How can atheism have morality?

a reply to: Xtrozero

That's pretty much it to.

I wish I could spread the message that using ACTUAL science isn't heretical, because the alternative is pain to me. Even Mormons will debate you on String Theory and their scripture says a lost tribe of Israel lived in the freaking Adirondacks.

It's pointless, and even I hold some form of intelligent design, but it bugs the ever-loving crap out of me when modern thinking tries to force itself into a very superstitious ancient mindset. Or try to shoehorn absurdity into what is very obviously parable.

Michael Heiser wrote a book about the current vs. ancient mindset, and how he felt we can apply ancient biblical superstition in an updated world.

A bit scripture-based for me, but he makes a good point that many have to work to see it through ancient eyes.

I came across him via Sitchiniswrong.com. I like rational theologians.

a reply to: cooperton

Still, what use does God have for war plunder?

Which in one case was stated to include 32 virgins.

originally posted by: WakeUpBeer
a reply to: cooperton

Still, what use does God have for war plunder?

Which in one case was stated to include 32 virgins.

cite the verse you're referring to. The Israelites believed they were one with God, and God's spirit lived among them.

a reply to: cooperton

I'm talking about the Tabernacle of the Lord where his presence was said to manifest.

Not some "he's always with us in spirit" type presence.

originally posted by: cooperton

originally posted by: WakeUpBeer
a reply to: cooperton

Still, what use does God have for war plunder?

Which in one case was stated to include 32 virgins.

cite the verse you're referring to. The Israelites believed they were one with God, and God's spirit lived among them.

I'll find the versus but upon re reading them I may have been wrong about the virgins being taken to the Lord. I think it was just gold.

ETA:

My bad, I was wrong about God wanting 32 virgins (captive war virgins) for himself. He gave them to someone else. Lol.

Anyway the chapter I was referring to is Numbers 31.

originally posted by: Xtrozero

We do not find any bones of anything like dragons, dinosaurs, giants...etc..

The word "dragon" simply means 'large serpent'. Prior to the 1850s when the word 'dinosaur' was invented, they would have referred to large serpents generically as 'dragons'. Most of the stories don't involve fire-breathing flying "dragons". I believe their stories of dragons were referring to remnant dinosaurs.

originally posted by: cooperton

originally posted by: NovemberHemisphere

I'm going to give you a little unsolicited advise- if you simply claim deism with intelligent design, drop the christianity, and focus solely on how 2 sophisticated prokaryotes suddenly appeared in Earth's strata- Your arguments would carry a lot more merit IMHO... just my 2 cents.

In person I do this I think very well. I know when someone would just turn off if I mention Jesus, so I feed them whatever I think they'd want to eat. Most atheists for example still like hearing about science mixed with philosophical speculation. On public forums it's difficult because it's just a group of people of widespread beliefs. I do believe Jesus is the manifestation of the Architect of this world. I know a lot of people, including myself, noticed hypocrisies of churches growing up, but I insist people don't throw the baby Jesus out with the bathwater.

Coop, I happen to agree with you about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. At least so far as it relates to further philosophies not immediately relevant to this thread.

On a side note, have you ever considered the description of Jesus in Revelation?

originally posted by: HKMarrow

Coop, I happen to agree with you about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. At least so far as it relates to further philosophies not immediately relevant to this thread.

On a side note, have you ever considered the description of Jesus in Revelation?

Which description are you referring to?

a reply to: cooperton
There 3 descriptions of him in Revelation. Usually, people separate them. However, if you were to happen to visualize them as applying to the overall "look" of Jesus in Revelation, I dare say you might be slightly shocked, as your mind will quickly finish the image for you.

Possibly, you have already done this, since you don't seem to have an overly ridged view of the bible.

ETA, you should reference the Greek text to clarify the English, especially with the first description amongst the lampshades.

Key word. "Mastos" enjoy the little rabbit hole there, unless of course, you've already done so.

originally posted by: HKMarrow
a reply to: cooperton
There 3 descriptions of him in Revelation. Usually, people separate them. However, if you were to happen to visualize them as applying to the overall "look" of Jesus in Revelation, I dare say you might be slightly shocked, as your mind will quickly finish the image for you.

