This topic is about whether human beings are apes or not.
Then this should be a very short thread. Humans are apes. Why are we past 100 replies then?
I gave a large amount of scientific studies to back up my points that humans are different from other apes, which has been ignored by some.
None of your posted studies showed what you hope they do. Chimps are different from other apes. Gorillas are different from other apes. If all apes were the same we would just be a single species. We are not. There are many species of apes.
A previous post that was made stated "I also don't have a concept of god, like many fellow apes.", which apparently was trying to make the following logical argument:
The problem is that you didn't understand my point. It was not a "logical argument". You had claimed that having versus not having a concept of god separated humans from (other) apes. I only was pointing out that not all humans (including me) have a "concept of god". I have no idea if chimps have a god concept or not. I suspect not, but it is not what separates them from us.
Premise 1: Chimpanzees do not have a concept of God. Chimpanzees are apes.
Premise 2: I do not have a concept of God.
Conclusion: I am an ape.
Which is not a properly formed logical argument. Others have noted this so I will let their responses stand instead.
I attacked premise 2, because I believe it's incorrect, and so that led us to discussing whether you have a concept of God and what atheism is.
Well, I don't have a concept of god, and I don't know what you could possibly know about my mind to make counterclaims about my mind. What ideas I've heard about gods of various sorts have come from others. When I believed in one, I probably had some personal concept of that god, but since I no longer believe that god exists I have no reason to hold any particular notion about it, nor do I care. When discussing their concepts of god with others, I am prepared to meet then where their position is and try to understand how they conceptualize whatever god or gods they believe in, but I don't have any need to conceptualize gods I don't find believable or plausible.
However, on the face of it, the argument is absurd even if I don't attack premise 2.
Premise 1: Chimpanzees do not have a concept of God. Chimpanzees are apes.
Premise 2: I do have a concept of God.
Conclusion: I am not an ape.
So this argument basically does nothing,
correct. It is absurd and does nothing, because it is poorly formed and the conclusion does not follow from the premises. But, I really don't care, because it certainly isn't an argument *I* made.
because all it does is say that all people who do not have a concept of God are apes and all people who do have a concept of God are not apes.
Every being who ever claimed to have a concept of god is also an ape. (as they were all humans)
Belief in Christianity is all it takes to be elevated back to being human and made in the image of God and not longer being equated to an animal.
Christians, like all other humans, are still animals. None are plants, bacteria, or fungi.
Everyone who has to work for a living or who has given birth has been affected by God.
Somehow I think it is unlikely that a human being can go through life without having encountered hard labor, work, or weeds. Genesis 3:17-19 describes how reality works on this planet. Every time you see a weed, that is God affecting you. Every time you go to work, that's God. Everyone is affected by His displeasure at our sin and the adversity that creation throws at us.
Given that I don't follow your religion, why should I (or any other non-Christian) be concerned about what your scriptures say? Much of the first few chapters of Genesis read very much like an ancient story to explain why a bunch of things are the way they are. They are not substantially different from the contemporary stories of other cultures from ~2500 years ago when it was written that also try to explain how things are the way they are.
If evolution were true, the creation would be disordered, chaotic, and it would obey our will entirely.
What? This makes no sense.
I could wish for a box of Cheerios to show up on my doorstep tomorrow and there would be a 50/50 chance that it would actually show up, spontaneously and out of the blue. That's not how the universe works. It's not governed by random chaos, it's ordered by natural laws.
None of that is in any way related to evolution. You have shifted to the nature of the laws of physics. I'm not sure why you think they are part of evolution.
These natural laws dictate that, if I wish to obtain Cheerios, I have to do some kind of labor in exchange for money, which I have to take to a store. And Cheerios don't arrive on the store shelves spontaneously either - they have to be made from grown plants and chemicals and machines, all of which took a massive amount of human expertise, toil, hard labor in fields and factories. Fortunately, this cost is distributed across a vast number of people who want Cheerios, so I have my fellow Cheerios customers to thank for the fact that I can buy this product, and all of their labor across multiple different industries, for the fact that I can sit in my kitchen and eat Cheerios.
The laws of physics are unconcerned about Cheerios. That you have to go to a store and exchange money for a box of Cheerios is entirely because they are a manufactured product you can't make at home, unlike some other foods.
Therefore, Genesis 3:17-19 explains reality better than evolution does.
That short bit of scripture explains nothing related to the diversity of life. (What evolution *actually* is about.)
Chaos runs downhill to benefit the greatest intelligence to take advantage of it.
I'm sure this is some poor understanding of entropy, but I see no reason to address it until so formatted.
If evolution were true, one of us would be God.
This makes no sense. Evolution doesn't address notions of god, nor about who is a god.
But the creation does not subject itself to our will, which indicates that we are struggling against a greater intelligence than our own that is displeased with our actions.
This does not follow.
Rest assured, if I were in charge of the universe, hard work and weeds would be among the first things to be abolished. I most certainly am not responsible for them, and neither is any other human.
The only reason this is even remotely relevant is that you think God cause this to be. None of us think you are God, nor do we care what you would do different.
I was 12 when I read Strobel, and I already stated that my research sources may not have been the best. I think I can give some grace to my CPTSD-affected 12-year-old self for not being the best apologetics researcher to walk the earth. Likewise, Strobel is a journalist, not a scientist, and he was biased, perhaps ever-so-slightly, by his wife's conversion to Christianity. He wanted to resolve his painful personal crisis, and that biased his research.
