---Maybe it's just a function of the specific Atheists I've spoken with in the past, but they have all stated there beliefs in the format of "I believe there is no God", as opposed to "I do not believe there is a God".---
Perhaps. "I don't believe in gods." is easily confused with "I believe no gods," even by atheists themselves. To make matters worse, people who believe there are no gods are ALSO atheists (because if you believe there are no gods, you also fall under the superset of "I don't believe in god").
The best way to think about it is this: when you call someone a theist, you don't necessarily have to know their REASONS for believing in god. They could be rational reasons, faith reasons, habit, whatever. All you have to know is that they do in fact believe in god (and not even WHICH god, at this point!). On the atheist side, a belief that there is definately no god is one possible REASON why one might be an atheist (not believe IN gods): it is a sufficient, but not necessary, condition. Other reasons might be: no reasons TO believe, never even heard the claim (god exists) and so never even considered the possibility of belief, or don't even think the claim (god exists) is linguistically meaningful (which is known as non-cognitivism).
It can be a confusing issue, because "belief" can have more than one meaning: and one of them is "trust in" or "have (personal) faith in." Consider the Greek gods: many people believed in most of the them, but only worshiped a subset of them.
However, in modern usage, "theist" and "atheist" refer to the existence question only. Someone who believes in Allah, but doesn't like Allah, would still be a theist for the purposes of philosophical discussion. To understand why this is so you have to think about the needs of a philosophical discussion: to establish what _objective_ truths can be considered givens between _subjective_ parties. That I don't like Allah isn't particular relevant to any philosophical discussion of objective facts. However, whether or not I believe Allah objectively exists IS very important: if I don't, then a participant in the discussion cannot simply assume the truth of Allah's existence: I can't gratn that premise unless its proven. That's why the terms 'theist" and "atheist" are actually useful: they tell us what a given person's ultimate position is on whether or not they think the proposition "god exists" can be taken as being true, without additional proof.
It's not that hard, but confusing to people that are used to positive definitions only. To say that I am an atheist is akin to saying that I am not a racecar driver.
---Is it the specific belief that there are no gods, or is it no opinion either way?---
You've got it wrong. "There is a god" is a belief. "I don't believe in god" is a description of a person (and an atheist). "No belief" is not the same thing as "I believe no."
---A lack of opinion would make you an Agnostic.---
Some agnostics believe in god: on faith. Agnostic means "without knowledge" i.e.: I don't have any knowledge of god. Atheism/theism concerns _belief_, not knowledge. Agnosticism is not a midpoint between having a belief or not having it. A person who says that they are agnostic can always still be asked "yes yes, but do you believe IN a god?" If yes, then they are a theist. If no, then they are an atheist.
--- firm belief that there are no gods would make you equally as faith based as any other religion as there is no proof one way or the other that there are gods of any kind.---
I agree. However, not all atheists believe THAT there are no gods. Most just do not believe IN any gods, usually because they don't have any reason to believe (like me). Are there gods? Who knows: but I don't BELIEVE in them anymore than I BELIEVE in the existence of life on Venus.
---For a good discussion about life's probability's, read Not By Chance by Dr. Lee Spetner.---
Spetner's discussion of the issue is about as good as someone who claims that helium filled ballon cannot rise, because given random movement, it's very unlikely that it would go straight upwards. You can't simply calculate odds of something as if every process were random. Discussing the potential origins of life is fundamentally about _mechanism_, not mere probability.
No, there is not a "quite huge chance" of that. There isn't a way we could calculate how huge or small the chances of that would be: we don't know the parameters we're even talking about, much less their probability.
Wait a minute: for the microbes to seed the galaxy, how fast would they have had to be moving, and in which direction? They'd still have whatever momentum our solar system hadc(there isn't a lot of friction in space), and they'd only go outwards as fast as the solar wind could push them. Even with several shots of 250,000 years, I'm not sure they could get far enough to reach other solar systems with planets, much less the galaxy.
I have no idea whether it will be successful or fail, and neither do you. Personally, my guess is that decrepit boomers in cities will be the niche market for something like this: as they start to get old and creaky and it takes longer and longer to walk anywhere, this thing will let them scoot to the store and back four times as fast. Whether that sort of market is big enough to support the company really remains to be seen. Here in the US, it seems as if any product that doesn't grab a slice of teen/young adult demographic has a rocky future, regardless of how well it does anywhere else. We'll see.
