I'm sure many of you have your own opinions on this subject, but seeing as how respectful everyone was in the thread on Mormonism, I figured it would be nice to explore some other religious perspectives in a somewhat respectable way. Before I begin, I do not adhere to Young Earth Creationism, but that does not mean I am still not curious about the logic behind it.
First, for those who don't know, the definition...
Young Earth Creationism: the religious belief that the Universe, Earth and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of the Abrahamic God during a relatively short period, sometime between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago. Its primary adherents are those Christians and Jews who, using a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative as a basis, believe that God created the Earth in six 24-hour days.
Okay, so my roommate believes that the Earth is young, among other things (he also thinks there are only really about 35 kinds of dinosaurs, that carbon dating and other dating methods are false, and that the bible is supposed to be taken literally). He knows that I'm an evolutionist, but that I also claim to be a Christian, and it bothers him because he doesn't think it's possible to be both (obviously, I disagree). What do you guys think about this way of thinking? What can I say to someone like this? Should I even bother defending myself?
Maybe I am missing something about this belief system, but I personally don't see anything wrong with believing in both evolution and God. After all, why can't one be the answer to "how" and the other be the answer to "why"? I have always viewed the story of Creation as something of a metaphor or tall tale, used to explain something that had no answer. However, as I was told recently, if you can't accept that, then how can you accept the rest of the Bible? I don't really have an answer for that.
Also, how do these people disregard scientific studies and physical proof of the age of the Universe? How do they explain the many other dating methods used besides Carbon dating that all give roughly the same numbers? How do they explain the fact that galaxies of stars that are millions of light years away require millions of years for their light to reach us (we wouldn't be able to see the light from those stars if the Universe was only 10 thousand years old, right?)? What about the fossil record?
Anyway, some feedback would be most appreciated. I'd like to see how others feel about this, despite your background.
Posted by RivalOfTheRose (Member # 11535) on :
You can respond by saying that your own personal faith provides every comfort that you need, and helps you to be the best person that you can. I believe everyone finds whatever "level" of faith they need to.
Posted by Wingracer (Member # 12293) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jeff C.: Also, how do these people disregard scientific studies and physical proof of the age of the Universe? How do they explain the many other dating methods used besides Carbon dating that all give roughly the same numbers? How do they explain the fact that galaxies of stars that are millions of light years away require millions of years for their light to reach us (we wouldn't be able to see the light from those stars if the Universe was only 10 thousand years old, right?)? What about the fossil record?
Easy. They don't care about any of that. It's all just a vast conspiracy by satan or muslims or freemasons or whoever to undermine true religion and send us all to hell.
I want to be respectful, I truly do. Despite being an atheist, I have a healthy interest and respect for most religions and their faithful but there are a few I just can't stand and young earth creationists are one of them. I guess for some, ignorance really is bliss.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
How could an all seeing, all knowing all powerful God could be comrehended by the likes of us, a sinful, fallen race?
Any time your roomate wants to try and "explain the one and only truth about God" just remind him it is prideful to think one understands what is above his pay grade.
And pride cometh before a fall.
Then push him down.
:-)
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
My cousin believes in YEC.
We've banned the topic at Thanksgiving.
That's how you deal with it.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Young Earth Creationism (or just Creationism in general) acts as the primary case study in how religious beliefs tend to be crafted into gaps of ambiguity in the workings of the universe, and are a study in what happens when religious claims become contested (and end up in a war of cultural attrition) by overwhelming scientific evidence and human knowledge. In even just living memory, it's been very telling.
There's one question I'm always interested in hearing in general, when I'm ever in a situation in which it is being in any way asked of me, and that's this: why should I respect creationist beliefs? Why should I give them any sense of 'equal time' or respectful standing in an argument about biological origins or the age of the earth?
Posted by Aros (Member # 4873) on :
To paraphrase the Bhagavad Gita: if God is infinite and man cannot understand infinity, how can he understand God?
So, an omnipotent being (at least from our perspective) creates a world. It wants to deliver instruction to the people who populate the planet in the form of a gospel. This gospel will have to be durable and last through the ages. It will have to incite rigorous study among the learned, but be relatable to the ignorant.
God had one shot to create a single book that would create AN OUTCOME. It needed to have a relevant message for the people thousands of years ago, as well as a framework for modern theology.
Is this possible if the book is 100% literal? Our understanding is extremely limited. Think of trying to explain particle physics to a five year old. Will you have to simplify? Use metaphor and analogy? Imagine if you are speaking to a five year old across a thousand years and having your words translated three times before they hear it!?!?!
If you're a believer, the creation of a working bible is a fantastic feat. It has a lot of things that need to be accomplished in a single, immutable form. To believe that it can be the literal end-all-and-be-all seems (to me) a very deluded position. I'd think that prayer, study, and discussion are necessary to decipher anything from it.
The bible is meant for the masses. I often wonder what a separate gospel made for the intellectual elite would look like, in an age where everyone is literate, if God could have created one in English with succinct word selection.
I think that the LDS church has it right. Read, pray, and think. The spirit will guide you. There's room for multiple interpretations. But . . . there's no way that the world is only 10,000 years old. Unless the planet is made from recycled bits, that is, with soil of billions of years of creatures and recycled humans.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:There is knowledge to be had, after all, about the earth, about the sky, about the other elements of this world, about the movements and revolutions or even the magnitude and distances of the constellations, about the predictable eclipses of moon and sun, about the cycles of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, fruits, stones and everything else of this kind. And it frequently happens that even non-Christians will have knowledge of this sort in a way that they can substantiate with scientific arguments or experiments. Now it is quiet disgraceful and disastrous, something to be on one’s guard against at all costs, that they should ever hear Christians spouting what they claim our Christian literature has to say on these topics, and talking such nonsense that they can scarcely contain their laughter when they see them to be toto caelo, as the saying goes, wide of the mark. And what is so vexing is not that misguided people should be laughed at, as that our authors should be assumed by outsiders to have held such views and, to the great detriment of those about whose salvation we are so concerned, should be written off and consigned to the waste paper basket as so many ignoramuses. . . . It is impossible to say what trouble and grief such rash, self-assured know-alls cause the more cautious and experienced brothers and sisters. Whenever they find themselves challenged and taken to task for some shaky and false theory of theirs by people who do not recognize the authority of our books, they try to defend what they have aired with the most frivolous temerity and patent falsehood by bringing forward these same sacred books to justify it. Or they even quote from memory many things said in them which they imagine will provide them with valid evidence, not understanding either what they are saying, or the matters on which they are asserting themselves.
St. Augustine of Hippo. Fourth Century C.E.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:God had one shot to create a single book that would create AN OUTCOME.
Not to quibble, but it seems to me that if the goal was to create a given outcome, God could have used a number of mechanisms that would not only have not been books but could have been significantly superior to books. Consider an immortal, indestructible unicorn that would teleport to anyone with a question and answer that question immediately in the person's native language. Much better than a book, to my mind.
Posted by Aros (Member # 4873) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:God had one shot to create a single book that would create AN OUTCOME.
Not to quibble, but it seems to me that if the goal was to create a given outcome, God could have used a number of mechanisms that would not only have not been books but could have been significantly superior to books. Consider an immortal, indestructible unicorn that would teleport to anyone with a question and answer that question immediately in the person's native language. Much better than a book, to my mind.
Is it unfeasible to assume that God, though powerful, is bound by the same laws of physics that the rest of us are? Using the word "deity", we are merely implying some form of higher-level intelligence. That doesn't necessary mean he's some dude sitting in a cloud somewhere.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Is it unfeasible to assume that God, though powerful, is bound by the same laws of physics that the rest of us are?
For a given definition of "God," yes. But even if you limit me to currently-known technologies, omniscience, and immortality, I can come up with something better than "poorly translated book."
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:God had one shot to create a single book that would create AN OUTCOME.
Not to quibble, but it seems to me that if the goal was to create a given outcome, God could have used a number of mechanisms that would not only have not been books but could have been significantly superior to books. Consider an immortal, indestructible unicorn that would teleport to anyone with a question and answer that question immediately in the person's native language. Much better than a book, to my mind.
There are most definitely better ways of transmitting facts and creating certain outcomes. And a Magic 8 Ball unicorn would be pretty awesome and entertaining to say the least.
But what if getting all of the facts straight is not the main purpose, in this life? If God wanted to just make sure we have all of the right facts, He has done a pretty poor job. Information from God (if you believe in Him) comes piecemeal and through a lot of ambiguity.
In LDS theology, we all lived with God before this life and the most simple among us knew a hell of a lot more than the most brilliant of us on this earth. Knowledge is easy to transmit and retain. It is simply a matter of effective delivery and the mental hardware to comprehend and remember the information. If God is incapable of designing a better brain than what we currently have, then He isn't much of a God.
But what if He made us this way on purpose, for a good reason? There is an LDS scripture in the Book of Mormon that says:
"And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."
Here, God states that He gave us weaknesses on purpose. He designed us to be forgetful, and ignorant at times, and subject to death & illness, and subject to fear, and a whole list of other weaknesses I could mention. Now, if this is the case either God really is a cosmic jerk who likes to burn ants with magnifying glasses, or He has some higher, vastly important purpose in mind.
From an LDS perspective, the growth that we obtain from working through weaknesses and uncertainty, having to rely on God for spiritually ambiguous guidance, remaining humble, living a life where we have forgotten everything from before, and dealing with death & pain leads to growth for our eternal spirits that is indispensable in the eternal scheme of things, but which sucks balls in this life.
And Mormons believe that we all chose to come to this life and subject ourselves to these conditions. Of course, being told "life will suck" and having to live through it are two different things. Thus, this life is a sifting time to show who will strive to be good and love others at all costs, and who will decide it isn't worth it, and everyone in between.
If you don't understand that God is trying to raise beings like Himself, who truly love and serve and create and enjoy life out of their own will, then this life makes no sense at all. This life is not the time to become experts at theory and skills. It is not a time for clear answers. It is not a time for peace and utopia. It is not the place where our deepest dreams are fulfilled. It is a time to show our true colors and develop internal strength of character in a place where the only reason to truly do good things is because you love good for its own sake.
You don't have any guarantee of an eternal reward to motivate you, because we can't know for a certainty that there is life after death. You can't do good because you remember how great life was with God, because you have forgotten that. You can't do good because your ma and pop told you what you should believe, because when you get older you are faced with the fact that you must either find spiritual knowledge for yourself (a mature, lifelong, challenging task) or be a blind follower or give up on the whole spiritual life as a farce for ignorant people.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Oh, I have no problem with the Problem of Evil being answered with either, "God doesn't have the power to solve this" or "God allows it to exist to teach us some specific lesson that cannot be learned any other way, for some unknown reason." I personally find both of those to be sort of cop-outty, but they're potential resolutions to the paradox and perfectly internally valid within Mormon dogma.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aros:
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:God had one shot to create a single book that would create AN OUTCOME.
Not to quibble, but it seems to me that if the goal was to create a given outcome, God could have used a number of mechanisms that would not only have not been books but could have been significantly superior to books. Consider an immortal, indestructible unicorn that would teleport to anyone with a question and answer that question immediately in the person's native language. Much better than a book, to my mind.
Is it unfeasible to assume that God, though powerful, is bound by the same laws of physics that the rest of us are? Using the word "deity", we are merely implying some form of higher-level intelligence. That doesn't necessary mean he's some dude sitting in a cloud somewhere.
When I say "God" I am certainly not merely implying some form of higher-level intelligence.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Oh, I have no problem with the Problem of Evil being answered with either, "God doesn't have the power to solve this" or "God allows it to exist to teach us some specific lesson that cannot be learned any other way, for some unknown reason." I personally find both of those to be sort of cop-outty, but they're potential resolutions to the paradox and perfectly internally valid within Mormon dogma.
I've never been able to accept those coinciding with a belief in a God that intervenes in human affairs. In that case, you are still left with a God that will say, answer your prayers to help you get through a rough day at work, but not lift a finger to stop an infant from being raped to death, a God that communicates with his follows all the time, but never says, "Hey, torturing people in my name is wrong.".
Posted by Aros (Member # 4873) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by Aros:
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:God had one shot to create a single book that would create AN OUTCOME.
Not to quibble, but it seems to me that if the goal was to create a given outcome, God could have used a number of mechanisms that would not only have not been books but could have been significantly superior to books. Consider an immortal, indestructible unicorn that would teleport to anyone with a question and answer that question immediately in the person's native language. Much better than a book, to my mind.
Is it unfeasible to assume that God, though powerful, is bound by the same laws of physics that the rest of us are? Using the word "deity", we are merely implying some form of higher-level intelligence. That doesn't necessary mean he's some dude sitting in a cloud somewhere.
When I say "God" I am certainly not merely implying some form of higher-level intelligence.
From the perspective of an agnostic, it is a concrete supposition that God is SOME KIND of intelligence, not necessarily bound by any existing dogma.
From the perspective of a believer, I contend that one cannot know the true boundaries, limits, or nature of God. Even if our beliefs are close to the truth, they can only be hopelessly incomplete and simplified.
Posted by DustinDopps (Member # 12640) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky:
quote:Oh, I have no problem with the Problem of Evil being answered with either, "God doesn't have the power to solve this" or "God allows it to exist to teach us some specific lesson that cannot be learned any other way, for some unknown reason." I personally find both of those to be sort of cop-outty, but they're potential resolutions to the paradox and perfectly internally valid within Mormon dogma.
I've never been able to accept those coinciding with a belief in a God that intervenes in human affairs. In that case, you are still left with a God that will say, answer your prayers to help you get through a rough day at work, but not lift a finger to stop an infant from being raped to death, a God that communicates with his follows all the time, but never says, "Hey, torturing people in my name is wrong.".
From a human perspective, what you have said makes sense. We see cause and effect, and we feel empathy for other humans.
But imagine it this way instead: I have just made cookies for my kids to eat. I turn off the oven, and put the cookie sheet on the top of the stove for it to cool. I clearly tell the kids "This is really hot. Don't touch it. I'll give you a cookie when they have cooled off." Then I lock the baby gate in place to keep them out of the kitchen.
My phone rings and I go to pick it up in the other room, and my 2-year-old immediately drags a chair over next to the baby gate and hops over it. She reaches up to grab a cookie and burns her hand on the cookie sheet, causing her to immediately burst into tears and wail in pain.
Who is at fault?
I was the one who turned the oven on and made the cookie sheet hot. So I'm clearly a bad parent for introducing something painful into the child's environment, right? Even though my intentions were good, and I was making something good for my children to enjoy, I didn't stop bad things from happening. I could have duct-taped my kids to some chairs to make sure they couldn't get to the kitchen. I could have installed a heavy security door to block off the kitchen. I could have done 1,000 things to keep my kid from getting burned.
But isn't the kid at fault too? She was told "Don't touch this" and an obstacle was put in her way, but she didn't care. She wanted what she wanted, and she disobeyed me. Is it really fair for her to say "Daddy burned me!!!"?
My 2-year-old has no concept of how an oven works. She doesn't understand how cookies are made. She doesn't know about nutrition or chemistry or thermodynamics. And if I tried to explain those things to her, she wouldn't understand.
I view God the same way. He wants us to be happy serving him. And he warned us "Don't do these things if you want a good life." But we rebel and do what we want anyway, and bring sadness and pain upon ourselves. If He tried to explain the *why's* of pain and tragedy, we wouldn't be able to understand because our knowledge base is limited. But just as the heat is necessary to make the cookies (even though some people prefer raw dough...), we couldn't learn to serve God without pain and loss.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:Originally posted by DustinDopps: But imagine it this way instead: I have just made cookies for my kids to eat. I turn off the oven, and put the cookie sheet on the top of the stove for it to cool. I clearly tell the kids "This is really hot. Don't touch it. I'll give you a cookie when they have cooled off." Then I lock the baby gate in place to keep them out of the kitchen.
My phone rings and I go to pick it up in the other room, and my 2-year-old immediately drags a chair over next to the baby gate and hops over it. She reaches up to grab a cookie and burns her hand on the cookie sheet, causing her to immediately burst into tears and wail in pain.
Who is at fault?
You are. Without comment on the theological validity of your example, if you leave something dangerous where a 2 year old can get at it, you are at fault.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
DD, I'm not sure how that was intended to be a response to what I said. Could you explain?
Posted by Aros (Member # 4873) on :
quote:Originally posted by dkw:
quote:Originally posted by DustinDopps: But imagine it this way instead: I have just made cookies for my kids to eat. I turn off the oven, and put the cookie sheet on the top of the stove for it to cool. I clearly tell the kids "This is really hot. Don't touch it. I'll give you a cookie when they have cooled off." Then I lock the baby gate in place to keep them out of the kitchen.
My phone rings and I go to pick it up in the other room, and my 2-year-old immediately drags a chair over next to the baby gate and hops over it. She reaches up to grab a cookie and burns her hand on the cookie sheet, causing her to immediately burst into tears and wail in pain.
Who is at fault?
You are. Without comment on the theological validity of your example, if you leave something dangerous where a 2 year old can get at it, you are at fault.
So. . . . a toddler can drown in a toilet. Is every parent who lives in the civilized world guilty of attempted murder? Culpability is based on intent or negligence. This is neither.
It's a cold, cruel universe. A loving God doesn't need to protect us. That's why we're given agency.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Leaving hot pans where an unsupervised 2 year old can reach them, or letting a toddler play unsupervised in a bathroom is negligence.
I already said I'm not commenting on the theological analogy.
Posted by DustinDopps (Member # 12640) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: DD, I'm not sure how that was intended to be a response to what I said. Could you explain?
Sorry, Squicky. I felt like I was saying too much at once and didn't actually get to my response to you to avoid rambling on and on.
When my kid burns her fingers, it is a terrible thing. It admittedly isn't as bad as a child being raped, but to the 2-year-old living with the pain, it is horrific. All she knows and cares about at the time is "Why does it hurt so bad?" and "Why did this happen?"
I can tell her "It will feel better soon," but she can't grasp that idea. To her, she lives in this terrible moment of pain and fear. She doesn't know that this is one experience in an entire lifetime of experiences and that when she is older she won't even remember the pain from her burned finger.
I feel that all human suffering is the same way. To us, living here and now, there are horrific, evil, vile things. Life is unfair. People suffer while other people live a life of luxury based on that suffering. It is tragic.
But it is momentary. Since I believe in eternal life, our time on earth is just an eye blink. All human suffering is important, yes, and we need to minimize it out of basic human decency, but it will also be forgotten like the burned finger. To a Christian, the Bible promise of "no tears, no sorrow, no pain, no hunger" in heaven makes this brief mortal life somewhat inconsequential.
(And I know that opens up a whole new can of worms. The analogy is far from perfect.)
Posted by DustinDopps (Member # 12640) on :
quote:Originally posted by dkw: Leaving hot pans where an unsupervised 2 year old can reach them, or letting a toddler play unsupervised in a bathroom is negligence.
I already said I'm not commenting on the theological analogy.
I assume you aren't a parent. 2-year-olds are endlessly creative when it comes to mischief and I have yet to meet someone who was able to completely baby-proof a house.
Plus, the analogy could easily change: my 12-year-old went into the kitchen to get a drink and left the gate open, which allowed her sister access to the stovetop. Surely that's not my fault too...
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
DD, I'm still not entirely sure how that tracks. Do you believe that God intervenes in human affairs?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:I assume you aren't a parent. 2-year-olds are endlessly creative when it comes to mischief and I have yet to meet someone who was able to completely baby-proof a house.
She is a parent (edit: I'm pretty sure, anyway). I am too. The examples you gave were of negligent parents who are to blame for their child's injuries and deaths.
[ October 15, 2013, 03:08 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
Posted by DustinDopps (Member # 12640) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: DD, I'm still not entirely sure how that tracks. Do you believe that God intervenes in human affairs?
I personally believe that God intervenes when a righteous person prays for something good to happen. Yes. But I think most "Christians" are selfish and pray for the wrong reasons. "God, help me win the lottery and I'll give half the money to the poor" is still a selfish prayer.
My response was a bit more abstract, I know. But I still think it doesn't really matter if or why God intervenes because as humans we could never fully grasp his reasoning. Why save one child and not another? Why a tidal wave in Indonesia, but not one in Hawaii? Why did one person who smokes get cancer but not another?
That's what I meant. Whether or not God intervenes - or whether or not he is to blame for the existence of evil - doesn't matter to me if evil only exists for a brief moment in time.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
So, to you, God could intentionally make everyone's life a living hell, as long as they all went to heaven afterwards and it wouldn't matter in the slightest?
---
quote:I personally believe that God intervenes when a righteous person prays for something good to happen.
If I understand this, since God doesn't intervene, you believe that either the innocent child who is being tortured over the course of their entire life is not righteous or someone noticing and putting a stop to this is not something good. Is that accurate?
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky:
quote:I assume you aren't a parent. 2-year-olds are endlessly creative when it comes to mischief and I have yet to meet someone who was able to completely baby-proof a house.
She is a parent (edit: I'm pretty sure, anyway). I am too. The examples you gave were of negligent parents who are to blame for their child's injuries and deaths.
I am indeed.
DD, would you leave a two year old in a backyard with a swimming pool and say "don't go near the pool, you might fall in and drown, but I'll be out in a few minutes to take you swimming" and then go inside? How about in the front yard of a house on a busy street with a playground just across the street?
Whose fault would it be if that 2 year old were drowned or run over?
