DeanR

@MarioFunk @sarahsalviander That’s simply false. We know they have fight or flight instincts and in some cases bondings. Beyond that requires humanizing animals, which is not appropriate nor validated by data. Terror and grief are emotions. Mere brain chemistry cannot account for the fullness of emotions.

@DeanR007 @sarahsalviander We actually do know, through the study of their nervious systems, pain receptors, hormonal reactions and conduct patterns, most mammals experience pain, terror and grief like we do

Yesterday I asked for the strongest arguments in favor of the claim "there is no God." A lot of responses had to do with suffering. Atheists, help me understand why suffering is an argument against God. One thing I don't understand in particular is this: if there is no God, just a materialist universe, then how do you contextualize suffering? What is it? Is it still bad? Please help me understand this.

@MarioFunk @sarahsalviander Anthropomorphizing animals leads to category fallacies. People agonize over deaths. No evidence animals do. We see survival instinct behavior, but we don’t know about a zebra’s brain when it is killed. To attribute terror, horror, agony to it is to assume it is like us. It’s not.

@sarahsalviander My take on this is the incompatibility between the atribute of benevolence and the existence of gratuitous suffering. A new born deer being mauled by wolves infront of its agonizing mother, for example, can’t be the result of design from a loving creator

@Protestia This church is a “Matthew 25 Church,” a PCUSA program that misinterprets Jesus’ reference to the “least of these.” Jesus is referring to his disciples, not the poor in general. Thus, a whole denominational program built on a misreading of the text. Seems to be a pattern.

Pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Springfield, MO says that publicly speaking about the exclusivity of Christ is "doing violence to the text" and is "dangerous, disrespectful, UN-CHRISTIAN, and UN-AMERICAN"

@afdevine_ @sarahsalviander So, horrible accidents that occurred before the one he personally witnessed didn’t affect him? I never understand this. Suffering has gone on forever. A personal encounter with suffering changes nothing about the nature of good and evil. That’s just self-centered emoting.

What are the best arguments for God not existing? I'm not talking about defending a lack of belief by saying "there's no evidence for God," but strong arguments in favor of the statement "God doesn't exist." When I was an atheist, I didn't pursue these arguments, because to me it was just a given that all religion was false. It was the way I was raised, it was the environment I grew up in. Now that I'm on the other side, the vast majority of what I encounter (especially here) is extremely weak tea - lack of evidence, religion is dumb, haha magic sky fairy, which god do you believe in, etc. I'd like examples of strong, intellectual atheism. I'd also genuinely like to know why the vast majority of atheists on social media don't use these strong arguments, but instead rely on weak antagonistic stuff.

@MEATritionCom @sarahsalviander Why are you even here? Atheist antagonists make no sense. If you don’t believe it, fine. But then just ignore what you don’t believe. Instead, many atheists harass, insult, & cuss out believers. Seems you need to constantly reinforce your unbelief. Scared it might really be true?

Interesting photo to use considering your god lied and said all of those stars you see in the picture are angels who will fall to earth. They’re supposedly embedded in the firmament. I honestly don’t see how you can be a Christian in any way. You’re just borrowing from science and secular humanism. You don’t follow the laws of Moses which Jesus said would last until heaven and earth pass away.

@mostlyreplies @RFupdates Your first statement is nothing more than opinion. What duty? Who says? From where does such a duty originate? If no objective moral standard exists outside of ourselves & society, then it is all just opinion and societal agreement. All of it.

@RFupdates We have a duty to the victims and beneficiaries of our actions. Even if God exists, this is all there is to it. God just adds a totally unnecessary layer that ends up being God expecting the exact same obligation. Who needs Him then?

20 Questions About God’s Moral Perfection: Can Atheists Make Moral Judgements?

@SamsBulldog @Lafe_Nelson @sarahsalviander Looks like the ostrich just stuck his head in the sand. Truth is hard to hear when your fingers are in your ears.

@Lafe_Nelson @sarahsalviander That’s a fallacy. You know I’m right, bc your book is clearly wrong about the order. Everyone knows this. Go away.

Despite what the critics in the OP say, Genesis 1 does explain the origin of the universe. There are people who don't believe it's a good explanation, but it IS an explanation, just like the multiverse is an explanation. However, unlike the multiverse, Genesis 1 is well supported by reason, in particular the Kalam Cosmological Argument + the argument for a personal cause. I have links to these arguments in my pinned post, if you want to know more.

@BiblicalBeauty As long as Ham keeps promoting YEC, he hurts the cause of Christ. “Day” in Hebrew has four different meanings. Serious Biblical hermeneutics matters, and YEC does not represent the best understandings, nor is YEC or OEC a litmus test for Bible-believing Christianity.

I highly encourage you to listen to this interview between Heidi St. John and Ken Ham. In it, he explains why he believes the church has been so greatly weakened and unsuccessful in raising up younger generations to stand boldly on the truth of God's Word. As expected, he points to the church's failure to uphold the authority of God's Word starting at Genesis 1-11 and to the failure of both Christian parents and churches to disciple young people to know both what they believe as Christians and why they believe it. Link below👇 Heidi St. John: Why does it matter that we believe in a young earth and not in millions of years? Ken Ham: When people ask me that question, one of the ways I answer it is this. Does it matter if we take God at His word? Does that matter? You see, you've got to stand back. And this is something I've been doing for 50 years is to try to get people to understand this is a biblical authority issue. And if you can grasp hold of that, when you undermine the authority of the Word of God, and you unlock a door, you don't need to start with God's Word... Go back to the late 1700s, early 1800s when the idea of millions of years started to be popularized. It came out of atheism, right? From atheists and deists who rejected the Word of God, believed everything is material, and said, How do we explain the fossil record was laid down over millions of years. What did Christian leaders start to do? We'll take the millions of years and put in a gap between the first two verses in Genesis, the Gap Theory. We'll take the millions of years, and we'll reinterpret the days of creation. And then along comes Darwin who builds on the millions of years. Given the millions of years, one kind of animal changes into another, then Christian leaders said, We'll say God used evolution, and then, God used the Big Bang and so on. But you see what's happening progressively is they're saying to the people they impact and to generations, we can take what man says out here, and you reinterpret the days, and you reinterpret this part. And you're unlocking a door. And when you unlock that door that you can start outside of Scripture to reinterpret Scripture, that door gets pushed open further and further and further, generation after generation until you're on that slippery slide of unbelief through the whole of Scripture."

