I believe scientific law is harmonious with Christianity
Oh you do? And you believe in miracles?
That seems weird. If God could indeed change the laws of nature it would affect the world a lot more than in miracles and if he could change them in only in a small area so that the miracle wouldn't get out of hand (as in all the water in the universe turning into wine) he should be powerful enough to change the world in ways that would prevent useless suffering like by stopping the holocaust or instead of sacrificing his son (can an omnipotent spirit even have a son and how is this being a son of his? Does God have genes?)
But you do need to be aware of what clothes are. This if anything, is a terrible argument, because Dawkins is taking a sledge hammer to a broad philosophical concept of blind faith when Christianity doesn't ask for blind faith.
So you object blind faith huh? Well see that in a moment. Dawkins however has quite strictly dedicated singular arguments toward different versions of religious thinking. Against different beliefs you need different arguments. He dedicates most of the book for blind faith and comments this by noting taht if all religous people would not believe in blind faith (as in the blind faith of Soren Kierkegaard) he wouldn't need to write that book but the world as it is has a lot of ill religiousness that is dangearous to the society in many ways.
And you should take into note my argument. You can't then speak of existance without understanding of metaphysics and you can't know anything without understanding episthemology (paradox).
I do believe it might be beneficial for you to understand what exactly a straw man is. Let me explain. A straw man is when you pick out a specific issue in an argument, a belief that somebody holds, and you push that belief to the illogical extreme, then you observe that illogically extreme version of someone's belief, conclude it is false, and as a result, claim that somebody's entire argument is false. I have made no such arguments.
Usually Straw Man isn't aimed at proving someone directly wrong but trying to make their arguments sound illogical by simplifying them.
And IMO this is a Straw Man:
The basic atheist argument that many (Including some in this thread) stop at, is that religion is laughable because people can't rise from the dead.
While this isn't a straw man, it's edging closer,
There was this simple wod if there and the reason it was there was that I wasn't really sure were you trying to prove your point by such simple argument.
What I am arguing is that that the apostles did not die because they believed Christ was the Messiah, they died because, with their own eyes, they saw the risen Christ, walking on earth and preaching, even though he had been killed and placed in a tomb
HOw do you know why they did what they did. For me the whole resurrection thing sounds just like a story made up after christ died because they couldn't believe the man they believed in had died just like that and their long jjourney as his followers (they were known for following him so admiting they had mistaken would have meant losing their status and appreciation.
It would have been easy for them to have died for Christ before the resurrection because there was an element of uncertainty around Christ, there wasn't a way to definitively prove whether Jesus was who he said he was, and therefore the apostles might have been misled, just like millions throughout history have been for whatever causes.
Well yes compared to any other martyrs who have died because of second hand knowledge they indeed are different. But not unique. They may have still believed even though Christ wasn't resurrected. We see the same thing happening with religous sects all over the world. The members live their life believing in some powerful leader who they may see as God even after they have lived out of the sect for years they may still believe in that person and those teachings. The stories of Christs resurrection may have been made up just to make other people believe. The Catholics have been doing the very same thing for a long time with saints.
The point is, after Christ's death, there was NO ROOM for confusion. In his ministry he had told his followers that he would die
Which was told AFTER he had died and it was written by those who believed in it.
Even when he died, even in the gospel accounts, there was dismay, Peter, who was the first disciple called into Christ's ministry, denied his association with Christ 3 times on the night Jesus was captured.
Yes and Christ himself lost his faith while hanging on the cross. Maybe he realised he had been living a lie all his life.
I would argue then, that faith alone was not enough for these men to die, but what's important is what comes next. The stone is moved from Christ's tomb and his body is gone, these are not disputed by history. Never mind the extreme difficulty (Or even asinine stupidity) of implying that this was a plot, this brings us to what the apostles died for.
So any historical proves of the whole tomb? or anything else at all.
or facing the most painful form of execution known to man
Of course this is a bit offtopic but that is nowhere near the extreme executions. People are brilliant when it comes to making other people suffer (luckily military techonology often helps the society as a whole (radar turned to a microwave oven)
Jews were willing to die for their religioon many generations after Moses in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege
Religion at its best.
Mark 13:22
For false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God's chosen ones
So you don't believe in blind faith but you can just simply take up a part of the bible to use as a proof.
Then again. You mght think that your other arguments make using bible justified but still the way you read the bible depends on your own mind (values, moral...) If one needs to study read a book right is the information in the book itself or the studies?
For some reason we only use bible to back our beliefs when we agree with it.
If people are discussing womens rights someone might quote the bible butwhen people are discussing slavery no one will mention that bible says its ok.
In the secularizing society values are changing faster than with religions. The morale of the society becomes the source of individual morale and religous morales are thrown aside and people deny any conflicts between the morale of the society and religion.
The explanation for what was, and wasn't, prophecy in the old testament is a very, very, complicated matter that really isn't worth explaining, but what we do know is that the old testament that is printed in every Christian Bible existed in its complete form before Jesus. We know that the series of Messianic prophecies (Events described in the books of Isiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, and others) were, in parts, very specific to identifying the chosen one who would redeem the gentiles and create the true covenant between man and God. We know that many of these, including the place of Christ's birth, and many things involving events far outside his control, were listed in prophecy and Jesus fit the prophecies. Look for example, with me, to the book of Daniel, in the 9th chapter.
