The Upper Room

5:51 AM

@Atheist Probably because you're trolling topics and posting sarcastic comments slandering others. The fact that you're not tolerated is not surprise to anybody. Consider respecting the views of those on this forum and in return the users here will respect you as a person.

@Atheist Even within the believing group on this forum we all have to respect each others views, which often times differ very widely within this topic itself. There are plenty of atheists here that we respect, so long as we are shown respect.

Jonathon Byrd

7:10 AM

well hello

so much ranting here there's no place to start. I did answer your question, but I'll go ahead and answer it again. If god asked me to sacrifice my child to Him, then I would.

But fortunately I understand full well that God would not ask that of me, because that's not what He desires. I don't assume to know that, it's simply what He has told us through His Word.

You think religion is harmful because you don't understand it. Most Christians don't read their bibles and therefore they don't even understand what Christianity means.

The Bible does a few things for us, I'll lay them out for you.

The number one thing that the bible does, is open our eyes to how wicked that we are. The bible tells us how much we hate every other being but ourselves, it tells us that we want nothing else but to be all powerful all wicked beings.

Then the bible tells us that we need to repent of that wickedness, that we need to turn from being such haters and actually learn how to love each other. Not just with words and feelings, but with action and in truth

That's what the bible is about from cover to cover.

The bible also shows us how much God hates it/us when we are wicked towards one another. God is such a loving God that He cannot stand a person that acts in pure evil against their earthly brethren. So God has nothing but anger/rage for these wicked people.

God punishes all of man kind like a righteous father would. When people are evil, then God institutes the death penalty.

But if we repent of our wickedness, then God has nothing but love, prosperity and blessings for us.

@Atheist We don't need to turn this community into the comment debates like you find on youtube. We are building this community to be a location where people like yourself can come and ask us very difficult questions about our beliefs and we can have a fair opportunity to answer them.

But that's not why you're here @Atheist, you don't want to learn, you're here to fight against us. It's obvious from your assault of comments that you are here to make yourself heard and care nothing of the people within this community.

Caleb

11:27 AM

@JonathonByrd As a brother I hope you would actually agree that we need to act respectfully at all times whether we are shown respect or not. That's not a fair qualification to make as if the way we treat others varies depending on how they treat us.

Otherwise -- thanks for not actually responding in kind :)

As for you Sir @Atheist, I'm going to have to ask you to re-consider the flavor of your participation here. You just went off on a rant about Christianity being the product of ignorance, the opposite of good, a "freaking cancer", its members "idiotic, backwards", threw in a few swear words, and abused what we believe to be the precious and good Lord of heaven and earth with the label "magical sky daddy", then you ASK how any of that is dis-respectful? Sorry but that doesn't work.

@Atheist If you would like to engage Christians by respectfully asking questions about things you would like to legitimately learn about Christianity you are welcome to do so, but if you are here only to make counter-points and rant, then (per our FAQ) this is not the site for you.

TRiG

11:50 AM

Good grief.

christianity.stackexchange.com/badges/54/enthusiast

I've only gone and got the enthusiest badge.

wax eagle

@TRiG lol I missed it by a day or 2 at the beginning and got reset over the weekend again

Sven

5 days to go

@JonathonByrd I would like to mention again, that your scientific rants and unscientific explanations that are proved wrong should be left out of your answers, just like Atheists rants about christianity

this is equally disrespectful

Caleb

12:54 PM

@TRiG Fortunately for you, we haven't expanded the site definition of 'Christian' to include anybody with a badge based on participation!

TRiG

@Caleb Yet.

It's because h2g2 is still down. I'm coming here instead.

Sven

I told you to ignore him ;)

Caleb

@TRiG How about this? The day this site makes the definition of Christianity 'anybody with an active member account on C.SE' is the day I become a rogue mod and use my big stick to delete most or all of our members' accounts :)

@Atheist Chat is no excuse to be dis-respectful. We are a little more forgiving in here than we are about main site content but you can't use that as an excuse.