I'd argue that the difference between those scenarios and your hot cookie sheet is not who would be responsible when the 2 year old didn't have the self-control to protect herself -- that's the same in all three examples -- but the level of danger. You're comfortable walking away from the hot pan because the worst that's likely to happen is a minor ouch, and that's a risk you're willing to take to answer your phone call.
Posted by DustinDopps (Member # 12640) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: So, to you, God could intentionally make everyone's life a living hell, as long as they all went to heaven afterwards and it wouldn't matter in the slightest?
I think God *could* do that and it wouldn't be my place as a creation to complain. The Bible says that a potter can take a lump of clay and make part of it into a fine vase for a place of honor in the house, and use another part of it to make a chamber pot. Neither can or should complain because it is the potter's choice, not the clay's.
But I don't think God *does* do that. I think he set up a world with a balance of some sort (black/white, good/evil, suffering/joy, etc.) and he put it us in it. We - humanity as a whole - bring our own consequences down on our heads. That child is only raped because humanity has devolved spiritually to a place that would allow that to happen.
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: If I understand this, since God doesn't intervene, you believe that either the innocent child who is being tortured over the course of their entire life is not righteous or someone noticing and putting a stop to this is not something good. Is that accurate?
The child is innocent. They are neither righteous nor unrighteous. But I do believe God will bring the children who never had a choice to heaven.
I think a true Christian would intervene if they knew of child abuse. They would step in and protect the child. But I don't think God intervenes in most cases because he wants us to be free.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
I am religious, but don't believe in YEC. I am LDS and I do believe in evolution.
I don't believe that God just snapped his fingers and the Earth appeared, complete with humans, animals, plants, oceans, etc. I see God as a scientist. I believe that he did create the earth. Whether that included setting into motion events that caused the Big Bang which then lead to Earth being formed billions of years later or not, I don't know.
Science has explained a lot. Recent studies have furthered theories on the Big Bang. Science still has a problem explaining what came before the big bang. There are only theories and speculations, nothing remotely concrete.
Who knows. Maybe God is a super intelligent being from another dimension that uses science to create his own universes.
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: So, to you, God could intentionally make everyone's life a living hell, as long as they all went to heaven afterwards and it wouldn't matter in the slightest?
---
I know you are asking someone else, but I wanted to comment here. All suffering matters. It matters very much. I want my suffering to matter. I want the suffering of every child and person to matter.
In the end, it all boils down to this for me: when I stand before God, if He is anyone worth being called God, then I will be able to gladly say to Him, "It was all worth it now that I am here and I understand what you have in store for me."
On the other hand, if I get there and my suffering was not worth it, then there is a problem.
Every suffering person in this world must have sufficient amends made in the next life if God is a God of love and justice. It seems to me that the problem for us is understanding and enduring the suffering of this life without giving into the belief that "nothing is worth what I am going through." If heaven isn't worth it, then it isn't heaven. If living with God isn't worth it, then He isn't God, in my opinion.
Now, would I ever say to someone else who lives in real poverty, violence, disease, abuse, etc. and say to them, "Buck up, it will be alright in the end?" Hell no. Suffering must be attended to. We must alleviate it the best we can. We must do everything within our power to console and prevent and heal.
But if God really is a God of love, who are we to say that what He has to offer isn't worth it? How can we possibly know the answer to that question with certainty? As a society, we can't even figure out if God is real or not. All we can say is there's no proof he's there and this life is like hell much of the time, so God isn't there, or he isn't just and loving.
What I can tell you is that [speaking only for myself] the suffering I have been through in the past, which I very much wanted to go away NOW when I was in the midst of it, I would not now go back and undo it, because of what I have learned and how I have grown.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:But if God really is a God of love, who are we to say that what He has to offer isn't worth it? How can we possibly know the answer to that question with certainty? As a society, we can't even figure out if God is real or not. All we can say is there's no proof he's there and this life is like hell much of the time, so God isn't there, or he isn't just and loving.
It's a hell of a thing, though, to tell that child whether directly or not, or way of that child, that the suffering *is* worth it. Which is really the only way the so-called Good News works out.
Speaking for myself, it would be much easier to credit these sorts of just, loving God propositions if they didn't all seem to wind up at and start from 'God is loving and God is just, therefore we should take it on faith that these unloving and unjust things are squared in the end.' I cannot see why a deity would give me a mind that recognizes the serious, crippling flaws in such a style of argument for everything else in the world-for all our understanding of dealing with one another and unraveling the mysteries of the universe-but simultaneously expect me to turn that part of my mind off when I'm dealing with this particular deity.
Put another way, why is that child suffering unspeakable torment for the grand experiment of human free will? The Worthing Saga had an answer for that, but at least in that story those offering or withholding safety from that torment were human beings.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
Some would use the ripple effect as a counter argument, suggesting that if this happens, then this happens, and then something else happens. In other words, if that little kid dies, maybe in some crazy way, it saves a hundred people later on. Personally, I don't buy it.
I honestly believe that God doesn't get involved in people's lives like that. You can pray all you want, but all it's going to do is give you comfort. He's not just going to wave his hands and fix whatever's wrong. Your football team doesn't win because you pray for it; they win because of the players' choices on the field. Your sickness isn't just prayed away, either; most times, it's fixed because you got the right medicine from a human doctor. You didn't get that scholarship because you asked God for it; you got it because a human being picked it from a stack and made the choice that yours was the best. Why? Because of Free Will.
To further explain what I mean, think about it like this. If you pray to God that you want your wife to change her mind and come back to you, and God does it, he's negating your wife's free will, which makes her a puppet and thus has lost her humanity. The Bible clearly tells us we have a choice in how we live our lives. That's why I think Predestination is a load of crap. What would the point be in living your entire life if the end result is already mapped out? How is it my fault if I end up in Hell if God already knew I was going there? Doesn't that make it God's fault? After all, I never really had a choice in the matter, did I?
Free Will is very important for this reason. God (if you believe in him) can't interfere with human affairs because that would be cheating, and it wouldn't be balanced. It would be immoral and it would imply that humans have no control over their actions, choices, and ultimately their very lives.
I think the world is full of chance and hilarious randomness that makes no sense at all. That's what bothers me about when people say things like "Oh yeah, my wife is leaving me and I just don't know what to do. I prayed and told God that I'm not going to do anything and I'm just going to let him have control and take over. Whatever happens now is because God wanted it to happen." No, I'm sorry, you're wrong. Your wife is leaving you because you failed to do what she asked you to do; she's leaving you because of your actions, not God's, so don't try to blame him when it inevitably fails. Ugh.
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:But if God really is a God of love, who are we to say that what He has to offer isn't worth it? How can we possibly know the answer to that question with certainty? As a society, we can't even figure out if God is real or not. All we can say is there's no proof he's there and this life is like hell much of the time, so God isn't there, or he isn't just and loving.
It's a hell of a thing, though, to tell that child whether directly or not, or way of that child, that the suffering *is* worth it. Which is really the only way the so-called Good News works out.
Speaking for myself, it would be much easier to credit these sorts of just, loving God propositions if they didn't all seem to wind up at and start from 'God is loving and God is just, therefore we should take it on faith that these unloving and unjust things are squared in the end.' I cannot see why a deity would give me a mind that recognizes the serious, crippling flaws in such a style of argument for everything else in the world-for all our understanding of dealing with one another and unraveling the mysteries of the universe-but simultaneously expect me to turn that part of my mind off when I'm dealing with this particular deity.
Put another way, why is that child suffering unspeakable torment for the grand experiment of human free will? The Worthing Saga had an answer for that, but at least in that story those offering or withholding safety from that torment were human beings.
My answer to that question about why human agency is so important is that you cannot achieve anywhere near the same amount of eternal joy as you can when you have genuine free will. To be "happy" without free will is akin to the bliss of ignorance, or childlike joy that does not appreciate its own joy.
Maybe I am misunderstanding your point, Rakeesh, but I honestly don't understand why it isn't more apparent that the highest forms of joy in life come from being able to make choices for yourself and getting through hard things. I try to imagine what happiness would look like when you cannot make any choices, and the best thing I can imagine is a spoiled child sitting on a pillow being given everything he wants and never knowing any better. But then again, maybe I misunderstand the point.
As soon as you introduce an ounce of free will into a system, evil is a possibility. Free will is all or nothing. Either you have it or you don't. If you don't have it, the system can run perfectly like a machine, with the inventor being the only one who can truly appreciate it. If you have it, then crap is going to start happening when someone decides to make choices that hurt others.
At that point, there are only four options left: 1) Shut the whole thing down and get rid of agency so that people are safe and comfortable. 2) Let the whole thing run into chaos and misery for all eternity and basically say "F it." 3) Set limits, akin to what we do with criminals in prison, to prevent the bad choosers from hurting others 4) Work with the system until, in the end, you have sifted people into categories where they have proven what kind of choices they want to make and the worst of the worst stay together, the best of the best stay together, and everyone in between is likewise organized. They have all chosen to be where they were, no one was forced, and those who are happy truly appreciate what they have achieved.
Options 3 & 4, or some combination thereof, seem to be what most religions are suggesting God is doing.
And to be clear, I don't believe God inflicts one iota of evil anywhere in the universe. However, He may inflict pain, but only if it leads to ultimate good. After all, an athlete subjects her body to pain to achieve a certain goal. We don't call her evil just because she purposely inflicts pain on herself to get there. Of course, the real suffering of this world is lightyears worse than a sore muscle, but I also believe in a God who has rewards to offer that are lightyears beyond our mortal ability to comprehend.
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jeff C.: Some would use the ripple effect as a counter argument, suggesting that if this happens, then this happens, and then something else happens. In other words, if that little kid dies, maybe in some crazy way, it saves a hundred people later on. Personally, I don't buy it.
I honestly believe that God doesn't get involved in people's lives like that. You can pray all you want, but all it's going to do is give you comfort. He's not just going to wave his hands and fix whatever's wrong. Your football team doesn't win because you pray for it; they win because of the players' choices on the field. Your sickness isn't just prayed away, either; most times, it's fixed because you got the right medicine from a human doctor. You didn't get that scholarship because you asked God for it; you got it because a human being picked it from a stack and made the choice that yours was the best. Why? Because of Free Will.
To further explain what I mean, think about it like this. If you pray to God that you want your wife to change her mind and come back to you, and God does it, he's negating your wife's free will, which makes her a puppet and thus has lost her humanity. The Bible clearly tells us we have a choice in how we live our lives. That's why I think Predestination is a load of crap. What would the point be in living your entire life if the end result is already mapped out? How is it my fault if I end up in Hell if God already knew I was going there? Doesn't that make it God's fault? After all, I never really had a choice in the matter, did I?
Free Will is very important for this reason. God (if you believe in him) can't interfere with human affairs because that would be cheating, and it wouldn't be balanced. It would be immoral and it would imply that humans have no control over their actions, choices, and ultimately their very lives.
I think the world is full of chance and hilarious randomness that makes no sense at all. That's what bothers me about when people say things like "Oh yeah, my wife is leaving me and I just don't know what to do. I prayed and told God that I'm not going to do anything and I'm just going to let him have control and take over. Whatever happens now is because God wanted it to happen." No, I'm sorry, you're wrong. Your wife is leaving you because you failed to do what she asked you to do; she's leaving you because of your actions, not God's, so don't try to blame him when it inevitably fails. Ugh.
I don't find it inconceivable to imagine God allowing free will, but also being able to intervene, by inserting circumstances and events in which he knows a certain person will make a certain choice in response to it. Thus, if you pray for someone to come help you when you are stranded on the road, and let's assume God answers your prayer, he could have organized the universe from the moment of inception so that all of the free will choices made by people would lead to there being someone who willingly decided to help you.
Or, if you believe God can speak to people, why not prompt someone, who he knows will choose to listen and act, to come help you.
Then again, you might not get an answer to your prayer, or the one you want. To decide when God should and should not answer prayers is decidedly impossible for beings such as us who cannot even fully comprehend ourselves, let alone the unfathomable complexity of a universe full of innumerable variables.
Posted by DustinDopps (Member # 12640) on :
I like what you've said, Marlozhan.
Recently I prayed to God, "God, I want to be a better man. Please do whatever it takes to mold me into a better Christian, husband, and father. Even if I get in an accident and get paralyzed, if it makes me better, please do it.
Not even a week later, my wife came to me with doubts about our 15-year marriage and how I treated her. It made me question the way I behave, and it made me realize I really wasn't showing her how much I love her.
I believe my prayer was answered. Further, when she was so upset and doubtful, I prayed that God would soften her heart and help her forgive me.
Do I think God took away her free will? No. But I *do* believe that God adjusted her attitude to some degree. Things are going good now and our marriage is actually stronger. And in the meantime, I've found myself being a lot more patient and agreeable when my kids mess up.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Do I think God took away her free will? No. But I *do* believe that God adjusted her attitude to some degree.
Can you explain the distinction?
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
I'm with Tom on this one. If he altered anything about her personality or her attitude, that is an alteration of free will. There's no middle ground. It's either 100% or it's not.
What could be happening is that you're experiencing a spiritual placebo effect. You believe that God is taking your anger and negative feelings away, which is entirely possible, but that belief that it's happening may also be powerful enough on its own. Our bodies are capable of amazing things. People have cured themselves simply because they believed they were cured or that a placebo medicine was working. The opposite is also true, where some people were told they had cancer when they really didn't, and then they actually developed it quickly thereafter.
I'm not saying God isn't helping you on a spiritual level, but I do believe you are giving yourself the patience and the strength to be a better person. Your faith is helping you, because you want it to, and so are your prayers (for the same reason). When your wife asks you to change something about yourself, it's not God who is making that decision for you to change; in fact, it is you and your own willpower. Your wife, conversely, is making her own decision to forgive you. If none of that were true, neither of you would truly have free will, as any alterations to those feelings would take away from the part that makes up your humanity and your right to choose.
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
quote:Originally posted by dkw:
quote:There is knowledge to be had, after all, about the earth, about the sky, about the other elements of this world, about the movements and revolutions or even the magnitude and distances of the constellations, about the predictable eclipses of moon and sun, about the cycles of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, fruits, stones and everything else of this kind. And it frequently happens that even non-Christians will have knowledge of this sort in a way that they can substantiate with scientific arguments or experiments. Now it is quiet disgraceful and disastrous, something to be on one’s guard against at all costs, that they should ever hear Christians spouting what they claim our Christian literature has to say on these topics, and talking such nonsense that they can scarcely contain their laughter when they see them to be toto caelo, as the saying goes, wide of the mark. And what is so vexing is not that misguided people should be laughed at, as that our authors should be assumed by outsiders to have held such views and, to the great detriment of those about whose salvation we are so concerned, should be written off and consigned to the waste paper basket as so many ignoramuses. . . . It is impossible to say what trouble and grief such rash, self-assured know-alls cause the more cautious and experienced brothers and sisters. Whenever they find themselves challenged and taken to task for some shaky and false theory of theirs by people who do not recognize the authority of our books, they try to defend what they have aired with the most frivolous temerity and patent falsehood by bringing forward these same sacred books to justify it. Or they even quote from memory many things said in them which they imagine will provide them with valid evidence, not understanding either what they are saying, or the matters on which they are asserting themselves.
St. Augustine of Hippo. Fourth Century C.E.
Wow, that was interesting, Dana. The more things change, I guess. Which of his writings is that from?
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
I agree God cannot change anything about you without you choosing to allow it. But when I talk about God influencing people, I am talking about the same way we influence one another, except on a spiritual level. We try to persuade one another all of the time. If I try to change your mind through persuasion, I am not taking away your free will. It is therefore conceivable that God is also capable of spiritual persuasion. In Christian words, God can speak to you through the Holy Spirit and you are left with the option to listen to that prompting or ignore it, just like I can choose to listen to you or ignore you.
However, if you believe that God intervenes in human affairs by flipping a switch to just take away your anger or suddenly make you kind or something, then yes, he is violating free will. But should you ask him to take away your anger, and he does so through his power, he is not violating your will because you asked for it.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Jake, it's from De Genesi ad litteram.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
quote:Originally posted by DustinDopps: I like what you've said, Marlozhan.
Recently I prayed to God, "God, I want to be a better man. Please do whatever it takes to mold me into a better Christian, husband, and father. Even if I get in an accident and get paralyzed, if it makes me better, please do it.
Not even a week later, my wife came to me with doubts about our 15-year marriage and how I treated her. It made me question the way I behave, and it made me realize I really wasn't showing her how much I love her.
I believe my prayer was answered. Further, when she was so upset and doubtful, I prayed that God would soften her heart and help her forgive me.
Do I think God took away her free will? No. But I *do* believe that God adjusted her attitude to some degree. Things are going good now and our marriage is actually stronger. And in the meantime, I've found myself being a lot more patient and agreeable when my kids mess up.
I don't think God adjusts our attitudes, that would be a form of manipulating our free will.
What I think He DOES do is help us understand or comprehend better. Just as He made you realize that you weren't showing your wife enough love, He may have helped your wife understand your intent to be more loving. Her change in attitude may be just because of that.
While I know God is involved in our lives, I think sometimes we overestimate how much he is involved. While he may provide understanding and comprehension, getting more involved would jeopardize what he is trying to do. Giving your children everything they ask for isn't an effective teaching tool for helping them grow.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
The creationist said to me, "God created the Bible in hole, perfect, and complete. From it you will find the only truth."
I said to the Creationist, "God created the world, the universe, in hole, perfect, and complete."
I added, "You seek God by reading the translations of generations of imperfect men who edited and changed God's creation over the multiple languages from which it originated and the generations it has crossed. I seek the Truth by understanding God's other creation first hand, with only my errors of translation. And I recognize that I may be in error, so correct those errors when discovered."
I added, "You seek truth in a book of words, whose meanings change as time, distance, and societies change from when they were written to when they were read. I seek truth in the computations of numbers, who's meanings never change, who's sums always stay constant."
Finally I said, "Our views of God are different. But God is infinite. It is our perspectives that are different. If you look upon the ocean from a glacier in Alaska, and from a storm-swept New Zealand during a hurricane, or a foggy morning in San Diego, the Ocean appears to be so different, but it is the same. I do not complain that you look for the Truth in one of God's creations. Why do you complain that I look in another?"
Posted by DustinDopps (Member # 12640) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Do I think God took away her free will? No. But I *do* believe that God adjusted her attitude to some degree.
Can you explain the distinction?
Marlozhan and Geraine summed it up pretty well.
My wife is a Christian too. Her heart was hard toward me (which I know is an awkward phrasing, but it's from the Bible) and I prayed for God to soften her heart.
I think God helped her to let go of being stubborn (her words) in her anger toward me. Because she wanted to change, even though wouldn't verbalize that to me. She wanted us to get along. God just made it easier.
----
Of COURSE it's possible that it's just a manifestation of my own body/will/changing attitude. It's entirely possible that I decided to be nicer, and she adjusted her reaction accordingly. But I don't think that's true. :-)
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:Giving your children everything they ask for isn't an effective teaching tool for helping them grow.
You know, I think this highlights something. Within the LDS belief framework, I do think that you can account for suffering of various kinds as a necessary side effect of [hand wave]the nature of mortal probation which is required for eternal progression[/hand wave].
However, the way you've phrased it here does not account for people who DO get everything they want. There are a few people who lead charmed lives, who have wealth and comfort and everything they want. Some of these people are atheists.
Is God being ineffective in how he's using teaching tools to help these people grow?
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: The creationist said to me, "God created the Bible in hole, perfect, and complete. From it you will find the only truth."
I said to the Creationist, "God created the world, the universe, in hole, perfect, and complete."
I added, "You seek God by reading the translations of generations of imperfect men who edited and changed God's creation over the multiple languages from which it originated and the generations it has crossed. I seek the Truth by understanding God's other creation first hand, with only my errors of translation. And I recognize that I may be in error, so correct those errors when discovered."
I added, "You seek truth in a book of words, whose meanings change as time, distance, and societies change from when they were written to when they were read. I seek truth in the computations of numbers, who's meanings never change, who's sums always stay constant."
Finally I said, "Our views of God are different. But God is infinite. It is our perspectives that are different. If you look upon the ocean from a glacier in Alaska, and from a storm-swept New Zealand during a hurricane, or a foggy morning in San Diego, the Ocean appears to be so different, but it is the same. I do not complain that you look for the Truth in one of God's creations. Why do you complain that I look in another?"
I really like this. I'm stealing it!
Posted by Vadon (Member # 4561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: My cousin believes in YEC.
We've banned the topic at Thanksgiving.
That's how you deal with it.
Bravo. Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Of COURSE it's possible that it's just a manifestation of my own body/will/changing attitude. It's entirely possible that I decided to be nicer, and she adjusted her reaction accordingly.
Out of interest, why wouldn't you have tried being nicer first? Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum:
quote:Giving your children everything they ask for isn't an effective teaching tool for helping them grow.
You know, I think this highlights something. Within the LDS belief framework, I do think that you can account for suffering of various kinds as a necessary side effect of [hand wave]the nature of mortal probation which is required for eternal progression[/hand wave].
However, the way you've phrased it here does not account for people who DO get everything they want. There are a few people who lead charmed lives, who have wealth and comfort and everything they want. Some of these people are atheists.
Is God being ineffective in how he's using teaching tools to help these people grow?