Still we have the Jews to disagree with the prophecy. Many of the "facts about Jesus" were changed afterwards so that he would fulfill the prophecy. Especially his place of birth.
blood is required for the atonement of sins
Now what kind of allloving God creates a world like that.
In order to save mankind, a sacrifice HAD to be made
If he is as almighty as to make miracles (and so on) then there wouldn't be any sense in that. There are many other things he could have done. And if you believe he knows the future and our own thoughts he should have seen it coming before he created the world. For example the creation. If he created people who were stupid enough to earn themselves to be banned from the paradise that was Gods fault. He created us to be able to make such a mistake. And no I don't believe in free will. Just as with Jesus. He could have used his powers to change the world or possibly even start over. The explanations to Gods actions are nothing more than trying to explain the world as it is. Simply a psychological phenomenon.
I need to find the book I have that addresses this issue, the arguments that you are referencing are based in out of date archeological information, within the last 15-20 years, we have discovered quite a bit of finds that have made the gospel accounts seem much more reliable and consistent, in particular Luke's accounts in the book of Acts are regarded by the historical community as the most accurate representation of the various areas described and visited that we have
Yes I would really like to see evidence. Yet often evidence to support religous views is done with some funding from american christian organizations and they don't try to be accurate but to confirm the beliefs. This one for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlas_of_Creation
This can't really be considered science by any standards.
Again, out of date information
Or then your corrections aren't simply accepted buy the scientific community.
Israel was an incredibly small nation, therefore things like masturbation and homosexuality were seen as counter intuitive to the growth of the nation
Actually evolution considers homosexuality to be a positive attribute. It helps the community (as well an animal community as a human community) to survive and take care of the children. At least before human culture kicks in. Many of the orders however were a lot more arbitary and absurd than these thumbrules. And couldn't Gd simply remove homosexuality if he didn't want it to happen among his people. Instead he tells one man the rules who tells them to the others.
And then siding with with one people in the world seems quite cruel but once again the society those days wasn't as global so among people it created local religions. Every society believed in God(s) that favored them over the others.
There are a couple ways you could address this issue. I think that the issue is secondary to the greater proof of Christ's resurrection, and being that I believe that, I think that the rest of the world can be correctly interpreted through that. I suppose an interesting question is, have you ever written a story? Made a character in your head? I started writing a story 3 years ago, but some of the characters are much older than that, I didn't start the story with their birth, and then walk them through it, nothing is to say that when God created the earth, He didn't create it with a history.
So he only made the world look old
I thought you would (as mots christian scientists do) deny that information.
Does that even sound propable to you? Don't you think the people whp wrote these things donw could have mistaken? Afterall they were just people and people tend to explain things by making up explanations (not just kids or under the influence of hypnosis but others as well)
Right, but if my livelihood, my well being, and in fact, my actual mortal life, depended on my saying Lady Gaga did NOT having a huge dick, and I maintained that I had seen it with my own eyes, one would begin to wonder if maybe she does have a dick.
So a schizophreinic person who sees pink elephants should not believe people who tell him it was just hallucination.
The issue here is to establish that miracles are not a fool proof method of identifying God's work. People can be deceived, and the scriptures are well aware of this. Unfortunately, in modern day, there is no fool proof way to tell what is, or isn't from God. In my journey I've found these 100% answers almost never exist, and that's something that fundamentalists disagree with me on quite a bit. What I've found then, is that the only real way to test a theology, or the validity of someone who claims to be called by God, is to see if it is in line with the message of the Gospels, and of Christ's life.
Exactly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherentism
Thats a epistemological view that thinks that only knowledge that fits the previous view is justified.
This is exactly how you described your way of dealing with new religious information.
It always comes down to Philosophy. (If I had kept my eyes open I could have found more epistemological stances in your arguments but it is not really necessary. Actually it might do some good to avoid philosophical terms for a while)
So the problem (one of them) with Coherentism is that it doesn't correct itself even though new information would be more reliable. The new information is always compared to the old one that is thougt of as the truth. You can also pick anything to be the base of the information that all new information is compared to.
archaeology has confirmed that all historical data referenced in the gospels, particularly that in Luke and in Acts (Which was written by Luke), is more accurate than any single document from that era.
I am still awaiting for you rpoofs on this. Yet it is quite difficult to compare the reliablility of ancient documents if you have a limited number of documents. If you have documents A B and C and A and B say that C is right and C says that A and B are wrong then is document C right? (well not really like this but rather like this) Can any number of less reliable documents convince you that another document is is more reliable? As in A (reliablity 3/10) and B(reliability 2/10) say both that Cis true. Can this mean C is more reliable than there two if they both are unreliable.
Ok this is quite messy I am getting tired of trying to explain my clumsy thoughts on this.
Ok I am going to take a break and return on this later. Just some final words left.
See now THAT is a straw man. You take the idea of blind faith, something that is not essential to Christianity (Although it is regarded as noble, to a degree), extracting it from the whole of the proof I have presented, and then applying it to the illogical extreme, and using that as a counterargument against everything I have said.
Well I admit that was a bit too agressive accusation.
If you feel that I have been accusing you of blind faith then I have to apologize. You clearly have a created a lot more understandable view and while I can't really think of it as the truth (the discussion is on and so far the evidence goes against the existaence of any God)but I have to say hats off to you for actually thinking this through.
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That's very good! how the hell did someone with a worthy talent like that become so sidetracked? 