TRiG

@Caleb I'll look forward to that! May the day come soon.

@Atheist. I really do wish you'd change your name.

@Atheist And with that I fully agree.

Sven

I do too :D

Caleb

1:07 PM

@Atheist Do you or do you not hold a personal world view that would prefer to to see the entire subject matter of this site as a field of study become relegated to the annals of history?

@Atheist Nobody here is trying to ram anything down your through. You're the one visiting this site.

TRiG

@Caleb Wishing that something might become so does not mean mandating it. I know of no one who wishes to ban religion. Atheists are no threat to religious freedom. Other religious people are.

Caleb

@Atheist Ok. FYI, you also have a fairly blunt/confrontational way of wording your comments on the site and in chat. Between the wording you use and the world view behind your words, it's no surprise that some folks here will categorize your remarks as trolling.

wax eagle

@JonathonByrd something more along this line and I will ban you for half an hour. Please refrain from this sort of thing.

Jonathon Byrd

@waxeagle I love you too wax :)

wax eagle

@Atheist I'm with Caleb, you should be more careful about your wording.

Caleb

1:15 PM

Side note: If anybody wants their content to be starable or their stars to stick, they should avoid bad language. If SE filters your vocabulary with ***, it will get un-stared even if it was an otherwise valid statement.

wax eagle

tone is hard to communicate when its only text. It's important to err on the side of being nice. particularly when religion (or politics :P) are the subject, they get heated very quickly

TRiG

@Atheist. I agree with your premise that religion is not only wrong, but dangerous. And there are places to fight that fight. I don't think this site is one of them.

5

dancek

1:30 PM

@Caleb I'm interested in seeing if you have any input to christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/4003/…

I've noticed you use ESV and said something about having strong preferences about bible translations...

Caleb

@dancek I usually use ESV when communicating with people but often use NASB as a study/reference tool. And I'll star that one to work on a proper answer. It's a good question.

I wish SE had a more efficient to-do-list type system of flagging questions to answer, answers to edit, etc.

dancek

I tend to use multiple translations side-by-side too... But that's mostly only when using a computer. For English translations I tend to prefer ESV and NLT as they're the ones I have physical copies of.

@Caleb agreed.

TRiG

@Caleb Trello?

I've not used it yet, but I've heard it's good for to-do lists.

Caleb

@TRiG I've considered writing a RTM plugin/browser extention for SE. Havn't touched trello yet.

TRiG

@Atheist. Is that Chthulu in your avatar?

dancek

1:47 PM

@TRiG I have a couple of personal wikis for making notes about stuff... dunno if trello would have benefits over my style

TRiG

2:05 PM

@Atheist Have you seen the Chick tract?

dancek

I found the source article for this Skeptics.SE question I asked a while ago:

0

A: Are only 700 out of 480,000 life scientists creationists?

The claim is groundless This is only a partial answer. It doesn't address the actual amount of creationism-supporting life scientists. After showing this question to some friends, I got access to the Newsweek article (behind a paywall). The article is about the debate on creation "science" in p...

Ray

+1 dancek

Sven

2:21 PM

we should make a new list then ;)

TRiG

ncse.com/taking-action/project-steve

Project Steve

Project Steve is a list of scientists with the given name Steven or a variation thereof (e.g., Stephanie, Stefan, Esteban, etc.) who "support evolution". It was originally created by the National Center for Science Education as a "tongue-in-cheek parody" of creationist attempts to collect a list of scientists who "doubt evolution," such as the Answers in Genesis' list of scientists who accept the biblical account of the Genesis creation narrative or the Discovery Institute's A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. The list pokes fun at such endeavors to make it clear that, "We did not wish to...

Sven

I saw that

dancek

@Sven a list can't really work IMO. If there are 480,000 people (I don't know if there is) and you want to know how many of them believe in X, you can't get a reliable count by asking them to put their name on a list if they do.

