Jan attacks the person, not the arguer. Jan's primary response is invariably an ad hom. Because Jan has no defense to the argument, he tries to divert it to the arguer. It would be refreshing to see Jan actually attempt to address an assertion made, rather than try to diminish the person making it.
And the Gold Pretzel Thread Post goes to (drum roll) James Congratulations James Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Us trying to comprehend the capacity of a civilization or entities billions of years into the future is like the earliest bacteria on Earth trying to comprehend our future existence. These predictions are based on extrapolations of current understandings of physics and technology. What’s more likely is that the intelligence and resulting technology of the future will be far beyond our current capacity to comprehend. How do you flesh out the particulars of science and technology that don’t yet exist?
And yet here you are doing it And yet here you are doing it And yet here you are doing it Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Because that's what humans and bacteria do, they eat, shit, multiply and speculate about the future. It's in our DNA.
I'm an atheist because you convinced yourself that you're a believer? Err... okay. Whatever. What interests me more is your studied ignorance of the post in which I elegantly exposed your "No True Scotsman" tactics.
If you were a theist, then you should be able to talk purely about God, and your relationship with God. The problem with that, is that you can’t, because you never had a relationship with God, and you don’t currently know how such a relationship could occur. Why? Because you never believed in God. I accept that you were a Christian, and I’m sure you could give evidence and testimony to prove that. To sum up. Just because you profess Christianity, or any religion under the sun, does not mean you are theist. One good way to tell if a person is a theist, is to see if they love talking about God. I don’t mean Jesus, Mohammed, or the Buddha, God. Jan.
It's not a temptation. It's a conclusion based on reality. Your inane comments contribute to that conclusion.
Begging the question. If there is no God, then there is nothing to resist or reject. So, show that there is a God. Still waiting on that one.
This is pure baloney, Jan can no more talk about God than we can. He also does not have a relationship with God, he has a relationship with words in a book, the same book we have all read. Jan has simply decided to take those words seriously. That is the extent of his relationship with God.
He hasn't invalidated a person; he's dismantled the assertions they've made - voluntarily and with foresight - in a public discussion - that make a claim to privileged information - that can't be defended. Nowhere has Goldtop presumed to know or judge anything about Jan that isn't part of Jan's own arguments.
A keen observer would not have just noticed what I quoted from Jan's post, but also what immediately followed... Tell me again about personally invalidating other human beings?
Of course. Only you are a true theist. Christians who believe in the Bible don't measure up to your very high standards of being a theist. I am sure the Christian world will sleep poorly tonight, bereft after you have declared them "not real theists" and invalidated them. Well, then I am a theist, since I post a lot (well over 100 posts) on the topic.
I could certainly talk about my "relationship" with God when I was a Christian. The problem is, I now recognise that the "relationship" I believed I had was not a relationship between me and a separate being, but rather something entirely internal to me. That's different to my relationship to the religion of Christianity, of course. That involved other people. In short, I'm confident I had the same kind of "relationship" with God that you currently believe you have with God. Like I've said before, I've been where you are. Nothing you say to me about your relationship with God is news. I believed in God, just like you do. But I grew out of it. If you believe in a god or gods, then it kinda does. That's what theism is, no matter how much you try to dress it up and exclude people who don't share your exact idiosyncratic set of religious beliefs. Theism is a low bar. It's not as hard to hop over it as you make out. It doesn't make you special. It literally makes you one more believer among billions. All religions teach that their gods are more important that the prophets. Special prophets, however, can be granted god-like status or even equivalency. Behold the Christian Trinity!