How is simply stating a fact dishonest quote mining?
Do you...not understand what quote mining entails? If you're not considering a contrary position, you're ignoring it to present your position as vindicated without honestly looking at it for falsification
They do exist independent of the mind. There were two rocks under a tree 65 mya, therefore the quality of twoness existed long before the human mind existed.
No, the quality of twoness is only something a mind conceives of, it doesn't exist in itself because we don't generally see the notions of quantity in nature independent of the mind. Not sure you're comprehending independent existence that well if you're suggesting that you counting something that existed before humans existed means that the quantities are substantive: they're abstract concepts, they don't exist in themselves because they require one to conceive of them in the mind
While not all atheists deny free will, a majority of the many that I have debated the last 20 years do deny it. But of course, they try to rationalize the self contradictions away.
That's a selective sampling and still a generalization based on a group that is still substantively small in terms of demographics, so it's little different than me generalizing all gay people as flamboyant or such stereotypes.
Not sure if your notion of freewill that they deny is the same as them denying freewill in all senses, because it's not a cut and dry concept
I could say the same thing about you. But I was referring to people that were converted by what they considered evidence irrespective of whether you or anyone else considers it evidence.
If it's purely an individual notion of evidence, then you're advocating pure relativism in epistemology rather than actually seeking coherence by common understandings and falsification and testing of claims. In short, you render the idea of truth completely hollow in any remotely objective sense (though I have to wonder if you're skewing the idea of objective as well as truth)
Umm I was not claiming it was evidence for Christianity, I was just showing the weakness of the atheist argument I was referencing. E.g. that just because most people accept the religion of their society is evidence against Christianity.
It's evidence against Christianity being true when someone argues that point, regardless, it's not just atheists, not sure you can claim that's exclusively or primarily an argument against Christianity, ad populum is just as easily used by those who claim that it supports transcendent/supernatural claims as true. The fallacy of one argument does not undermine the conclusion made with a different argument
We are made of the same basic elements just as the bible teaches.
We're not the same elements except on the most fundamental level at best, that's stretching the notion as if we are the same as the graphite in our pencils, also a form of carbon. Even a quick search suggests to me that carbon is not ALL we are made of, it's that carbon is a good bonding agent chemically, and as I recall, our body is arguably more composed of water than carbon in itself, so the notion that we're made of dust as Genesis falsely claims is misunderstanding the science that describes us as carbon-based lifeforms.
I was assuming a Creator, I was just explaining the concept of stewardship from the Christian worldview. I was not presenting an argument for Christianity.
I remain skeptical that all Christians would agree with you and that's the problem: there are those who would say you're mistaken in some way and the idea is not that we should regard it as valuable, though the way you phrase it is more like this earth is just a stepping stone, useful as a means and not an end, which has its own problematic implications
There is no evidence that He is going to reconstitute every to be like we enjoy it. God only creates things as He wills irrespective of our wills. First of all suicide potentially sends you to hell, second if the Christian God exists, there is no such things as needless suffering, that only occurs in an atheist worldview. All suffering has purpose. And by opting out, a believer misses out on helping God accomplish His purpose of destroying evil forever.
Assuming it even potentially sends you to hell is suggesting you know God's judgment on such a thing, not sure the bible really addresses that.
Bullcrap, God is a sadist by that description of a world where there are parasitic wasps that breed by planting eggs inside other insects, to say nothing of cancer and other needlessly painful diseases. When you say there is no needless suffering, you're going the route of Mother Teresa, a monstrously immoral person who suggested that suffering brought one closer to Jesus instead of considering that quality of life should not strive to be a martyr or suffer, but accept that suffering is a part of life, but nto something that we should not oppose in a reasonable sense (as in, we don't like suffering hunger, so we eat, we don't like suffering thirst, so we drink, etc)
Evil cannot be destroyed if it is merely a privation of the good, not an uncommon Christian position, seems to me you're engaging in hyperbole and flowery language, ignoring the implications of what that expression would entail in your metaphysics, that evil is a substance in itself, like Zoroastrian dualist theology
You are only assuming that it is used in a mistaken fashion. So you dont think the purpose of eyes are for seeing? What other purpose could they be for? Many biologists would disagree with you.
You use purpose as if it is synonymous with function, they aren't, they have precise meanings that distinguish each other: purpose is that which has an intent behind it, applied to the artificial or abstract, function is that which we observe that would be natural to the entity or object in question, biological function all that we can really claim scientifically or evidentially, because it's human fallibility that suggests there must be a purpose behind our biology rather than considering it is natural and doesn't require a mind behind it, only a mind to investigate.
Ad populum again? Come on
Nevertheless, according to Donald Goldsmith in the Nov. 2007 issue of Natural History, that is the majority view of cosmologists.
He doesn't speak for all cosmologists, you're quote mining again with the assumption that one person saying what you think is common sense means all scientists must agree with him, which is absurd and asinine
From all of human experience only personal beings create purposes for things. Unless you can provide an example of a purpose being created by impersonal processes, without assuming what we are trying to prove.
I never claimed a purpose came from impersonal processes, you're strawmanning and continuing to mistakenly use purpose and function as identical, showing that your understnading of nuance in language is severely lacking, which is why you continue with this inane line of "apologetics" that treats language prescriptively instead of descriptively
You perceiving purpose does not mean it is the case that purpose exists for what you ascribe it to (biology, etc), that's faulty reasoning on its face, appeal to ignorance