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if the number was <0.15% in Finland, but I've got the idea that USA is different...

wax eagle

@dancek right, this is incredibly non-scientific.

there are so many biases introduced by this method that a statistician would have a serious aneurism

dancek

(frankly, I don't consider creationism scientific myself though I believe in it, at least in some form)

wax eagle

2:31 PM

@dancek right, its not really science for the most part.

dancek

@Atheist even if most theists were 90% there would still be a lot of theists that support science and might be scientists themselves

wax eagle

@Atheist not necessarily. A scientist shouldn't let that affect his methods or findings

dancek

@Atheist do you have a scientific background yourself btw?

Sven

@dancek, sure a list does not work, but asking x (like 1000, maybe 10000) scientists if they believe in evolution or not would lead to significant enough results

wax eagle

@Atheist also, while this does seem to be a stance taken by vocal evangelicals, its not taken wholesale by the church. In fact a couple of scientists (professors at the college i went to) I know have written a book seeking to change that stance.

dancek

2:39 PM

@Sven are you sure? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size

wax eagle

@Sven provided it was done in a random sampling, in a way that could ensure honest response :).

TRiG

Re: Christians using the Bible to distort science. Re: Christians supporting science; other Christians being suspcious of it.

Sven

@waxeagle of course

dancek

@Atheist pretty much the same here, though I did study two years of physics before changing to computer science

wax eagle

@Atheist and this is why we don't have a solid number :)

the way this would be typically accomplished would be by getting a phone list of the entire population, or a specific subset (entire science faculties of 10-100 unis) and then selecting your random sample from this. Unfortunately this leads to some other bias issues (is participation voluntary etc)

dancek

2:44 PM

@Atheist for scientists of certain fields, that should be easy. If it's possible to count them, we probably know who they are. Just take the list and a sufficiently good RNG (well, PRNG in practice), and pick some. Then send them letters, call them or something.

getting them to participate and answer honestly is the difficult thing

wax eagle

@dancek there are biases introduced with this, problematically voluntary participation as I mentioned above)

Sven

@dancek, according to surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm we would need to do this survey with less than 2500 to achieve a ±2% result with 95% confidence

if we assume there are 500k life-scientists

TRiG

@Atheist +1 to that Meta.SO question.

3

Q: To-do list feature request

Can we get a centralized to-do list kind of feature? Some times there are questions I would want to answer, answers I'd like to edit, etc. Stuff that I don't have time to do right then but I'd like to get back to later. This could also be extended to moderators for stuff they want to clean up. ...

Sven

automatically, if you only post the link

if you add text, it will be inlined

TRiG

@Atheist If the link is the only thing you post, that works.

chat.stackexchange.com/faq#formatting

dancek

2:50 PM

@Sven ok... I might have the wrong general idea here. I recall seeing polls claiming <2% confidence intervals with just ~1k samples of the entire Finnish population.

wax eagle

@dancek could be using a different (ie more reliable) sampling method

dancek

of course, they could be using a confidence level of 50% or so :P

@waxeagle true

anyway, frequentist statistics confuses me to no end

Sven

@dancek, if you play with the generator you'll se it does not take much more for that

2400 for ±2% results with 95% confidence

dancek

@Sven I did

Sven

and you'll need less people, the more clear your result is

i.e. you have 95% pro evolution, you can be ±1.78% with 99% confidence and just 1000 samples

dancek

2:54 PM

@Sven yeah... you're very right. If the actual number of X is 0.15% of population, it's quite difficult to show that by a random sample poll

Sven

@dancek, why do you think it's difficult getting them answer honestly?

dancek

3:10 PM

@Sven I recall hearing that in political polls unpopular views tend to be underrepresented (compared to elections), and this is attributed to people somehow not daring to be honest about their political views (even in a claimedly anonymous poll). I think the same might happen with creationism.

