Wow, look at all the great stuff I missed.
First let me make one thing clear: I do not care what anyone on this board thinks of me. People have a tendency to assume that what is important to them is important to others. They crave respect and recognition like a dog craves a bone, so they assume everyone else feels this way too. Whatever status I have (or "had") on this board, I did not seek it out and I most definitely never deemed it to have any real value. If you think I am on the ball, great. If you think I am a raving lunatic, great. I really truly could care less. That may be a hard concept for some of you to understand, because you don't have the ability to step outside yourself and see what the world is like from someone else's perspective. So deep down you assume I care just because you do. But the reality is, I really, seriously don't. These little skirmishes are like dumbbells for me. Work you for three sets of ten, then throw you in the closet. That's it.
Now, to those of you calling me a terrorist? How shallow can you be? I am talking about ideas, people. I am talking about perspectives of the world. Rs7 said "I have nothing against any particular religion. I just don't want to be forced to convert by ANYONE. If I wish to worship my rabbits foot keychain, I should be entitled to. And I am. It's in our constitution." And you know what? I completely agree with that statement 100%. I am not talking about FORCING anyone to do anything. The fact that we must walk our own path is why faith and choice exist in the first place. Look at it this way- is anyone forcing you to be a capitalist? No they are not. You can be a communist if you want to. You can move to wyoming and stake a patch of land and live a subsistence existence off potatoes if you want. But if you start telling everyone that communism is the best way, people will stand up and loudly disagree. They will point out that your ideas, while you are free to hold them, are bad ideas and do not work. This is what I am talking about. I am talking about a war of ideas. I am talking about competing views of reality. I am talking about logic and truth, not bombs and bullets. Anyone with common sense should be able to see that. The references to 'terrorism' are shallow and small minded and silly and reveal more about the small mindedness of the criticizers than anything else.
I love how you guys can so quickly put me (and others) in the stupid box. Because you have to, really- all your arguments are based on the idea that Christians are unintelligent. Even when you say, 'you may be smart but here you are dumb' you are still trying to argue that Christianity is essentially unintelligent. What does this boil down to? It boils down to a grade school argument. 'You are wrong because you are dumb.' That is the best you have- calling us dumb.
This is what puzzles me about these threads. I know plenty of intelligent atheists. I do not feel the need to say or think that all atheists are stupid because I know they are not. I understand that there is a logical case to be made for atheism, though I obviously assert the finer points of it are incorrect and thus it is wrong. But the point is, I do not feel the need to secretly harbor the idea that all who oppose me are 'stupid.' The thought that your opponent is stupid or blinded is really just a security blanket, like the one Linus Van Pelt used to carry around. It shows a pathetic weakness on your part- a concession to your desires. If your opponent is just 'dumb', then you can write off his argument with a surface level examination and need not go deeper. If he is 'dumb', then you do not need to probe his argument in depth. Do you see my point here?
The simple fact is, the 'Christians are stupid' line is based on insecurity and ignorance. Your true knowledge of history and philosophy in regards to this question is about as shallow as a pool of rainwater. To compensate for this, you call Christians stupid so that you can make a subconscious inference: "since they are stupid, we don't need to examine the case too closely." This is pathetic. It's downright weak. You guys are making incorrect logic leaps and faulty assumptions all day and night here. And you are doing it to protect your own insecurity. Your mental weakness.
"Darkhorse is smart in all other areas but in this one he is dumb." I don't think so. I have studied the ultimate questions with the same rigor and precision and hard nosed objectivity that I have used on the market and on all other things. 'You believe because you have a blind spot'- please, what a rationalist loser argument. You just want to HOPE I have a blind spot so you convince yourself. 'You believe because your parents tricked you'- please, rationalist loser argument. Again, you just HOPE this and swallow your own line. 'You call this a war so you must be a terrorist'- please, ad hominem fallacy and straw man to the extreme, not to mention pulling ridiculous conclusions out of your ass.
I have respect for a number of atheists I know, because they have the guts to say that there is an intelligent case for Christianity and they have the guts to stand against it WITHOUT tearing the Christian intellect to make themselves feel better. I can respect them as opponents because they do not do surface level analysis. They actually go deep and make hard connections and refrain from pulling stuff out of their butts. They do not call me 'dumb'. They say 'hey, I hear what you are saying and you make some very good points, but while respecting you I still have to disagree.' And you know what? That is a sign of strength on their part. They are willing to do the heavy lifting and the hard thinking. They can see that I have a solid case because they actually look instead of spending their time on DUMB ONE LINERS. Thus they do not need to hide behind name calling and pathetic rationalizations and lame arguments to promote their views. There are atheists out there whose minds I respect- but to be honest, the arguments I've seen on this thread are about as consistent as swiss cheese. You guys who think you are so high and mighty in your logic? You basically suck. Might be hard to swallow but you are your own judge and jury. If there were a logic referee on this thread- simply weighing the quality of the debate and the quality of assumptions, without taking argumental sides- you guys would be whistled off the field about every thirty seconds. Am I dumb or are you dumb for thinking I'm dumb? Deep down I think you know the answer.
The 'irrefutable arguments' presented on this thread are laughable. They are broken records presenting the same tired points over and over again without ever going deeper. I have heard every one of them before and they are about as hard to punch through as wet tissue. You guys sound like a bunch of random walk professors congratulating yourselves on discovering why all traders 'have' to be idiots, meanwhile never having taken a logic chain past the tip of your own noses. The ones who act like they know the most on this issue are the ones who are the most deluded.
And as to who is going to win: A recent WSJ editorial highlighted a study showing that America's universities are basically 95% left wing- i.e., atheistic, socialistic philosopher kings. The kind of monkeys you guys admire. But you know what? That's bad news for you, because it means your power has maxed out. The best you've got has failed miserably. You hijacked the halls of learning and yet you still couldn't snuff the foolish christians out. It's too late now, reality has caught up with your lies. The age of postmodernism is dead- 'no such thing as right or wrong' has been exposed to the world as the vile garbage it really is. Think back on your glory days, God hater- your time to shine is gone. This is the pinnacle of power for autonomous man. It's all downhill from here. Even science is turning against you now. Precious science, that haven of anti-God intellectual superiority for so long, has now led to what? The brightest minds in the world speculating that the universe could be composed of information, or reality could be composed of consciousness or thought- Steven Hawking suggesting that reality is actually a hologram. Crazy stuff that gets crazier. The more we learn, the more we realize we are babes in the woods. As it should be, as all truth eventually integrates itself with the ultimate truth. The barriers have been broken down and the tables turned. Science is now moving us closer to God, not farther away. Your hour has passed! Your sneering domination....is...over. And the return of intelligent theism is yet but a seed in the ground- a seed that will grow into a mighty oak tree.