Latest CNN story says that "While it will still be a year to 18 months before consumers can purchase the Segway,"
So it looks like this is legit. What could be going wrong? Testing poorly in marketing? Needs to be redesigned to be more sexy, or easier to learn how to use?
---And I do consider atheism a form of spirituality, but I suppose that's debatable.---
It sure is. An atheist might or might not have spirituality, but it is not because of his atheism, nor is it "atheist" spirituality. It is HIS spirituality, plain and simple, or the spirituality of some other view or belief. Atheism simply means lack of belief in gods: it isn't a positive affirmative position on which to build or further classify positive positions.
Buzz... no. Buddhism is a religion. So is Taoism. Neither necessarily involve any gods. And indeed, that religions have gods doesn't mean that they think their gods rightfuly determine who lives and who dies. Pantheists don't even necessarily think their god (existence) even has a mind.
---btw, I don't consider atheism a religon. That's like calling anarchy a form of government---
Agreed: but I like this one better: "it's like calling bald a hair color."
---Japan had a long history of agressive & atrocious behavior---
If by "long" you mean more than simply that regime during WWII, then that statement seems wrong. Japan was on the side of the Allies in WWI. In fact, nationalism only exploded in Japan after the WWI Treaty in which Japanese moderates we dealt a telling blow by people like President Wilson, who not only refused to honor their contributions, but rejected Japans' proposed treaty language condemning racism and wars of racial superiority (boy, was THAT shortsighted of us!).
The Japanese moderates tons of face over this, the hardliner racist facists took over, and Japan basically decided that if the West would never accept them as equal partners, and there could be no truce against racial rivalry, then the West wasn't going to be allowed to belittle it anymore, or treat it as trivial.
---It's a good point to note: tit for tat leads to ongoing conflict, while massive retaliation generally gets the message across more succinctly and saves lives in the long run.---
So why wasn't Iraq's gassing of the Kurds, most of whom were rebelling at the time, just good policy? It sent a message (just as we sent a message in Japan) that stopped the fighting in its tracks and certainly saved a lot of lives. Do you at least appreciate how easily this principle could be abused? Do you at least see that, however warped, this was EXACTLY the stated rationale of Osama: that if they caused enough damage in one blow, that we'd reconsider and get out of the Middle East, thus saving them the trouble of having to start a war there?
---Everyone is free to believe whatever thay want, but it does not make it so.---
Sure: but the problem is: this dictum applies to you and your beliefs too. Therein lies the problem.
So what you are syaing is if they compleatly misinterprit the teachings of christ (and I am sorry but nowhere, I mean nowhere can you take mass murder out of his teachings) to call themselves something they are not, we will recognise them by what they are?
Christ doesn't mention lots of things. Reality check here: very few Christians are total pacifists: despite the fact that this is certainly one quite rational interpretation of some of Jesus' teachings. Most Christians believe that violence is quite justified in certain situations, and Christ certain never suggests that killing people is wrong: he even scolds the Pharisees for not stoning to death an unruly child. The OT, further, is filled with instances in which God has the Israelites wipe out entire tribes (killing men, women, and children: though saving some virgins for the soldiers). Given all this to work from, and the danger of "faith" doctrines, it's really not much of a stretch to start believing something (admittedly crazy, but then I find MOST faiths beliefs just as crazy and faith opens the door to almost ANYTHING) along the lines of the idea that the Jews are destroying Germany, and only by killing them can Germany be saved, and even that God has revealed that this is his plan (heck if you feel that God can reveal things to you, who are you to say what other might have felt that God might or might not have revealed to someone else?). Again: don't you know who Martin Luther is? He is the founder of modern Protestantism. If he isn't a Christian, then no one is. And yet he advocated pretty much exactly what the Nazis did on a larger scale (primarily because they had better technology). Because of him and the Catholic church, Jews were presecuted and killed all over Europe for centuries in the name of Christ. If this disturbs you, then perhaps you should think more about what doctrines like revealed teachings allow for.
Find a teaching, prevert it to fit your needs. do not obey/understand it, not necissary, so long as you can twist it to your advantage youre now a member.
Again, your mistake is in declaring yourself the arbiter of what is and is not a perversion of a teaching. Others might well claim that YOUR beliefs are a perversion. I'm not saying that one is right and one is wrong, or even that both are right or both are wrong: simply pointing out the problem inherent in any contentious definition. You want to simply declare something a "big pile": but the problem is, to do so, you have to beg the question in simply assuming your own interpretation is correct.
