John Cuthber

So you think Christ was so important that the best thing to do was not bother to document His life. I wonder if anyone else sees that as plausible. "Yes, they attacked Christ through the time of Constantine, who epitomized the mantra, "If you can't beat them, counterfeit them."" Oh come off it; the crucified run-of-the -mill thieves too. They crucified people because it's really really nasty- it doesn't kill them quickly. "Again, you misunderstand because you've not given care to the text. Christ always sought escape from the masses from the very close of his very first Sermon, masses growing numerously by the day. If any Roman soldier so much as laid a hand on him there would have been horrific riots. His arrest depended on betrayal by a close friend." Bollocks. After the arrest and trial they could have cut His head off. They crucified Him because they wanted Him to suffer. "The price God required of his Son, the penalty paid for all human sin." Someone already made the comment elsewhere about telling child services. It's still a valid point. That's not what loving Fathers do. "When a person is pierced in their side, and water and blood flow, as in Jesus' case, he is indeed dead." According to one biassed witness, who know what the significance of that claim would be. And it's not even true from a medical standpoint. "Perhaps notable, but not of much force in your argument. It should be expected that opinions would clash since local calendars were not always in sync with the Julian Calendar, nor with one another, not to mention the transitions of calendars that followed." FFS! who doesn't know if it's the Sabbath? All the shops are shut. (And there's the minor matter of getting stoned to death for not keeping it) No subsequent change in the calendar would have explained why they didn't agree at the time. Incidentally, I'm old enough to remember what life was like before the internet- and I couldn't remember what I'd had for my damned breakfast then either- so that part of your post is dross too. "It should frighten you to assume so much without shame." It's not an assumption; we have evidence- we have the books- and they don't tally- just like bad copies. "The Eden story begins the history of a fallen world, due to human pride. " No it fell because God wanted it to because He is evil. That's why He put the serpent in there (either directly or through an agent - perhaps in order to maintain what would be called "plausible denial" if He did it today.) He made sure the whole system was going to go tits up from the outset. If this "People reject Christ because they are not content with just good. They prefer good, with evil" was true then you would need to work out how that's the case. Here's a clue "in His image".

I meant you in the plural sense. It was made up by someone else- big deal, it's still imaginary. This pitiful pauper seems to have been responsible for a lot of suffering. Why would a kind and loving God not stop him You have offered nothing for me to understand.

Possibly as a result of a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone. http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Golgafrincham

More "act of clod" than "act of God". And who are you to tell science what it can and can't do? Why do you think that you get to decide what's supernatural?

As I pointed out earlier, there is a reason for taking this line. For any experiment on this "magic" that you can imagine, there's always an excuse why it doesn't work. You can't refute those excuses. When the so called "mystic" says "the spirits were tired today" there's absolutely nothing you can say to refute that excuse for the experiment's failure. But evolution happens inevitably, and continuously. If the effect is real then it should be practically universal- but it isn't. So, rather than giving the mystics carte blanc to "explain away" the failure of any experiment, I'm asking them to explain away the failure of countless natural experiments done over tens of thousands of years across the whole human race. Any effect too small to see on an experiment that big is, for all practical purposes, non-existent. It's not perfect, but it's still a strong point.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Anyone claiming that some people have this ability need to explain why not everyone has it. Also RobbityBob's earlier comment "Imagine if it happens to be you. You find you are able to do TK and TP. OK the rest of the community thinks you're nuts. How does that help you get a mate?" totally misses the point. the community only thinks you are nuts if you can't actually do it; in which case you are making a delusional claim and you are (colloquially speaking) nuts. If you actually can do it, the community probably thinks you are some sort of God; at the least, they think you are "more interesting than the next bloke"

Can we start "positive eugenics" by preventing people who believe that eugenics can be positive from breeding? Seriously, why is it that people understand that biodiversity is a good thing, but forget that exactly the same thing applies to us?

It' not credible that any mutation could make the difference you are on about. But, just for the record, your comment about "A mutation that allows for these (TK and TP) to happen could also mean that another trait has suffered in the process. One gain maybe more than offset by the other." would apply to colour vision, sexual reproduction or, indeed, just about any significant evolutionary change. Yet they still happen. Did you think it was a valid point? can I just point out that you didn't actually address my point, you went off on some irrelevant tangent about magic mushrooms. While you are about it, do you realise that even the trivial ability claimed by the OP would be helpful in getting a mate? Even if it's pretty useless, it's a clever conjuring trick. In the days before the internet,TV and even books, such a skill would be highly prized. So, why isn't it universal?

Rather than believing old books. I'm ignoring the invisible worlds that you have to make up to support the story of an all powerful God who is subordinate to Satan. It's silly, and it's not science or logic.

It' not credible that any mutation could make the difference you are on about. But, just for the record, your comment about "A mutation that allows for these (TK and TP) to happen could also mean that another trait has suffered in the process. One gain maybe more than offset by the other." would apply to colour vision, sexual reproduction or, indeed, just about any significant evolutionary change. Yet they still happen. Did you think it was a valid point?

Well, there are a number of possibilities, For a start, I can eliminate rivals for mates by telekinetically pinching their jugular veins. And, of course, I can also influence the fall of the balls in the national lottery so I would get very rich. (Or, if I wanted to be a bit subtler, I could use my telepathic ability to find out what's happening in theboard room of FTSE100 companies and make money on the stock market.) So, even without the facility to make women's pants vibrate from across the room, I think it would increase my DNA's chances. Was your question actually serious; had you just not thought it through?

Preventing what? Most insurance companies consider lightning to be an act of God...

On a related note, why do so many churches have lightning conductors?