Well, IMO, everybody gets the set of trials that tries them individually. Everybody has circumstances, good or bad, that they must deal with. You never know what a wealthy person with all the comforts of life is privately facing, what they want that they don't have, and how they are growing from what they are facing. And not everyone is going through a crisis at the same time. The "trial" might also be one in which you are doing well but have the opportunity to help someone who is not. And an atheist might respond to this admirably, and a theist poorly.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
You can justify suffering if you really want to. I don't think you can map instances of suffering or getting-what-you-want to a series of decisions about what is or isn't a good teaching tool without running into logical contradictions.
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum:
quote:Giving your children everything they ask for isn't an effective teaching tool for helping them grow.
You know, I think this highlights something. Within the LDS belief framework, I do think that you can account for suffering of various kinds as a necessary side effect of [hand wave]the nature of mortal probation which is required for eternal progression[/hand wave].
However, the way you've phrased it here does not account for people who DO get everything they want. There are a few people who lead charmed lives, who have wealth and comfort and everything they want. Some of these people are atheists.
Is God being ineffective in how he's using teaching tools to help these people grow?
Talking about suffering as a path toward growth does not mean that it is the only path toward growth. There are any number of ways that we learn, grow, change, etc. Suffering is just the one we talk the most about because it sucks and none of us like it and good people work toward ending suffering.
Which then some people will respond to by saying: "Why should we work toward ending suffering when God allows suffering as a tool for growth? Does this mean God isn't good, but he expects us to be good? Is God a hypocrite?"
If he was anyone besides God, yes, he would be a hypocrite. The whole reason he can decide who needs which circumstances to learn whatever they need is because he is omniscient and can see the whole complex pattern as one whole. We cannot see the forest for the trees, so to speak.
From an LDS perspective, you must also understand the various stages of life. If mortal life is the beginning of our existence, then it makes much less sense. But if you understand that we all lived an unknown, possible very long, time as a spirit before coming to this world, then the idea of customized learning experiences makes even more sense.
Person A may need one set of circumstances to complete important lessons. Person B will need a similar or possibly entirely different. And as mortals, it prejudiced for us to even begin to decide who needs what. That is precisely what separates us from God. He is the only one qualified to make such a complex decision. Only a person who doesn't make even an iota of a mistake can make such decisions.
It is this same idea that led Christ to basically say: 'Your Father in heaven is in charge of who he does and doesn't forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men'. Why can't we decide who needs forgiveness and who doesn't? Because we are so completely unqualified to make a just judgment that it is ridiculous. Likewise, for us to attempt to judge who needs what lessons in the eternal picture is equally ridiculous.
And as a final note, while God is perfect at customizing the learning experiences we each need, this by no means guarantees a good outcome for each person. If God could guarantee that everyone will always choose good with the right set of circumstances, there would be no such thing as free will. But I do believe we each are given the best thing that honors our agency and opportunities for the most growth in the end of all things. But LDS people recognize you must take into account premortal life, mortal life, and postmortal life. To judge your existence by only 1 or 2 out of the 3 is to judge a play without watching all 3 acts.
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: You can justify suffering if you really want to. I don't think you can map instances of suffering or getting-what-you-want to a series of decisions about what is or isn't a good teaching tool without running into logical contradictions.
I can't speak for anyone else, but saying that God understands the whole picture and will make all suffering worth it in the end, is not the same thing as saying us mortals are justifying suffering.
Anyone who says to another suffering person: 'just deal with it, it will make you stronger and it must be God's will' is being uncompassionate and is making a judgment that they are not qualified to make. I consider myself responsible to help alleviate all suffering that I can, while letting God be responsible for the reason and purpose of that pain.
Explaining God's reasoning and purposes cannot be confused with our own responsibilities and expectations.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:I can't speak for anyone else, but saying that God understands the whole picture and will make all suffering worth it in the end, is not the same thing as saying us mortals are justifying suffering.
Um, those are exactly the same thing.
To be fair, it is not the same as ignoring or encouraging suffering. I'm sure everyone tries to reduce it when they feel they can. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
I do think it's slightly abhorrent to imagine a god that has custom-tailored lives of extreme torture and misery for a subset of his children, because that's the experience they need. I think it's an immature justification.
It's much, much more palatable to imagine that God's hands are tied, that he simply doesn't have the power to prevent these things, or that they are impossible to avoid side effects of extremely necessary conditions for some goal.
But the idea that God has chosen the very worst experiences for some of his children...ugh. The analogy to how we guide our own children breaks down completely. Nobody tortures their own child for benevolent reasons.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
Yes, suffering is necessary, and everybody does their share of suffering. I'm not sure saying that means I'm justifying suffering, however. I don't have that power. I'm accepting that suffering is a fact of life.
My job when someone is suffering is to offer what support and comfort I can; my learning and growth opportunities thus become intertwined with someone else's. That is just as much God's will as the suffering end of the experience.
Posted by DustinDopps (Member # 12640) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Of COURSE it's possible that it's just a manifestation of my own body/will/changing attitude. It's entirely possible that I decided to be nicer, and she adjusted her reaction accordingly.
Out of interest, why wouldn't you have tried being nicer first?
That's a loaded question, but I'll try to answer it.
I have OCD, which causes me to be difficult to live with sometimes. For example, when I do laundry, I fold the clothes and stack them in order of age so I always know which pile belongs to which person. (There are seven of us, and five are girls, so the stacks can be hard to distinguish without a sorting system.) When my wife does laundry, however, she makes random stacks for each person that aren't in any order. So when I continue doing laundry she has started, I have to go through the stacks and figure out which belongs to which person. It's a minor thing, but it grates against my OCD.
I had been off of my medication (Prozac) for a while and now I'm back on it. While I was off the med, I had a hard time ignoring stupid little things that bugged me. But on the med, I can take a step back and think "That shouldn't bother you so much. Just ignore it."
To put it back in the context mentioned above: when off of Prozac, I don't choose my reaction - I just default to Irritated Man. Now that I'm back on it, I choose to be nicer and not act annoyed.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
Personally, I think it's short-sighted to think that suffering and misery in this life are the worst thing that can possibly happen to someone--without considering what that person is ultimately gaining from the experience.
I don't think this whole thing makes much sense if you don't first believe in God. Without God, it's just a bunch of crap happening to people at random. With God, and the view of this life as only part of our existence and progress, then IMO it's the only way it can happen.
D&C 122:7-8 7 And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.
8 The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?
Central to LDS doctrine is Christ's atonement, which not only provides mercy for those who repent, but ultimately swallows up suffering in joy and peace. Even if the suffering is ugly and terrible, there is always hope through Christ.
Consider also that God is the God of those who are suffering and also those who are causing that suffering. He isn't just concerned about the outcome for the sufferer.
That said, let me reiterate that another fundamental here is our duty to alleviate and prevent suffering wherever we can. We believe that in many instances, the comfort and hope God provides are given through other people, which blesses all involved. We are never off the hook to just stand back and let suffering happen.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Talking about suffering as a path toward growth does not mean that it is the only path toward growth. There are any number of ways that we learn, grow, change, etc. Suffering is just the one we talk the most about because it sucks and none of us like it and good people work toward ending suffering.
The problematic part here is how this results in the same answer to radically different arguments and scenarios-or no answer at all, such as 'God is omniscient'. That's what I was referring to earlier-in any other portion of life, if I were faced with this kind of reasoning or even a reality tha appeared to be this way, I would rightly be suspicious-why do some suffer terribly? God's plan, though not *specifically*. Why does this person benefit? God's plan again, though not specifically-except if he prays and it's answers, in which case it's specially and also part of God's plan. Or he didn't pray enough or in the right way, so it's still God's plan, he's just not on board with it properly. Or he IS on board with it entirely, it's just God's plan has something larger in store that will make the scenario sensible in the future. Or it won't, but these unfortunate outcomes are the periodic randomness that's also part of God's plan.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Talking about suffering as a path toward growth does not mean that it is the only path toward growth. There are any number of ways that we learn, grow, change, etc. Suffering is just the one we talk the most about because it sucks and none of us like it and good people work toward ending suffering.
The problematic part here is how this results in the same answer to radically different arguments and scenarios-or no answer at all, such as 'God is omniscient'. That's what I was referring to earlier-in any other portion of life, if I were faced with this kind of reasoning or even a reality tha appeared to be this way, I would rightly be suspicious-why do some suffer terribly? God's plan, though not *specifically*. Why does this person benefit? God's plan again, though not specifically-except if he prays and it's answers, in which case it's specially and also part of God's plan. Or he didn't pray enough or in the right way, so it's still God's plan, he's just not on board with it properly. Or he IS on board with it entirely, it's just God's plan has something larger in store that will make the scenario sensible in the future. Or it won't, but these unfortunate outcomes are the periodic randomness that's also part of God's plan.
Except each outcome isn't just random but has a purpose, the same way you don't have just one or two ways of responding to needs and questions your child may have. Taken in the context of a specific situation, each of these outcomes might make perfect sense.
At any time we might be dealing with a variety of good and bad circumstances and faced with many choices, some easy, some perplexing. God deals with us on our level, at our capacity, at each point. Mormons at least believe that the closer we bring ourselves to him, the more he is able to help us, the way you wait for your toddler to take your hand so you can support her steps--and the more we understand why he lets each thing happen in our lives. Our relationship with him is finely nuanced; we may receive immediate answers and help in one thing while waiting to the edges of our patience for answers on something else, for example. All of it is going on, at many levels, all the time.
Resist the urge to harden explanations being given along these lines into some strange construct of a seemingly pointless, closed set of plans we think God is running us all through. It's not a marble maze. These discussions often seem to devolve into, "Well, what happens when you feed this into the little system you've created to explain how God acts?"
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
Out of curiosity then, does anyone here think that it is logically possible for these three things to be simultaneously true?:
1) God is perfectly good 2) God has given his children free will 3) There is never any suffering anywhere, anytime, ever
In my mind, either 2 or 3 must go, but not both can remain at the same time.
If you believe that free will is the problem and that it would be better for there to be no free will in exchange for a perfectly controlled, safe, comfortable environment, well, then we just have to agree to disagree.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
I propose an experiment.
Many YE believers base their belief on a literal interpretation of a perfect Bible. Human scientists are imperfect and make errors or fall under the sway of Satan so their proofs are invalid.
The Bible has of course, passed through the hands of imperfect human interpreters and translators. However, these literalists believe that the Bible was always translated perfectly, because each such translation was overseen by religious men in almost constant prayer to God, asking that this translation be perfect.
Lets take a group of such religious men and apply their prayers to the math that disproves Young Earth thinking. Lets see if they can sanctify the math or find and destroy the imperfect human errors.
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum:
quote:I can't speak for anyone else, but saying that God understands the whole picture and will make all suffering worth it in the end, is not the same thing as saying us mortals are justifying suffering.
Um, those are exactly the same thing.
To be fair, it is not the same as ignoring or encouraging suffering. I'm sure everyone tries to reduce it when they feel they can. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
They are only the same thing if you don't believe there is a real God. If there is no God, then what I say about God and what I believe are no different. But if there is a God, then how God justifies suffering and how I approach suffering are not the same thing.
If some pain leads to ultimate, eternal good that would lead you to say: "Everything I went through made this so much more rewarding and was totally worth it," then it is good.
If some pain doesn't lead to that, then it isn't good. I am in no position to judge what pain will qualify for this. God is, and that is what makes it different.
Now, if you believe that it is possible to have the same eternal reward and fullness of eternal joy without going through any suffering, then that is where we disagree and I see no way of changing that. Innocent joy and mature, proven joy just don't feel the same to me and I don't know how you create the latter without ever experiencing some type of pain.
LDS doctrine also includes another caveat that takes into account free will: we believe that every one of us knew that this life would be really hard and each of us had a choice as to whether or not to accept the hardships of this life. God did not force anyone to come here. We also knew we would forget that decision. Whether or not we each knew in detail what unique challenges we would each experience, has not been taught in our doctrine. But I do know what it is like to want some good goal and completely underestimate how much work or pain it was going to take to achieve it. Understanding that things will be hard and experiencing that hardship first hand are two different things.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Out of curiosity then, does anyone here think that it is logically possible for these three things to be simultaneously true?:
1) God is perfectly good 2) God has given his children free will 3) There is never any suffering anywhere, anytime, ever
I do. And, in fact, I believe that would be my minimum standard for a competent God.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Tom, I've done a lot of thinking on the nature of suffering, and the nature of evil. My conclusion is that there are four roots to all evil.
Their opposites are divine attributes--Ecstasy, Enlightenment, Love, and Creation.
In our universe you can not completely defeat these evils, either singly or as a group. We can do our best to keep them at a minimum. As a result there will be some minimal suffering at the least.
You say you believe that there can be free will and no suffering. But if I can't make another person suffer, then I don't have truly free will. Most if not all of the pain and suffering we mortals endure is because of our free will. We, in our ignorance and self-absorption, influenced by the entropy of the universe, and our fear of pain, or under the influence of pain, make the wrong decisions.
It is rarely the one that suffers that has made the wrong decision.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:But if I can't make another person suffer, then I don't have truly free will.
You can be free to try to make someone else suffer. But God is free to completely neuter those attempts, in the same way Superman could. God can temporarily remove your intended victim's ability to feel pain, or his memory of an insult. He could instantly heal all wounds, salve all hurt, and correct any misunderstandings. He could, in fact, alter the universe -- even retroactively -- so that if you were the sort of person who kept trying to hurt someone, you would have never existed in the first place. Heck, every time you thought about hurting somebody, He could arrange to have you distracted by a beautiful woman carrying cupcakes.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
But, of course, God does not exist.
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
I agree that God is capable of putting beautiful women and other distractions before a person every single time they want to do evil.
It seems to me that the disagreement, then, comes down to this: some of you believe that a fullness of joy can and should be able to come to pass without any opposite...there should never be any pain or suffering and God should make it so that we are all happy without knowing its opposite.
I believe that happiness is severely limited without having experienced something of its opposite. A universe of happiness with no opposite makes happiness meaningless in my mind. I know of no way to prove this one way or the other, though.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I would rather not see starving children suffer great agony so that a rich man in California has the free will necessary to lose some money on the stock market, thus making him appreciate his family more and in so doing come to a fuller understanding of happiness.
Posted by Aros (Member # 4873) on :
I haven't often seen TomDavidson exhibit troll behavior. I'm not saying that he is here . . . I'm just saying that it doesn't often happen.
Hmm. . . it might not be a bad idea, though, for him to avoid direct sunlight. Just for the time being. Until we're sure.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Originally posted by Marlozhan: I agree that God is capable of putting beautiful women and other distractions before a person every single time they want to do evil.
It seems to me that the disagreement, then, comes down to this: some of you believe that a fullness of joy can and should be able to come to pass without any opposite...there should never be any pain or suffering and God should make it so that we are all happy without knowing its opposite.
I believe that happiness is severely limited without having experienced something of its opposite. A universe of happiness with no opposite makes happiness meaningless in my mind. I know of no way to prove this one way or the other, though.
It cannot be proven now or in any foreseeable future but that doesn't prevent us from recognizing one aspect of this 'terrible pain necessary for true joy argument': that it's faith-based. I don't mean that it's reliant on religion overall, rather that it's inherently faith-based. None of us really know at all, or are even close to the experience necessary to know, that terrible pain is a prerequisite of wisdom, joy, and a fuller more 'real' life.
We just know that it's impossible for any of us to escape shades of pain in the world. Which leads me to an important question: why should I believe this unescapable reality points to a truly just and omnipotent and omniscient deity, rather than the much simpler explanation 'humans find reasons to give their experiences meaning'? Particularly when the second explanation can be observed in other areas of human activity, too?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Aros, what seems trollish about the observations that:
1) Even if God allows pain to permit us free will, it is very easy to imagine scenarios in which less pain is possible while still permitting free decisions; 2) Even if God allows suffering to maximize appreciation of the lack of suffering, thus increasing happiness, there is no clear connection between the experience of a given quantity of sorrow and an appreciation for a given quantity of joy, especially across individuals; 3) God does not actually exist.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I think Aros is either poking fun at you, or else engaging in the not-uncommon thinking that to speak plainly one's disbelief in God, or to plainly insist that someone else's faith needs to be demonstrated to ordinary argument standards rather than faith-standards, is considered combative or rude somehow.
Which it can be, of course. But isn't just on its own.
Posted by stilesbn (Member # 11809) on :
I'm still trying to parse Aros' statement to figure out if he was actually saying Tom is behaving like a troll or not...
Posted by DustinDopps (Member # 12640) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I think Aros is either poking fun at you, or else engaging in the not-uncommon thinking that to speak plainly one's disbelief in God, or to plainly insist that someone else's faith needs to be demonstrated to ordinary argument standards rather than faith-standards, is considered combative or rude somehow.
Which it can be, of course. But isn't just on its own.
Tom said: "But, of course, God does not exist."
The 'of course' part of the comment makes it sound like this is a factual statement and if you disagree with it, you are obviously wrong. That's why the statement comes off as trolling.
But the 'of course' could also be a dry aside, which doesn't work so well in a text-based medium like this. In that case, Tom was just being funny.
Posted by DustinDopps (Member # 12640) on :
But, of course, Tom was being a troll. :-)
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
If someone said "Of course, there is a God, and it is specifically the God outlined by the Christian Bible and not any other God." would that be taken as trolling
Because as "factual statements" go if someone is trying to tell me that it's more on the level than saying "of course, there is no god" then yeah no
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Because, of course, blithe statements of certainty of the unknowable were unheard of in this discussion before Tom made that remark? I can recall without looking-without having looked at the thread for a few hours, in fact-statements of reassurance as to what God does.
They weren't trolling. Treat it as a direct, plain question rather than a gotcha: since they weren't, why was Tom's? Or, as seems very possible, was it this double standard Aros was remarking on in the first place?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Or, well, what was said two hours ago when I had an incomplete post typed!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Point being that if in this thread someone had made such a matter of fact statement about the existence of god, the immediate reaction would not have been that they are trolling.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Nah, I think if an atheist was offering a reasonable argument that God didn't exist and then one of the Christians just said "but, of course, God does exist" that would be seen, rightfully, as a cheesy cop-out. I dunno if it's trolling per se, but I do think it's a pointless unargued assertion just there to tweak the opposition's nose. Which is a little too close to trolling.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Nah, I think if an atheist was offering a reasonable argument that God didn't exist and then one of the Christians just said "but, of course, God does exist" that would be seen, rightfully, as a cheesy cop-out. I dunno if it's trolling per se, but I do think it's a pointless unargued assertion just there to tweak the opposition's nose. Which is a little too close to trolling.
So it's a cheesy cop-out if it stands alone, but if it's presented repeatedly as though it's an actual argument, it's not a cheesy cop-out?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Huh? If anything, what mitigates it is the fact that Tom has also made posts in this thread that were not unargued assertions, but were instead actual critical arguments on the existence of God.
Those were good posts. The one in question wasn't, really.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
But my point is, any absolute assertion about God in either direction is ultimately absurd-and there have been many more in one direction that weren't trolling, apparently, than Tom's variety. Why are all of these unobjectionable, then?
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
The whole discussion was only meaningful within the context of God actually existing. No one was being asked to change their views on that matter--just work with it as a hypothetical. If you couldn't do that, then the whole thing was kind of pointless. This wasn't a discussion about whether God exists, but what the LDS and other religions believe about God and suffering.
Is it now necessary to preface every post in such a discussion with "Note: God's existence is only being assumed for the purposes of this discussion"?
I'd say Hatrack is still generally quicker to pounce on anyone who makes a bald assertion like Tom's, but also can't abide unqualified assertions of God's existence for longer than a couple of pages, regardless of the context.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Hrm. I regarded the conversation differently from pretty early in the thread, I think. That isn't to say the hypothetical discussion you mentioned wasn't going on, afr, just that it was also connected to another one as well.
When someone objects, 'Wait, this doesn't fit together, these things you're saying amount to a just and loving deity who is also omnipotent. To me that calls into question whether this deity you're describing is really there at all, or at least if it's as you describe' and the response includes (even when it's not limited to) 'we know God is just and loving even when things don't make sense in the short term, because we don't know what the larger or eternal picture is, or what the ultimate long-term outcome will be', to me that reads as an offering of a persuasive argument to the original proposition that was challenged: that God exists and is loving and also just and omnipotent.
The problem, for me and I suspect others, is that this isn't actually a positive argument for the idea that God exists, is omnipotent, loving, and just-it's just a challenge (and a good one) to the statement 'God doesn't exist, and/or as you've described isn't loving or just and/or is incompetent.'
It's essentially an argument of 'you can't say for sure he's not loving and just' which is quite true. So my question remais: why is it trolling to say, in effect, 'neither can you?'
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
To clarify: I noted that the God I was describing -- the sort of God who was not only powerful but all-knowing, and was competent enough to use those abilities to eliminate suffering without negating free will -- clearly does not exist. The only God that could exist, based on the evidence before us, is one that is a) bound by rules considerably more powerful than He is; b) not all that powerful; c) not all that concerned about suffering; or d) not all that wise.
Posted by happymann (Member # 9559) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: To clarify: I noted that the God I was describing -- the sort of God who was not only powerful but all-knowing, and was competent enough to use those abilities to eliminate suffering without negating free will -- clearly does not exist. The only God that could exist, based on the evidence before us, is one that is a) bound by rules considerably more powerful than He is; b) not all that powerful; c) not all that concerned about suffering; or d) not all that wise.
First, I believe in God (of the Christian variety with more LDS specifics) and I can see a) as a possibility and c) with an asterisk describing how there isn't just one lifetime (what is this? reincarnation?) and we will continue to exist in some kind of capacity after death that we will continue to exercise free will in (with another asterisk that I only speak for myself and don't claim any special knowledge on what the religion I follow states as their official position).
