puffin51's channel

The "Confessing Church" is a figment of Craig's imagination. Some individual Christians opposed Hitler, yes. They were a tiny minority. Nearly all Christians in Germany acquiesced or supported him. The Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches officially maintained good relations with him, the Vatican...

Lee was a fine general and a good man. Nobody doubts it. I've read a lot of Civil War history, and I know of nobody on either side who spoke of him with anything other than admiration and respect. But whatever he meant to do, whatever he thought of it, he fought to retain chattel slavery as an in...

I live in a western democracy that brought in single-payer, tax-funded universal basic health, medical, pharmaceutical and hospital care forty years ago. Today, nobody can imagine a government surviving if it borked it. They'd be out on their ear in weeks. It's not perfect - nothing is - but it w...

But the question is so easily answered: God created all things, including time and space. Therefore He must necessarily be independent of time and space. But causation and creation both rely on a temporal succession of events. Therefore, God could not have been caused or created. He exists witho...

Halosynclines exist in the sea. That's what the girl Dawkins mentions was referring to, but she clearly didn't understand the natural cause, and you can see that if you look at the original interview. She only knew that the Koran said so, and it was right, because the Koran is right. Her language...

Have we had the Philosophy 1.01 Final Exam joke yet? There was one question: "Why?" If you answered "Why not?", you got a C, if you answered "Because" you got a B, and if you answered "Why, indeed?" you got an A. All other answers failed, except one that read "Fish!", which was awarded the Dean's...

This is from Jason Lisle's "nuclear strength apologetics", and it goes like this: Fish for something that the non-deist will say is absolutely true. This must mean that the non-deist accepts absolute truth. But absolute truth is an abstraction not found in the observable Universe, so to accept th...

Amelia, nobody fits in middle school, except those who never leave it.

The very first thing said was "you need to call a physicist show". The problem is that quantum-level physics does not make intuitive sense and cannot be imparted without mathematical argument - but it still works. It makes predictions that are borne out empirically.

These guys aren't physicists ...

There was of course Carrhae.

I can see steel bolts, nails and trusses holding it together, and it's in a steel cradle. The reason is that even at this scale - less than half size - it would fall apart within days without them. It's not afloat, because it could never stay afloat for a day - seams that long would work open ve...

@AlienshateU That is a lie. I am not a sockpuppet of NorthForkFisherman, and I know nothing of him except that he's rational. I have only ever posted here or anywhere else on my own handle, which is the only one I use. Check the URLs, if you like.

You lie. Didn't Jesus tell you not to lie, and t...

@joestha1 What, in 500 characters or less? It can be done. It has been done. Do some research.

Eyewitness accounts from ancient times of ordered foot versus mounted - eg Arrian and Caesar - is that mostly the foot wins, if it's facing and ready. There were only two uses of scythe chariots against Roman legionaries, in the Mithradates wars, and both failed disastrously.

Cataphracts - heavi...

@SeedsOfHatred No. My apologies if I have misread you. So easy to do, when irony is so difficult to convey in brief writing.

@lunchbox420wb No, you couldn't. I've read the whole context, as well as the all tortured fundamentalist attempts at rationalisation, which are nonsense. I've been reading them for twenty years, as well as the Bible itself, cover to cover. They're errors of translation or of fact, most likely the...

Intelligent design: the assertion that an intelligent agent created an unknown number of unspecified features of unspecified lifeforms. This was done an unspecified amount of time ago by unknown means for an unknown purpose, using a process that left no evidence whatsoever.

Weird fact. I can see the lines of the P-40 and P-47, and the WIldcat, Hellcat and Bearcat in this plane. There's something to this evolution business, there really is.

@devious21 No, I don't disagree with him, nor do I think he made the claim that "we recognise design". Clearly, we don't, if "we" means "rationalists". But if "we" means "people", then many do make that claim, see below. Creationists claim that design can be inferred from high complexity and purp...

If Fred Phelps hates you, you're doing something right, anyway.

@GodsLittlegizmoguy96 Wrong. Water is extremely common. Probably carbon-based life requires liquid water, water being a "universal" solvent. The zone around our sun where water would be liquid under one atmosphere pressure is about twenty million miles across. A heavier planet with a denser atmos...

No, we cannot measure the age of the Earth - 4.56 billion years - by "carbon dating" because the half-life of C-14 is around 5 thousand years, which means that there will not be sufficient C-14 left in the sample after about 50 thousand years. To measure the vastly greater age of early geological...

Weird. They show the British 3.7 in AA guns going forward. These were standard equipment of the British, similar in performance to the German 88mm. But it never occurred to the British to issue an AP round and make the trifling changes that would make that piece effective in the AT role, still le...

How I hope with all my heart that you are right.

Living evidence for Poe's Law. "It is impossible to satirise creationism, because it is impossible to make a statement more absurd that what creationists already believe". Corollary: "No matter how absurd a statement may be, a creationist has said something even more absurd."

Hence, it is impos...

@DarriusisGr8 The laws against rape applied only to Israelite women. Deuteronomy 22 specifies, "virgin of Israel" (v 19) and "purge Israel" (v 22). Rape was not punishable by death, but a fine - paid, get this, to the girl's FATHER! (v 29). The slight ameliorations of slavery you quote (I see you...

Troll. He's just mooning you to get a reaction.

@WizzRacing I think I'm going to leave it there. Nothing more perfect could have been uttered. It's a pristine, picture-perfect example of its type. Ignorance, bigotry, projection and hate delivered with spit-flecked semi-literate bile.

The US is better than that, it truly is, and it deserves be...

@poetgb The Bible isn't clearly true. All that's clear about it is that it was written by human beings long before there was rigorous science, and that it consists mostly of opinions - in the case of 2 Thessalonians, which you are paraphrasing, Paul's, if indeed he wrote it.

If that's speaking a...

@biblicalreality So you don't have a reason, you don't know, you can't say, and you won't even think about it, but you are willing to insult and threaten people just for asking questions.

If there were a God, I'd thank him that you guys aren't in charge any more, and never will be again.

@newfreshreview Like everybody else, I can only know from evidence. In the absence of evidence, it is useless to say that there might be some, someday. The burden of proof still falls on the positive side.

Shorter Gibson: Universities are for rich people.

Ah, Youtube. Where the crazy is but a click away.