No. Deists believe in a separate Creator god who then has no interest or interaction in its creation. Einstein would be better termed a pantheist: one who's god IS existence/the universe.
"Creationist" usually refers to the idea that evolution is wrong. People who believe that god created the world are not out of line with evolutionary theory and don't have any special name ("mainstream Christians?"), nor are those that think god directed evolution (often called theistic-evolution).
Of course, there ARE people who believe that literal creationism and evolution are true, which is quite contradictory, but works to them under the idea that the litteral truth of the Bible and the truth of reality are two different worlds, usually with the litteral Bible world being more important to our spirits and the normal reality to our bodies.
It's that it's not something that leads to a modern invention people can hold in their hands and see working.
Well, that may be why its not as easy to allay their fears, but I also think that evolution is pretty singular in terms of the way it impacts what's considered a key and core story in the Bible. Also remember that until Darwin, there had never been such a serious and sustained blow to the idea Biblical literalism: most people didn't even know that such a thing was even possible, and evolution took the wind out of a lot of people. So historically, it's been the herald-bell of the serious split between religious claims about factual reality, and science, and probably gets a lot of the focus from that.
These Scriptures developed in a complex and scholarly rabbinical tradition, they were not simply handed down in the desert to the slaves. The way were interpreted by this tradition for millenia was as litteral days, and the Sabbath system wasn't merely a teaching tool: it was a direct outgrowth of that belief.
They got the milk, as they needed. If you need divine proof of this, you can study some of what the Messiah himself said. Paul has some great things to say about it as well.
This, of course, is the Christian interpretation of the Scriptures: the Jews see things quite differently, with the Christian re-interpretation seeming to be a very sloppy reading: yet another instance of people who had already decided what the truth would be, and had to massage the evidence around to justify it. (Which of Abraham's sons was which, Paul?)
I believe that all truth is consistent with itself.
And, apparently, you've already decided what the truth is, in this situation: that the text is true: all that has to be done is root around for the right way to make it true.
If substantiated findings contradict a certain interpretation, of course I'm going to look for viable alternatives.
There's a big difference between reading a text for its meaning, and "making" it say whatever you need it to. If the plain reading is wrong, then alternate meanings are really just a way of hedging ones bets (just like vague horoscopes). If evolution is proven false, no scientist is going to say "well, the natural selection a really just a very brilliant metaphor for the work that the alien designers did, and macromutation sings their glory." They are just going to admit that they got it wrong, and talk about the actual truth in plain terms.
I think the other poster answered your concerns fairly well, and I still think you're confused. The idea that transcription errors (which are only one means by which new genomes come to being) need to create information is sort of beside the point. I suppose they could, but that's simply not what evolution is talking about. "Information," insofar as we are talking about information theory, only really enters into the picture when selection pulls out certain slice of psuedo-random variation. Only then is some sort of filter (what's needed for information) applied.
The book "Tower of Babel" touches on this. Evolution threatens a core idea: that humans are special. The other sciences may threaten Biblical claims (like modern language theory certain threatens the "Tower of Babel" story), but none are as threatening as taking away the idea of special creation and special design.
An unrepentant (in his heart not from his mouth) sinner is not a Christian, I am sorry if this seems harsh but it is the truth.
Again, you're just assuming beforehand what is an is not a sin.
The Nazi's were unrepentant sinners (Murder, is the easiest to point out). They did not allow Jesus to move them, they moved themselves and were not at all "christ like"
Whether or not they fit your idea of what "christlike" is, is beside the point. I am not trying to draw conclusions about what all Christians are like, or what the "true" Christian ideas are. I call them Christians because they had a belief system based off of their understanding of the teachings of Christ and the meaning of the religion. I don't know what other possible definition one could have of "Christian" that would not simply beg the question of who's view is right.
If I call myself a buddhist but live in the world tied to physical posestions more than hummanity it does not make me one, if I call myself a daoist and do all the ritual but think its all horse crap it does not make me one.
Again: true, but irrelevant. These particular Christians were not violating their beliefs: rather they believed something DIFFERENT than you or I in the first place.
I think you're a bit confused, if that's what you were really talking about. This is a rather ancient creationist claim, and indeed a rather silly one. An increase in variation is itself an increase in "information" content if one means unique sequences. But increasing "information" in terms of information theory is the result of selection: not of mutation itself.
