Ahh, Im sorry this is coming like 2.5 weeks later. Ive been unbelievably busy.

Yeah, Neil Tyson is great. He has quite a bit of videos on youtube which are all really interesting. Hes certainly a smart guy, and anyone turned off by the sort of coldheartedness of Christopher Hitchens, might find Tyson to be more warm and fuzzy. As far as the universe being ordered, it appears to be ordered on some scales, and on others, it appears to be chaotic (e.g. a star seems orderly, but the particles being thrown around and hitting nuclei within the star is random and chaotic.) But I would say gravity is simply a very order creating force. Mass simply having a gravitational pull, given enough time will almost always bring order to mass (spiral galaxies, spherical planets, the plane of solar systems) It simply works blindly. You could say that cosmic, chemical, and biological evolution are all blind watchmakers. It all works completely without the assumption of God (ie. If God is proven to not exist, physical mechanisms and phenomena will be no different Things will work just as well without appealing to a God) And I would have to disagree with theists thinking something pulls the strings Theists explicitly state that they nearly know its a someone I say in all probability its a something considering every natural phenomena we know about doesnt happen because of someone That was a weird sentence. Anyway, even if you could give evidence for a god that created the universe, youve only gotten yourself to a deistic position. You still have quite a journey to get to a theistic position in which God knows you personally, answers prayers, takes sides in wars, and uses weather patterns to punish or reward.

Its true we cant get a perfect date of things, but we can get within a good ball park of things using cultural and archeological methods, among others. And as Im sure you know, the new testament wasnt written until several decades after the events at Calvary, is it not possible that they wrote the new testament knowing what prophecies they needed to fill in the stories? I think the likelihood that I am correct is staggeringly high Especially considering the high amount of debate that went on in the early church about what to include/add/subtract/and edit into the new testament. Its clearly a man made document. Your description of God is nurturing your arguments; it benefits you because you can change your description and idea of God to fit an argument, but the fact is that god is infinitely infinite He is timeless and spaceless That means exactly what it means. The Bible also says that he is now what he has always been and always will be. Again, he is infinite. Infinitely wise Why would he show regret or surprise or anger after creating a naturally inquisitive species, sexually charged, barbaric and superstitious, and after we start behaving badly or immoral, hes shocked? He shows regret? This SCREAMS tale from bronze age Palestine And its quite shocking to me that anyone can actually believe it Not to be insulting, but its straight up delusion; no more, no less.

I only say that there are inconsistencies in the Bible because you believe them to be there based on human perception; not my own beliefs. Someone could then argue that the parts of the Bible that claim it is flawless are indeed some of the flaws. You can't ignore logical fallacies simply because something is supposed to inerrant. The many different religions in the world doesn't raise serious questions in my mind because my explanation makes just as much sense as your does. I don't see how you're missing the fact that just because

many exist doesn't mean that one can't hold any truth. Let's pretend that Buddhism is the truth and there were more evangelists for that religion in the US than there actually are right now. Would you say that Buddhism can't be true, because most Americans didn't let go of Christianity? In that case, a comfortable lie simply beat the truth to the punch and Americans didn't feel the need to change religion. It's that simple. You already believe that humans are good at making up religions, so why is it difficult to accept that someone made one up before the real one had a chance to spread? Every time you stress how much I'm missing something, you should pay more attention to how little you're giving me and realize how many thoughts and opinions can be derived from only a few sentences or even one basic theme. You gave me the link to a video that's part of a long presentation and the clip contained a few brief points. Based on such a short portion, it's very easy to see how I came up with the defenses I did, but you instead thought it was fair to assume comprehension of the entire seminar. You don't debate anything you haven't read in many different sources, so why would you expect me see things the way you do with only a tiny portion of one of your sources? I heard the morality argument in a Hitchens video. I agree that someone can be moral without believe in or knowledge of God; I met one over the weekend ironically enough. However, you're giving Christians too much credit if you think the majority would still make every decision the exact same way. Would I still be a nice guy if my faith was destroyed? Sure, but there are tiny decisions that I make which could easily contribute to the butterfly effect. Multiply that by the billions of Christians in the world. Things would still go sour, but it wouldn't be as sudden as I laid out in my last message and other scenario. I do want to continue down the path of "be careful with your talent" a little bit further. I'm not sure if you're a superhero geek like me, but if so, Spiderman's quote "With great power, comes great responsibility" is ever so important here. I've recently been convicted to use apologetics only on the defensive instead of the offensive. I really hope that you do the same. If you still think it's okay to spread atheism with such passion, I urge you to give Christians even less credit than you already do. I wish I wasn't an exception to the many Christian hypocrisies in that I wish they didn't exist. I openly admit with a heavy heart that too many believers are doing good deeds for the wrong reasons. Paul reminded us that all things are permissible due to grace, but few are beneficial. Therefore, we are not required to do good deeds to earn salvation, because salvation cannot be earned; it's a gift. If more Christians understood and accepted that teaching, I'm afraid there would be less donations and volunteer work out there. Damn, I totally thought this was going to be much shorter. They always start out short, right? Haha. I actually want your opinion on some other stuff (light-hearted, personal and other testimonial stuff), but I'll wait until you reply. I'm at least doing myself a favor of putting less time into these as I'm sure you can tell by avoiding the really big stuff that can go on forever. You don't have to feel the need to keep up or even reply to everything in a message. I won't claim victory if you stop responding either, haha.