atheist how many here ?

[providencecrow]

My question for those that do not believe in God. Do you celebrate Christmas? Though it is now a *blech*commercial holiday, it started as a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Just wondering if giving up things like that are part of the philosophy.

I do, but not as a celebration of Christ. You can call it a celebration of winter, giving, generosity, fundertastic-ness, whatever. I don't pray on christmas, i don't have an angel on my tree (i do generally get one though, lets face it those things are sweet and make the house smell awesome). I celebrate it secularly i suppose. It's not like there is anything else to do on December 25th, everything is effing closed!

When you are talking about our GOD please use a little more respect. We respect you, please respect us. Especially the drunk part.

I'm the one that is supposed to be easily offended and I don't read what he said as being disrespectful of God. His argument was that God would have to justify not telling his followers about aliens... his statement helped explain this coming up with a hypothetical way God would explain it.

At least i wasn't the only one who couldn't see how i was being disrespectful. If i wanted to be, believe me everyone would have known. Obviously even if God had a quote with that exact intent in the bible, it would have been worded better due to a king james translation (supposedly done by Shakespeare, which is todays fun fact)

Would you care to acknowledge my evolution post?

You are talking micro-evolution. From what I understand most Christians who have a problem with evolution don't believe in macro-evolution. Personally I don't think either mico-evolution or macro-evolution is contradicted by the Bible.

It has been a few years since i've studied biology, but at least while i was in the classes it was understood that the separation of micro and macro evolution is artificial and created by religion. Evolution only cares about natural selection and mutation. Once X population has deviated far enough from the general species population so that they can no longer produce fertile offspring, then speciation has occurred.

I want you to explain how, after only two people were left in the story of Noah's Ark, they could have repopulated the Earth and different races and cultures developed after 5000 years. You must believe that story, since you said the bible was 100% factual. I get that you believe in evolution, but this has nothing to do with that. You are avoiding my question. If you say that the story is an anecdote, then you do not believe it is 100% factual. You could believe everything it contains are "truths", but not facts.

The Bible explains that very clearly. There were not just two people but there were eight people after the flood. People lived longer back then and had a lot of children. I do believe it is 100% factual.

If you want me to do the math on this, I will, but even though in the past humanity has been known for having tons and tons of children, the reason was that the majority of them didn't make it very far along in life. In order for in 5000 years the population to go from 8 to several billion, youre talking of a Zap Brannigan's dream style mating system.

The fossil record also does not show a mass near extinction of humanity 5000 years ago. But that's the easy proof against Noah's story.


And to go with the whole miracle talk, if God did want to prove to us that he can cure disease or help people through prayer, he just needs to perform one simple miracle to convince everyone: Just give one amputee a limb back.