Possibly, you have already done this, since you don't seem to have an overly ridged view of the bible.

Do you know the verses ? I am interested. I have read Revelation multiple times, but never thought to amalgamate the descriptions together

Kind of like how Ezekiel was describing an extra-dimensional being. These sorts of surreal descriptions show a glimpse of the deeper realms of existence.

a reply to: cooperton

I believe their stories of dragons were referring to remnant dinosaurs.

Those are called birds. Birds are the dinosaurs that survived.

KT boundary. You need to grasp it. You need to acknowledge it.

Animals that survived:

Alligators & Crocodiles: These sizeable reptiles survived—even though other large reptiles did not.

Birds: Birds are the only dinosaurs to survive the mass extinction event 65 million years ago.

Frogs & Salamanders: These seemingly delicate amphibians survived the extinction that wiped out larger animals.

Lizards: These reptiles, distant relatives of dinosaurs, survived the extinction.

Mammals: After the extinction, mammals came to dominate the land. An early relative of all primates, including humans, survived the extinction.

Snakes: Although a number of snake species died out around 65 million years ago, snakes as a group survived.

Turtles: Of the known species of turtles alive at the time of the dinosaurs, more than 80 percent survived.

Now be sure to lol and tell me how misinformed I am to dare quote that birds are surviving dinosaurs.

You need to take that up with the biologists that now classify birds as dinosaurs.



Out of curiosity, do you acknowledge taxonomy?

A "claude" is like a sub class. After animal, and vertebrate comes class. While Aves is the modern name, they can be considered therapods.

A Seagull is as much a therapod as a T-Rex.

If you want to get technical then you are correct to argue that "dinosaurs" live alongside humans.

Food for instant creationist rejection.

originally posted by: Degradation33

It's pointless, and even I hold some form of intelligent design, but it bugs the ever-loving crap out of me when modern thinking tries to force itself into a very superstitious ancient mindset. Or try to shoehorn absurdity into what is very obviously parable.

What gets me is they fight every aspect of science dealing with all life. Humans walked among the dinosaurs type of crap. The universe is 6000, or 60,000 years old. so on and so forth, they will not agree to a single thing.

originally posted by: cooperton


The word "dragon" simply means 'large serpent'. Prior to the 1850s when the word 'dinosaur' was invented, they would have referred to large serpents generically as 'dragons'. Most of the stories don't involve fire-breathing flying "dragons". I believe their stories of dragons were referring to remnant dinosaurs.

Ok, but that is all we got...stories. I would bet if there were dragons we would have bones with fantastic carvings in them, but we have nothing.

a reply to: Degradation33

Before reading the information below, keep in mind that unsubstantiated claims about dinosaurs with feathers (feathered dinosaurs) do not equal "evidence" for this claim, no matter who is making the claim, or how many 'scientists' are making that claim (argument from authority, argumentum ad populum/appeal to the majority/argument from consensus/authority of the many/bandwagon fallacy/common belief fallacy).

Reptiles are cold-blooded animals, meaning that their internal temperature will either increase or decrease depending upon the outside temperature. Birds, on the other hand, are warm-blooded; their bodies maintain a relatively constant internal temperature regardless of the temperature outside. To solve the puzzle of how warm-blooded birds came from cold-blooded reptiles, some evolutionists now say that some of the dinosaurs (which were reptiles) were warm-blooded. But the general view is still as Robert Jastrow observes: “Dinosaurs, like all reptiles, were cold-blooded animals.” (Red Giants and White Dwarfs, by Robert Jastrow, 1979, p. 253.)

Lecomte du Noüy, the French evolutionist, said concerning the belief that warm-blooded birds came from cold-blooded reptiles: “This stands out today as one of the greatest puzzles of evolution.” He also made the admission that birds have “all the unsatisfactory characteristics of absolute creation”⁠​—unsatisfactory, that is, to the theory of evolution. (Human Destiny, by Lecomte du Noüy, 1947, p. 72.)

