re: Texas getting it's own Sharia Law

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You're so tiring

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Aww. Are you feelings hurt that dumb ole Foo won't just submit to your stupid ideas?

Perhaps, and hear me out, perhaps YOU are the one who is tiring because you're so thick headed.

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Suppose that you were born and raised in Sanaa Yemen to Muslim parents.

Do you think that you would convert to Christianity before your Earthly death?

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I can't say. Many people were born into such situations and were converted to Christianity before they died. I've heard reports of many Muslims converting to Christianity lately from having dreams about Jesus. Others are converted through missions works in Muslim countries and through family members, friends, and acquaintances who converted to Christianity

On the flip side, one could ask if being raised in America by Christian parents means that you would remain a Christian until you die. I think we can say for sure that that is no guarantee.

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Do you think that you would convert to Christianity before your Earthly death?

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It's been known to happen countless times. Get this - even in the middle east

This post is to highlight you and Foos ridiculous habit of responding to every god damn sentence.

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You've been asked to provide proof and you've provided absolutely none.

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I'm not going to dig up proof for you. Google Herod the Great's death, and Quirinius' census. You might as well be asking me for proof 9/11 happened on 9/11.

You either trust Josephus and the various contemporary historians or you dont.

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You've also been told multiple possibilities as to how they actually were.

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Possibilities that have no evidence backing them.

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But feel free to keep repeated already refuted points.

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You've refuted nothing.

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It's refreshing.

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Did you snap when you typed that?

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How do you think taxes were assessed?

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They'd need a headcount, so a census. Judea wasn't paying taxes to Rome, they were paying a tribute to Rome to remain independent (quasi-vassal with Herod the Great acting as a Roman puppet).

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You say with absolutely zero proof and evidence to the contrary

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Its about as obvious as saying they didn't pay taxes in bitcoin.

Rome kept records. Feel free to search for Roman censuses of Judea prior to 6AD.

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The Bible has been repeatedly vindicated as historically reliable.

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Nope, and youre still begging the question.

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Perhaps you don't know this.

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I know you're full of shite.

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Because I asked you to prove your stupid, ahistorical assertions?

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My dates are historically accepted dates, sorry.

Because at least Foo understands the history of Judea/Rome during this time period enough to have a conversation about it. You, from the start, came in swinging and didn't know what you were talking about.

I suspect you have been looking into it since you started as you are, very marginally, making slightly more sense.

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And there it is.

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I make no bones about how tiring it is talking to your type.

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It's amazing how halfwits on the internet read a few popular level ideas from biased people and then start throwing around unproven assertions as if they're fact.

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Becoming self aware, are we? About time.

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And then when you get called out on it, do you step back and reassess what you think you know? No. You double and triple down on stupid

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"Waaaa, he's not accepting baseless possibilities!!!"

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Aww. Are you feelings hurt that dumb ole Foo won't just submit to your stupid ideas?

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Nope, just pointing out how annoying yall are. Did that trigger you are you a big enough girl to take mild criticism?

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Perhaps, and hear me out, perhaps YOU are the one who is tiring because you're so thick headed.

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I considered that, but came to the conclusion that that's not the case.

Have fun sorting through all that.

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Exactly. Instead of calling it spaceless, timeless, and immaterial, just say nonexistent.

It’s all the same, just saves you the time it takes to type all of that.

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It isn't the same at all.

A spirit that exists outside of time and space is not non-existent. The claim is that such a being exists, and exists necessarily.

Me:

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The religious views that you subscribe to are dictated by the circumstances of your birth

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You:

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This is totally false. There are Christians in China who live under constant persecution. Same for Africa. The M.E. There are tons of Muslims in India where they are hated.

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Your ignorance of history is showing. And math is not your strong point.

What is the percentage of Christians living in China? About 5%, and that is being generous.

Christians living in Africa are descendants of western Europeans who were colonizers during the 19th century. Their numbers are diminishing, not growing. Don't even try to challenge me on this. My in-laws do missionary work in Africa.

