Boazy. Actually, you are not mocking. Mocking is (according to the Cambridge) to "to laugh at someone, often by copying them in an amusing but unkind way". It requires a bit of wit, because you have to appropriate the mockee's point and apply some irony or sarcasm. You need to be amusing yourself. I have never seen you mock anyone on these boards.

What you did was dribble some Coca Cola product from your mouth because you heard the word "Dawkins".

Cat because you believe your brain just happened from a random collection of molocules that happened to be in the right envirionment it is easy to make anything appear rational to your undesigned brain.

The Scriptures reports events as they happened in the life of Israel - sins and all in the culture of the day with the understanding they had of morality. Jesus who is the Christ clearly gave a clear revelation of the character of God and contradicted events they saw as right. The hebrews believed in "Hate your enemy" Jesus taught "Love your enemy". However characters in the Hebrew nation saw glimpses of how to live in slavery, like Moses, in captivity like Daniel, in interacial marriage like Esther. God is about working with individuals in their situation rather than nationalism, which is the context of much of the Hebrew history.

How are you making a difference to improve the problems in your world through your life, attitudes, actions?

I have to concur with both Vanilla and CJ.

Like CJ, I was going to let it slide (since I agree with Foxy on most other issues), but I don't think I can anymore. It pains me to do this, but common sense and truth must prevail.

So, to address Foxy's list...

* No. God does not necessarily provide the best explanation for everything that exists.

Everything that we know exists starts from a simple entity, then evolves into a more complex entity. If God exists, then He/She/It would be the most complex thing in existence. Therefore, to suggest that everything we know started with a more complex being like a God is illogical.

Now it's at this point that the religious will say: “Oh, but God is not of this universe. He cannot be explained.”

Well, all I can say is: “Isn't that just too easy”. Stating that God cannot be explained is nothing more than an excuse not to think and explains nothing.

* For this, all I could say is that you should read up a bit on science. I couldn't possibly fit a response to this in one post. All I can say is that it isn't helpful in this modern day and age to assume that a God 'must've done it', just because we may not have the full answers. That's what privative people did (like those who wrote Genesis) and look how foolish they seem now.

* Design? This is my favourite Creationist fallacy.

Complexity does not imply design. Simplicity is the main goal of design. To me personally, the complexity of the universe and all the life that is in it, is what eventually convinced me that there was no God.

Why would God try to fool us by creating the life and the universe so that there were irrefutable alternative (and more rational) explanations?

* If God is the best explanation for the encoded instructions in our DNA, then why is 80% of our DNA junk DNA that does nothing?

Junk DNA, like everything else that exists, is evidence for evolution.

Continued...

...Continued

So again, why would God be so deceitful that he would pack our DNA with junk?

* Um... Behe's “Irreducible Complexity” was debunked almost immediately after mentioned it...

http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.html
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_1.html
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_1_1.html
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_2.html
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_3.html
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_4.html
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_5.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_HVrjKcvrU

* Duality? Too much to go into here, but all I can say is that considering how little we know about the brain and emotions, we are no better than primitive tribes to assume that a magical being did it.

* Same as above for 'morality'. Inter-subjectivity and survival provide adequate explanations for morality.

In fact, if it wasn't for secularism, we could quite easily still be burning heretics at the stake.

Secularism, inter-subjectivity and evolution are all that has helped us to ignore the viciousness in the Bible and focus on the good in it. It is only because of non-religious influences that we now know how to pick out the good bits. Otherwise, how would we have known that (most) of what Jesus said (if he even existed, which we can't know for sure) was good and not bad?

It had to have been an outside (Secular) influence, because it certainly wasn't the Bible – particularly the Old Testament.

C'mon Foxy, you're smarter than that. Please don't fall for the deceitfulness of Creationists. All Creationists do is try to create a sense of confusion that isn't there. Heck! You can even disprove Creationism conclusively with simple Google searches!

Philo,

You've had this explained before, but it seems that Christians are a little slow, so here it is again...

Randomness has virtually nothing to do with evolution.

Boaz,

You've never read anything of Dawkins', so how can you comment?

As for the alleged dinosaur carving in Cambodia, there are many explanations for that. Creationists must really be clutching at straws to think that proves anything!

It is an absolute fact that humans were not around at the same time as dinosaurs. If they were, then there would be evidence of it everywhere.

Philo,

"God is about working with individuals in their situation rather than nationalism, which is the context of much of the Hebrew history."

As I have commented before Moses seems to be preventing the transition for a nomadic/war god to an agricultural gos. This seems to be Moses trying to keep group consolidation not create indivualism. Mohammed did the same thing in sventh century CE. I see evolutions taking place, as we turn the pages of history. But those persons participating in living, seem to project their current situation onto god and their charactisation of god. This appears bottom-up, rather than top-down, at least until Nicaea, where matters became more institutioalised into dogma.

Do you mean individualism or individuals as conduits?

Panthesim and dual-names for the same god seem to have been important to the Eyptians, Greeks and Romans. Egyptian monotheism lasted only the rule of Akhenaten. The social/political pressure on Ankhkheperure to revert must have have been great. And he did.

Reverting back to an early post, can you pleaes give me a citation on James the Elder being Jesus' brother. My research comes up with a person several generations into first century.

Thanks.

O.

Boazy: << Says he who rarely actually looks at issues :) and prefers to throw verbal grenades from a safe distance of 'no research/no interest' >>

Now Boazy - while "no interest" may be somewhere near the mark in the case of your interminable blather, you know that my "research" has been far more extensive and qualified than your own - which seems to be restricted to holy books and associated texts, Google and YouTube.

Once again, people in glass houses and all that...