Comment Thread for The Resurrection of Jesus - Apologiaphoenix vs Gary

[Apologiaphoenix]

Anti-intellectual people avoid books.

Just like Gary.

[Gary]

Anti-intellectual people avoid books.

Just like Gary.

No, educated people do not read fairy tales and ghost stories as if they are reality.

[Gary]

Sure, believe every dumb thing on the internet. Opinions are facts!

Christian minister and apologist Josh McDowell recently spoke at the International Christian Retail Show, where he told attendees that the Internet is the greatest threat to Christianity.

"The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have... whether you like it or not."
He goes on to cite many statistics showing just how influential the Internet has become. According to McDowell:

•The number of evangelical Christians who don't believe in absolute truth has jumped from 51 percent to 62 percent in 1994, then to 78 percent in 1999 and it now hovers at around 91 percent.

•Back in the good old (pre-Internet) days, if an agnostic or atheist wrote a book nobody would read it. But now the Internet has given atheist authors (that would be me...) access to these kids' minds.

http://religionvirus.blogspot.com/20...-internet.html

[Mikeenders]

The "Church" is in its death throes in educated, western civilization. The strategy of skeptics like myself is to ignore your pompous "scholars" and go for the jugular: attack the silliness of your supernatural superstitions.

So sad for you that the time for that to work was BEFORE skeptic scientists started appealing to supernatural ideas themselves. the whole "supernatural superstition"argument is itself in its death throes. Your idea of jugular is more like a small vein in a finger. Look how easy it was to have you running on the issue of the supernatural appeals scientists now make? You could do nothing but handwave and claim to the effect "derr errr well we don't know we are working on it" . That party is now over. We can defeat that without breaking a sweat. The moment scientists started talking about multiverses and universes popping out of nothing miracles and resurrections even Virgin births become no big deal and the public will slowly catch on

Whats more spectacular? a woman possessing already half of what is needed to create a human being having the other half supplied

or
Everything coming out of absolutely nothing as many of your new atheists are getting behind?


LOL....pretty obvious. You can't win that argument. The church usually takes awhile to adjust to the new claims but once these whammies start getting well known the supernatural argument is toast. I know because youare like the thrid or forth skeptic I have challenged on that issue of supernatural and none of you can come up with anything to rebut it. You pretty much all run away welping.

Skeptics like to point to the increase in nones but they are not converting all over to naturalism and atheism or those numbers would not be as flat as they are . Meanwhile they forget theres a whole big world out there and they are losing MIGHTILy in some fo the largest nations in the world

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-15-years.html

Sorry. We took your best shot and you couldn't hit double digits. Now that naturalist are appealing to supernatural ideas you have well ....no prayer.

Superstitions are silly. Superstitions are not real. Brain-dead bodies do not walk out of the graves and fly off into outer space.

Go for it. You are gaining no ground here and you provide a service of bringing in all the weakest arguments online that we can knock over. Thanks!! Now what we should concentrate on more in this thread is using it to our advantage. Never look a gift horse in the mouth

[Gary]

Sure, believe every dumb thing on the internet. Opinions are facts!

The United States has seemed oddly immune to the huge growth of religious skepticism over the last half-century. That perception changed two years ago when an American Religious Identification Survey noted the number of Americans who profess Christianity fell sharply from 85 percent in 1990 to 76 percent in 2009. Perhaps even more surprising was the surge in those who claimed no religion: The number nearly doubled from 8 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2009. In his April 2009 Newsweek article, “The End of Christian America,” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jon Meacham suggested America had begun its encounter with an “old term with new urgency: post-Christian.”

“What has changed everything?” Christian apologist Josh McDowell asked his audience on July 15 at the Billy Graham Center in Asheville, N.C. His talk, titled “Unshakeable Truth, Relevant Faith,” had detailed a certain uncomfortable fact in anticipation of the question: that young Christians in America are rejecting Christian fundamentalism—and doctrinaire concepts such as absolute truth and biblical infallibility—in droves. Why is faith in God being supplanted, earlier and earlier, by relativism, secularism and skepticism? McDowell’s answer was simple: the Internet.

Read more at http://www.relevantmagazine.com/cult...0g17oTzE8LD.99

[Mikeenders]

Drink! The same thing was said in the 1960s.

There are more religious believers now than ever before.