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Belief that God isn't actually omnipotent mitigates quite a few, though far from all, of the problems involved with the world as it is and the existence of a loving creator.
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
There are two different types of omnipotence:
1) A being capable of doing everything that is possible in a universe where literally everything is possible
2) A being capable of doing everything that is possible in a universe where there are limits to what is possible
In all fairness, LDS people believe in the second type of omnipotence, at least as far as we can understand it. Technically speaking, point 2 may not be considered true omnipotence.
Example of point 1: "God please turn me into a God right now. In this instant, make me like you. Make me as loving as you, as knowledgeable as you, as powerful as you. Change who I am. I don't want to be me. I want to be exactly like you. Please do it now, Matrix-download-style." Then God says, "OK done."
Another example of point 1: Making it so that evil actions actually lead to good things. Design a heaven where happiness is based on lying and hurting. Waving a wand, so to speak, and turning the devil into Christ, just because you feel like it.
An example of point 2: "God please make me like you." God says, "Okay, I can do that. But you will have to learn one step at a time. I cannot instantly make you like me. You have to experience the learning for yourself."
Another example of point 2: Good will always be good and the nature of goodness cannot be changed. Genuine happiness can not be changed to be based on things like murder, lying and hatred. God cannot force evil to be the same as goodness.
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
In fact, as I think about the Christian religion, the very fact that there needed to be a Christ shows that the Christian God does not have the first type of omnipotence. If he did, then he wouldn't need someone to pay for sins or to heal people's souls. He would just wave his wand and there would be no such thing as sin, or he could erase everyone's sins with no suffering, or he could have decided that 'justice' is defined as making other people suffer for your own mistakes. He could come up with probably an infinite number of other solutions as well. Why would he have ever invented sin in the first place?
In such a universe, would the words 'order' or 'logic' have any meaning at all?
--Note, I am just referencing Christian theology. I do not mean to imply that this same logic may not also apply to other religions.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Those are all interesting questions, but I note that none of them actually preclude an omnipotent deity at all, though they likely do for a simultaneously loving, just, and omnipotent one.
Why God at that time, according to His own press, would've been considered particularly loving or just by anyone except perhaps his chosen people is something of a mystery to me though, so I don't take it as a given.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Hrm. I regarded the conversation differently from pretty early in the thread, I think. That isn't to say the hypothetical discussion you mentioned wasn't going on, afr, just that it was also connected to another one as well.
When someone objects, 'Wait, this doesn't fit together, these things you're saying amount to a just and loving deity who is also omnipotent. To me that calls into question whether this deity you're describing is really there at all, or at least if it's as you describe' and the response includes (even when it's not limited to) 'we know God is just and loving even when things don't make sense in the short term, because we don't know what the larger or eternal picture is, or what the ultimate long-term outcome will be', to me that reads as an offering of a persuasive argument to the original proposition that was challenged: that God exists and is loving and also just and omnipotent.
The problem, for me and I suspect others, is that this isn't actually a positive argument for the idea that God exists, is omnipotent, loving, and just-it's just a challenge (and a good one) to the statement 'God doesn't exist, and/or as you've described isn't loving or just and/or is incompetent.'
It's essentially an argument of 'you can't say for sure he's not loving and just' which is quite true. So my question remais: why is it trolling to say, in effect, 'neither can you?'
I didn’t personally see Tom’s posts as trolling—maybe of a certain rhetorical nature on purpose, and getting just the reaction desired because Tom’s just that good—but trolling isn’t something I would attribute to Tom. If anyone’s got the feel for where a discussion is headed it’s him. I also don’t think anybody else who has contributed substantially to the thread has been trolling here, either.
I really don’t know how to carry on a discussion about a few particular beliefs about deity without treating a few things as given for the time being: that God does exist and has us front and center in his designs. Otherwise it’s an argument about whether God exists and why or why not that’s possible. I see posters arguing from an LDS perspective here explaining things as if God exists and has a certain list of characteristics—and I do it as well. To me it’s all part of presenting an LDS perspective, and my assumption, at least, is that many of these things don’t need to be explained further here on Hatrack, as the regulars likely have a grasp on them already.
I don’t see prolonged strings of such posts as an attempt to browbeat anyone here into believing that God exists. That’s certainly not the intent, it’s not how I’m reading the posts, and it’s not what I’m trying to do in my own contributions. I didn’t see the original question as being about whether God exists, but about how the God we believe in can permit suffering. Asserting that God doesn’t, in fact, exist kind of makes the whole preceding discussion pointless.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
*nod* For the record, I find the LDS answer to the Problem of Evil -- that God is not omnipotent, and that God is bound by rules which transcend His abilities -- to eliminate the usual paradox.
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
Back on the subject of Young Earth.
When you encounter a Young Earther, ask them how they know. Because I'll bet Dollars to Donuts, they don't know how they know. Likely they will say, it says so in the Bible. Then ask them to show you the passage in the Bible that says that. They won't be able to because the Bible does not specifically say that.
All they know is what some God-Whore Televangelist has told them. Personally I need more than the word of a morally corrupt money grubbing shill and grifter.
So, where does this idea come from? What is the foundation for it?
It date back to ArchBishop Usher, who, by the way, was on the outs with pretty much every religious authority of the day.
In roughly 1650, Usher went through the Bible and added up all the A beget B beget C, and X son of Y son of Z, and added up the generations to find the total. But this is massively flawed because the Bible in not consistently chronological.
When you move from Ezekiel to Daniel it is not Ezekiel on Monday to Daniel on Tuesday. There are huge gaps of time missing.
So, the Young Earth idea is base in the flawed chronology of an ignorant man, who was on the Outs with the Church, who based his information on a book that is not itself Chronologically consistent.
Keep in mind, in the year 1650, Doctors did not even know what the heart did. They assumed the Liver pumped blood.
And we weigh that massively flawed evidence against immeasurable volumes of Scientific Data that is being revised and updated all the time.
Now some will say that the fact the scientific data is being revised and updated proves it can't be trusted. But it is being revised and updated toward more and more accurate knowledge, not toward the flawed fantasies of money grubbing God-Whores.
No one of any honest intelligence could believe that the Bible gives a complete accounting of time from the beginning of time to 1650.
Not only did Archbishop Usher know how many years (4004), but he claimed to have calculated it down to the minute - October 23 at 6PM (some say 'night fall').
Further, using the same Bible many Biblical Scholar have tried to calculate the age of the earth, and are off relative to each other by thousands of years or more. It ranges from 4000 years to about 8000 years. Which only serves to prove that the Bible is not and can not be taken a Chronologically consistent.
Seriously folks.
Steve/bluewizard
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
what's this thing about 'god-whores'
Posted by millernumber1 (Member # 9894) on :
Just for the record, not all Young Earth Creationists are Usherites. Nor do we all watch or listen to tele-evangelists.
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
Well, Sex-Whores trades Sex for Money.
A God-Whore trades God for Money, a particular game that has been going on for Centuries. However, the modern world has raised this grifter scam to a high art form with Televangelists.
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
quote:Originally posted by millernumber1: Just for the record, not all Young Earth Creationists are Usherites. Nor do we all watch or listen to tele-evangelists.
Regardless, as I have pointed out, you have absolutely no basis for your belief in Young Earth other than stubborn obstinance.
Believe what you will, but just because you believe it, doesn't make it true.
Posted by millernumber1 (Member # 9894) on :
That is certainly an assertion made without talking to a Creationist who doesn't fit or can be made to fit your prejudices.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:Originally posted by millernumber1: That is certainly an assertion made without talking to a Creationist who doesn't fit or can be made to fit your prejudices.
A similar assertion. Are you trying to a pull a reverse No True Scotsman?
What is unique about your particular form of YEC that distinguishes it from the Answers in Genesis style of mainstream YEC with a superficial sciency veneer?
Posted by millernumber1 (Member # 9894) on :
I'm not trying to pull anything. Just trying to point out prejudice that's being presented as argument.
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
quote:Originally posted by millernumber1: I'm not trying to pull anything. Just trying to point out prejudice that's being presented as argument.
Yes, Prejudice is being presented as argument. So the question is, why do you keep doing it? I presents a long list of historical facts, and pointed out indisputable flaws in the reasoning.
As to talking to Young Earthers, you can't have a rational conversation with irrational people.
You have no foundation for any of your arguments besides befuddled logic, rationalization, circular logic, and a long list of other flawed irrational reasoning.
People have been in the USA (N.America) for over 15,000 years. That's a pretty neat trick when the world is only 6,000 years old. There are artifacts, building and similar, that date back more than 6,000 years.
Worldwide, the scientific consensus from multiple disciplines, all agree, the earth is about 13.8 billion years old.
You hold the position you hold not based on logic or information, rather you hold it because you are trying to justify bronze age writing that are not themselves chronologically consistent. And to make the facts fit your believe, you will use any twisted logic necessary. Self-fulfilling prophecy, you don't believe the facts, you make the 'facts' fit your beliefs.
Now, you can certainly believe what you will and what you want, but I repeat, just because you believe it, doesn't make it true.
Here is the test of your failed belief. When new information becomes available, science updates it beliefs to fit the fact. There is no set of facts or knowledge that will sway you from you irrational belief.
Sorry to be so harsh, but ill-reason and irrational logic and just plain ignorance can drive anyone up the wall.
The best you have is pseudo-science and pseudo-logic.
"The scientific consensus, supported by a 2006 statement by 68 national and international science academies, is that it is evidence-based fact derived from observations and experiments in multiple scientific disciplines that the universe has existed for around 13.8 billion years and that the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, with life first appearing at least 2.5 billion years ago.[6]"
Read it an weep.
Steve/bluewizard
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
I disagree with YEC, but man, that was a terrible post.
Setting aside readability errors, you also get aggressive and then try to play it off that bad logic and ignorance can "drive anyone up a wall." No. You chose to get driven "up a wall" yourself. You could have posted in a different way, and you chose not to. Take responsibility for your behavior.
Then there's all the appeals to authority. Don't just say there's a consensus and "read it an[sic] weep." Explain why he's wrong. Actually provide data and details, not this bombastic "I'm right and you're an idiot" bullshit.
Or alternatively, actually ask what he thinks. Try to understand his view, then tell him what's wrong with it. If you're not willing to spend that much effort, why engage at all? What's the point? Just to make yourself feel smarter, or what?
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
Explain why he is wrong?
Perhaps you missed this part of my post.
"The scientific consensus, supported by a 2006 statement by 68 national and international science academies, is that it is evidence-based fact derived from observations and experiments in multiple scientific disciplines that the universe has existed for around 13.8 billion years and that the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, with life first appearing at least 2.5 billion years ago.[6]"
I have the entire consensus of the Scientific community on my side - thousands of researchers and scholars, countless verifiable artifacts, multiple countries, multiple scientific disciplines, all in consensus.
They have one chronologically flawed book written 3,000 years ago, and interpreted by people with a self-serving agenda.
So ...no... I don't have to be nice when dealing with naughty children.
Steve/bluewizard
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: I don't have to be nice when dealing with naughty children.
Yes, Steve, you do. It is not your job to enforce intellectual honesty on the Internet.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
You're confusing an argument from authority with an explanation. A consensus can be wrong, it really doesn't matter how big it is. There has been a significant scientific consensus on all sorts of wrong and terrible ideas in the past.
Again, I don't think that's the case with regards to carbon dating and the age of the world. But that's irrelevant. Here's what I'm asking: do you understand and agree with the explanations that led to the consensus?
If so, post those explanations. If not, why do you agree? And why do you agree so vehemently that you are willing to attack people who disagree? You should understand the arguments before you jump into a discussion like this.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlueWizard: Well, Sex-Whores trades Sex for Money.
A God-Whore trades God for Money, a particular game that has been going on for Centuries. However, the modern world has raised this grifter scam to a high art form with Televangelists.
okay, but whatever you are talking about with these 'god-whores' isn't really not endemic to faith in general. televangelists were just lurid in their particular methodology for monetizing our desire and psychological predispositions for accepting a comforting truth about the universe and our own deaths. they're hardly the ultimate practitioner by a long shot. they're just easy to point to and make a spectacle out of in terms of how baldly they are making a business out of people's irrationality.
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by BlueWizard: Well, Sex-Whores trades Sex for Money.
A God-Whore trades God for Money, ...
okay, but whatever you are talking about with these 'god-whores' isn't really not endemic to faith in general. ...
Religious organizations are by their very nature corrupt. They are about money and power, bought and sold in the guise of comfort, dressed up in the cloak of faith.
The Catholic Church is guilty of countless crimes against humanity in both the ancient and modern world. They take in $billions every year, they have untold wealth in a long history of art treasures they looted from around the world.
Every time they need money, they scam up some new way in which the masses must pay them ... or else. And when the money scam dries up, God magically changes his mind, and it isn't needed any more.
The Mormons are little better, when you consider the Mountain Meadows Massacre. (look it up)
Martin Luther did all his best writing when he was a poor monk. But when he became famous, and grew fat living with Kings, he turned his back on the poor who were espousing the very philosophy that Luther created. As a result of Luther's in inaction and indifference 100,000 peasants were slaughtered.
Are their good religious PEOPLE - Yes, absolutely. Some of them are in my family. Are there good, or at least better, religions? Absolutely, Quakers and Amish come to mind.
It is one thing to take comfort and guidance from religion, it is quite another to take it literally.
But for the systematic fleecing of people, nothing ever invented in the history of mankind has ever equaled the whole sale fleecing by organized religion.
Now, in every bad organization, there are a few good apples. But they act as individuals. The organizations themselves are, have been, and always will be corrupt money grubbing institutions. The massive money they take in makes pale the small good that they do.
I'm not against religion on the level of the individual. If they gain comfort and guidance from it, more power to them. But you will never persuade me that the Organizations are anything but corrupt, as they have been for Centuries.
And you will never convince me that the pseudo-Christians who buy and sell the name of God for money and power are anything but tools of the devil.
Of course, that is just my opinion.
Steve/bluewizard
[ November 07, 2013, 09:53 PM: Message edited by: BlueWizard ]
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: ... A consensus can be wrong, it really doesn't matter how big it is. ...
Consensus is wrong when it clings to Ideology in the face of evidence to the contrary, or when it simply refuses to hear evidence that does not fit its mind set.
And that is precisely what religion does, it clings blindly to ideology, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
In the ancient and not so ancient past, religions and science where linked. The idea that the Earth was a sphere floating in space was based on real evidence, and suppressed by the Church until the evidence became so massively overwhelming, the Church had to agree to save face.
Atomic Theory - Democritus - 5th Century BC - an idea lost for 2,000 years.
Earth is a Sphere - Eratosthenes - 3rd Century BC - Measure the earth's circumference with amazing accuracy considering he was using nothing but a stick in the ground.
Copernican System - 1543 AD - The Sun is the center and the Earth travels around it.
Kepler's Law of Planetary Motion - 1610 AD
Galileo's Law of Falling Bodies - Galileo's Concept of the Solar System - 1632
What is the one thing that suppressed all this Scientific Facts? Answer: Religion.
And why? Because knowledge threatens power.
Make of it what you will.
Steve/bluewizard
[ November 07, 2013, 09:46 PM: Message edited by: BlueWizard ]
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Blue Wiz, that's too easy.
Science is good/Religion is Evil is just another dichotomy, a reversal of Religion is Good, Secular is Evil that the worst of those claiming faith as their justification use to commit crimes.
Beware the false dichotomy.
All dichotomies are false.
Religion and people of faith have done wonderful things both in the ancient past, and the present. They have helped make wars, but they have helped make hospitals. They have supported terrible dictators but they have fed and clothed the poor when none others dared. For every Cardinal Richelieu there have been Mother Theresas. For every false saint there have been true.
You are a man of science, so investigate and study people of faith. Take a true unbiased sample and you'll discover that most of them are good people. Even the Young Earth Believers, though misguided, are mostly good people.
They are people like us all, atheists or secular, faith filled or spiritual. Some are good, and some are not.
If you mark them all as treacherous our naive you do them an injustice.
Now as far as Biblical Literalists vs Science--remember, according to those of Faith, God created two things. God created reality, and God created the Bible. One of these he created first hand with is perfect hands, and one he created through the imperfect hands and minds of men. When our understanding of these two creations seem to be in conflict we must decide which is correct--the perfect creation we can all witness and the universal language of math that allows us to decipher it, or the words written in long dead languages, where we imperfect humans have evolved our languages away from what was written so long ago.
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
I made it clear that m criticism fell on the corporate end of Religion, not on the personal end. Yes, people can be good or corrupt, but corporations, like religion, are inherently bad. They serve there own end above all else.
Yes, religions do a few good things to maintain their credibility, and the people for whom that good was done are grateful, assuming it truly was good.
But the magnitude of that good pales compared to the $Billions they collect.
Religion has always put on a good show, but that's all it has even been, a show to keep the people in line and the money flowing, and to maintain their grasp on power.
Religion has opposed every advancement in science across a massive span of history. They have opposed true in favor of Dogma. The previous Pope, not the current one, when he was younger defended the Church saying there were right to try and oppress Galileo, simply because Galileo opposed the power of the Church. This wasn't about true or right, this was about holding on to power. And this was a Pope 500 years after the fact. Still trying to hold on to false virtue, to false morality, to false authority.
Posted by millernumber1 (Member # 9894) on :
So scientists who work for corporations manage to avoid all this badness in all their views?
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
A large part of the problem is the determined effort to misrepresent the Creationist position, and especially the Young Earth, Young Universe position, along with false claims that evidence for evolution and vast ages of the universe is "overwhelming." This is propaganda and is absolutely untrue.
Here is an article setting forth 14 scientific evidences for a young physical earth and/or universe, measured in thousands, rather than millions or billions of years.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asp Evidence for a Young World by Dr. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D., ICR associate professor of physics First published in Impact #384, ICR, June 2005
______________________
Here are fourteen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old....The point is that the maximum possible ages are always much less than the required evolutionary ages, while the Biblical age (6,000 years) always fits comfortably within the maximum possible ages. Thus, the following items are evidence against the evolutionary time scale and for the Biblical time scale. Much more young-world evidence exists, but I have chosen these items for brevity and simplicity. Some of the items on this list can be reconciled with the old-age view only by making a series of improbable and unproven assumptions; others can fit in only with a recent creation.
1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast. The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.1 Yet our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. Evolutionists call this “the winding-up dilemma,” which they have known about for fifty years. They have devised many theories to try to explain it, each one failing after a brief period of popularity. The same “winding-up” dilemma also applies to other galaxies. For the last few decades the favored attempt to resolve the puzzle has been a complex theory called “density waves.”1 The theory has conceptual problems, has to be arbitrarily and very finely tuned, and has been called into serious question by the Hubble Space Telescope’s discovery of very detailed spiral structure in the central hub of the “Whirlpool” galaxy, M51.
2. Too few supernova remnants. According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years worth of supernovas.3
3. Comets disintegrate too quickly. According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the solar system, about five billion years. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years. Many comets have typical ages of less than 10,000 years.4 Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets come from an unobserved spherical “Oort cloud” well beyond the orbit of Pluto, (b) improbable gravitational interactions with infrequently passing stars often knock comets into the solar system, and (c) other improbable interactions with planets slow down the incoming comets often enough to account for the hundreds of comets observed.5 So far, none of these assumptions has been substantiated either by observations or realistic calculations. Lately, there has been much talk of the “Kuiper Belt,” a disc of supposed comet sources lying in the plane of the solar system just outside the orbit of Pluto. Some asteroid-sized bodies of ice exist in that location, but they do not solve the evolutionists’ problem, since according to evolutionary theory, the Kuiper Belt would quickly become exhausted if there were no Oort cloud to supply it.
4. Not enough mud on the sea floor. Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.6 This material accumulates as loose sediment on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of all the sediment in the whole ocean is less than 400 meters.7 The main way known to remove the sediment from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion tons per year.7 As far as anyone knows, the other 19 billion tons per year simply accumulate. At that rate, erosion would deposit the present mass of sediment in less than 12 million years. Yet according to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged three billion years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would be massively choked with sediment dozens of kilometers deep. An alternative (creationist) explanation is that erosion from the waters of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present amount of sediment within a short time about 5,000 years ago.
5. Not enough sodium in the sea. Every year, rivers8 and other sources9 dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year.9,10 As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today’s input and output rates.10 This is much less than the evolutionary age of the ocean, three billion years. The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations that are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years.10 Calculations11 for many other seawater elements give much younger ages for the ocean.
6. The earth’s magnetic field is decaying too fast. The total energy stored in the earth’s magnetic field (“dipole” and “non-dipole”) is decreasing with a half-life of 1,465 (± 165) years.12 Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as well as how the earth could have maintained its magnetic field for billions of years are very complex and inadequate. A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then.13 This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data, most startlingly with evidence for rapid changes.14 The main result is that the field’s total energy (not surface intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be more than 20,000 years old.15
7. Many strata are too tightly bent. In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. The conventional geologic time scale says these formations were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds of millions of years before they were bent. Yet the folding occurred without cracking, with radii so small that the entire formation had to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred. This implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after deposition.16
8. Biological material decays too fast. Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age of “mitochondrial Eve” from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years.17 DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly much older: Neandertal bones, insects in amber, and even from dinosaur fossils.18 Bacteria allegedly 250 million years old apparently have been revived with no DNA damage.19 Soft tissue and blood cells from a dinosaur have astonished experts.20
9. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic “ages” to a few years. Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.21 “Squashed” Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale.22 “Orphan” Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply accelerated nuclear decay and very rapid formation of associated minerals. 23, 24
10. Too much helium in minerals. Uranium and thorium generate helium atoms as they decay to lead. A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that such helium produced in zircon crystals in deep, hot Precambrian granitic rock has not had time to escape.25 Though the rocks contain 1.5 billion years worth of nuclear decay products, newly-measured rates of helium loss from zircon show that the helium has been leaking for only 6,000 (± 2000) years.26 This is not only evidence for the youth of the earth, but also for episodes of greatly accelerated decay rates of long half-life nuclei within thousands of years ago, compressing radioisotope timescales enormously.
11. Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata. With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 14, even though such strata are supposed to be millions or billions of years old. Conventional carbon 14 laboratories have been aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s, have striven to eliminate it, and are unable to account for it. Lately the world’s best such laboratory which has learned during two decades of low-C14 measurements how not to contaminate specimens externally, under contract to creationists, confirmed such observations for coal samples and even for a dozen diamonds, which cannot be contaminated in situ with recent carbon.27 These constitute very strong evidence that the earth is only thousands, not billions, of years old.
12. Not enough Stone Age skeletons. Evolutionary anthropologists now say that Homo sapiens existed for at least 185,000 years before agriculture began,28 during which time the world population of humans was roughly constant, between one and ten million. All that time they were burying their dead, often with artifacts. By that scenario, they would have buried at least eight billion bodies.29 If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 200,000 years, so many of the supposed eight billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, perhaps only a few hundred years in many areas.
13. Agriculture is too recent. The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 185,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.29 Yet the archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age men were as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the eight billion people mentioned in item 12 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men were without agriculture for a very short time after the Flood, if at all.31
14. History is too short. According to evolutionists, Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for 190,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases.30 Why would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely.31
References 1. Scheffler, H. and Elsasser, H., Physics of the Galaxy and Interstellar Matter, Springer-Verlag (1987) Berlin, pp. 352–353, 401–413. 2. D. Zaritsky, H-W. Rix, and M. Rieke, Inner spiral structure of the galaxy M51, Nature 364:313–315 (July 22, 1993). 3. Davies, K., Distribution of supernova remnants in the galaxy, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism, vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship (1994), Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 175–184, order from http://www.creationicc.org/. 4. Steidl, P. F., Planets, comets, and asteroids, Design and Origins in Astronomy, pp. 73-106, G. Mulfinger, ed., Creation Research Society Books (1983), order from http://www.creationresearch.org/. 5. Whipple, F. L., Background of modern comet theory, Nature 263:15–19 (2 September 1976). Levison, H. F. et al. See also: The mass disruption of Oort Cloud comets, Science 296:2212–2215 (21 June 2002). 6. Milliman, John D. and James P. M. Syvitski, Geomorphic/tectonic control of sediment discharge to the ocean: the importance of small mountainous rivers, The Journal of Geology, vol. 100, pp. 525–544 (1992). 7. Hay, W. W., et al., Mass/age distribution and composition of sediments on the ocean floor and the global rate of sediment subduction, Journal of Geophysical Research, 93(B12):14,933–14,940 (10 December 1988). 8. Meybeck, M., Concentrations des eaux fluviales en elements majeurs et apports en solution aux oceans, Revue de Géologie Dynamique et de Géographie Physique 21(3):215 (1979). 9. Sayles, F. L. and P. C. Mangelsdorf, Cation-exchange characteristics of Amazon River suspended sediment and its reaction with seawater, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 43:767–779 (1979). 10. Austin, S. A. and D. R. Humphreys, The sea’s missing salt: a dilemma for evolutionists, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship (1991), Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 17–33, order from http://www.creationicc.org/. 11. Nevins, S., [Austin, S. A.], Evolution: the oceans say no!, Impact No. 8 (Nov. 1973) Institute for Creation Research. 12. Humphreys, D. R., The earth’s magnetic field is still losing energy, Creation Research Society Quarterly, 39(1):3–13, June 2002. http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/39/39_1/GeoMag.htm. 13. Humphreys, D. R., Reversals of the earth’s magnetic field during the Genesis flood, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism, vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship (1986), Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 113–126, out of print but contact http://www.creationicc.org/ for help in locating copies. 14. Coe, R. S., M. Prévot, and P. Camps, New evidence for extraordinarily rapid change of the geomagnetic field during a reversal, Nature 374:687–92 (20 April 1995). 15. Humphreys, D. R., Physical mechanism for reversals of the earth’s magnetic field during the flood, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship (1991), Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 129–142, order from http://www.creationicc.org/. 16. Austin, S. A. and J. D. Morris, Tight folds and clastic dikes as evidence for rapid deposition and deformation of two very thick stratigraphic sequences, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism, vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship (1986), Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 3–15, out of print, contact http://www.creationicc.org/ for help in locating copies. 17. Gibbons A., Calibrating the mitochondrial clock, Science 279:28–29 (2 January 1998). 18. Cherfas, J., Ancient DNA: still busy after death, Science 253:1354–1356 (20 September 1991). Cano, R. J., H. N. Poinar, N. J. Pieniazek, A. Acra, and G. O. Poinar, Jr. Amplification and sequencing of DNA from a 120-135-million-year-old weevil, Nature 363:536–8 (10 June 1993). Krings, M., A. Stone, R. W. Schmitz, H. Krainitzki, M. Stoneking, and S. Pääbo, Neandertal DNA sequences and the origin of modern humans, Cell 90:19–30 (Jul 11, 1997). Lindahl, T, Unlocking nature’s ancient secrets, Nature 413:358–359 (27 September 2001). 19. Vreeland, R. H.,W. D. Rosenzweig, and D. W. Powers, Isolation of a 250 million-year-old halotolerant bacterium from a primary salt crystal, Nature 407:897–900 (19 October 2000). 20. Schweitzer, M., J. L. Wittmeyer, J. R. Horner, and J. K. Toporski, Soft-Tissue vessels and cellular preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex, Science 207:1952–1955 (25 March 2005). 21. Gentry, R. V., Radioactive halos, Annual Review of Nuclear Science 23:347–362 (1973). 22. Gentry, R. V. , W. H. Christie, D. H. Smith, J. F. Emery, S. A. Reynolds, R. Walker, S. S. Christy, and P. A. Gentry, Radiohalos in coalified wood: new evidence relating to time of uranium introduction and coalification, Science 194:315–318 (15 October 1976). 23. Gentry, R. V., Radiohalos in a radiochronological and cosmological perspective, Science 184:62–66 (5 April 1974). 24. Snelling, A. A. and M. H. Armitage, Radiohalos—a tale of three granitic plutons, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship (2003), Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 243–267, order from http://www.creationicc.org/. 25. Gentry, R. V., G. L. Glish, and E. H. McBay, Differential helium retention in zircons: implications for nuclear waste containment, Geophysical Research Letters 9(10):1129–1130 (October 1982). 26. Humphreys, D. R, et al., Helium diffusion age of 6,000 years supports accelerated nuclear decay, Creation Research Society Quarterly 41(1):1–16 (June 2004). See archived article on following page of the CRS website: http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/41/41_1/Helium.htm. 27. Baumgardner, J. R., et al., Measurable 14C in fossilized organic materials: confirming the young earth creation-flood model, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship (2003), Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 127–142. Archived at http://globalflood.org/papers/2003ICCc14.html. 28. McDougall, I., F. H. Brown, and J. G. Fleagle, Stratigraphic placement and age of modern humans from Kibish, Ethiopia, Nature 433(7027):733–736 (17 February 2005). 29. Deevey, E. S., The human population, Scientific American 203:194–204 (September 1960). 30. Marshack, A., Exploring the mind of Ice Age man, National Geographic 147:64–89 (January 1975). 31. Dritt, J. O., Man’s earliest beginnings: discrepancies in evolutionary timetables, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship (1991), Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 73–78, order from http://www.creationicc.org/.
Additional resources for items 9–11. • DeYoung, D., Thousands … Not Billions, Master Books (2005) Green Forest, AR. • Vardiman, L., Snelling, A. A., and Chaffin E. F., editors, Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Vol. II, Institute for Creation Research and Creation Research Society (2005) El Cajon, CA and Chino Valley, AZ. (Technical).
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
It should be added that there are situations where the speed of light constant may be different. E=MC² represents what is involved in the conversion of matter to energy, which happens during nuclear decay. In that equation, C represents the speed of light in a vacuum. It has been found in the laboratory that radioactive isotopes, when heated to the plasma state, may have their rate of radioactive decay multiplied billions of times. In the case of lutetium, the rate of decay is actually increased trillions of times. Now, was not all matter in the universe in a plasma state for the first instant of Creation? Is it not likely that at the very moment of creation of the universe, God may have allowed the constant of the speed of light in a vacuum to be very different from what it is now? Materialists talk about a "Big Bang," in an effort to mock Creation. (But what they propose is even more absurd, the idea that without God, in the beginning was nothing, and then nothing exploded and became the ordered universe.) But Isaiah 45:12; 48:13; and numerous other texts say God "stretched out the heavens."
The Creator in Genesis 1 is also shown to desire that the universe be a place of light, not a place of darkness, waiting billions of years for light from distant stars and galaxies to arrive at earth. Thus if we are willing to see the reasonableness of taking into account the testimony of the One who created the universe, we should take due note of His announced purpose.
If the only light from distant stars and galaxies that we can see is that which has been travelling for billions of years to reach us, then why don’t we see some sections of space where there is only blackness, and then later more and more stars and galaxies gradually appear, as the light from them is just now reaching us? We may increase the resolving power of our telescopes, but no one has ever reported reaching the limit of how distant stars and galaxies must be for their light to just now be reaching earth. This would seem like a very fundamental problem for the position that the universe is vastly old, and the light we see from distant stellar objects is only that which has been travelling for billions of years to reach us.
We must not say that the universe has always existed. If we said that, we would be denying that God created the universe. Since God did create the universe, there has to be a beginning point for the universe. But was it billions of years ago, or at most only 12,000? Moreover, since we believe that God did create the universe, that means that God created both space and time when He created the universe. Now here is where it is a little tricky: There can be no "before" God created time, because "before" implies time, and time did not exist before God created it.
Posted by Wingracer (Member # 12293) on :
I don't feel like taking the time to blow holes in all of that but I will take a moment for 14. Yes the oldest known writing of language is only about 5-6k years old but numbers have been written long before that. Tally sticks have been found over 40k years old.
Posted by Wingracer (Member # 12293) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: It should be added that there are situations where the speed of light constant may be different. E=MC² represents what is involved in the conversion of matter to energy, which happens during nuclear decay. In that equation, C represents the speed of light in a vacuum. It has been found in the laboratory that radioactive isotopes, when heated to the plasma state, may have their rate of radioactive decay multiplied billions of times. In the case of lutetium, the rate of decay is actually increased trillions of times.
Rate of decay is not the same as speed of light. That's like saying because there are ten cars doing 60mph on the highway, they should all get tickets for doing 600mph.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
As for the theory of evolution, proponents conspicuously turn a blind eye to the abosolute mathematical impossibility of meaningful genetic code being written by mutation guided by natural selection, sufficient to turn one species into another entirely different species, with a complexity involving billions of bits of data.
The impossibility of evolution is proven by the existence in most genomes of species a library of alternate characteristics, already encoded in them and ready to be expressed. Thus the Great Dane and Collie and Cocker Spaniel did not "evolve" from a predecessor (such as, perhaps, a kind of wolf); rather, the Great Dane and Collie and Cocker Spaniel WERE ALREADY PRESENT in the genome of the predecessor species.
This library of alternate characterists used to be characterized as "trash DNA." But more recently, it has been shown repeatedly that this previously unused, unexpressed DNA, is in fact ordered, meaningful genetic code.
Here is the key question: How could all these sequences of meaningful DNA code have been written by mutation guided by natural selction, if these sequences were not expressed? There is no way that natural selection can act on genetic code that is "switched off" and not expressed! So how did it get written?
Science is rapidly advancing in its ability to map genes. When the point comes when it is conclusively proven that the genetic code for the Collie is already in the Wolf, that will be the final, inarguable proof that evolution is wrong, and creation by an Intelligent Designer is the only possible scientific truth.
While we may wait for this final, definitive genetic mapping to be done, we already know what must be the case--because plant and animal breeders have been successfully producing many variations of existing species through the simple means of selective breeding. So we know the genetic code for the blue rose already exists in the red rose. The almond already existed in the so-called "bitter almond." The modern maize plant already existed in the early forms of the plant. The blue potato, and yellow potato, already existed in the white. So we know selective breeding works--which must mean that the desired alternate characteristics already exist in the progenitor genome, for the breeder to select from generation after generation.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
quote:Originally posted by Wingracer: I don't feel like taking the time to blow holes in all of that but I will take a moment for 14. Yes the oldest known writing of language is only about 5-6k years old but numbers have been written long before that. Tally sticks have been found over 40k years old.
How do you verify that claim, without making a prior assumption dependent on what you are trying to prove? There is nothing on earth that can be proven to be greater than 10,000 years old. The evidence is not there. At least, not unquestionable evidence. If you want to cite Carbon 14 age dating, I will give you plenty of caveats on why that is not reliable.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
quote:Originally posted by Wingracer: Rate of decay is not the same as speed of light. That's like saying because there are ten cars doing 60mph on the highway, they should all get tickets for doing 600mph.
That example of the cars does not even make sense, logically. When radioactive decay takes place, matter is converted into energy, according to the equation that includes the speed of light in a vacuum as a factor. If the rate of radioactive decay can be increased, as it has been proven to happen in the laboratory, then what does this imply about the speed of light constant?
Posted by Wingracer (Member # 12293) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
That example of the cars does not even make sense, logically. When radioactive decay takes place, matter is converted into energy, according to the equation that includes the speed of light in a vacuum as a factor. If the rate of radioactive decay can be increased, as it has been proven to happen in the laboratory, then what does this imply about the speed of light constant? [/QUOTE]
Absolutely nothing.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
Wizards can clearly exist!
Posted by narrativium (Member # 3230) on :
Oh, Ron. Your posts would be entertainingly ludicrous if they weren't so tediously long.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
So I can't figure out why crazy comes in waves around here. Ron, what made you swing by again?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
This is where the Guile theme starts playing as I hear that Ron has returned, and I give myself a celebratory neon green mohawg and ride a flaming bus through a wall of televisions into the thread in sheer and utter ecstasy, eagle tears streaming out of my eyes to the backdrop of the american flag, as a chorus of literal angels take a moment out of their meteor-deflection duties to sing "BARACK NATE DHALANI"
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I just converted that entire video into an animated gif and had it tattooed onto my FOREHEAD
Posted by Wingracer (Member # 12293) on :
Hm, that sounds like a brilliant new technology. Animated tattoos! If I can just figure out how to do it, I'll make millions.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I particularly like the "winding-them-up" theory!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I particularly like that Ron literally is pretty much quoting Answers in Genesis verbatim in their tired format of "Our understanding of a particular scientific understanding of something is that they do not understand it perfectly and we presume it to be full of holes. Holes that are satisfyingly filled with extremely questionable postulations that we take as true from the beginning of our analysis."
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
COME ON I thought this would have a lot more steam.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
honestly this all goes right back to the single overarching question I have about young earth creationism. What claim does it have to being respectable? I think we've already long reached the point where it's more important to keep creationist initiatives from impacting real biological and geological primary education rather than say that it has any claims to deserving equal representation or time because it's something some people truly believe.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
scifibum: Yeah, this has been disappointingly slow. Angels deciding on whether to stop meteors based on homosexuality? Good times.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Curious about the creationist take on ice layering. Has that been brought up yet? Doesn't that put Earth at a minimum 160,000 years old?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
It's not just angels deciding to stop meteors based on homosexuality; it's that american laws on american marriage and homosexuals are specifically the most weighted issue when it comes to the wavering commitment of the angelic anti-meteor deflection shield. like, we're accountable in our marriage laws for whether meteors hit the whole damn planet
it's american exceptionalism at its finest: our law and our definition of marriage is the bastion for the rest of the world against meteoric disasters. y'all rest of you better be grateful for our traditional marriage. I'm looking at you, europe. if it had been up to you, god would have gone all Chicxulub on us all. in His mercy. or something.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stephan: Curious about the creationist take on ice layering. Has that been brought up yet? Doesn't that put Earth at a minimum 160,000 years old?
I think the gist is that we weren't there to watch the layering so we can't say that it's definitely one layer per year.
It's a specific form of the general claim that just because things work a certain way now doesn't mean it always worked that way in the past. This is applied to everything from the formation of geological features to the rate of radioactive decay.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
The objection is not to homosexuality, but to calling same-sex unions "Marriages," in defiance of the Creator's authority to define what Marriage originally consisted of. It is official defiance of divine authority that leads to the angels being told to "stand down" in their activity to protect earth from terminal disasters of all kinds.
I have no doubt that many people who were homosexual on earth will be in heaven to live forever at peace with God. However, like all of us, their human natures will be changed as "this corruption shall have put on incorruption, and this mortality shall have put on immortality." (1 Corinthians 15:54; NKJV) There will be no one practicing homosexuality in Heaven or in the New Earth. But then, apparently there will be no sexuality at all, since Jesus said that "...in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven." (Matthew 22:30; NKJV) God originally told humans to reproduce until they had filled the earth (Genesis 1:28). So once the earth is filled, as it will be when all the faithful from all past generations have been resurrected, there would no longer be any need to reproduce. But lest anyone protest that they would never want to do without sex, just bear in mind that God never takes anything away from us without giving us something even better in its place. Perhaps there will be a kind of mental/empathetic intimacy we will be able to enjoy, and not just be limited to one person, but to everyone in this and all past generations whom we might find to be kindred spirits. That's just a speculation.
The dire trap being set for homosexuals in the present push to legalize same-sex "marriage" is that when nature turns out of its course to pummel us with disaster after disaster, a powerful movement will arise of people who wrongly will blame homosexuals for the destruction, and they will claim that the only way to turn aside what will wrongly be interpreted as "God's wrath" is to eliminate homosexuals. Professed atheists will also come into the targeting crosshairs, and no one will even dare to openly profess agnosticism. Relatively sudden watershed change in human society is what is predicted by the prophecy of Daniel 11:40, if you allow the Bible to define for you all the prophetic symbols employed. The King of the South is atheism, like when Pharoah said "I do not know the Lord."--Exodus 5:2. The King of the North is false religion (spiritual Babylon), behind which is Satan Himself operating most directly, seeking to establish his throne "in the sides of the north" (Isaiah 14:13) This change to the point where false religion will virtually rule the earth is only months away.
[ November 19, 2013, 02:32 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Right, Ron, but the issue is that if America redefines marriage to allow gays to marry, this puts the world at risk of more meteor strikes, because divine agents who normally protect us from meteor strikes are less inclined to protect us when we are acting in defiance of God's word, at least insofar as it pertains to how our country should define marriage, right?
Also what other disasters are these angels protecting us from? I assume it's not just meteors!
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
It seems remarkable to me that angels would withdraw their protection from the world for governments letting homosexuals get legally married -- using an English term that did not exist until a few hundred years ago -- but would be cool with, y'know, all the state-sanctioned assassination that goes on.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
What God said was: "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." (Genesis 2:24) This is the concept, as God originally created it, before sin ruined everything. Marriage and the Sabbath are the two things that were instituted by God in Eden prior to the entry of sin. Both rest solely upon God's authority as Creator, thus official defiance of these institutions constitutes direct defiance of God's authority. Divorce is bad enough, and adultery obviously is destructive of marriage, but daring to redefine what God instituted as marriage is too direct a challenge to God's authority to be passed over lightly. This is precisely what Satan is trying to con humanity into doing, because then he can claim the right to bring increased destruction upon humanity.
America dominates world culture, and sets an example even our most hateful enemies cannot ignore. Tolerance, expecially of religion, is widespread on earth only because it is what America stands for. America's sabotage of the institution of marriage will be definitive for all humanity.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:This is the concept, as God originally created it...
Can you explain why you think same-sex marriage represents defiance of or a threat to this concept? It seems to me that men and women remain free to leave their parents and merge their flesh even if homosexuals can get tax benefits and adopt children.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Answered in my previous post.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
So you could make God happier by making sure people were not allowed to divorce? But it's more important that our government specifically doesn't redefine marriage from the original biblical standard?
I assume the original biblical standard includes teh tax rebates and the naturalization stuff for offseas territories. Otherwise, wuh-oh!
What happens if only a few states allow gay marriage but it's not a federal standard? Is that good enough to survive for now, or must it be abolished totally?
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
As to why I have not posted in this forum for a while, I spend my time with some care. The kind of "progressive" bigotry and close-mindedness that dominates this forum does not seem to warrant my serious attention. But certainly a thread titled "Young Earth Creationism," especially after it has gone on for three pages still without showing any fairness or justice or accurate knowlege in representing the position of Young Earth Creationism, warrants some comment from me, since as most people here know, I do care about this topic.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
That's cool but we're asking you really important questions about the angel meteor shield! It's kind of important to us ron because we do not want to get hit by meteors.
I would be really sad if my misguided progressivism resulted in the mass casualty of human beings. Even I admit that there is a limit to my cause, and that limit is protecting human beings for god's wrath, which apparently would be inflicted on us if we do not keep marriage for men and women.
