caused by the Kaibab Upwarp, or Kaibab Monocline, which lifted the previously flat strata some 3000 feet. This would appear to form a barrier to the flow of the river, which might have turned southeast to join the Rio Grande and dump into the Gulf of Mexico, or it might have turned south and southwest to dump into the Pacific via the Gulf of California. Instead, it did what seems impossible flowed west, cutting directly into and through this huge monocline! Also from 1926 until 1950, just before the Glen Canyon Dam was built, the daily sediment flow of the river was carefully measured, and was found to average almost 500,000 tons per day (168 million tons per year). This is equivalent to 0.015 cubic miles per year. During a 1927 flood, this increased to some 23 million tons per day. Another interesting fact -- in modern times, the majority of the sediment coming out of the Canyon originates in the headwaters region, not in the Canyon itself. The Grand Canyon is not presently undergoing much erosion.

[Unless you find a problem with Natural Selection? [in relation to adaptation to salinity][/b]

Not at all.
But you seem to only subscribe to it when it suits your purposes.
Specialization would mean that BEFORE the flood those species would have adapted to their environments, not AFTER.

[on possible separation of salt water and fresh water layers][/b]

Which is all irrelevant anyways because the temperature change would be just as detrimental as the salinity change.

No one knows how salty the sea was before the flood. The flood was initiated by the breaking up of the "fountains of the great deep" (Genesis 7:11). Whatever the "fountains of the great deep" were (see Noah's Flood - What did all the water come from?), the flood must have been associated with massive earth movements, because of the weight of the water alone, which would have resulted in great volcanic activity.
Volcanoes emit huge amounts of steam, and underwater lava creates hot water/steam, which dissolves minerals, adding salt to the water. Furthermore, erosion accompanying the movement of water off the continents after the flood would have added salt to the oceans. In other words, we would expect the pre-flood ocean waters to be less salty than they were after the flood.

[And since radiometric analysis of lava beds from known very recent volcanic activity has yielded (incorrect) dates of millions of years][/b]

Cite your evidence, please.

Yes sir! here you go. K-Ar Dating

Most likely you were referring to K-Ar dating, since that's the only radiometric dating that gives incorrect dates for volcanic rock.

If so, read here.

However the methods of Ar40/Ar39 Chronological dating methods are not reliable either. Take a look here.Besides how many other forms of dating methods that are out there. I haven't seen not one that is reliable and there will never be a reliable dating method.

And here's a quick overview of why radiometric dating is accurate:
1.******** Independent measurements, using different and independent radiometric techniques, give consistent results (Dalrymple 2000; Lindsay 1999; Meert 2000). Such results cannot be explained either by chance or by a systematic error in decay rate assumptions.
2.******** Radiometric dates are consistent with several nonradiometric dating methods. For example:
o********* The Hawaiian archipelago was formed by the Pacific ocean plate moving over a hot spot at a slow but observable rate. Radiometric dates of the islands are consistent with the order and rate of their being positioned over the hot spot (Rubin 2001).
o********* Radiometric dating is consistent with Milankovitch cycles, which depend only on astronomical factors such as precession of the earth's tilt and orbital eccentricity (Hilgen et al. 1997).
o********* Radiometric dating is consistent with the luminescence dating method (Thompson n.d.; Thorne et al. 1999).
o********* Radiometric dating gives results consistent with relative dating methods such as "deeper is older" (Lindsay 2000).

3.******** The creationist claim that radiometric dates are inconsistent rest on a relatively few examples. Creationists ignore the vast majority of radiometric dates showing consistent results ( e.g., Harland et al. 1990).

Luminescence Dating in which age control is rare.Recent advances in luminescence dating have led to increasing application of the technique to sediments from a wide range of depositional environments, many of which are characterised by rapid transport and deposition under turbid conditions. The complete zeroing of the luminescence signal, by exposure to light, is critical to obtaining an accurate age for deposition of the sediment, before any geomorphological or palaeoenvironmental reconstructions can be undertaken based on this chronology. Comparison of luminescence dates with independent age control is rare, due to a lack of suitable material in natural contexts and thus the accuracy of the luminescence dating technique has yet to be proven in many depositional environments. There is therefore a clear need for both quality assurance in luminescence dating and a method for assessing the accuracy of each date. This paper describes and demonstrates a quality assurance method that can be used as part of a routine dating programme and which can discriminate against samples which would give inaccurate dates.
Revue / Journal Title
Geomorphology (Geomorphology)

ISSN 0169-555X
Source / Source
Congrès
Special issue: New techniques in geomorphology
Symposium on "New techniques in geomorphology", Guildford , ROYAUME-UNI (01/1998)
1999, vol. 29, no 1-2 (34 ref.), pp. 173-185
Langue / Language
Anglais

Casualty probems associated with the Milankovitch model shows inaccuracies and is not consistent. It's cosmic rays that's driving the glacial cycles. Especially since there is suggestive evidence that Earth’s magnetic field and the GCR flux have components that vary with orbital frequencies. Various methods have been used to reduce the danger that climate variations could simulate changes of the Earth’s field or of the Be flux, e.g. through vari-ations in the concentration of remanence-carrying grains or variations in sedimentation rate. Keep in mind that sedimentation rates determined by orbital tuning have never shown 100 or 41 kyr periods. Furthermore, at least one of the proxies—magnetic inclination—is unaffected by these systematic problems. Even though the presence of such signals is not definitive, we suggest that previous conclusions that orbital frequencies are absent were premature. Inaccurate timescales tend to hide such periodicity.


Time shows inconsistency due to radiometric dates in regards to human fossils by use of C-14 which by no way can determine civilizations of people from Millions of years ago. The c-14/c-12 ratio decay cannot show accurate results once settled back to 14-N How can they make determinations of consistency in civilizations if the C14 is none detectable after a period of time Way Before millions of years? Now I understand there is no C-14 in non-living things but K-Ar dating hasn't consistently been accurate either.
The radioactive potassium-argon dating method has been demonstrated to fail on 1949, 1954, and 1975 lava flows at Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, in spite of the quality of the laboratory’s K–Ar analytical work.

EDITOh MAN! I just realized I missed a lot of your questions. Don't worry I'll get on those Asap.

Well, judging by post length you haven't gotten to adding the questions you missed.
I guess that doesn't matter for the moment, though--I've got finals all this week and will be either studying or testing so I won't have much time to form a reply to all of the points.

Originally Posted by Keeper

is anyone changing anyones views here?
[/b]

Yes! I did.

When I came to DV I was an agnostic. Thanks to people like Tsen thoroughly and intelligently debunking religious ideas (and thanks partly to the inept defense of the theists), I had a change of view and switched to atheism.

Thanks for asking.

atheism is just as ridiculous as theism
well not quite but close to
if you dont know what it i. research apathetic agnosticism
Imran

no offence, but arn't you trying to convert us to being agnostic?

not at all, im saying that anyone in a situation of doub shoudl research all beliefs and apathetic agnosticism is not a well publicized belief
many people ahve not heard of it and if they had may find it fits quite well to their beliefs
Imran

ah! thank you