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---Maybe it's just a function of the specific Atheists I've spoken with in the past, but they have all stated there beliefs in the format of "I believe there is no God", as opposed to "I do not believe there is a God".---
Perhaps. "I don't believe in gods." is easily confused with "I believe no gods," even by atheists themselves. To make matters worse, people who believe there are no gods are ALSO atheists (because if you believe there are no gods, you also fall under the superset of "I don't believe in god").
The best way to think about it is this: when you call someone a theist, you don't necessarily have to know their REASONS for believing in god. They could be rational reasons, faith reasons, habit, whatever. All you have to know is that they do in fact believe in god (and not even WHICH god, at this point!). On the atheist side, a belief that there is definately no god is one possible REASON why one might be an atheist (not believe IN gods): it is a sufficient, but not necessary, condition. Other reasons might be: no reasons TO believe, never even heard the claim (god exists) and so never even considered the possibility of belief, or don't even think the claim (god exists) is linguistically meaningful (which is known as non-cognitivism).
It can be a confusing issue, because "belief" can have more than one meaning: and one of them is "trust in" or "have (personal) faith in." Consider the Greek gods: many people believed in most of the them, but only worshiped a subset of them.
However, in modern usage, "theist" and "atheist" refer to the existence question only. Someone who believes in Allah, but doesn't like Allah, would still be a theist for the purposes of philosophical discussion.
To understand why this is so you have to think about the needs of a philosophical discussion: to establish what _objective_ truths can be considered givens between _subjective_ parties. That I don't like Allah isn't particular relevant to any philosophical discussion of objective facts. However, whether or not I believe Allah objectively exists IS very important: if I don't, then a participant in the discussion cannot simply assume the truth of Allah's existence: I can't gratn that premise unless its proven. That's why the terms 'theist" and "atheist" are actually useful: they tell us what a given person's ultimate position is on whether or not they think the proposition "god exists" can be taken as being true, without additional proof.
---Umm, how does that work?---
It's not that hard, but confusing to people that are used to positive definitions only. To say that I am an atheist is akin to saying that I am not a racecar driver.
---Is it the specific belief that there are no gods, or is it no opinion either way?---
You've got it wrong. "There is a god" is a belief. "I don't believe in god" is a description of a person (and an atheist). "No belief" is not the same thing as "I believe no."
---A lack of opinion would make you an Agnostic.---
Some agnostics believe in god: on faith. Agnostic means "without knowledge" i.e.: I don't have any knowledge of god. Atheism/theism concerns _belief_, not knowledge. Agnosticism is not a midpoint between having a belief or not having it. A person who says that they are agnostic can always still be asked "yes yes, but do you believe IN a god?" If yes, then they are a theist. If no, then they are an atheist.
--- firm belief that there are no gods would make you equally as faith based as any other religion as there is no proof one way or the other that there are gods of any kind.---
I agree. However, not all atheists believe THAT there are no gods. Most just do not believe IN any gods, usually because they don't have any reason to believe (like me). Are there gods? Who knows: but I don't BELIEVE in them anymore than I BELIEVE in the existence of life on Venus.
---For a good discussion about life's probability's, read Not By Chance by Dr. Lee Spetner.---
Spetner's discussion of the issue is about as good as someone who claims that helium filled ballon cannot rise, because given random movement, it's very unlikely that it would go straight upwards. You can't simply calculate odds of something as if every process were random. Discussing the potential origins of life is fundamentally about _mechanism_, not mere probability.
---Remember that in a billion years--- Wait: didn't you say we go around once every 250,000 years? That woud be a lot more than 4 times around.
No, there is not a "quite huge chance" of that. There isn't a way we could calculate how huge or small the chances of that would be: we don't know the parameters we're even talking about, much less their probability.
Wait a minute: for the microbes to seed the galaxy, how fast would they have had to be moving, and in which direction? They'd still have whatever momentum our solar system hadc(there isn't a lot of friction in space), and they'd only go outwards as fast as the solar wind could push them. Even with several shots of 250,000 years, I'm not sure they could get far enough to reach other solar systems with planets, much less the galaxy.
These superhero's take the cake!!! Bear Suit is my favorite.
Why can't I slander them?
That's some scary scary stuff. Is any of it true?
I have no idea whether it will be successful or fail, and neither do you. Personally, my guess is that decrepit boomers in cities will be the niche market for something like this: as they start to get old and creaky and it takes longer and longer to walk anywhere, this thing will let them scoot to the store and back four times as fast. Whether that sort of market is big enough to support the company really remains to be seen. Here in the US, it seems as if any product that doesn't grab a slice of teen/young adult demographic has a rocky future, regardless of how well it does anywhere else. We'll see.