Would the united states lose its area of coverage individually if it deviates from setting God's standard for the world, or would other countries be equally at risk of meteor strikes from when God's angels are told to "stand down?"
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Answered in my previous post.
No, I don't think so. Because here's the thing: when Adam and Eve were "married," even according to your own mythology, it wasn't called a "marriage." The word didn't exist. There was a state of union, and a term evolved to describe that state of union.
Other forms of union have since appeared. Some of them are described by a term that is also used to describe the state of union you believe that God personally instituted; some of them are not.
But what threat to the sort of union God instituted, what defiance, is there in applying a term that encompasses that sort of union to another sort of union, given that we've been doing that for as long as we've possessed both language and the concept of state-sanctioned unions?
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I wish you would care to notice you are bat shit crazy, and no one else cares....
Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :
Ron - I just have one question. Which God is greater, the one that must manually create every thing and lied about the age of the earth, or the one that gives a single command, and the elements obey to evolve a planet, then evolve life, then evolve man in God's image - through a command billions of years ago?
Assuming God - this is not that debate - which is the simpler, more profound answer?
Read Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian who shows biblical support for deep time and evolution. The parts of the Bible describing creation was written thousands of years ago, the flawed memories of revelations God gave to men who thought the universe ended a few miles above the surface of the earth - stars were pinpricks in the dome of the sky letting through the light of 'heaven'. The point wasn't even just creation, it was to teach men what they were - agents who could choose between good and evil - and teach them to be better, to have self control, and to prepare mankind for a Savior.
It is not a scientific account of creation. Genesis is basically a metaphorical account, showing increasing complexity until Man appears. Then Genesis is about God's covenants with Man.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Kwea! That's really rather rude. Ron has gone to great lengths to warn us about how we have to keep gays from marrying otherwise god will make sure we are hit by meteors. He's also done some good work showing us the absolutely crystal-clear evidence that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. And his arguments as to the obvious proof of the true age of the earth are irrefutable, except by weak-minded people who are driven to murderous tempest by the influence of the devil.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Samprimary, even God allowed "for the hardness of your hearts" by allowing for divorce under some circumstances (see Matthew 19:8). It is better to break free of a relationship that is harmful--and some marriages are extremely harmful to the point of being life-threatening. It is difficult enough to live a life seeking to come into closer fellowship with God, without being dragged down by a spouse who is not on the same path you are. God did tell us not to be "unequally yoked."
But it is important not to confuse what is the divinely authorized ideal. In fact, this becomes all the more important when so many human relationships are being sundered and lying in ruins.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Amka--this is the God who is greatest. The one of whom it is said: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth....For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." (Psalms 33:6, 9)
Have you ever considered why it is that natural law, with all its constants, remain the same, and does not change from moment to moment? Who enforces that?
Let me remind you of the argument I presented based on the fact that there is meaningful genetic code in the genome of most species that is unexpressed. How could "Natural Selection" have written meaningful genetic code that is not expressed? Do you see how this has to indicate that God created everything at once--even the potentials for variation and adaptation within a species? And do you see how this must necessarily and conclusively disprove evolution? Evolution requires Natural Selection to explain how meaningful code can be written by chance; but there can be no action of Natural Selection on code that is not expressed. Can you appreciate the tremendous logical weight of this argument?
And once you admit the necessity for an Intelligent Designer, there no longer is any need to contrive excuses for believing in vast age for the earth and universe.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Can you guys? Can you?
Can you appreciate the tremendous logical weight of Ron's arguments?
I don't think you can.
quote:And once you admit the necessity for an Intelligent Designer, there no longer is any need to contrive excuses for believing in vast age for the earth and universe.
Exactly! If we're talking intelligent designer, it necessarily means we're talking a timeframe of a few thousand years, tops. Nothing ridiculous like a million or more. Everybody knows gods can't work with numbers that big.
The existence of God as the creator of life necessarily means that timeframes don't work like that. Because, reasons.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:How could "Natural Selection" have written meaningful genetic code that is not expressed?
At the heart of that question, Ron, is your use of the word "meaningful." What do you believe "meaningful" code actually is?
-------
Also, you have failed to answer my question regarding why God's preferred form of union is endangered by permitting homosexuals to legally form a union using a similar term.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: The objection is not to homosexuality, but to calling same-sex unions "Marriages," in defiance of the Creator's authority to define what Marriage originally consisted of. It is official defiance of divine authority that leads to the angels being told to "stand down" in their activity to protect earth from terminal disasters of all kinds.
quote: Mishnah Kiddushin 1:1 specifies that a woman is acquired (i.e., to be a wife) in three ways: through money, a contract, and sexual intercourse. Ordinarily, all three of these conditions are satisfied, although only one is necessary to effect a binding marriage.
No religion or priest needed.
Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :
Ron, I hope you don't feel piled up on. I admire your faith in God.
What I worry about is that you're reducing God to the gaps in our knowledge: "God of the Gaps" is what that is called. I went through a crisis of faith, facing the fact that I was believing in God because creation proved God, because I would be able to use science to prove God.
My parents had taught me young earth creationism. I thought that, though good disciples, people who believed in deep time and evolution were following false doctrines.
But they also taught me to be honest. As I grew older, almost everything in that account of creation was stripped away. I hung on to it for a long time, because my belief in God was all wrapped up in it. Letting go of it would have meant letting go of God. But then, I realized, I didn't want to believe in a God that was smaller and smaller, only there to tweak the little things.
God needing to enforce the laws of nature suggests that he created them imperfectly in the first place and now has to keep tinkering with them so we can still have the universe and life.
But if the laws of nature are God's programming for the universe, unchangeable and in force no matter what, then God could have set those laws to generate us. God is not inefficient.
Since our belief in God shouldn't center around proof through creation, then what should it center around? Proof through testing what the Bible tells us to do. Read and study the scriptures, pray, obey to know God, rinse and repeat (repentance through Christ).
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
Ron wouldn't a universe billions of years old make your god more awesome and more powerful?
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
No, Elison and Amka, a God who requires billions of years would be a very weak and ineffectual God, who could not create things the way He wanted them right away. A God who must rely upon chance to create any form of life has virtually no power at all.
Also a God who must utilize death to create life, where nature "red in tooth and claw" is the very inefficient, slow, and painful and horrible means of causing one species to morph into another, is a God who is utterly evil and unworthy of worship. Evolution, even if dressed up as "theistic" evolution, depicts God as having the villainous characteristics of Satan; not of an all-powerful, utterly just and fair Deity who intends for His universe to be governed by Love, where never again will sin rise up.
Satan would substitute selfish striving in the place of love, and brainwash us into believing that we can somehow evolve into godhood through this means. God allows nature to be corrupted now for our sakes, so that nature can be a lesson book to us, where we can see what the ultimate result of selfish striving must be. But God also promises that nature will be restored when man is restored to the original perfection He intended. As the Apostle Paul said, "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now." (Romans 8:20-22; NKJV)
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:A God who must rely upon chance to create any form of life has virtually no power at all.
An example of the contradictory nonsense-thinking this sort of literalism encourages. On any number of issues, we will hear about the impenetrable mysteries of God. We'll hear about he many mysterious ways in which God works. We'll even hear how an answer of 'God caused this' is a better answer than 'I don't know how it started' and this will somehow be offered as an even more meaningful argument-that God is responsible for something so unfathomable as creating the Universe.
None of these things, though, stops Ron from sneering at a deity that can 'only' set all of existence in motion such that without ongoing direct intervention, self-aware intelligent life will occur. This is somehow a trifle. It's easy. As though you could even begin to imagine how these things might be done by some sort of deity, Ron. It's as impossible for you to imagine how that sort of Creation might be achieved as it is for the one you believe happened.
This is a sign not that you respect God because God is so powerful and awe-inspiring, but that it actually stems from a much more self-centered place. It's not that you revere amazing acts of Creation-because you even reject that other equally impervious-to-understanding acts, if they were true, would be mighty acts worthy of awe if they happened. Nope. Instead, they require 'virtually no power at all'.
Except when some atheist or agnostic comes forward and asks whether these things might have happened without any creator, you're back again to how impossible, how unthinkable it is that reality exists without some amazing act of creation.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Also a God who must utilize death to create life, where nature "red in tooth and claw" is the very inefficient, slow, and painful and horrible means of causing one species to morph into another, is a God who is utterly evil and unworthy of worship.
Explain to me why Jesus had to die for our sins, again?
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: No, Elison and Amka, a God who requires billions of years would be a very weak and ineffectual God, who could not create things the way He wanted them right away. A God who must rely upon chance to create any form of life has virtually no power at all.
Also a God who must utilize death to create life, where nature "red in tooth and claw" is the very inefficient, slow, and painful and horrible means of causing one species to morph into another, is a God who is utterly evil and unworthy of worship. Evolution, even if dressed up as "theistic" evolution, depicts God as having the villainous characteristics of Satan; not of an all-powerful, utterly just and fair Deity who intends for His universe to be governed by Love, where never again will sin rise up.
Satan would substitute selfish striving in the place of love, and brainwash us into believing that we can somehow evolve into godhood through this means. God allows nature to be corrupted now for our sakes, so that nature can be a lesson book to us, where we can see what the ultimate result of selfish striving must be. But God also promises that nature will be restored when man is restored to the original perfection He intended. As the Apostle Paul said, "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now." (Romans 8:20-22; NKJV)
Or maybe god exists, has perfect understanding of everything because that's what he is iirc, and because of that KNEW Humanity would 100% chance evolve on Earth that he ALSO knew would 100% form from the solar detritus and all of this is actually kinda supported by quantum mechanics in that observing something changes that something; and so created the universe with observable and empirically determinable laws that he KNEW would 100% result in Humans.
And your saying this is "ineffectual"? Why is billions of years even a big deal? Why should he perceive time at all? Maybe time has no meaning to him or her?
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
Ron Lambert -
"And once you admit the necessity for an Intelligent Designer, there no longer is any need to contrive excuses for believing in vast age for the earth and universe."
Samprimary -
"Exactly! If we're talking intelligent designer, it necessarily means we're talking a time frame of a few thousand years, tops."
Just one small problem, you are massively egocentric. You see yourself as absolutely right, but why?
Every culture in the world has its own creations myth. Why is yours better than theirs?
You quote the Bible, but why is your Holy Book any better than anyone else's? Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, the Teachings of Buddha, or the many animistic religions?
You believe in an Intelligent Designer, OK, I'll give you an Intelligent Designer.
Billions of years ago, Mars was a fruitful planet, lush grass, vast oceans, large forests, happy intelligent people. But there was a greedy faction that put momentary profits and environmental destruction above long term survival.
By the time they realized their planet was doomed, it was too late. So, the brilliant scientists did the only thing they could. They couldn't save the people, so they saved the essence of the people.
They sent a DNA Bomb to Earth to seed the Earth with the intelligent essence and the essential genetic code that would give rise to the unique creature called MAN (mankind; men and women).
But from seeds it take a long long time for mighty trees to grow, so by a process of evolution, man developed from a primitive seeding to the complex organism we know today.
Oddly, my Creation Myth is a lot closer to scientific truth than your Creation Myth. My Intelligent Design is far far more likely than yours.
Who are you to say that I am wrong? Who are you to challenge my belief in this reasonable explanation?
There is more rational behind what I believe than in what you believe.
So, there is your Intelligent Design and your Intelligent Designer.
Steve/bluewizard
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
Don't forget Enuma Elish.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: No, Elison and Amka, a God who requires billions of years would be a very weak and ineffectual God, who could not create things the way He wanted them right away. A God who must rely upon chance to create any form of life has virtually no power at all.
Actually the actual age of the earth is no more than about 112 years. I don't know how weak and ineffectual your god is, but if you think that he's so weak and ineffectual as to require multiple thousands of years, that's quite an insult to our Creator.
You should really meditate on your hubris and apologetically pray to Him for salvation.
Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :
Steve - I think that Samprimary was being sarcastic. He doesn't believe in YEC. But maybe I misunderstand you.
But, you did take us to an interesting place: panspermia. It is not an irrational solution to the problem that we appear to have had organisms with DNA already intact almost as soon as life was possible.
Ron is correct is saying that this is highly complex. I may even go so far as to say that it is more complex than anything else in life, once you break it all down to molecular machinations, and that the rate of change in the replication/messaging system of DNA itself is so slow that the few hundred million years it had to develop once the earth was cool enough is not enough.
We also have the difficulty of not having predecessors running on a substantially less complex version of RNA or DNA. But in life, at least a handful of primitive species continue without evolving much because they are already successful enough. Cockroaches are older than dinosaurs.
My hubby and I were pillow talking this. We decided there were three possibilities, maybe two:
1. panspermia - it evolved somewhere else and got here somehow. In this scenario, we now have 10 billion more years for things to evolve.
2. There are simply pieces of the puzzle we don't have which would explain how DNA evolved so quickly on Earth.
3.Perhaps this is a direct manifestation of intelligent tinkering. But this could involve either 1 or 2. This is not set forth as a proof of God, simply a reasonable possibility in a universe where God exists. But if one imagines that God's first command of "multiply and replenish" was given not to organisms but to the elements themselves, how would the stuff of stars "contrive" to do that. Don't think of this command as one intelligently understood, but more as a law of nature: the elements will naturally combine to create things which are more and more complex until intelligence is achieved.
In any one of these scenarios, we must still have an evolution of RNA/DNA somehwere and somehow.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
At least on a state and national level, common sense appears to be prevailing.
quote: A quick refresher: In 2008, school board members voted 5-0 to fire Freshwater, a Mount Vernon Middle School science teacher, after learning that he had preached Creationism to the students, handed out flyers in class urging kids to attend a presentation by the “Answers in Genesis” ministry, left the Bible out on his desk during class even after being told to stop, hung a Ten Commandments sign in his classroom, offered extra credit to students who watched the Ben Stein pro-Intelligent Design movie Expelled, and burned a student in the arm with a Tesla coil… in the shape of a cross:
Freshwater not only ignored the school district’s directive, he defied it. After he was directed to remove the items, Freshwater deliberately added to them, incorporating the Oxford Bible and Jesus of Nazareth into the classroom. He then refused to remove his personal Bible from his desk, and refused to remove a depiction of former President George W. Bush and Colin Powell and others in prayer from his wall. … Freshwater is fully entitled to an ardent faith in Jesus Christ and to interpret Biblical passages according to his faith. But he was not entitled to ignore direct, lawful edicts of his superiors while in the workplace.
Blue Wizard, you asked: "You quote the Bible, but why is your Holy Book any better than anyone else's?"
Because the Bible is validated by prophecies that when interpreted using objective means--including allowing the Bible to define all its own prophetic symbols and allowing context to indicate the time when prophecies are to be applied--accurately outline world history from 600 B.C. clear up to the present. Since only the God who is beyond time could know "the end from the beginning," as claimed in the Bible, this means all the writings in the Bible along with these prophecies should be taken as having great weight. No other literary work in all of human history has this validation.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
If it were anything else, you would likely correctly note the huge (crippling, unavoidable, pervasive) problems with the idea of asserting an 'objective' analysis of textual media when you have to include terms like 'let it define its own terms' (that sound objective) and insisting on a correct reliance on 'context'.
Even someone strongly committed to objectivity-which you are not-would be extremely vulnerable to confirmation bias in making such an analysis. You may try all you like, but don't expect to ever get a free pass on hand-waving all of those problems away anymore.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Blue Wizard, you asked: "You quote the Bible, but why is your Holy Book any better than anyone else's?"
Because the Bible is validated by prophecies that when interpreted using objective means--including allowing the Bible to define all its own prophetic symbols and allowing context to indicate the time when prophecies are to be applied--accurately outline world history from 600 B.C. clear up to the present. Since only the God who is beyond time could know "the end from the beginning," as claimed in the Bible, this means all the writings in the Bible along with these prophecies should be taken as having great weight. No other literary work in all of human history has this validation.
Except the Messiah hasn't arrived yet, just ask the Jews.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Ever watch Star Wars? All those prophecies came true to.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Blue Wizard, you asked: "You quote the Bible, but why is your Holy Book any better than anyone else's?"
Because the Bible is validated by prophecies that when interpreted using objective means--including allowing the Bible to define all its own prophetic symbols and allowing context to indicate the time when prophecies are to be applied--accurately outline world history from 600 B.C. clear up to the present. Since only the God who is beyond time could know "the end from the beginning," as claimed in the Bible, this means all the writings in the Bible along with these prophecies should be taken as having great weight. No other literary work in all of human history has this validation.
I'm a Christian and I really hate this argument about all of it being validated through prophecies.
At the time of Christ's life, there were a lot of people going around claiming to be the Messiah. Not only that, but some of those prophecies were very much up to interpretation. I remember one of them said something like the Messiah was going to free the Jews, so the Christians look at Jesus as spiritually freeing them. Obviously, that's just one interpretation. Then you have the whole "He'll be the descendant of David". That's fine, except that in two of the four gospels, there are different lineage accounts that don't really match up.
Point is, you'll never know, so just believe whatever you want to believe and stop arguing about your religion with other people.
Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :
Allowing the bible to define it's symbols... not sure what you mean by that, but... days are clearly metaphorical and God's time is clearly not our own.
Psalms 90:4-5
4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
5 Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
6 In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Elison and Jeff, all you have to do is carefully trace the time prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27 through history. This prophecy pinpoints the year and even the time of year when the Messiah would appear and be annointed, and how long his ministry would last before He is sacrificed.
Here is the text in the NKJV:
quote:24 "Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city, To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, And to anoint the Most Holy. 25 "Know therefore and understand, That from the going forth of the command To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; The street shall be built again, and the wall, Even in troublesome times. 26 "And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; And the people of the prince who is to come Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood, And till the end of the war desolations are determined. 27 Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, Even until the consummation, which is determined, Is poured out on the desolate.
The original text actually says "seventy sevens." Weeks were inferred by the translators. 70 times 7 is 490. There are examples in Bible prophecy where a day of prophetic time represents a literal year. Ezekiel 4:6 and Numbers 14:34 are texts which specify that each prophetic day was to represent an actual year. In the writings of the Qumran community, their commentary on this passage in Daniel 9:24 calls it "ten Jubilees." The Jubilee cycle was 49 years, with the following year being the Jubilee. Every seventh year the Israelites were to let the land rest and lie fallow, and every seventh seventh (or 49th) year, the land was to rest, and all debts were to be forgiven, and all slaves were to be freed, and any ancestral land that had been sold was to be returned to the family or clan that originally owned it.
The beginning of the 490 years was to be indicated thusly: "...from the going forth of the command To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks"
When Ezra returned from Persia to Jerusalem with the decree of King Artaxerxes of Persia to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, he left in the spring on a journey that typically took six months, so would have arrived in the Autumn, and then was able to publish the king's decree throughout the land. This took place in the fall of 457 B.C.
So the 490 years that was decreed to remain for the Jews extended from 457 B.C. to the fall of 34 A.D. (remembering that there was no year zero--you go from 1 B.C. to 1 A.D.)
Verse 25 specifies that after 7 weeks and 62 weeks (69 weeks or 483 years total) "Messiah the Prince" would appear. Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan and annointed by the Holy Spirit when He "began to be about thirty years of age" (Luke 3:23). Since the Gregorian calendar was in error, and Jesus was actually born in 4 B.C., this means that the Messiah was prophesied to begin His ministry in about 27 A.D. This was the end of the 483 years.
That leaves seven days (7 years). Verse 26 says that after this time "Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself;" (Cut off means killed.) Another detail is given in verse 27 about when the Messiah would be killed: "But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering." The middle of seven years would be three and one half years. Since the 490 years was to end in the fall of 34 A.D., this means that three and one-half years earlier would be the spring of 31 A.D. This is when Jesus Christ was crucified on the Cross, for the divine purpose of paying for the sins of all humanity. (He was "cut off, but not for Himself.") Making "an end of sacrifice and offering" refers to the fact that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the sacrifices and offerings of the Old Testament. They were but types that pointed forward to the one True Offering for Sin, who alone had the power to take away sins. So when Jesus Christ (Yeshua Messiah) gave His life on Calvary, that was the end of the significance of the sacrificial system. Any further continuance of the sacrificial system would constitute acts of unbelief in the Salvation that God had provided once and for all. This was why at the moment that Christ died, "the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom." (see Mark 15:38; NKJV)
When Jesus began His public preaching, He began His sermons by saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel." (Mark 1:15) When He said "the time is fulfilled," He was referring to the time prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27.
This was the original foundation of the Christian faith.
[ November 21, 2013, 01:03 AM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
That's all very helpful! I'm glad to know a storybook can be read to have predicted other parts of itself, according to itself. This is the most stunning evidence of how biology and geology work, ever.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
One of my favorite parts of Lord of the Rings was when, as the White Council planned, destroying the One Ring broke the power of Sauron and purged him from the world. Just as predicted!
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
The Lord of the Rings was fiction, and the whole thing was written only about 60 years ago. The book of Daniel was written in 600 B.C. and was in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
Let me offer a quote -
"Rather they were quilty of too much belief in a story they were told. Most people are able to hold the most stories they're told in abeyance, to keep a little distance between the story - and for you, Qing-Jao - the terrible lie has become the self-story, the tale that you must believe if you are to retain yourself. How can I blame you for wanting us all to die? You are so filled with the largeness of the Gods, how can you have compassion for such small concerns are the lived of three species of Ramen? I know you, Qing-Jao, and I expect you to behave no differently from they way you do. Perhaps someday, confronted by the consequences of your own actions, you might change, but I doubt it. Few who are captured by such a powerful story are ever able to win free of it."
