Jim Halpert Explains

Since gender isn’t a spectrum, I’d go with the opposite.

You'd choose to follow a religion where the god condones rape, murder, child sacrifice, and genocide?

Does God have a plan you can't see?

Ah yes, condoning horrible things for "a better good". Your god sounds like a great guy. /s

I wonder what your god's plan is for the 27-30 people who are murdered each day in the US.

Your claims are from texts out of context and thus a pretext of proof text

Oh really?

Name the ones you want further context on.

Let’s start with God commanding rape when the Bible says in Deiteronomy 22:5 that tape is punishable by death.

How about commanding genocide when II Peter 3:9 says that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

Child sacrifices: Jeremiah 17:31 “And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; WHICH I COMMANDED THEM NOT, NEITHER CAME IT INTO MY HEART.

Deuteronomy 22:5 says nothing about rape.

Incorrect. 2 Peter 3:9 only says god is SLOW to punishment. It doesn't say he's totally against it. Also, if you haven't read the bible before, Genesis explains how god killed everyone except for eight people by flooding the entire world.

Let's see how "merciful" your god is:

Leviticus 24:10-23- god commands the Israelites to stone a man to death for blasphemy (imagine a god being so insecure that he kills people over using his name)

1 Samuel 15:2-4- god commands the Israelites to kill ALL Amalekites (including women, children and animals)
"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’"

Your god literally told a man to kill his son for "a test of faith".

Genesis 22:1-2, "After these things God decided to test Abraham’s faith. God said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Yes!” Then God said, “Take your son to the land of Moriah and kill your son there as a sacrifice for me. This must be Isaac, your only son, the one you love. Use him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains there. I will tell you which mountain.”

As he was about to sacrifice his kid, his psychosis calmed down and he killed an animal instead of his kid.

Your god told a man, "Go tie up your son and set him on fire" and once the (insane) father did, your god supposedly said, "Haha, it was a joke, just kidding"

Jeremiah 17:31 doesn't exist.

Your first verse had nothing to do with what you were talking about, your second verse didn't support your claim, and your third verse doesn't exist.

Nice.

I prefer to stay neutral in discussions like these merely to avoid creating excess strife

I would side with both, but siding with neither is easier

Siding with neither will anger christians but most trans people won't care as long as you don't go out of your way to be a rude person.

I've met more decent christians than you would think

Sure, there are plenty of nice christians, but they're usually the surface-level types who barely understand the religion. Once they dig further into the bible and still follow everything it stands for after having an understanding of it, they aren't good people.

It's funny how studying the bible MORE made me rethink it.

Christianity is an iceberg that gets more f**ked up as you learn more about it.

yea, but the ones who don't force the religion are good people

Lol, the fact that this comment got hidden just proves how ignorant you are.

I said you can worship whoever tf you want as long as you aren't forcing it on others and it's somehow making you guys mad.

Is forcing people (even if it means killing millions (crusades)) to follow your religion that deeply embedded into your minds? The brainwashing goes further than I imagined.

I think it makes the same kind of people angry on our side that gets angry on the left when you tell them not to push their sexuality on everyone else, Dogmatic people are always far more sensitive when it comes to subjects they align with. It doesn't make anyone dumber than the other.. it just makes them emotional.

Fun fact: an anomaly in nature doesn’t mean it will be the norm in humanity. Anacondas give birth to live young, but no other reptile does. The platypus is a mammal that lays eggs but no other mammals do. Humans are not capable of male pregnancy.

Unless you were able to see evolution actually in progress, as in see a lizard morph into a bird, or repeat the process in a laboratory, your statement is as unscientific as mine.

Unless you can see Gods in the sky creating, smoting, having discussions with people through burning bushes and can replicate that process in the lab... See how this works?

You see evolution in progress all the time, all around you. Common lizards are the Eurasian ones I mentioned earlier that give live births in colder climes while still laying eggs where it's warmer. There's two species of skinks that do both as well, one in Australia apparently showing the beginnings of supplying nutrients, a possible precursor of placentas.

20% of reptiles give live births, not just your one anaconda.

There are three species of steamer ducks that can't fly at all. A fourth one, the flying steamer duck, can fly but doesn't do much of it. It can be found in the Falkland Islands (as well as the South American mainland) along with the Falkland steamer duck, which is flightless. They are genetically indistinguishable, so may very well be the same species (their populations are geographically separated). Regardless, flying steamers are evolving towards flightlessness like the other species already have.