It's not arrogant to assume that, for example, stellar physics will not suddenly change because you change your mind about something. On the other hand, to think that one's opinion will alter the universe is spectacularly arrogant. Lazy typing, I can forgive (as long as it's still clear what you mean). How do you blame lazy thinking on your 'phone?

You don't seem to understand science. "Doesn't quantum teleportation break the law of the speed of light ?" no "Anyway that's what I read." So read better things. " I want to comment something, and that is how young modern science is. It is only about 100 years old, it is practically an infant, both in comparison to the overall age of humanity, " You might want to make that comment, and you might even make it, but that doesn't make it true. It is true by tautology that new science is new. however science has been going on for a long time This guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon is widely cited as the "father of science" about 400 years ago, but there's a strong argument that the subject started hundreds or thousands of years before him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_in_early_cultures "it is practically an infant, " What infant that you know of gave you the internet and the microwave oven and antibiotics and so on? "It is very young " Only if you ignore the old bits. Even if you take the rather odd definition you chose, it's twice as old as I am, and it has the advantage of being able to amass the knowledge of many people rather than just one. "but at the same time also very arrogant and boustful" It isn't arrogance to claim to be right when you can demonstrate that you are. (and it also gave you access to spell checking software; why not use that? "sort of like a baby bully" Who does it bully? It's an abstract concept- how does it bully? "My personal belief is that in the future ..." Reality doesn't know or care what you believe.

Nope. I don't have a religion. That's not a problem. The bloke down the road has a religion. That's not a problem. The bloke down the road's religion says he should hate me for not sharing his religion. That's a problem.

OK, fair point, but at the moment nobody is making any such claim. They just say "it works some of the time" (By an odd coincidence that seems to mean it works when they are the only one watching, but fails the rest of the time). They come up with excuses like the effect won't work through glass or the "interference" from the camera stops it working or whatever. OK, any of those could be a reason why it is never actually found to work when tested scientifically. They could even claim that it's God-given and thus it obviously won't work when it's tested because the Bible says so. However, in spite of all the excuses they can invent, and then some; they still need to explain why it's not universal.

You don't have the authority to do that. If you want to call it Robbittybob motion, that's fine. But if you use an established term you need to use it correctly. So, as I said, the only reason we are still discussing Brownian motion is that you don't understand it- specifically, you think it's some thing you made up. Now we have established that you were wrong, can we drop it? On the subject of evolution, both telepathy and telekinesis would be such useful traits that, if anyone had ever possessed them, it would have been strongly selected for. By now, many generations after the subject was first discussed, those without it would be either a sub-class of slaves, or extinct. Anyone who claims that these things exist has to show why they recently arose or why they are not universal.

But it is not harmonious; it is full of imperfections. So, by your argument there is no God. (And I know I'm not good at using it either, but can you please sort out how to use the quote function. In that last post you attributed this "Actually it's a principle of Providence." to ajb) In any event, you have completely failed to say anything to do with science, you have just preached (badly, in my opinion). Please stop.

Any competent devoted follower would have kept a diary at the time. transcribing it ant tidying it up for publication could be done in a few weeks. Rome did know how to crucify, and they also knew why they did it. If they just wanted someone dead they could take his head off with a sword. But the point of crucifixion is not to offer a quick death but as long, drawn-out, and painful one as could easily be achieved. So, since the point of some of the details of crucifixion was to keep the unfortunate victim alive so they could suffer, it's entirely plausible that sometimes they managed to keep him alive for a few days. If they then mistakenly thought the unconscious man was dead they would cut him down and entomb him. Hence an apparent resurrection. It's notable that, even though this resurrection was the only thing that set the biblical Jesus apart from many other wannabee prophets at the time, there seems to be considerable disagreement of what day it happened. You would think they got that important detail right but no, not even that. They are not a very good record; certainly not fit to be used as proof of anything.

So the reason it's created by a perfect God is that it's full of imperfections. Do you actually think that makes sense? Anyway, according to scripture God proclaimed His own stupidity by including the serpent in the garden of Eden.

And yet, in the real world the year is something like 365.259636 times longer than the day. That's natural- and it's not even constant. The earth isn't spinning as fast as it used to. Nature is just plain awkward in this case (and many others). The orbital period of the moon also isn't either an exact number of days, nor a simple fraction of the year.

It isn't even possible to tell if the question has a meaning since there's a debate about whether or not "Christ" existed. If he did (that's a big if) then the only records of what he might have thought are old books written (and re-written) many years after the alleged event by people who had their own clear agenda. And that's probably why the various tales don't agree with eachother. That's been followed up by a determined plan to reinterpret the books because they simply aren't very nice. These days, no book that tells you where to get your slaves and how to treat them can be taken seriously as a guide to morality. And, once you realise that it's not being used as a moral guide, and it's not a history book,what's left? Certainly nothing reliable so, as I said, there's no way to know the answer to your question. Feel free to make up an answer- plenty of people have done it before and plenty will do it again.

I assumed you had tied the end of the string to a rock. The rock is the creator of the universe.

OK, for a start, no, it's not. I live on a fairly steep hill.But that's irrelevant anyway. What you said was "Tell me, how do you personally know about the nature of the stars?" And you said it in direct response to me saying "Yet another example of the logical fallacy known as argument from personal incredulity. Do you realise that you are basing your claims on something that is known to be invalid?" The way you said it implies that it's a rebuttal of some sort- that my point would only be valid if I somehow knew about the stars. Well, that's simply wrong too. The best interpretation for you saying "Tell me, how do you personally know about the nature of the stars?" is that it's just some irrelevant words you typed. Do you think that makes you look any less foolish than the clearly illogical arguments you have put forward in earlier posts? BTW I'm not implying that you are a fool. I'm stating outright that your posts make you look foolish.