While it is true that both reptiles and birds lay eggs, only birds must incubate theirs. They are designed for it. Many birds have a brood spot on their breast, an area that does not have any feathers and that contains a network of blood vessels, to give warmth for the eggs. Some birds have no brood patch but they pull out the feathers from their breast. Also, for birds to incubate the eggs would require evolution to provide them with new instincts​—for building the nest, for hatching the eggs and for feeding the young—​very selfless, altruistic, considerate behaviors involving skill, hard work and deliberate exposure to danger. All of this represents a wide gap between reptiles (such as dinosaurs) and birds. But there is much more.

Feathers are unique to birds. Supposedly, reptilian scales just happened to become these amazing structures. Out from the shaft of a feather are rows of barbs. Each barb has many barbules, and each barbule has hundreds of barbicels and hooklets. After a microscopic examination of one pigeon feather, it was revealed that it had “several hundred thousand barbules and millions of barbicels and hooklets.”⁠ (The Birds, by Roger Tory Peterson, 1963, p. 34.) These hooks hold all the parts of a feather together to make flat surfaces or vanes. Nothing excels the feather as an airfoil, and few substances equal it as an insulator. A bird the size of a swan has some 25,000 feathers.

If the barbs of these feathers become separated, they are combed with the beak. The beak applies pressure as the barbs pass through it, and the hooks on the barbules link together like the teeth of a zipper. Most birds have an oil gland at the base of the tail from which they take oil to condition each feather. Some birds have no oil gland but instead have special feathers that fray at their tips to produce a fine talclike dust for conditioning their feathers. And feathers usually are renewed by molting once a year.

Knowing all of this about the feather, consider this rather astonishing effort to explain its development: “How did this structural marvel evolve? It takes no great stretch of imagination to envisage a feather as a modified scale, basically like that of a reptile​—a longish scale loosely attached, whose outer edges frayed and spread out until it evolved into the highly complex structure that it is today.”⁠ But do you think such an explanation is truly scientific? Or does it read more like science fiction? (The Birds, by Roger Tory Peterson, 1963, p. 34.)

Consider further the design of the bird for flight. The bird’s bones are thin and hollow, unlike the reptile’s solid ones. Yet strength is required for flight, so inside the bird’s bones there are struts, like the braces inside of airplane wings. This design of the bones serves another purpose: It helps to explain another exclusive marvel of birds​—their respiratory system.

Muscular wings beating for hours or even days in flight generate much heat, yet, without sweat glands for cooling, the bird copes with the problem​—it has an air-cooled “engine.” A system of air sacs reach into almost every important part of the body, even into the hollow bones, and body heat is relieved by this internal circulation of air. Also, because of these air sacs, birds extract oxygen from air much more efficiently than any other vertebrate. How is this done?

In reptiles and mammals, the lungs take in and give out air, like bellows that alternately fill and empty. But in birds there is a constant flow of fresh air going through the lungs, during both inhaling and exhaling. Simply put, the system works like this: When the bird inhales, the air goes to certain air sacs; these serve as bellows to push the air into the lungs. From the lungs the air goes into other air sacs, and these eventually expel it. This means that there is a stream of fresh air constantly going through the lungs in one direction, much like water flowing through a sponge. The blood in the capillaries of the lungs is flowing in the opposite direction. It is this countercurrent between air and blood that makes the bird’s respiratory system exceptional. Because of it, birds can breathe the thin air of high altitudes, flying at over 20,000 feet for days on end as they migrate thousands of miles.

Other features widen the gulf between bird and reptile. Eyesight is one. From eagles to warblers, there are eyes like telescopes and eyes like magnifying glasses. Birds have more sensory cells in their eyes than have any other living things. Also, the feet of birds are different. When they come down to roost, tendons automatically lock their toes around the branch. And they have only four toes instead of the reptile’s five. Additionally, they have no vocal cords, but they have a syrinx out of which come melodious songs like those of the nightingales and mockingbirds. Consider too, that reptiles have a three-chambered heart; a bird’s heart has four chambers. Beaks also set birds apart from reptiles: beaks that serve as nutcrackers, beaks that filter food from muddy water, beaks that hammer out holes in trees, crossbill beaks that open up pinecones​—the variety seems endless. And yet the beak, with such specialized design, is said to have evolved by chance from the nose of a reptile! Does such an explanation seem credible to you?

At one time evolutionists believed that Archaeopteryx, meaning “ancient wing” or “ancient bird,” was a link between reptile and bird. But now, many do not. Its fossilized remains reveal perfectly formed feathers on aerodynamically designed wings capable of flight. Its wing and leg bones were thin and hollow. Its supposed reptilian features are found in birds today. And it does not predate birds, because fossils of other birds have been found in rocks of the same period as Archaeopteryx. (The Neck of the Giraffe, pp. 34, 35; Science, “Feathers of Archaeopteryx: Asymmetric Vanes Indicate Aerodynamic Function,” by Alan Feduccia and Harrison B. Tordoff, March 9, 1979, pp. 1021, 1022.)

a reply to: Degradation33

In conclusion, birds are not dinosaurs/reptiles (surviving or otherwise). To claim otherwise, is a big fat and rather blatant lie/falsehood. (to make people ignore the difference and the rather huge gulf between them that has not been explained by evolutionary speculation and myth*)

...

Lies, Lies!

Certainly, the handiest trick of the propagandist is the use of outright lies. ...

Source: The Manipulation of Information (Awake!—2000)

*: Chapter 6: Huge Gulfs—Can Evolution Bridge Them?

FOSSILS give tangible evidence of the varieties of life that existed long before man’s arrival. But they have not produced the expected backing for the evolutionary view of how life began or how new kinds got started thereafter. Commenting on the lack of transitional fossils to bridge the biological gaps, Francis Hitching observes: “The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps: the fossils go missing in all the important places.”⁠1

The important places he refers to are the gaps between the major divisions of animal life. An example of this is that fish are thought to have evolved from the invertebrates, creatures without a backbone. “Fish jump into the fossil record,” Hitching says, “seemingly from nowhere: mysteriously, suddenly, full formed.”⁠2 Zoologist N. J. Berrill comments on his own evolutionary explanation of how the fish arrived, by saying: “In a sense this account is science fiction.”⁠3

Evolutionary theory presumes that fish became amphibians, some amphibians became reptiles, from the reptiles came both mammals and birds, and eventually some mammals became men. The previous chapter has shown that the fossil record does not support these claims. This chapter will concentrate on the magnitude of the assumed transitional steps. As you read on, consider the likelihood of such changes happening spontaneously by undirected chance.

The Gulf Between Fish and Amphibian

...

References Listed by Chapter

...

Chapter 6

Huge Gulfs​—Can Evolution Bridge Them?

1. The Neck of the Giraffe, by Francis Hitching, 1982, p. 19.

2. Ibid., p. 20.

3. The Origin of Vertebrates, by N. J. Berrill, 1955, p. 10.

...

Dinosaur - Wikipedia

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles[note 1] of the clade Dinosauria.

True, dinosaurs are cold-blooded reptiles without feathers. And now come the propagandistic lies under note 1:

Dinosaurs (including birds) are members of the natural group Reptilia. Their biology does not precisely correspond to the antiquated class Reptilia of Linnaean taxonomy, consisting of cold-blooded amniotes without fur or feathers. As Linnean taxonomy was formulated for modern animals prior to the study of evolution and paleontology, it fails to account for extinct animals with intermediate traits between traditional classes.

What a load of crap. They mean, prior to evolutionary propaganda, speculation and myth. These "extinct animals with intermediate traits between traditional classes" are as mythological as pink unicorns, walking whales and ape-men. Solution? Just re-define the "reptile" class according to evolutionary speculation and myth, so you can include warm-blooded birds as part of the same class. Some other terms that have been redefined in the last 150 years for the sake of evolutionary propaganda:

evolution
species (and speciation)
nothing
information

Re-defining terms is such a lame propagandistic tactic. Their attempts to confuse people's understanding of the term "nothing" is the worst (most blatantly false, illogical/nonsensical):

originally posted by: whereislogic
a reply to: Degradation33

In conclusion, birds are not dinosaurs/reptiles (surviving or otherwise). To claim otherwise, is a big fat and rather blatant lie/falsehood. (to make people ignore the difference and the rather huge gulf between them that has not been explained by evolutionary speculation and myth*)

...

Lies, Lies!

Certainly, the handiest trick of the propagandist is the use of outright lies. ...

Source: The Manipulation of Information (Awake!—2000)

You literally are a propagandist, lol. Saying birds aren't dinosaurs even though they clearly descend from dinosaurs would be the equivalent to saying humans aren't mammals despite clearly descending from mammals. Theropods have hollow bones and a wishbone in their anatomy, which is quite telling. Dinosauria is a monophyletic clade, it has to include all the descendants of the most recent common ancestor of ornithischians and saurischians, which are birds, making birds a type of dinosaur. Birds are technically all of these things- archosaurs, theropods, coelurosaurs, maniraptorans, and avialans. Characteristics from all of these are found in the anatomy of birds. Just to give you an idea, the only ancestor we had living during the time of dinosaurs was a small squirrel-like creature of sorts.

"Many of the earliest fossils of placental mammals are quite small creatures such as Purgatorius – an early ancestor of primates – which was a small burrowing creature a bit like a tree shrew."

IN my opinion morality is based off a collective understanding of empathy and common law.

a reply to: whereislogic

In conclusion, birds are not dinosaurs/reptiles (surviving or otherwise). To claim otherwise, is a big fat and rather blatant lie/falsehood.

Well that's what the watchtower says...

There's some solid evidence to back it up.

www.birdlife.org...

There’s no longer really any doubt that birds are a type of dinosaur. These days, the debate is about details. The strong evidence doesn’t just come from fossilised bones and similarities found across the skeleton, but from fossilised soft tissue – especially feathers. Many dinosaurs had not just some kind of body covering, but distinctive bird-like feathers. Rare fossils also give us glimpses of the behaviour of bird-like dinosaurs, such as Mei long, a small, duck-sized bipedal dinosaur from the Cretaceous era. It was found preserved in volcanic ash falls – a bit like Pompeii – captured curled up in a sleeping position very similar to how a lot of birds roost today.

Only 70% of the animals died at the tertiary boundary. And the "dinosaurs" that survived were the small beaked ones, because they didn't starve. And within a few million years exploded. These dinosaurs directly evolved into birds.

Like how the first mammals went through an egg laying in between phase, some at that point kept that set-up and became montremes, which are all hilarious ones in Austrailia.

For me a JW counterpoint is to evolution as medical expert is to personal injury lawyer.

originally posted by: NovemberHemisphere
Theropods have hollow bones ...

originally posted by: Degradation33
a reply to: cooperton

A Seagull is as much a therapod as a T-Rex.

Do T-Rexes have the same type of hollow bones as a bird? Are you really going to try to sell this falsehood to me? What's next, are T-Rexes now suddenly warm-blooded like birds (including seagulls)?

As I said at the beginning of my comment, unsubstantiated claims made by those who spin the term "hollow bones" (when used in reference to the type of hollow bones found in birds, which are nothing like the bones in T-Rex, not even close, regardless of the claims otherwise) do not equal evidence, no matter who is claiming it or how many are making that claim (argument from authority, argumentum ad populum/appeal to the majority/argument from consensus/authority of the many/bandwagon fallacy/common belief fallacy).

a reply to: whereislogic

Those traits were an evolutionary adaptation to allow for flight. They hollowed out a little more. That may be why puffins and loons don't fly very well. They are funny looking trying to stay flying though. And penguins don't fly. Not every bird evolved to have hollow bones either.

I'm betting they really hollowed out right around the time their upper bipedal appendages became wings.

That's not really a "gotcha" type thing. It's just a failure to acknowledge evolution thing.