I've heard Strobel's arguments. I don't find them compelling or that interesting at all.
Point is that I don't casually believe things without researching them, which I was accused of. In response to that accusation, I provided my sources for my information and gave my information about how I came to faith in Christ.
I should point out that the quickest and easiest solution for my own painful personal crisis would have been atheism at multiple points later on, probably drugs and lying, cheating, and stealing. That would not have been the best solution over the long term, but it certainly would have helped. I chose to work hard for the best solution, and in doing so, suffered more than I would have otherwise. My intuition tells me that I made all the right choices and that those choices will pay off in the next decade, but what do I know?
I don't know what that story is and I'm not particularly interested in why you became a Christian.
Point is that atheism and Christianity both offered solutions, and I chose my solution.
"Atheism" doesn't offer anything as it is not a church, society, or philosophy. All it is is the state of non-belief. What you make of yourself when you don't believe is a separate thing.
And not having a belief in God is rejecting God and what He says, because He claims to be the authority over mankind.
It really isn't. The thing about not believing in any god concept is that you generally don't care what other people claim that the god says or does.
When you say "God doesn't exist", you are rejecting God's authority over your life.
We're ignoring claims that the believers in the being you call God make about what he said or his authority.
Multiple passages of Scripture indicate God's authority over mankind, most notably the famous Decalogue aka the 10 commandments.
If I don't believe the one you call God exists, why would I worry about the authority you guys claim he has?
Jesus claims authority over heaven and earth.
Now that *is* possible, since Jesus probably a real man and if those parts of the gospels are correct, then he did make that claim, but... I don't have any reason to accept that claim.
Disregarding authority has negative consequences.
So says the religion based on the God I see no reason to think exists. It is hard to imagine any real consequences of disregarding the authority that we don't recognize.
It has been my understanding that most atheists who flip from Christianity to atheism do so because the Christian communities they were living in disapproved of their actions (whether truly sinful or not, some Christian communities can flip out over things that don't matter) and they wanted to continue those actions.
An old "trope" with little connection to reality.
The root of atheism is a disregard for the authority of the Christian community and God Himself and wanting to continue in sin in complete disregard for God's authority.
The "root of atheism" is not finding claims of religions, particularly about their "concepts of god", to be plausible or believable.
That's not how everyone ends up in atheism, however. Some people were raised in it and blindly believed what their parents told them, like many other beliefs.
Funny, that's how I ended up in Christianity. Eventually, I realized the only reason I believed any of it was because I trusted people who said it was true. Then I stopped believing.
Other people had no clue what to believe, and they researched the science and other data, and found that atheism had a greater emotional appeal (they liked it better) because the sin nature of mankind likes atheism better.
This is just your first bad argument, but about not joining instead of leaving.
Human default mode is break the rules and go for the druggie sex parties and laugh at authority.
I may need to check out the local atheist group...
A moderator might want people to do what they say. If a moderator says "do not post this in this thread" in their mod role, they might want people to do just that, or face negative consequences.
If a person believes that forum moderators don't exist, they will not obey the website TOS or heed any actions that the moderators take against them or follow their instructions. This person rejects said forum moderator. The mod in question probably will not take it personally, but it's still a rejection of them as a person because that person is a forum moderator. Clearly said moderator believes forum moderation has some value, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.
I tried not believing that some moderators didn't exist, but the board software won't let me ignore them.
Likewise, the Bible and the 10 commandments are this universe's Terms of Service. If you reject God's Terms of Service for His creation, eventually the vast numbers of rule violations will get you banned to the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. You also reject His authority, which means that you reject Him because He gave you the rules. Therefore, failing to believe in God is rejecting His authority, and rejecting His authority is rejecting Him.
Unlike the owners and staff of this board, I have no reason to think God exists, therefore, I have no reason to be concerned about the rules his followers claim nor be concerned about the claimed punishments.
Okay, I think most people believe that forum moderators exist. If not, when they get banned, they would benefit from changing their beliefs. But getting banned, if you're guilty, means that you lose access to the services of that forum, which might be useful. Likewise, if we as humans loose permanent access to the resources of our environment, it doesn't look good for us. Weeks without food, days without water, minutes without oxygen, we are dead! Getting banned from God's creation isn't an option we can just entertain casually. Our survival literally depends on the creation God made.
Oxygen comes from the explosion of massive stars. It is put in molecular form by photosynthetic organisms. That's how I am able to breath.
(And yes, that's not what was meant here, but I couldn't resist. I think it meant "You should understand our definition in order to mod the forum better", in which case thanks, but I couldn't resist borrowing this comment to turn it into an analogy to make my own point.
It would seem that you were so interested in making your own point that you failed to understand the point that was made to you about who atheists are and why it should matter to you as a mod. If you are to judge us and the rules of the board, it would really help if you could at least properly conceptualize who and what atheists are. This post demonstrates that you haven't gotten there yet. Like most people, we don't take well to being mischaracterized by others. Let me give you a short summary that I hope will help (a series of statements to any believer in any god):
1. Atheists don't believe in any god, including yours. That is all, nothing more, nothing less.
2. Atheists are atheists because we are non-believers. "Sin" has nothing to do with it.
3. Because we don't believe in gods (including yours), we are not persuaded by your religions rules or claims or scripture.
I'm a terrible person sometimes.)
I am not here to judge.