India - educate yourself on the Mughals. They are Muslims who ruled India for 300 years before the British took over in the middle of the 19th century. They built the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is a Muslim mausoleum built by a Muslim emperor for his wife. There is a mosque on the grounds.

The British forced a separation of the Muslims and Hindus. That is why Pakistan, Bangladesh and India are all separate countries today.

A spirit that exists outside of time and space is not non-existent. The claim is that such a being exists, and exists necessarily.


It sounds exactly like something that doesn’t exist. You’re don’t need to do all the mental gymnastics to make that kind of a claim. Just say “nonexistent”

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Your inability to grasp the difference between a claim of existence and non-existence does not mean I need to give in to you and lie.

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No, I understand the difference. I’m pointing out that your “existence” claim has been made so vague and untouchable that it becomes indistinguishable from nonexistence.

You’re saying it exists, but not in time, not in space, not in any measurable way, not in any testable way, and not in any way that can be falsified.

That is not a profound distinction. That is just hiding “nothing” inside a theological safe and calling the lock philosophy.

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You're operating from an empiricist view of epistemology, where that which can be known must be measured in the natural world. That standard of knowledge is self-defeating. Now that I know where you're coming from, it's a lot easier to predict what you will say.

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You’re trying to label my position instead of answering the problem. I’m not arguing that every truth must be measured with a ruler. I’m arguing that if you make an existence claim, you need some meaningful way to separate “exists” from “doesn’t exist.”
Otherwise “exists outside time and space” becomes a magic closet where any unsupported claim can hide.

You can call that empiricism if you want. I call it not letting words do counterfeit work.

So again: what is the functional difference between a being that cannot be observed, measured, tested, falsified, located, or distinguished from nothing, and a being that simply does not exist?

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You’re trying to label my position instead of answering the problem.

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It's important to understand where someone you're arguing with is coming from. It helps a person understand the context of the arguments being made as well as the underlying assumptions that may be smuggled in.

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I’m not arguing that every truth must be measured with a ruler.

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Seemed that way to me, when you said, "observed, measured, tested, falsified, located..." as your test for understanding existence. That's empiricism at its core. It's a denial of the immaterial, and as I said, it's self-refuting.

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I’m arguing that if you make an existence claim, you need some meaningful way to separate “exists” from “doesn’t exist.”
Otherwise “exists outside time and space” becomes a magic closet where any unsupported claim can hide.

You can call that empiricism if you want. I call it not letting words do counterfeit work.

So again: what is the functional difference between a being that cannot be observed, measured, tested, falsified, located, or distinguished from nothing, and a being that simply does not exist?

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First, I'll say that you're assuming that to exist means to be observable, measured, tested, falsified, and located, and that is not what existence necessarily entails. Laws of logic exist, yet you cannot identify them merely through observation, as if they have mass and substance.

But to your main point of differentiating God from something that doesn't exist: I could say many things, but I'll just focus on one thing: "nothing" cannot produce "something". In order for anything to begin to exist, something else must have brought it into existence. Since the universe began to exist, it needed to have a cause that brought it into existence. Whatever that cause was could not be the effect, or in other words, the universe could not have brought itself into being. That means whatever the universe is (space, time, and matter) could not have been the cause of bringing itself into existence. Something else must have existed in order to bring the universe into existence.

I'm contending that that something that existed had to be outside of time to create time, outside of space to create space, and immaterial to create matter. I would also contend it also needed to be both personal so that it would decide to create rather than not create (and stay in an eternal state of non-creation), and necessary rather than contingent, as all contingent things require something else to create or sustain it, leading to an infinite regress. Therefore, this first cause had to be necessarily existent in its nature and choose to create.

The Bible describes a being just like this: an infinite (spaceless), eternal (timeless), spirit-being who is independent (necessary, not contingent), omniscient (knew what to create and how), and omnipotent (possess the power to create all things), and personal (chose to create all else that exists), with a mind that upholds all things and is the basis for all thought.