CNN disagrees 18 months to a year. That's what they said LAST year.
Latest CNN story says that "While it will still be a year to 18 months before consumers can purchase the Segway,"
So it looks like this is legit. What could be going wrong? Testing poorly in marketing? Needs to be redesigned to be more sexy, or easier to learn how to use?
---And I do consider atheism a form of spirituality, but I suppose that's debatable.---
It sure is. An atheist might or might not have spirituality, but it is not because of his atheism, nor is it "atheist" spirituality. It is HIS spirituality, plain and simple, or the spirituality of some other view or belief. Atheism simply means lack of belief in gods: it isn't a positive affirmative position on which to build or further classify positive positions.
---*every* religion believes in a god,---
Buzz... no. Buddhism is a religion. So is Taoism. Neither necessarily involve any gods. And indeed, that religions have gods doesn't mean that they think their gods rightfuly determine who lives and who dies. Pantheists don't even necessarily think their god (existence) even has a mind.
---btw, I don't consider atheism a religon. That's like calling anarchy a form of government---
Agreed: but I like this one better: "it's like calling bald a hair color."
---Japan had a long history of agressive & atrocious behavior---
If by "long" you mean more than simply that regime during WWII, then that statement seems wrong. Japan was on the side of the Allies in WWI. In fact, nationalism only exploded in Japan after the WWI Treaty in which Japanese moderates we dealt a telling blow by people like President Wilson, who not only refused to honor their contributions, but rejected Japans' proposed treaty language condemning racism and wars of racial superiority (boy, was THAT shortsighted of us!).
The Japanese moderates tons of face over this, the hardliner racist facists took over, and Japan basically decided that if the West would never accept them as equal partners, and there could be no truce against racial rivalry, then the West wasn't going to be allowed to belittle it anymore, or treat it as trivial.
---It's a good point to note: tit for tat leads to ongoing conflict, while massive retaliation generally gets the message across more succinctly and saves lives in the long run.---
So why wasn't Iraq's gassing of the Kurds, most of whom were rebelling at the time, just good policy? It sent a message (just as we sent a message in Japan) that stopped the fighting in its tracks and certainly saved a lot of lives. Do you at least appreciate how easily this principle could be abused? Do you at least see that, however warped, this was EXACTLY the stated rationale of Osama: that if they caused enough damage in one blow, that we'd reconsider and get out of the Middle East, thus saving them the trouble of having to start a war there?
---Everyone is free to believe whatever thay want, but it does not make it so.---
Sure: but the problem is: this dictum applies to you and your beliefs too. Therein lies the problem.
So what you are syaing is if they compleatly misinterprit the teachings of christ (and I am sorry but nowhere, I mean nowhere can you take mass murder out of his teachings) to call themselves something they are not, we will recognise them by what they are?
Christ doesn't mention lots of things. Reality check here: very few Christians are total pacifists: despite the fact that this is certainly one quite rational interpretation of some of Jesus' teachings. Most Christians believe that violence is quite justified in certain situations, and Christ certain never suggests that killing people is wrong: he even scolds the Pharisees for not stoning to death an unruly child. The OT, further, is filled with instances in which God has the Israelites wipe out entire tribes (killing men, women, and children: though saving some virgins for the soldiers). Given all this to work from, and the danger of "faith" doctrines, it's really not much of a stretch to start believing something (admittedly crazy, but then I find MOST faiths beliefs just as crazy and faith opens the door to almost ANYTHING) along the lines of the idea that the Jews are destroying Germany, and only by killing them can Germany be saved, and even that God has revealed that this is his plan (heck if you feel that God can reveal things to you, who are you to say what other might have felt that God might or might not have revealed to someone else?).
Again: don't you know who Martin Luther is? He is the founder of modern Protestantism. If he isn't a Christian, then no one is. And yet he advocated pretty much exactly what the Nazis did on a larger scale (primarily because they had better technology). Because of him and the Catholic church, Jews were presecuted and killed all over Europe for centuries in the name of Christ. If this disturbs you, then perhaps you should think more about what doctrines like revealed teachings allow for.
Find a teaching, prevert it to fit your needs. do not obey/understand it, not necissary, so long as you can twist it to your advantage youre now a member.
Again, your mistake is in declaring yourself the arbiter of what is and is not a perversion of a teaching. Others might well claim that YOUR beliefs are a perversion. I'm not saying that one is right and one is wrong, or even that both are right or both are wrong: simply pointing out the problem inherent in any contentious definition. You want to simply declare something a "big pile": but the problem is, to do so, you have to beg the question in simply assuming your own interpretation is correct.