There are some practical situations that might cause this: someone might be having lunch with their supervisor when they're called and asked for opinion. They don't want to tell their opinion to the supervisor so they lie.

etc.

but this is a minor point really, and if someone publishes a statistically valid poll on something I tend to believe that.

TRiG

3:31 PM

@dancek We had a discussion once on h2g2 on why there are apparently so few gay people over forty.

dancek

@TRiG I can imagine. I'd think most over-40 bisexuals in the homosexual end of the spectrum still have ended up in a heterosexual relationship...

Sven

@dancek, are you familiar with the story if elijah?

i think in I Kings, but i'm not sure

wax eagle

@Sven which one? he has several

Sven

baal vs. god

wax eagle

3:46 PM

@Sven I assumed so

Sven

can you explain me why god would show himself to the people on elijahs order?

wax eagle

@Sven elijah was a prophet, he was actaully told to do that by God

Sven

did elijah assume baal does not exist?

i don't see where he mentions that

TRiG

@Sven Elijah is recorded as mocking the prophets of Baal. "Maybe your god's on the loo, and that's why he's not answering you." That could be read either way: Baal isn't powerful, or Baal doesn't exist.

wax eagle

4:20 PM

@Sven take a look at that passage as well. note that it seems to relate prestige and power to the number of priests a god has. Elijah was the only representative of yahweh, but baal had 450 priests. Yet Yahweh acted and baal did not.

Sven

4:39 PM

@TRiG, elektron positron and matter vs antimatter do form spontaneously right?

TRiG

@Sven Err, that does seem to be the current scientific consensus, as I understand it. I must admit I don't see the relevance.

Sven

"Things do not come into existence uncaused"

TRiG

5:19 PM

“Everything Has a Cause” is a Terrible Argument for God

Sven

"Created things do not come into existence uncaused" is the better statement

afaik christians believe their god did not come into existence and therefore didn't need to be created

wax eagle

@Sven I had to look way to far down in that turtles wikipedia page to find the first pratchett ref, with this I am disappointed

Sven

;)

JustinY

I need some advice on how to fix this question of mine:

5

Q: Is it easy to live according to Christ's Gospel?

Today I mentioned that I think following Christ's Gospel (being righteous) makes life easy. Immediately someone disagreed with me. It seems to be common for people to think that being righteous is difficult. Some scriptures that I think support my claim: Matthew 11:28-30 (KJV) 28 Com...

christian-living righteousness

David Stratton pointed out that I really have two different questions, and because of that I have two really good answers, but they're for two different questions.

Its not possible to split a question on SE, is it?

wax eagle

@JustinY not really, through the edit mechanism its possible to seperate them. Let me check something, I might be able to move an answer.

no, we don't have much recourse, best you can do is modify your question, ask your other one and ping the answerer in the comments to move their answer

JustinY

5:33 PM

I was afraid of that.

@waxeagle thanks for the advice

wax eagle

@JustinY np, let me know if I can help

(like if you want your question closed for a bit while you work on it or something)

Caleb

@waxeagle No we can't do that. We have some tricks to move ALL answers but not be picky about it.

wax eagle

@Caleb right, I was hoping we had a single move tool, but there isn't one :(

JustinY

@Caleb Do you know of a reason why it can't be done? It seems like something that would be pretty handy to do.

Caleb

@JustinY Ya I've wanted to before. It's just not a frequently enough used operation to be worth the trouble to build into the software stack particularly considering the abuse that it would then see and thus the overhead it might make for cleanup.

JustinY

5:51 PM

I edited my question to try and avoid the need for splitting up the question. Could you guys take a look and let me know what you think?

Stack Exchange

0

Q: Quoting public domain text

I did quite a bit of quoting in this question: What is unique about Christianity? which raised eyebrows about whether I was breaking some copyright laws by doing so. I know that it is completely legal for the majority of the English speaking nations to access what is public domain in the United...

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