Its really quite incredible. they have had the school systems FOR DECADES and in almost every poll atheists just cannot crack into double digits.

[Gary]

Its really quite incredible. they have had the school systems FOR DECADES and in almost every poll atheists just cannot crack into double digits.

Who gives a rat's ass about atheists. Its "non-religious", "secularist", "non-theist", that are the new labels for people who believe your superstitious belief system is a load of silly bull...crap.

You are so 80's, Mikey.

[Gary]

Sure, believe every dumb thing on the internet. Opinions are facts!

[tabibito]

Its really quite incredible. they have had the school systems FOR DECADES and in almost every poll atheists just cannot crack into double digits.

However, it remains that opponents of Christianity will gain ground while the churches continue to promote precepts that quite clearly are erroneous. The biggest factor in such strength as atheist groups have is simply the Churches' failure to properly address real problems. 80% demonstrable failure by atheist argument is still a 20% success rate. And while churches deny the existence of that 20%, they do the detractors' work for them.

[Gary]

Sure, believe every dumb thing on the internet. Opinions are facts!

Proof that it is actually CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS who are anti-intellectual. Listen to this conservative Christian's call to anti-intellectualism:



How the Internet Destroys Community

We think we're connected, but we've never been more isolated from others or more emotionally out of touch with reality.




America is in a deep spiritual crisis, like never before. The threat really isn't terrorism. It's something a lot more devastating--the spread of technology and the Internet.



Internet access is common in high schools and is being introduced to younger children. It's even mandatory in some states, such as Pennsylvania, where the governor has recently said that every high school in the state must have affordable high-speed Internet service within the next 18 months.

This has one aim: to raise a generation of children and young people who are spiritually dull, who live according to logic, who do to not ponder about God's greatness and mystery, and who forget about God.

We are raising a nation capable of any and every atrocity in the end, without raising an eyebrow, because we are spiritually dull. God gave every human being a conscience, which is far superior to the intellect. If the conscience is silenced in us, we are doomed.

Technology is our Achilles heel, which in the end will be worse than any weapon of mass destruction. It will destroy us from within. This frightening trend can only be reversed if more and more citizens listen to their consciences and say, "Enough is enough." Technology puts the "I" in the center and ignores the fact that life is only worth living if "I" depend on my neighbor.

Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Chri...kS1M6drBf1L.99

[tabibito]

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Chri...kS1M6drBf1L.99

I won't bother to look at it ... but it seems that Gary has found his religious other half.

[Gary]

The internet is killing all forms of Christianity, including one of the newest version of that superstitious, ancient tall tale, Mormonism:

[Gary]

However, it remains that opponents of Christianity will gain ground while the churches continue to promote precepts that quite clearly are erroneous. The biggest factor in such strength as atheist groups have is simply the Churches' failure to properly address real problems. 80% demonstrable failure by atheist argument is still a 20% success rate. And while churches deny the existence of that 20%, they do the detractors' work for them.

Which Christian denomination do you belong to, Tabby? Are you Mormon?

[Mikeenders]

Sure, believe every dumb thing on the internet. Opinions are facts!

When you are in the minority you have to hold on to every sign of hope. Its true that mainline protestants are in decline but they try and spin that as atheism when in fact even the latest polls indicate the asses are not running to a purely naturalistic worldview

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...ligious-nones/

In the last seven years agnostics have picked up less than 2% and atheists less than them

This rapid decline in theism Poor Gary is conning himself into believing is mythical. People are attending and identifying with brick and mortar churches less but thats the part of the internet connection skeptics are not getting - its not all about their skeptic crusade its about the social changes of being connected without having to meet.

[Gary]

When you are in the minority you have to hold on to every sign of hope. Its true that mainline protestants are in decline but they try and spin that as atheism when in fact even the latest polls indicate the asses are not running to a purely naturalistic worldview

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...ligious-nones/

In the last seven years agnostics have picked up less than 2% and atheists less than them

This rapid decline in theism Poor Gary is conning himself into believing is mythical. People are attending and identifying with brick and mortar churches less but thats the part of the internet connection skeptics are not getting - its not all about their skeptic crusade its about the social changes of being connected without having to meet.

This Jewish rabbi superbly dismantles Christian claims that Jesus fulfilled even one single messianic prophecy: