My favorite cogdis of the Mormons.

[_EAllusion]

That's hilarious.

Really.

On the other hand, I probably should have mentioned earlier that the very definition (and corresponding expectation) of intermediary forms is another of the many things in Darwinist Dogma that has been greatly modified over the years in order to adapt itself to the actual record in the dirt.

Now that is what I call evolution.

When Rothgar the destroyer conquered Earth in the year 2012 BCE from his empire on the moon, he taught the Chinese how to make ceramics. Ironically, it was their newfound knowledge of ceramics that enabled them to topple the deathray machine and repel him back to his throne of blood where he remains frozen to this day.

[_beastie]

EA - I think the chances of you getting a meaningful response from Schryver is about the same as the chance he'll tell me what books he's read on the subject.

[_William Schryver]

EA - I think the chances of you getting a meaningful response from Schryver is about the same as the chance he'll tell me what books he's read on the subject.

beastlie, dear, I simply must confess that I know nothing except what I have learned from wikipedia.

In fact, I have coined a new term to describe people like me: wikididact

The worst part is that early onset "Halfheimer's" is beginning to take its toll on me, and, as a result, half the things I learn I can only remember for 18.36 seconds per megabyte of acquired information. Therefore, my brain is cluttered with all sorts of partial data files, most lacking pointers to the non-contiguous remnants.

This means, of course, that I know much less than you on any given subject, and of the things I have learned, a random half of the details are lost to recollection.

It's a sad state of affairs. I'm even starting to (mumble (and drool) out of one side of my mouth.

Are you satisfied now? Is your sense of intellectual superiority sufficiently augmented, at least for the next hour or so? Will you sleep better tonight secure in the knowledge that another silly Mormon believer has been silenced by the awful majesty of your scholarly might?

I know I'll be sleeping like a baby, blissfully content in my half-ignorance of all things.

[_Sethbag]

You say all this, yet you're sure that somehow tens of thousands of PhD scientists have got it all wrong.

Can you not see what religion has done to your brain? Unfortunately not, because the virus hides its tracks well - at least to you. To us, they're painfully obvious.

If you can't understand what I'm trying to say, just imagine the devout JW that knocks on your door. They're dead wrong, and yet they don't know it, and can't conceive of it. This is pretty much what religion does to people, and they cannot even conceive that it's happening to them, and not just to everyone in all those other, false religions.

[_beastie]

If you can't understand what I'm trying to say, just imagine the devout JW that knocks on your door. They're dead wrong, and yet they don't know it, and can't conceive of it. This is pretty much what religion does to people, and they cannot even conceive that it's happening to them, and not just to everyone in all those other, false religions.

I'll never forget a moment on my mission, in which my companion (who loved to bash with JWs) and I were engaged with some JWs, and it suddenly struck me, in the middle of it all, that we were mirror images of one another.

I think being able to recognize that, even as a believer, may be part of the reason I eventually lost faith.

[_mikwut]

Seth, you stated,

How does this change anything I said? The reason it turned into a figurative reading, which is still probably for a minority of believers even today, was just as I said - to escape being disproven. It was the believers - not the skeptics - who made the strawman, and they made it for their own apologetic purposes.

But I'm going to defend what I wrote in my previous post. Here's how it looks:

Seth: the Bible says such-and-such. Such-and-such is manifestly not true as we now know.

Mikwut: such-and-such is only to be taken figuratively, not literally. You are beating a strawman.

Now, in the above exchange, does it really matter what such-and-such is? No! You can, and would, use this formula for anything I happened to come along and criticize about the scriptures! Which is just what I said - with someone willing to assert that the scriptures are figurative, by definition anything the critic brings to the table will be turned into a strawman.

This is just not true. A figurative reading of Genesis has been around much longer than Darwin's original groundbreaking theory. So, "they" didn't come up with it just for apologetic purposes. It is quite easy to tell the difference between something figurative and literal, do you really think even the ancients believed in a talking a snake? And, as I originally stated the texts themselves don't present themselves as literal because they differ. I just don't accept theists really engaging in such arbitrary way as you present above.

my regards, mikwut

[_EAllusion]

At the time of the Scopes monkey trial, the literal "7 day" reading of Genesis was actually uncommon among American protestants and closely associated with 7th day adventism. More so than today, that branch of Christian thought was lowly looked upon by other sects. Like Mormons. It was only later that this interpretation of Genesis became a very powerful force within emerging evangelical thought. Prior to then, the common view was what we now usually call "day-age creationism" where the days described in genesis are creative periods of undetermined times. This reading is still a scientific dead-end, but it is less literal to the english translation of the Bible.

[_Nightlion]

Almabound must a certain East Millcreek Road neighbor back in the day. I will not tell anyone whom I think you are. But I think you remember me playing the piano loudly in a Church near the Uof U.

Sorry, but I'm not who you think I am. I've only driven through Utah a few times and never heard of East Millcreek Road.

Niac is the brother of kasemaj and yes he is based upon that brother who most betrayed me.

The conversation has slipped way beyond any of this, but your code-names are all relatively simple - Niac, backwards, is of course Cain, a brother who "betrayed" his sibling.

I'm actually a bit concerned for you and how this all has affected you.

Peace.

If you can imagine being excommunicated from the Church after dedicating a life of sacrifice, unmatched in all the world, to seek to get things right and perfect the entire Zion theology and practice and know how to bring it forth in power and strength. To be so unwanted and rejected after having done all and then to pour your heart with a flood of inspiration into what I consider a world-class composition and piece of art that everyone you show it too is just as nonplus in their rejection and out of hand spurning that I have to realize that the people are just that lost and fallen and under such tremendous weight of condemnation that hell gapes open the mouth wide after everyone I know and care about. Imagine how it affected me. Just try. Yet after this the Lord sings unto me personally the words to another song I wrote to comfort me and open the second comforter. Wow. And there are still atheist in the world.
I cannot imagine!

[_Imwashingmypirate]

I actually know what cogdis means without looking up the dictionary. Are you impressed?

I tried to find a cartoon with the expression I was making, but the only one I could fond was of someone's little girl and it wasn't cartoon, so didn't think it was very appropriate.

[_Sethbag]

If you can't understand what I'm trying to say, just imagine the devout JW that knocks on your door. They're dead wrong, and yet they don't know it, and can't conceive of it. This is pretty much what religion does to people, and they cannot even conceive that it's happening to them, and not just to everyone in all those other, false religions.

I'll never forget a moment on my mission, in which my companion (who loved to bash with JWs) and I were engaged with some JWs, and it suddenly struck me, in the middle of it all, that we were mirror images of one another.

I think being able to recognize that, even as a believer, may be part of the reason I eventually lost faith.

I had the same kind of epiphany on my mission. There were tons of JWs in Germany and Switzerland, and I had plenty of discussions with them. At some point I realized that we were really the same thing, just on different sides. I actually became sort of friends with a couple of them in Weingarten, Germany near the end of my mission, after I told them how interesting it was that for me, in a country filled to the brim with people who wanted nothing to do with me, here were some other folks who, for similar reasons, know exactly how it feels. I thought we were sort of comrades in arms, like soldiers from both sides of a conflict, who understood the role we were playing better than all of the civilians. I tried having that attitude with some evangelical Christians out on a square handing out pamphlets, but they wanted nothing to do with me - jerks. I don't recall if they were handing out Jack Chick tracts, but that would have been funny.

I've been saying for years, hoping it has some point, that probably nobody understood and sympathized with the sailors on the Russian submarine Kursk when it went down better than all of the submariners from the US, British, French, etc. navies.