Xenocide - Chapter 11 - Orson Scott Card.
"Perhaps someday, confronted by the consequences of your own actions, you might change, but I doubt it. Few who are captured by such a powerful story are ever able to win free of it."
Make of it what you will.
Steve/bluewizard
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: The Lord of the Rings was fiction, and the whole thing was written only about 60 years ago. The book of Daniel was written in 600 B.C. and was in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Then why aren't you a Jew? If the OT's long-term consistency is what matters, that is. Or will we hear more about the proper 'objective' evaluation of the Bible?
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
It is pretty easy to write a book decades after something happened and make it look like it was predicted.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Rakeesh, I am a Jew. I accept the continuation of Judaism in Christianity--which is the fulfillment of Judaism. As the Apostle Paul put it in Galatians 3:29: "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." He reasoned thus because as he showed, the promise to Abraham was that in His Seed all nations would be blessed. Therefore the true inheritance of Abraham is faith in God's provision for the blessing of humanity. Those who have faith to receive this promised Seed are the true Jews in this modern world, for they have the true faith of Abraham.
I do have to add that most Christians are wrong in changing from observance of the seventh-day Sabbath to venerating the pagan "Day of the Sun." Seventh-day Adventists are a 17 million-member Christian denomination which continues to keep the seventh-day Sabbath, as the Bible specifies, from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday.
But even this attempt to change God's Law was predicted in Daniel 7:25--speaking of the persecuting religious power that would arise from the foundation of the Roman Empire, the prophecy says: "And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time."
[ November 21, 2013, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Strephan, the book of Daniel, which predicts the year, time of year, and purpose for the appearance of the Messiah and when He would be sacrificed for the blessing of humanity, was written in 600 B.C. That means "Before Christ." The book of Daniel, including the prophecy I cited, was in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which no one disputes dated from at least 100 years before the birth of Christ. It was also in the Septuagint version of the Bible (quoted from in the New Testament), which is believed to have been produced around 250 B.C.
Notice also that the prophetic outlines of history given in Daniel 2, 7, and 8-9 predict that after Babylon's rule of the Middle East would rise Medo-Persia, and after Medo-Persia, Greece (which was then divided into four parts after the death of Alexander, when the Grecian Empire was divided among his four generals), and then Rome. Rome would have a dual nature--begining as a secular empire, and then morphing into a religion-based empire (the "Holy Roman Empire"). Following that would not be another world empire, but rather a division of Rome into a multitude of nations--which is what happened when the Barbarians who overthrew Rome went on to establish the nations of modern Europe. All these things were predicted in writing that dates from 600 B.C.
Thus the God of the Bible challenges doubters when He says, "Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, 'My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure';" (Isaiah 46:9, 10; NASB)
This is the power of the Creator God of whom it is said: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host....For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." (Psalms 33:6, 9; NASB)
[ November 21, 2013, 12:22 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Oh I have no doubt the Book of Daniel was written before the year 0. That is fact. No dispute there. I am talking about the myth of Jesus being written many years afterwards to fit prophecy, with the only proof being a contradictory bible and a questionable brief blurb from Josephus (who was not actually there).
Yeah, I know, that topic has been covered ad-naseum, and your mind is not going to be changed, so let us agree to disagree on that one.
I do have a question for a bible literalist that has never been answered before. And Ron, I really hope you answer it. It probably won't change my mind, but I truly and respectfully want to hear your perspective on this.
The Tower of Babel.
That story in my mind has always, even as a child in Hebrew school, been problematic. You have this tower that sounds remarkably like all the other towers the Babylonians built, whom the early Jews spent quite a bit of time with. It reads just like the Jews were telling their children why the Babylonians are so evil. But even besides that, we have gone much further into the sky then they ever did in that story. You would think if the Judeo-Christian god had a problem with building gigantic towers into the heavens, that he would have a severe problem with us now. No stopping us from building gigantic skyscrapers, let alone the moon landing. Any take on that?
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
Got into another argument with my roommate last night about Young Earth Creationism. I asked him about the speed of light and why is it we can see light from billions of light years away (implying that those stars existed that long ago). His response was simply, God put the light in the sky for us to see, so it was already here.
I'm done. I can't argue with that. It's too illogical and stupid. It is impossible to argue with someone who doesn't use factual data and who's main answer is simply "God did it".
Oh, and the best part, when I brought up that there was a mountain of evidence that supported the age of the universe and that the Earth was indeed much older than ten thousand years, and that the Big Bang theory was the most widely accepted scientific origin story out there, he scoffed and said "Jeff, they disproved the Big Bang theory in the 90s". I vehemently argued with him about it and insisted he was wrong, but he just said "Yeah okay Jeff" and laughed at me and walked away.
It makes me so angry because he does that every time. He did the same thing when I suggested that birds were related to dinosaurs (again, according to him, this was also disproven in the 90s...), and then when I suggested that there were thousands of different dinosaurs (he claims there are only about 30). Each time, he does not present any proof or evidence or sources, and then he just laughs at me. I am so sick of it and it is really annoying. It's like living with a small child.
The man was raised in a christian school, by the way, which explains a lot. Those schools are evil and they teach terrible information to children. I went to one for four years and it took me a decade to get over the brainwashing. You can't call it science class when all you are doing is teaching against science. I can't believe it is legal.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Rakeesh, I am a Jew. I accept the continuation of Judaism in Christianity--which is the fulfillment of Judaism. As the Apostle Paul put it in Galatians 3:29: "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." He reasoned thus because as he showed, the promise to Abraham was that in His Seed all nations would be blessed. Therefore the true inheritance of Abraham is faith in God's provision for the blessing of humanity. Those who have faith to receive this promised Seed are the true Jews in this modern world, for they have the true faith of Abraham.
I do have to add that most Christians are wrong in changing from observance of the seventh-day Sabbath to venerating the pagan "Day of the Sun." Seventh-day Adventists are a 17 million-member Christian denomination which continues to keep the seventh-day Sabbath, as the Bible specifies, from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday.
But even this attempt to change God's Law was predicted in Daniel 7:25--speaking of the persecuting religious power that would arise from the foundation of the Roman Empire, the prophecy says: "And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time."
Given that you're writing off all non-Christian (of the correct sect) Jews in the modern world as false, I hope we won't be hearing any talk about people being disrespectful towards Christianity or Christians.
Posted by Wingracer (Member # 12293) on :
Stephan, I am certainly no expert but it's my understanding that it was not so much the tower itself God did not like but the common language and unity of the people which the tower was a symbol of. I don't think airplanes and skyscrapers fall into the same category though perhaps you could make a case for the World Trade Center if you were so inclined.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
quote:Originally posted by Wingracer: Stephan, I am certainly no expert but it's my understanding that it was not so much the tower itself God did not like but the common language and unity of the people which the tower was a symbol of. I don't think airplanes and skyscrapers fall into the same category though perhaps you could make a case for the World Trade Center if you were so inclined.
If that is true, than anyone who accepts that as true history should be terrified of the internet. Talk about something creating a united people under one tongue.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stephan:
quote:Originally posted by Wingracer: Stephan, I am certainly no expert but it's my understanding that it was not so much the tower itself God did not like but the common language and unity of the people which the tower was a symbol of. I don't think airplanes and skyscrapers fall into the same category though perhaps you could make a case for the World Trade Center if you were so inclined.
If that is true, than anyone who accepts that as true history should be terrified of the internet. Talk about something creating a united people under one tongue.
Yeah, I've never understood the reasoning behind the Tower of Babel. If humans all spoke the same language and lived together in harmony and worked toward a common goal, why would God separate them? It's not like that tower would ever actually reach Heaven. Besides, if God dwells in a spiritual place and he supposedly created the Universe for Man, then what's the harm in letting humans explore it to the hearts' content? Certainly it's far crueler and more twisted to separate people into groups that can't understand one another so they end up killing and slaughtering each other over nothing. Wars erupt, bombs are dropped, millions die. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.
I'm tossing Babel into the same bin as the worldwide Flood and the six day creation myth. That is, it's a metaphor and didn't actually happen.
Posted by millernumber1 (Member # 9894) on :
Jeff - I'm sorry your roommate is arguing like a jerk. While I agree (to some extent) with some of his arguments, that's certainly an extremely obnoxious way of relating to someone.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
Babel I think was more of a story about Raistlin levels of hubris; I think there was a distinction in motivation, the humans in that story I don't think wanted to explore for explorations sake, they wanted to stand above god.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
And all that is fine if you look at it as a metaphor, no different than Greek myths explaining the natural world. In this case just a bed time story about why we have different languages.
But if you truly accept it has part of our history, that it truly happened, it just doesn't mesh with our level of technology today.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stephan: And all that is fine if you look at it as a metaphor, no different than Greek myths explaining the natural world. In this case just a bed time story about why we have different languages.
But if you truly accept it has part of our history, that it truly happened, it just doesn't mesh with our level of technology today.
It doesn't help that there is zero archaeological evidence to support the idea. The only evidence we have is that it's in the Bible.
Personally, I would love to see them uncover the real Tower of Babel just like they did Troy, but until that happens I have to accept it as just a story and nothing more. Same goes for a worldwide flood.
[ November 21, 2013, 02:48 PM: Message edited by: Jeff C. ]
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
That's the great thing about science and research. It is completely agnostic and does not require a belief in any one god. You can believe whatever you want, but the research is factual and unbiased. The people who disregard the growing piles of evidence are baffling to me.
Here is a serious question for those who believe in young earth creationism. If evolution isn't true, why do we continue to find more and more evidence that supports it? Logic says that if we have two options, and we go out and gather evidence, eventually the evidence will favor one over the other, right? So then why is evolution wrong? I seriously want to know. My roommate is an idiot and knows nothing about it, even though he likes to argue it, and he can't present any proof or evidence, so I'm asking here:
Why is evolution wrong? And why should we ignore all the evidence that supports it?
Seriously, I'm not trolling. I really want to know, because from every person I have talked to in real life, none of them actually have a good answer.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
Stephen, the real offense of the Tower of Babel was that it came soon after the global Flood, and was intended to reach higher than the highest limit the flood waters reached. This in effect was an act of defiance against God. Such organized, determined opposition to God had to be checked. There will come a time when organized, determined human opposition to the authority of God will be tolerated for a time--during the "Time of the End" spoken of in Daniel and Revelation. Then the final test will come home to every human, where they will be compelled to make their final, unalterable choice to trust in the goodness and authority of the Creator God, or to show loyalty to the creature.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
quote:1. Now the entire earth was of one language and uniform words. א. וַיְהִי כָל הָאָרֶץ שָׂפָה אֶחָת וּדְבָרִים אֲחָדִים: 2. And it came to pass when they traveled from the east, that they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. ב. וַיְהִי בְּנָסְעָם מִקֶּדֶם וַיִּמְצְאוּ בִקְעָה בְּאֶרֶץ שִׁנְעָר וַיֵּשְׁבוּ שָׁם: 3. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly"; so the bricks were to them for stones, and the clay was to them for mortar. ג. וַיֹּאמְרוּ אִישׁ אֶל רֵעֵהוּ הָבָה נִלְבְּנָה לְבֵנִים וְנִשְׂרְפָה לִשְׂרֵפָה וַתְּהִי לָהֶם הַלְּבֵנָה לְאָבֶן וְהַחֵמָר הָיָה לָהֶם לַחֹמֶר: 4. And they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered upon the face of the entire earth." ד. וַיֹּאמְרוּ הָבָה | נִבְנֶה לָּנוּ עִיר וּמִגְדָּל וְרֹאשׁוֹ בַשָּׁמַיִם וְנַעֲשֶׂה לָּנוּ שֵׁם פֶּן נָפוּץ עַל פְּנֵי כָל הָאָרֶץ: 5. And the Lord descended to see the city and the tower that the sons of man had built. ה. וַיֵּרֶד יְהֹוָה לִרְאֹת אֶת הָעִיר וְאֶת הַמִּגְדָּל אֲשֶׁר בָּנוּ בְּנֵי הָאָדָם: 6. And the Lord said, "Lo! [they are] one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they have commenced to do. Now, will it not be withheld from them, all that they have planned to do? ו. וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה הֵן עַם אֶחָד וְשָׂפָה אַחַת לְכֻלָּם וְזֶה הַחִלָּם לַעֲשׂוֹת וְעַתָּה לֹא יִבָּצֵר מֵהֶם כֹּל אֲשֶׁר יָזְמוּ לַעֲשׂוֹת: 7. Come, let us descend and confuse their language, so that one will not understand the language of his companion." ז. הָבָה נֵרְדָה וְנָבְלָה שָׁם שְׂפָתָם אֲשֶׁר לֹא יִשְׁמְעוּ אִישׁ שְׂפַת רֵעֵהוּ: 8. And the Lord scattered them from there upon the face of the entire earth, and they ceased building the city. ח. וַיָּפֶץ יְהֹוָה אֹתָם מִשָּׁם עַל פְּנֵי כָל הָאָרֶץ וַיַּחְדְּלוּ לִבְנֹת הָעִיר: 9. Therefore, He named it Babel, for there the Lord confused the language of the entire earth, and from there the Lord scattered them upon the face of the entire earth.
No mention of the flood. No real reason given at all. In fact go back to Chapter 10, and you get a whole hell of a lot of generations between the flood and the Tower of Babel. There would need to be many years, enough of a population to warrant a city. You don't go from restarting the world with a nuclear family to cities with towers in just a century or two.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Jeff C, I presented several scientific objections to the supposed proof of a vastly old universe based on the speed of light and the apparent distances involved. Some of them were in the article by Dr. Russell Humphreys I quoted.
There are nebulae where dust and gas and other debris in a nova or supernova clearly came from a central star, the remnants of which still exists, and in no case do we find that any such nebulae have been expanding for more than 12,000 years.
Dr. Humphreys mentioned the fact that there should be many more nebulae in our region of the galaxy, if it is as old as some claim.
I also asked why it is that no astronomer has ever reported seeing sections of space that were blank, and then stars and galaxies slowly began to appear as light from them finally reached earth. We may increase the resolving power of our telescopes, but we have never found the limit where light from distant stellar objects is just now reaching us.
If you accept the logical necessity for an Intelligent Designer--such as I argued for on the basis of alternative characteristics already existing in the genomes of many species (which negates the possibility that natural selection could be involved, because genetic code that is not expressed cannot be acted on by natural selection)--then you have to take into account the announced purpose of the Creator, which is that first of all He wanted the universe to be a place of light ("Let there be light"), and not darkness, where it is necessary to wait for millions and billions of years for light from distant stellar objects to reach earth. Just as God created mature trees in the Garden of Eden, which seemed to be hundreds of years old, because that is what He wanted, so He could create a universe with apparent age as well, because that is what He wanted. You should not so cavalierly dismiss what your roommate said. You are making assumptions that are not necessarily valid.
As for why some people CLAIM that they keep on finding more and more evidence supporting evolution, all their evidence from the beginning has been bogus, based on false assumptions, so they are merely multiplying poor conjectures and invalid conclusions based on wrong assumptions. You can adduce endless support for circular reasoning, but it is still circular reasoning. All evolutionists are wrong. Period. Evolution is impossible, and the presence of alternate genetic code that is not expressed in the genome proves it is wrong.
[ November 21, 2013, 04:02 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Stephan, some things can be logically inferred. According to Biblical chronology, which is more reliable than the fantastic fantasies of archeologists trying to disprove the Biblical account, the Tower of Babel was only a few hundred years after the Flood. This is not such a great time as it seems today, because people still lived to be several hundred years old for some time after the Flood. Shem, one of the sons of Noah who was on the ark, lived to the time of Abraham. Some people suggest that Shem may have been the "King of Salem," to whom Abraham paid tithes. And the Tower of Babel was built before Abraham came on the scene.
So the great context of everyone's lives was the still relatively recent global Flood.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Most junk DNA is now believed to have been inserted into the genome by viruses.
Also, a study recently indicated that junk DNA accounts for developing different facial features in mice.
It's not crazy to imagine that viruses occasionally adding and changing DNA in gametes has served as massive boon to life on earth, increasing it's ability to adapt as necessary. After all, a lot of gene modification research revolves around using a tailored virus to alter someone's reproductive cells.
Posted by Heisenberg (Member # 13004) on :
Article on faces and junk DNA.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Is it really reasonable to believe that virus-administered junk DNA is responsible for Collies and Great Danes and Cocker Spaniels arising from Wolves? Or Jaguars arising from Lions? Is this what produced edible almonds from bitter almoinds, and blue roses from red? This amounts to making viruses the Intelligent Designer. How much blind stupidity will otherwise intelligent people buy into, before they will admit the utter falsity of the theory of life origins that has been promulgated by people who are only motivated by a desire to prove God is not necessary, so they won't have to face His judgment?
What I said before stands. Let gene mapping advance to the point where we can see beyond a doubt that all the characteristics of the Cocker Spaniel are already present in the Wolf, and the point will be proven, that only an Intelligent Designer could have done this.
But even before we reach that point, look at the success of selective breeding in producing desirable "modifications" in thousands of species. How can it be denied that many alternate characteristics already exist in the genome of many species?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Fascinating. So the majority of biologists in the world today-they don't actually believe what their research continuously points towards, they only claim to because they're scurrying fearfully away from the truth of God's judgment?
If you get to say that, then I certainly get to say that you don't actually believe all this hogwash, rather you simply seek the ego-flattering comfort of a divine yoke to avoid what you think is the deadly fear of what you imagine would be a pointless life.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: There are nebulae where dust and gas and other debris in a nova or supernova clearly came from a central star, the remnants of which still exists, and in no case do we find that any such nebulae have been expanding for more than 12,000 years.
Okay (taking your word on that), but what about the other mountains of evidence that support an old universe? When you find one flaw, that does not negate the overall answer. How about the fact that carbon dating (along with the DOZENS of other dating methods that they use in conjunction with CD, which they then compare and verify with) tells us that fossils and the Earth are far older than ten thousand years? We are talking about dozens of dating methods that do not overlap or use the same dating source elements and still result in the same point of origin. It is impossible for them to all be wrong.
quote:All evolutionists are wrong. Period. Evolution is impossible, and the presence of alternate genetic code that is not expressed in the genome proves it is wrong.
First, only Sith deal in absolutes. Second, Evolution is not impossible. We have proven it to exist in nature. We've observed that species adapt and change over time according to their environment. This is a fact and it is true. Here are some examples:
Black people. Darker skin pigmentation due to the fact that their ancestors lived closer to the equator and endured a warmer environment.
Strains of viruses and bacteria evolve constantly to their environments.
More and more elephants are being born without tusks, due to the fact that all the elephants with tusks are getting killed by poachers.
Hudson River Fish are Becoming Immune to Toxic Waste.
Some lizards are rapidly evolving after getting introduced to an island and thus a new home. Ten of them were brought over at first, but then decades later there were hundreds of them and they went from being carnivores to eating plants. The thing is, they had to completely rebuild their digestive system to do it. They also grew larger heads and a harder bite.
Because of pollution, peppered moths are changing their colors. They were one color at first and they would cling to trees to hide and eat, but then when the pollution came and covered the trees, the moths could be seen and they died. Eventually they started to change colors because the moths were favorable colors survived. Half a century later and 98% of the moths were the new color.
Now remember, Evolution is adaptability. It is survival of the fittest. It is simply a series of small changes that happen that drive the survivability of a species forward. Eventually, enough of these changes occur and we get a new species. Now, we've found fossil after fossil after fossil showing that there are links between these animals, proving that these changes happen and have happened in the past. Saying that evolution is wrong is a refusal to see the truth.
This in no way means that your religion is wrong. This in no way means that your God doesn't exist. You can still believe in God and believe in Evolution. But when you see something like Evolution and you disregard it simply of a fluke or two, well, you're doing yourself a disservice. Evolution is not perfect. Nothing is. It is scientific and therefore open to change and open to growth. But the theory as a whole is true and has been both observed and proven over and over again. We know this. That is why the Catholic Church admits to it and teaches it on an official level. My student bible even talks about it briefly. I mean, the Pope agreed that it was true as far back as the 50's, for crying out loud. Over a hundred countries accept it as fact. Every major scientific committee and organization in the modern world accepts it.
You don't have to believe this stuff, but there's too much evidence in favor of it for me to say it isn't true. When we can observe it happening in the real world, it's hard to deny its authenticity.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Actually it does kind of mean he can't believe in HIS god. That is part of the problem. If you take out any part of the bible, the whole thing can then be questioned. All of a sudden you believe in a higher power, and at best a divinely inspired written by man bible. This is not the same god Ron believes in. This is a god that has not done ANY of the things he believes. This is a non-active god that lets countless millions starve to death with no biblical prophecies pointing towards a brighter tomorrow. Creationists cannot accept that kind of god.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
I also like how he says we're stupid for believing in evolution, something supported by science when he tries so very hard to use science as a sort of "judo argument".
If the world doesn't end by 2014 does that mean he has to drop his faith?
Posted by Marlozhan (Member # 2422) on :
I don't believe any of the YEC claims. But I do find it to be a bit black and white to say that NONE of the things written in the Bible could have therefore happened. God parting the Red Sea, for example, does not have to contradict the facts of evolution or science. We may not be able to come up with any scientific explanation of how it happened, but not understanding is not the same thing as saying it is a contradiction with the facts of reality.
