AiG responds to Seebs

[npetreley]

Originally posted by Susan
Sometimes we must discard science (falsely so called), intellect, and reason. We must stop feeding from the tree of knowledge and TRUST in the One Who died on the Tree of Calvary to give us everlasting life.

Amen to that!!!

Originally posted by Susan
And I know some preschoolers who are closer to God than anyone here including myself, because they don't have years of human knowledge that get in the way of knowing GOD.

Extremely well put!!

Mark 10:15
I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."

 

[seebs]

This thread is not being especially productive, huh.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by seebs
BTW, just for the record, their response strikes me as wholly inadequate

It strikes me as if you should be completely humiliated and retract your statements.

I guess different people see things different ways.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by npetreley

It strikes me as if you should be completely humiliated and retract your statements.

Yes sir, Mr. 16%-of-the-geological-column sir.

I guess different people see things different ways.

Yeah.

I see that their "rebuttal" IGNORED most of my points, and is simply false on points of fact.

You see a thing which appears to attack a position whose implications you don't like, and glory in it.

Y'know, young earth creation could be true, and the Chinese character thing still wrong. The joy you take in the suffering of others is not a good sign. I think you *REALLY* need to stop and ask yourself if the entity urging you to attack those you disagree with is the one you're supposed to be following. I still haven't seen you retract your blasphemous claim that I "worship evolution"... All I saw was that, since then, you've been deathly afraid of typing the word "God"... Perhaps you should think real hard about why you're so uncomfortable with Him.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by seebs
The joy you take in the suffering of others is not a good sign.

Then I guess you are admitting you have been totally humiliated and all that about it being an inadequate response is just bluster. After all, how could you get the impression I take joy in your suffering if you stand unconvinced and unphased?

I do take joy in is seeing the truth defended and lies and spiritual blindness exposed. If I also take any joy in your humiliation at all, rest assured I would take much greater joy in you ADMITTING you've been humiliated and take that opportunity to return to the truth. But your post makes it obvious you're nowhere near that, and instead prefer to go on the attack and deliberately misrepresent my use of "G~d." So you've basically hit bottom there, Seebs. Perhaps it's time to admit it and start climbing back up.

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

Is that why he types G~d? Always wondered that...

 

[Joe V.]

I do take joy in is seeing the truth defended and lies and spiritual blindness exposed.

Spare us the melodrama, Nicky. If you were really were interested in doing as much, you wouldn't be wasting your time posting ho-hum arguments against evolution on the web. If you really had the gumption to live up to those very words, you'd be fighting your little war in the courts and in the lab. But you can't, you know why? Because you have exactly SQUAT with which to challenge evolution.

You can make all the little posts and commentary about how faulty evolution is, but until you have something better than a 2000 year old book to use, you'll ultimately be on the losing side.

- Joe

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by npetreley

I do take joy in is seeing the truth defended and lies and spiritual blindness exposed. If I also take any joy in your humiliation at all, rest assured I would take much greater joy in you ADMITTING you've been humiliated and take that opportunity to return to the truth. But your post makes it obvious you're nowhere near that, and instead prefer to go on the attack and deliberately misrepresent my use of "G~d." So you've basically hit bottom there, Seebs. Perhaps it's time to admit it and start climbing back up.

And yet in all of that, I still don't see an apology for saying that Seebs "worships evolution." Maybe Nick would one day like to crawl up from the hole too.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by s0uljah
Is that why he types G~d? Always wondered that...

Well, all I can say is, he started doing it right after he made the comment about how all us heathens "worship Darwin". He's gone steadily downhill since he got here; he started out as a pretty decent guy who had some problems with the theory of evolution, but it really looks like he's spinning out of control at this point; it's all about *winning*, and about proving that the specific thing he believed at the start of the game was the right one all along. No seeking is going on here; he's made up his mind.

This is, in essence, why we are warned against pride; pride can twist truth into lies to defend a cherished belief.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Seebs, I don't know when he started doing it on this board, but I did see him doing it before he even came here.

 

[Joe V.]

Actually, I think he types it G~d out of "respect" for someone else's beliefs. Can't remember who, but I do recall seeing him explaining it that way.

- Joe

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
Seebs, I don't know when he started doing it on this board, but I did see him doing it before he even came here.

Hmm. It'd be fascinating to plot his willingness to type "God" when he means it against the frequency of his attacks on other posters; that would be a fascinating way to try to get evidence for or against the existance of God.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by Joe V.
Actually, I think he types it G~d out of "respect" for someone else's beliefs. Can't remember who, but I do recall seeing him explaining it that way.

- Joe

Yes, I've explained it, and yes, I've done it elsewhere before I came here. Here's a repeat of the explanation from my FAQ (at least a year old, by the way) on Petreley.org. I included the second item because it is somewhat related. The connection is that I notice that Messianic Jews are the ones who most frequently refer to G~d this way, so I am particularly doing it out of respect for THEIR views. I started using it HERE when a Messianic Jew showed up and used it.

What's with the G-d thing?