@MEANTWEETSCAT @EliseMenaker Says the one who cusses out others and is named “Mean Tweets.”

@DeanR007 @EliseMenaker Man. You’re angry. And petty. And weak. Get back in your hole.

The standard way to hold your glove is a thing of the past... Ian Happ shows me the hand positioning most guys use in MLB today:

@MEANTWEETSCAT @EliseMenaker Nothing petty about correct baseball terminology, especially when it comes to professional reporters who should know. You attacked me with profanity over what you already regarded as petty. Why bother then? Or, as your name says, do you just get your jollies from “mean tweets”?

@DeanR007 @EliseMenaker You lowered yourself when you decided to spend time correcting petty details. Your bad.

@imsoHInice2mtu @EliseMenaker Why does basic baseball knowledge hurt you so much?

@DeanR007 @EliseMenaker I hope you're ok after this trauma

@kokesque @EliseMenaker Must be a soccer fan. Too bad that basic baseball knowledge hurts you so badly.

@DeanR007 @EliseMenaker Shut the fuck up you mitten

@MEANTWEETSCAT @EliseMenaker Right. I lowered myself to your level. My bad.

@DeanR007 @EliseMenaker Classy

@rnelson0 @EliseMenaker Inside stitching is not the issue. Catcher’s mitts don’t have separately defined fingers.

@DeanR007 @EliseMenaker All the catcher mitts I used had defined positions for the fingers, there’s lots of stitching on the inside you have to work around.

@noahsarkscans Young earth creationism hurts evangelism because it tends to embrace irrationalism. Case in point right here.

In the Grand Canyon, entire rock layers can be seen bending dramatically upward from horizontal to vertical… without breaking. That detail matters because solid rock does not fold like soft clay.
It fractures and breaks. For these massive sediment layers to bend instead of break, they would have had to still be soft and water-saturated when the folding occurred. Not separated by hundreds of millions of years hardened into stone… but rather rapidly deposited and reshaped before fully lithifying. The rocks of the Grand Canyon are evidence of the aftermath of a global flood.

@the__boss_hog @ArkieMiasma A lot of false negative tests, too. My daughter has serious symptoms and never tests positive. Symptoms are a better indicator.

@ArkieMiasma Almost 40% false positive rate for alpha gal IgE ln Arkansas. Shitty test. Don’t believe it. Ultra rare disease.

It’s time to seriously talk ticks here in the Ozarks. My buddy in Benton County who used to diagnose a couple cases of Alpha-Gal a month—now multiple per day. Everybody’s dog has ehrlichiosis, and highest ER visits ever for rocky mtn tick fever in Arkansas last year.

@LeevonGrant @ArkieMiasma For some it’s more manageable than others. Many live with the constant threat of anaphylaxis & ER visits, never go to restaurants, or eat ANY pre-prepared food. Odors can make them sick. My daughter went to ER from 1 tiny bacon bit that fell in her salad. Didn’t even swallow it.

SW Missourian with Alpha-gal here. It’s manageable but not ideal and the majority of the information out there is contradictory and subjective. There isn’t any treatment. I don’t tell people often because if one more confidently assures me it’s cured with needles in your ear I’m gonna lose it. I also got eight bites four weeks ago (found three embedded) so I hope it’s not worsened. Ticks are very bad this year.

@ArkieMiasma Alpha-Gal affects people differently. Don’t assume you just get diarrhea from mammal meat. For many, odors can cause anaphylaxis, dryer sheets & chapstick with lanolin, & most bottled waters filtered by bone charcoal can cause ER visits. Vaccinations and medications are concerns.

@MalcolmBacchus @sarahsalviander @Simon7Holmes Atheists always assert that humans will eventually “evolve” away from silly spiritual thinking. If we met another advanced creation that was also spiritual, this would undermine a purely naturalistic world view - beings more advanced yet still spiritual would bolster a God view.

@sarahsalviander @Simon7Holmes Possibly quite high as lots of entirely separate human societies over the centuries separated by continents have all invented their own spiritual worlds. If the aliens proved to have something totally aligned with one particular Earth religion that might be a little more amazing.

Discovering extraterrestrials wouldn't seriously challenge Christianity. In fact, it could fit surprisingly well with a biblical worldview. The Bible never claims Earth is the only place with life. It's silent on the question. And with the universe so finely-tuned for life, it would make sense if we eventually found simple forms of life elsewhere. But what about intelligent life? That, to me, is the pivotal question. Scripture tells *our* redemption story. Does it need to address every other possible being in the cosmos to be true and relevant? C.S. Lewis thought deeply about this in his Space Trilogy. He suggested other worlds might be unfallen, or redeemed in their own way. The vast distances between stars could even be "God’s quarantine," protecting innocent civilizations from our fallen nature. Ironically, confirmed alien intelligence could strike a blow to strict materialism rather than to Christianity if they turn out to be as spiritually inclined as we are. If you want to read more, my full article is linked below. schroodle.com/p/if-we-discov…