My weirdest experience with a déjà vu yet:
Seemed to have dreamt a situation the night before, and in the dream I had a feeling of déjà vu. So it was a double one ^^

Arguing with axilmar over religion has got to be the most useless thing ever.

But it will be enjoyable to see him certifiably debunk a 2000 year old religion with a sentence or two. I expect the headline tomorrow to be, "Man on Internet proves Christianity is OBVIOUSLY false."

No, no. You're thinking of a book by Dawkins.

From my point of view, Christianity is obviously false. I was convinced a long time ago, and throughout the course of my life I've heard many many very convincing arguments that further that conviction. Unfortunately, the non-existence of God isn't really provable. The closest we can do is present more plausible explanations for things, and try to shrink the living space of the God of the gaps.

But I understand that the foundations for my way of thinking are not the same as the foundations used by everyone. The same arguments that I've found to be absolutely convincing just can't seem to find stable ground in the minds of thoroughly religious people, even people who seem smart and logical. So I can only assume that we must have different axioms or something. I've pretty much given up on hope of convincing strong-minded Christians to give up their beliefs, but I'm still interested in finding out the root of our disagreement.

I agree. I believe God has a lot of laws he set down, not just spiritual but physical laws like gravity, various laws science has discovered etc. There is no reason why one can't enjoy the scientific method and believe in God at the same time. Just as many churches are wrong about some aspects of God and His laws, so is science wrong about some things.

Just because we don't understand how God does something in nature, doesn't mean we can't discover it. Discovering how things happen doesn't, in my mind, prove there is no God, but simply shows more knowledge about his physical laws and how he does it.

This just in: all Christians believe in the formal theory of creationism! It's proven by science!

Neil didn't say anything about Christianity..neither did I. Please lrn2read.

EDIT:

Oh really? So those 40 million year old fossils dated using Carbon Dating are actually only 12 thousand years old?

Neil, this is for you since you don't seem to grasp the fact that Creationism is falsifiable indefinitely in almost every single aspect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

What he meant is whatever currently supports his beliefs. Whatever that is ... is what he meant.

There's nothing in the bible that says the universe can't be 40 million years old.

You would have to have studied the bible like I have to know that though. IN Genesis it states:

1:1) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Doesn't say when that was, could have been a billion years ago, could have been less... doesn't say.

1:2) Now the earth was formless and empty darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

In the margin of my bible it has a note regarding the word "formless" that says "or possible became". Because the original hebrew has that meaning "became formless and empty". Notice the earth and the waters existed already, and they became formless, you don't become formless unless at one point you were not formless and void. So there is evidence that there was an earth that existed in another state.

Satan used to be in charge of the earth before he rebelled against God, this rebellion happened before we were created, so the Earth obviously existed, was he responsible for what happened to the Dinosaurs? We have no way of knowing for certain what happened back then.

There could have been several reasons there was no light on the earth, a cloud covering the earth preventing light and killing off the dinosaurs has been postulated by science. Were they killed off in the great war between God and Satan? That's what I think happened. But I will admit that is my opinion. I think there is plenty of evidence to back up that the earth has obviously been around for a very long time. But that doesn't contradict the bible one bit.

Edit:

You're absolutely right, but I would think that is obvious. To us anyhow.

I don't know of a method that can date back that far. Carbon dating is very limited. Fossils are usually dated based on the layer they are found on, and that is based on theories of sediment deposits which is questionable. But as I said, there's no reason to believe the earth came into existence 6000 years ago, the bible doesn't say that at all.

Yup, you're right, he was. The earth was already here though.

Edit: that is, the earth as we know it now was re-created at the same time, but the bible clearly states, in the first two verses as I quoted that it was without form and void, or more accurately, became without form and void, which would be a more accurate translation of the original Hebrew. Nothing at all in there about the earth being created and other evidence it was around long before as Satan was given rule over the earth before we were created, he was ruling over it when he rebelled against God, can't rule over something that didn't exist, now can we? (and i bet a lot of people never really thought about that aspect)

Quiet; I want to see more strawmen.

/popcorn

Well, you got me, I can't argue against that. <converts to atheism>