Some people feel that spelling out G-d is disrespectful (i.e. taking the Lord's name in vain). I am not certain I agree entirely in the case of G-d, but I don't know for sure and I am trying to be sensitive to their position. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll forget, screw up and spell it out at times. In those cases, I am fortunate that our G-d is not only an awesome G-d but a merciful G-d.

So what's with all these Jewish links?

I'm not Jewish, nor am I a Messianic Jew. I am a Christian, and G-d has given me a love for Israel and the Jews, so I am drawn to the topics and post links to them.

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

Thanks Nick...I will check out your site now.

P.S.


<TABLE cellSpacing=4 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" bgColor=#000000 border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR vAlign=top>
<TD width="100%">
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width="100%" bgColor=#e0ffe5 border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR vAlign=center>
<TD width="100%">
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR vAlign=center>
<TD class=leftclass align=left>ttp://www.petreley.org/redirect.php?op=103">Famed biologist, author Stephen Jay Gould dies at 60 (CNN.COM) </TD>
<TD class=middleclass align=middle></TD>
<TD class=rightclass align=right></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD>Now he knows the truth. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

Thats cold dude.

 

[blader]

Originally posted by seebs
BTW, just for the record, their response strikes me as wholly inadequate, even apart from the assertions they make about the character for '8', which are inconsistent with anything anyone in China ever told me.

We could, of course, drag in Chinese speakers for ages. I don't see much point.

My question was, are the AiG people going to react honestly when confronted with a great deal of documentation of the errors. The answer is, no. They made snide remarks about an atheistic web site, as though a linguist who didn't believe in God would necessarily be unqualified; in fact, I pointed them at a LOT of data and discussion of how Chinese works.

Very disappointing.

I'm actually a native chinese speaker. You are correct. The pictograph in the word "boat" that they said was "eight" is really the character for "many."

 

[Didaskomenos]

Because Nick has all of God's Truth, why should we bother arguing with him? I mean, can't we learn something from his interpretation of the Bible? Shouldn't we believe him because his sarcastic jabs are so annoying? Since he has more interest in his viewpoints on creation than his Christian witness, why shouldn't we take a cue from him, reject everything we know to be true, and follow his stance? Who needs evidence when we have Nick's example of Christianity?

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by blader


I'm actually a native chinese speaker. You are correct. The pictograph in the word "boat" that they said was "eight" is really the character for "many."

If you have time to kill, you might send them a note, pointing out that at least one native speaker of Chinese does *not* immediately recognize the squiggle in question as an 8.

I'm pretty sure that, no matter how you draw an 8 in Chinese, it never has a line on the top, but in my dictionary, the thing in the upper-right-hand corner of the word for "ship" has the line on the top. This isn't a question of abbreviation; they're both two-stroke characters, but the connecting line is a substantial change in how the character is drawn! (For that matter, in the 8, the left stroke is fairly sharply angled, and in the other character, it's nearly vertical; this, as I understand it, makes a big difference.)

What's really *scary* about the sheer vehemence with which these people defend their positions is that it's sometimes enough to make me start wondering if maybe they've got some backup... then they make a testable claim, and it turns out to be totally made up, and everything goes back to normal.

It's horrible witnessing.

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

Seebs-

My sister-in-law is Chinese. I will have her look at it to vindicate you.

What's really *scary* about the sheer vehemence with which these people defend their positions is that it's sometimes enough to make me start wondering if maybe they've got some backup... then they make a testable claim, and it turns out to be totally made up, and everything goes back to normal.

It's horrible witnessing.

If you are right, then I will agree with this last part.

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

seebs-

I actually just read their whole response. Did you insult them on talkorigins forum?

What is the link to what they are refering to in their response?

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by s0uljah
Seebs-

My sister-in-law is Chinese. I will have her look at it to vindicate you.

Thanks. Of particular interest is that the symbol in the upper-right of the word for "vessel" is not, IMHO, a plausible 8. The character for 8 looks like this, roughly:

/ \

According to my dictionary, if it's being shrunk down to be part of another character, it's actually drawn upside-down; \ /. (Only smaller.)

The word in question is chuan (second tone). In every version of it I can find, the symbol in the upper-right looks an awful lot like ji (first tone or third tone), and very much unlike ba (first tone).

If you read the article on AIG, they also "discuss" my questioning of their use of the term "people" as a translation for kou, but I don't think it's a meaningful discussion; it amounts to hand-waving. If I said, in English, that there were a few dozen heads on a boat, you wouldn't necessarily have grounds to assert that it was specifically cabbage, or specifically cattle; it's a measure-word, and you can't tell what it's measuring generically.

If your sister-in-law wishes to discuss my interpretations, or the ones presented in the original book (in 1979) that someone wrote on the subject, I'd be happy to correspond. My Chinese is a little rusty, but I suspect that I'm one of the few people involved with this debate who can look words up in a Chinese dictionary. (The procedure requires you to recognize the components and be able to count strokes; since some strokes are more complicated than others, you actually need to do a fair amount of "work" to decompose a character, until it gets to be natural and you start just seeing them as words.)