No. Deists believe in a separate Creator god who then has no interest or interaction in its creation. Einstein would be better termed a pantheist: one who's god IS existence/the universe.
"Creationist" usually refers to the idea that evolution is wrong. People who believe that god created the world are not out of line with evolutionary theory and don't have any special name ("mainstream Christians?"), nor are those that think god directed evolution (often called theistic-evolution).
Of course, there ARE people who believe that literal creationism and evolution are true, which is quite contradictory, but works to them under the idea that the litteral truth of the Bible and the truth of reality are two different worlds, usually with the litteral Bible world being more important to our spirits and the normal reality to our bodies.
It's that it's not something that leads to a modern invention people can hold in their hands and see working. Well, that may be why its not as easy to allay their fears, but I also think that evolution is pretty singular in terms of the way it impacts what's considered a key and core story in the Bible. Also remember that until Darwin, there had never been such a serious and sustained blow to the idea Biblical literalism: most people didn't even know that such a thing was even possible, and evolution took the wind out of a lot of people. So historically, it's been the herald-bell of the serious split between religious claims about factual reality, and science, and probably gets a lot of the focus from that.
These Scriptures developed in a complex and scholarly rabbinical tradition, they were not simply handed down in the desert to the slaves. The way were interpreted by this tradition for millenia was as litteral days, and the Sabbath system wasn't merely a teaching tool: it was a direct outgrowth of that belief.
They got the milk, as they needed. If you need divine proof of this, you can study some of what the Messiah himself said. Paul has some great things to say about it as well.
This, of course, is the Christian interpretation of the Scriptures: the Jews see things quite differently, with the Christian re-interpretation seeming to be a very sloppy reading: yet another instance of people who had already decided what the truth would be, and had to massage the evidence around to justify it. (Which of Abraham's sons was which, Paul?)
I believe that all truth is consistent with itself.
And, apparently, you've already decided what the truth is, in this situation: that the text is true: all that has to be done is root around for the right way to make it true.
If substantiated findings contradict a certain interpretation, of course I'm going to look for viable alternatives.
There's a big difference between reading a text for its meaning, and "making" it say whatever you need it to. If the plain reading is wrong, then alternate meanings are really just a way of hedging ones bets (just like vague horoscopes). If evolution is proven false, no scientist is going to say "well, the natural selection a really just a very brilliant metaphor for the work that the alien designers did, and macromutation sings their glory." They are just going to admit that they got it wrong, and talk about the actual truth in plain terms.
I think the other poster answered your concerns fairly well, and I still think you're confused. The idea that transcription errors (which are only one means by which new genomes come to being) need to create information is sort of beside the point. I suppose they could, but that's simply not what evolution is talking about. "Information," insofar as we are talking about information theory, only really enters into the picture when selection pulls out certain slice of psuedo-random variation. Only then is some sort of filter (what's needed for information) applied.
The book "Tower of Babel" touches on this. Evolution threatens a core idea: that humans are special. The other sciences may threaten Biblical claims (like modern language theory certain threatens the "Tower of Babel" story), but none are as threatening as taking away the idea of special creation and special design.
An unrepentant (in his heart not from his mouth) sinner is not a Christian, I am sorry if this seems harsh but it is the truth.
Again, you're just assuming beforehand what is an is not a sin.
The Nazi's were unrepentant sinners (Murder, is the easiest to point out). They did not allow Jesus to move them, they moved themselves and were not at all "christ like"
Whether or not they fit your idea of what "christlike" is, is beside the point. I am not trying to draw conclusions about what all Christians are like, or what the "true" Christian ideas are. I call them Christians because they had a belief system based off of their understanding of the teachings of Christ and the meaning of the religion. I don't know what other possible definition one could have of "Christian" that would not simply beg the question of who's view is right.
If I call myself a buddhist but live in the world tied to physical posestions more than hummanity it does not make me one, if I call myself a daoist and do all the ritual but think its all horse crap it does not make me one.
Again: true, but irrelevant. These particular Christians were not violating their beliefs: rather they believed something DIFFERENT than you or I in the first place.
I think you're a bit confused, if that's what you were really talking about. This is a rather ancient creationist claim, and indeed a rather silly one. An increase in variation is itself an increase in "information" content if one means unique sequences. But increasing "information" in terms of information theory is the result of selection: not of mutation itself.
Here you go