In the 1980s, anole lizards were set loose on various tiny unpopulated islands in the Bahamas to study population pressures on limited areas. A decade later, differences in morphology were notable. On more windswept isles, they had developed shorter limbs, the easier to cling with lest they get blown out to sea. On less windier Islands, they had longer legs. This is in just a decade.

We see similar patterns with flying dragon lizards in the Philippines, only extending back far longer. Those on windier islands had shorter legs, and shorter gliding ribs, while those less windier places had longer legs and longer ribs.

So atoms don't exist? (Going by the logic of "I can't see it so, therefore, it doesn't happen".)

Also, we CAN see evolution in progress; Bacteria resisting antibiotics, insects becoming immune to pesticides, and the beaks of Galapagos finches adapting to different foods.

Also, evolution takes a very long time. If you have a good enough attention span, maybe you can watch it happen.

Nice straw man of atoms — we have technology that has made them to be visible.

And yet your god remains completely invisible to all of our senses.

We've known about the existence of atoms for longer than we've been able to actually see them.

Anyway, nice job ignoring the bottom 2/3 of my reply. You know, the part where I responded to your claim?

And yet God prophesied of you in II Peter 3:3.

Christians have been claiming humanity is "in its last days" since Paul and you'll keep saying so until your religion dies out.

If you can't put together a valid argument, why don't you just tell me since quoting verses from old books doesn't do anything, especially when one of us doesn't acknowledge that book as a valid source.

All you described is adaption, which our Creator endowed us and animals with. If I do hard work outs, my muscles grow and get stronger. It's NOT evolution

No, it's also evolution because these things are being passed down.

Being healthy can help your child be healthier, but it's not comparable to the things previously mentioned.

No. The information to make adaptions like getting stronger and healthier is already in our genes. It's not newly created information- it's just the result of how our bodies use the information already encoded within us. It doesn't cause us to change into a different creature.

Adaptation is usually happening within one organism's lifetime. Evolution will continue even after that organism has died (that's why bacteria immune to antibiotics will create more with the same resistance)

Let me know when one of these bacteria produces something other than another of the same bacteria.

Easy, some bacteria produce vitamins, enzymes, and oxygen.

Cyanobacteria can produce oxygen and methane.

Yeast can produce enzymes.

That is why they do a lot of genetic research with Fruit flies, they have a exceptionally high reproductive rate that they can observe mutation and genetic evolution take place.

And they have made fruit flies with curled wings, no wings, weak eyes or blind, dark bodies so predators can see them better — but they’ve never found either a beneficial mutation, or a mutation to anything but a fruit fly.

Research has shown that fruit flies can evolve rapidly in response to environmental changes, with studies documenting significant genetic changes and adaptations occurring within just a few weeks. For example, a controlled experiment revealed that 60% of the flies' genomes changed over four months, demonstrating swift evolutionary processes in real-time.

But they still remain fruit flies. None changed into a housefly.

Evolution doesn't mean it changed into another species.
noun
A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form.
A result of this process; a development.
"Judo is an evolution of an earlier martial art."
Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, often resulting in the development of new species. The mechanisms of evolution include natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, mutation, migration, and genetic drift.

That is one definition, but it is not the definition used by Charles Robert Darwin. His views required that all complex organisms came from simpler organisms, for which there is no basis in science.

"A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form"

This is very simliar to what Darwin spoke. This is the process observed in species that have very high reproductive rates. Evolution has been documented, peer reviewed, and from what I can tell is pretty much the accepted theory by scientists around the world, save a hand full of outliers which there always are.

The scientific fact of entropy says evolution is a fantasy.

If you want to regurgitate things your Sunday school teacher told you today, you should at least learn what they mean.

Entropy is an increase of randomness in a closed system.
Evolution is an increase in complexity.

Maybe at this point, the science got too difficult for you and you chose to leave it at that and make false claims to support your religious fantasies.

Earth is generally considered a closed system (most matter), but it's still very open to energy from the sun. When the energy from the sun enters and leaves Earth, it's basically an open system in terms of energy.

Also, land, water, and atmosphere are separate but capable of exchanging with one another. This means there are also several open systems within Earth that exchange matter and energy.

So, what does this mean? Earth isn't as much of a closed system as you think it is, evolution is easily capable of occurring (while also increasing in complexity), and creationism has no place in science.

See the second law of thermodynamics.

Again, evolution is still occurring within an open system (Earth)

Just because you find something bigger doesn't mean it cancels out. (See my example of land, water, and atmosphere within Earth)