I always find it odd when people want to use statements from the Bible as though it were a scientific, scholarly text. If God wanted the creation story to be a scientific explanation of creation, it is a pretty sucky attempt. It seems pretty obvious to me that it is meant to be a literary account. To say "and on that day God created the beasts" and then extrapolate scientific data from that is pretty ludicrous in my mind. You can still believe in the Bible as containing divinely inspired writings with real accounts of real events, and still recognize it is not a scientific text. There is no attempt within the Bible to prove its own claims through evidence. It is narrative history, not scientific history. If God is real, He seems utterly uninterested in proving Himself to us through scientific proofs. This completely lines up with all of the scriptures emphasizing faith while in this mortal life.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Just as God created mature trees in the Garden of Eden, which seemed to be hundreds of years old, because that is what He wanted, so He could create a universe with apparent age as well, because that is what He wanted.
Pssst, Jeff. In fact, God did this just yesterday! God also gave us false memories of everything that we think happened before 5:02 yesterday afternoon when He created the universe. We also were created with apparent age when, really, we were all born yesterday.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
quote:Originally posted by Marlozhan: I don't believe any of the YEC claims. But I do find it to be a bit black and white to say that NONE of the things written in the Bible could have therefore happened. God parting the Red Sea, for example, does not have to contradict the facts of evolution or science. We may not be able to come up with any scientific explanation of how it happened, but not understanding is not the same thing as saying it is a contradiction with the facts of reality.
You would think that there would have been a separate historical account for something that big though. There is also historical doubt that the Jews were even slaves in Egypt to begin. We are already pretty sure the day workers that built the pyramids were paid.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:Pssst, Jeff. In fact, God did this just yesterday! God also gave us false memories of everything that we think happened before 5:02 yesterday afternoon when He created the universe. We also were created with apparent age when, really, we were all born yesterday.
quote:Last Thursdayism (sometimes Last Tuesdayism or Last Wednesdayism) refers to the idea that the universe may have been created last Thursday, but with the physical appearance of being billions of years old. People's memories, history books, fossils, light already on the way from distant stars, and so forth. It forms both a philosophical point about how our observations may not match with "reality" and a reductio ad absurdum of some young-Earth creationist ideas; if the world was created 6000 years ago with the appearance of being made billions of years ago, what stops us simply claiming it was made last Thursday in the same manner?
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stephan: Actually it does kind of mean he can't believe in HIS god. That is part of the problem. If you take out any part of the bible, the whole thing can then be questioned. All of a sudden you believe in a higher power, and at best a divinely inspired written by man bible. This is not the same god Ron believes in. This is a god that has not done ANY of the things he believes. This is a non-active god that lets countless millions starve to death with no biblical prophecies pointing towards a brighter tomorrow. Creationists cannot accept that kind of god.
Actually, the Catholic Church, as I stated before, has officially declared their support of evolution and an old Earth.
There are multiple ways for a person to believe in both. For example, you can believe in the gap theory. You can believe that the six day creation myth was actually an "Epic myth" which was used to tell a story in order to teach us a lesson, rather than for historical purposes (this is the Catholic belief). You can believe in what Gerald Schroeder, a Jewish physicist, says about the age of the Universe and how it fits into the Bible.
Or, as you said, you can accept the bible as being divinely inspired by God, but not written by him. After all, the entirety of the bible was not even compiled and agreed upon by the Christian churches until the Council of Mycenae in 300AD. Before that, people were reading different books from different authors, many of which were ultimately left out of the Bible. These books included the Gospels of Thomas, Mary, Judas, and the book of Enoch (which, ironically, New Testament authors actually reference). So which bible is the right one? Martin Luther believed this version was ultimately flawed, and so he posted his 95 complaints and now the Protestant Bible has three or four less books in it.
Regardless, you need to keep an open mind. The more progress is made in the world on these fronts, the more people will ultimately believe in the science. Every year that passes, more knowledge is unearthed and more evidence is brought forth in support of Evolution and an old Universe. As this happens, only a small handful of people will still believe the Earth is young, and they will be considered fools, just like the people who can't accept that we landed on the Moon, or that Dinosaurs are real (God put them there to test our faith!!!!!!).
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Just as God created mature trees in the Garden of Eden, which seemed to be hundreds of years old, because that is what He wanted, so He could create a universe with apparent age as well, because that is what He wanted.
My problem with this is simple. This implies that God is deceptive, like he's trying to trick us. Why create something and then make it so that when we look at it, we're tricked? I don't want to worship a god that does that. That's evil. Trickery and deception are tools of the Devil, are they not? If God made the Universe look old and, being omnipotent, knew that we would study it and thus believe it to be old, he is an evil god.
I choose instead to believe that God is good, and that he would rather present the facts as they are, rather than lie to me for no apparent reason.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
Ron's god is the same god Dawkin's has every justification to denounce as an abomination.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Jeff, the variations within species that you refer to have been offered by evolutionist con artists as evidence of evolution to the gullible for many years. But no new genetic code is being written. The alternate characteristics that are expressed come from genetic code that was already encoded within the original genome, but switched off. Such on-off switches have been identified in the genetic code. New variations in species are only seen when previously unexpressed genetic code is switched on.
Since there is no way that natural selection can operate to produce genetic code for alternative characteristics that are not expressed, the fact that such alternative genetic code does exist is proof that there is no evolution. There had to be an Intelligent Designer to write all the code in the genome of each species, including the alternative genetic code that is not expressed. It is ironic that the very evidence that evolutionists have been pointing to as evidence of evolution in actual fact is what finally and conclusively disproves evolution.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Elison, what Dawkins denounced is probably something good. He was one of the most dishonest false scientists who has ever lived. He never had the guts to debate a knowledgeable creationist, despite repeated challenges.
Why should anyone claim God is being deceptive? He has told us how He created the Universe--by the power of His Word. He told us His purpose in doing so--so there would be a universe filled with light. So there can be nothing deceptive about Him creating a universe in which some would claim there is apparent age--based on their wrong assumptions that leave God out of their calculations. Of course they will be wrong. But it is not God's fault they are deceived. God's comment on all of this is simple: "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'" (Psalms 14:1; 53:1; NASB)
Those who embrace a cosmology that says in essence, "In the beginning was nothing, and then nothing exploded and became the ordered universe," are like the pseudo-scientist who walked out onto the Golden Gate Bridge with his primitive lab equipment and loudly announced that he was going to find out how the Golden Gate Bridge built itself, refusing to consult with any of the accounts of the architects and engineers. This is what some people suppose to be "objective science."
[ November 22, 2013, 07:55 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Elison, what Dawkins denounced is probably something good. He was one of the most dishonest and dishonorable false scientists who has ever lived.
A. Was? Is he dead? B. As a scientist myself, I'd call a "dishonorable" and "dishonest" scientist someone who 1. hacks into other scientists computers and steals their results 2. or falsifies his results like the autism and vaccines guy, resulting in the deaths of children and the return of disease that should have been eradicated. If we want to keep going on this vein, we can also add someone who 3. halts the peer review process to get their own work out.
If he was up in front of an ethics board for anything, it would be on his wikipedia page. It isn't.
Granted
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
For Ron Lambert, the word "dishonesty" means "disagreeing with Ron Lambert" and it's no different with how he is describing Dawkins.
Dawkins, far from being a coward, had a very elegant and well-stated reason for not wanting to waste time debating creationists.
quote:Some time in the 1980s when I was on a visit to the United States, a television station wanted to stage a debate between me and a prominent creationist called, I think, Duane P Gish. I telephoned Stephen Gould for advice. He was friendly and decisive: "Don't do it." The point is not, he said, whether or not you would 'win' the debate. Winning is not what the creationists realistically aspire to. For them, it is sufficient that the debate happens at all. They need the publicity. We don't. To the gullible public which is their natural constituency, it is enough that their man is seen sharing a platform with a real scientist. "There must be something in creationism, or Dr So-and-So would not have agreed to debate it on equal terms." Inevitably, when you turn down the invitation you will be accused of cowardice, or of inability to defend your own beliefs. But that is better than supplying the creationists with what they crave: the oxygen of respectability in the world of real science.
I have followed his advice ever since, and I was reminded of it again in 2001 when I was invited by a third party to take part in a debate with, among several other evolutionists and creationists, the lawyer Phillip Johnson, high priest of the 'Intelligent Design' sect of creationists. I refused, as usual. Johnson then refused too, and his letter (which he copied to me) brought back with a vengeance Steve Gould's words about creationists' real motives. Here is what Johnson said:
"It isn't worth my while to debate every ambitious Darwinist who wants to try his hand at ridiculing the opposition, so my general policy is that Darwinists have to put a significant figure at risk before I will agree to a debate. That means specifically Dawkins or Gould, or someone of like stature and public visibility."
Look at all these coward false scientists!
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I can't say I particularly blame Dawkins for that approach. I can understand it, particularly given the sort of riff-raff he would often be faced with. As Ron is showing us so well, openly and adamantly YEC/literalist proponents aren't necessarily much for putting forward an honest debate, and they certainly do pander. Furthermore it would be one thing for him, as a scientist, to face the special frustration of adamant and smug utter rejection of scientific principles while claiming to endorse them. Would get to be grating.
All of that said though, I find I'm more a fan of the approach of Christopher Hitchens. A willingness to vigorously and articulately meet any challenge that came up, even on its own home territory-I can't really fault anyone for failing to have that sort of stamina, but I'm fairly close to thinking it's an ideal.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Is it really reasonable to believe that virus-administered junk DNA is responsible for Collies and Great Danes and Cocker Spaniels arising from Wolves? Or Jaguars arising from Lions? Is this what produced edible almonds from bitter almoinds, and blue roses from red? This amounts to making viruses the Intelligent Designer. How much blind stupidity will otherwise intelligent people buy into, before they will admit the utter falsity of the theory of life origins that has been promulgated by people who are only motivated by a desire to prove God is not necessary, so they won't have to face His judgment?
There's a very simple process for creating non-bitter almonds that is well understood, Ron. There are many species of almond that exist, and some are more bitter from cyanide than others. Almonds that have less cyanide a) taste good and b) are extremely useful in terms of nutrition for farmers and hunter gatherers.
Tens of thousands of years ago, humans (paying careful attention to which foods tasted good and filled them up and were easy to gather) noticed these things and began, in fits and starts and in many ways, to cultivate these almonds that had less cyanide in them. Over time they pared back those almonds which they didn't want, and multiply this process into many, many thousands of generations of plants and you begin to see how non-bitter almonds 'magically' appeared.
It's certainly an easier explanation that can be directly observed than a magic bearded man who lives in the sky. 'Blind stupidity' indeed-even for you I'm surprised you don't have a better rejection than this. Jaguars, collies (dogs, you even pull this nonsense with dogs, which we can breed and create new breeds ourselves-industries are built on it!), on and on, simple well-known explanations exist for these things. Explanations that even a layman such as myself are familiar with, so I know you are too.
But, no. They're not just wrong, they're cowards, liars, blasphemers. It's certainly not clear to you but it is to others-when someone begins applying hysterically inflated charges in an argument, it's generally a sign they don't have much of an argument.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
"Fish to tetropod is the most well understood evolutionary transition." Well that collapses Ron's argument.
[ November 23, 2013, 10:49 AM: Message edited by: Elison R. Salazar ]
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Jeff, the variations within species that you refer to have been offered by evolutionist con artists as evidence of evolution to the gullible for many years.
Ron, why are you insulting people? Only people who feel like they're losing an argument end up yelling and insulting the other side. You clearly have anamosity built up against evolutionists and real scientists. Scientists are not con artists; they are scientists. They are seekers of truth. These people gain very little from researching and painstakingly working to understand the universe. Why do you hate them so much? Is it because you are afraid?
Believe whatever you want. I really don't care. But don't go insulting the rest of us because we believe the same things as 99% of the scientific community. You are the minority here. You are the one who has willingly set aside common, widely accepted scientific data.
I'm done arguing with you now.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Only people who feel like they're losing an argument end up yelling and insulting the other side.
Totally not true. Tons of people here are not afraid whatsoever of ever losing or having lost an argument with ron but will still brazenly insult him. Usually, they're just excruciatingly tired of him and his crap.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:But, no. They're not just wrong, they're cowards, liars, blasphemers. It's certainly not clear to you but it is to others-when someone begins applying hysterically inflated charges in an argument, it's generally a sign they don't have much of an argument.
If you disagree with ron strenuously enough he processes it as evidence of literal demonic corruption. It's not that he doesn't have an argument which is perfect and clear to all open-minded individuals and inerrant in its wisdom and clarity and one in its truth with God, it's that you are in league with literally satan and it is about the only thing that can keep the magnificence of his persuasive argument from reaching you and bringing you into the light.
like not even making that up, we remember this right
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Only people who feel like they're losing an argument end up yelling and insulting the other side.
Totally not true. Tons of people here are not afraid whatsoever of ever losing or having lost an argument with ron but will still brazenly insult him. Usually, they're just excruciatingly tired of him and his crap.
Touche, sir. Touche.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
I'm curious...
Does OSC believe in Evolution? I remember reading in one of his newer books where he references it and treats it as fact. Yet the man is a Christian, and not just any Christian, but a conservative Mormon.
I mean, the guy is against gay marriage and all that stuff because the Bible tells him so, and yet even he accepts that Evolution is true. Is he possessed by the devil?
Posted by millernumber1 (Member # 9894) on :
1) Card is not conservative. Certainly not by self definition. He is certainly more conservative than most Democrats, but he still identifies as one.
2) Card does believe in evolution - it's been a consistent theme in his books since at least Xenocide, if not Ender's Game (the novel). He's even written at least one column where he calls out the ID movement for being bad science.
3) Card may have religious objections to gay marriage, but his articles concerning the subject are much more dependent on theories about society, nature, and psychology than anything the Bible or Book of Mormon says.
Also, just as not all young earth creationists are Usherites, not all think that those who believe in evolution are demon possessed.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
When I say he is a conservative Mormon, I am not referring to his political opinions.
Also, I know very well that not everyone believes evolutionists are demon-possessed. I was referring to only Ron.
I thought those things were obvious, but I guess not.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jeff C.: Also, I know very well that not everyone believes evolutionists are demon-possessed. I was referring to only Ron.
Jeff, is this the only way you can counter my factual, evidence-based, and entirely logical arguments? To ascribe to me thoughts and motives that you merely make up in your own mind, and pretend apply to me? I have proven that evolution is wrong and impossible. Therefore evolution is bad science. Those who make a career of pushing the false science of evolution cannot be considered real scientists. They are anti-scientists, because they are anti-science.
Teachers who teach evolution to children are guilty of child abuse, and must answer for many of the violent acts of lawlessness and selfish cruelty seen in recent generations, who have been taught that man is merely the product of blind chance, and that there is no God to whom they must answer in Judgment. It is historical, documented fact that Adolph Hitler justified his attempted genocide of the Jewish people by invoking the evolution theory he was taught in school.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Ron,
Do you deny you've stated in the past that people who disagree with you are under the influence of Satan, and this in part explains their supposed imperviousness to the truth of your arguments?
In any event, first there are a number of pointed, direct rebuttals to your 'proofs' which you haven't answered. Second, evolution doesn't teach that humanity exists due to 'blind chance'-your use of that phrase in this context betrays your very poor understanding of evolution, in fact. Third, you may lie all you like about Hitler, but the fact is that anti-Semitism had its roots in Christianity for literally nearly thousands of years before what you claim he was taught in school. Support for national-level prejudice, bigotry, and then violence against Jews undeniably did not stem from a belief in evolution. It was religious, cultural, and political before it was ever anything else.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Teaching evolution is not teaching "there is no God" and its definitely not teaching "there is no God so be as evil as you want."
YE God is 10,000 years old. God as seen in evolution is billions of years old. YE God is all about one little earth and its small history. God that creates evolution spans a universe that is Millions or Billions of Galaxies large.
I believe in evolution, and I believe in a mighty, ageless, universe expanding God that still focuses on the tiniest person, sparrow, atom, and quark.
You believe in a small God Ron.
You believe in a petty God, who has used his great creation--the Universe--to try and fool and deceive humans into eternal damnation.
I believe in evolution, in the universe not as I can understand it, or that I can put within the pages of one small book, but in a creation that spans thousands of centuries, where the creators truths are written in the smallest particles and the largest congregations of stars. It is a grand and glorious creation, filled with mysteries and wonder to fulfill us mere mortals.
God created reality, and to fudge, or lie, or ignore any part of it is to turn away from part of God. I believe in a God bigger than the Universe, whom we have not yet begun to understand and perceive. Yet God gives us the tools to do work on that understanding and perception.
You believe in a God that fits between the covers of one book, written and translated and passed down through generations of imperfect mortal hands.
You believe in a morality written in black and white on pages thousands of years old, which must be translated and understood only by experts, who list them for you.
I believe that there are four true sources for all evil in the world, and as long as I work against all of them, what I do is moral. Those four evils are Pain, Self-Absorption, Ignorance, and Entropy. There opposites are divine states I seek to attain, Joy, Love, Enlightenment, and Creativity. To Love like God, to be Enlightened like God, to Create like God and to give Joy like God, these are my goals. Are they the evil, Nazi, eugenics goal you assume all Evolutionists harbor? I am sorry to disappoint.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Teachers who teach evolution to children are guilty of child abuse, and must answer for many of the violent acts of lawlessness and selfish cruelty seen in recent generations, who have been taught that man is merely the product of blind chance, and that there is no God to whom they must answer in Judgment. It is historical, documented fact that Adolph Hitler justified his attempted genocide of the Jewish people by invoking the evolution theory he was taught in school.
You have proved nothing but your own amazing ignorance. If any part of your brain blames evolution for Hitler, than every other human should connect creationism to the murder of countless millions. My great parents were not gassed to death because of evolution. They were gassed to death because of extremism and the fear of change, something you know all too well.
Not only do I teach evolution in my science class, I also teach the Epic of Gilgamesh in my history class. I let them draw their own conclusions, but I definitely encourage them to connect it to the bible in the hope they will see the myths for what they really are. More than a few of them have.
Creationism isn't a science. It never will be a science. It is an example of the blind leading the blind.
I do envy the faith in a higher power that people have. But all evidence points away from it. I will even go so far as to say I hope you are right. So when I answer for "child abuse" as you so aptly put it, I can spit in your mythological god's eye and go hang out in Hell with the likes of Mark Twain and Albert Einstein.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I have proven that evolution is wrong and impossible.
Just a quibble: you have not. I just want to put this out there.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Thanks, Tom.
Darth Mauve, that was beautiful and exactly right.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
quote:Originally posted by Jeff C.: Also, I know very well that not everyone believes evolutionists are demon-possessed. I was referring to only Ron.
Jeff, is this the only way you can counter my factual, evidence-based, and entirely logical arguments? To ascribe to me thoughts and motives that you merely make up in your own mind, and pretend apply to me? I have proven that evolution is wrong and impossible. Therefore evolution is bad science. Those who make a career of pushing the false science of evolution cannot be considered real scientists. They are anti-scientists, because they are anti-science.
Teachers who teach evolution to children are guilty of child abuse, and must answer for many of the violent acts of lawlessness and selfish cruelty seen in recent generations, who have been taught that man is merely the product of blind chance, and that there is no God to whom they must answer in Judgment. It is historical, documented fact that Adolph Hitler justified his attempted genocide of the Jewish people by invoking the evolution theory he was taught in school.
Ron Lambert, you coccoon yourself in swaths of self-affirming terminology which you think amounts to a scientific discipline, when actually it is you who have have no idea what genuine, actual reality is.
Another way to say it is that you have been brainwashed by creationists in positions of authority over you "teaching" you their "truth" since childhood on.
When all other argument and what you think is persuasion fail, you resort to insults and ridicule, because at the heart of it you cannot respect challenges to your world view. You cannot agree to disagree, you cannot admit that your opponents have reasonable positions that are supported by real evidence; you have to despise. I have witnessed this over and over again, so that I can only conclude that this must be an inherent characteristic of all defenders of creationism that eventually turns up sooner or later. It is not just your brainwashed world view that scientists must contend with, they must also endure your hatred. Have you ever asked yourselves who is really pulling your strings, and making you feel the things that you feel?
Yes. Satanic influence. You are influenced by devils to believe false things.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Teaching evolution is not teaching "there is no God" and its definitely not teaching "there is no God so be as evil as you want."
YE God is 10,000 years old. God as seen in evolution is billions of years old. YE God is all about one little earth and its small history. God that creates evolution spans a universe that is Millions or Billions of Galaxies large.
I believe in evolution, and I believe in a mighty, ageless, universe expanding God that still focuses on the tiniest person, sparrow, atom, and quark.
You believe in a small God Ron.
You believe in a petty God, who has used his great creation--the Universe--to try and fool and deceive humans into eternal damnation.
I believe in evolution, in the universe not as I can understand it, or that I can put within the pages of one small book, but in a creation that spans thousands of centuries, where the creators truths are written in the smallest particles and the largest congregations of stars. It is a grand and glorious creation, filled with mysteries and wonder to fulfill us mere mortals.
God created reality, and to fudge, or lie, or ignore any part of it is to turn away from part of God. I believe in a God bigger than the Universe, whom we have not yet begun to understand and perceive. Yet God gives us the tools to do work on that understanding and perception.
You believe in a God that fits between the covers of one book, written and translated and passed down through generations of imperfect mortal hands.
You believe in a morality written in black and white on pages thousands of years old, which must be translated and understood only by experts, who list them for you.
I believe that there are four true sources for all evil in the world, and as long as I work against all of them, what I do is moral. Those four evils are Pain, Self-Absorption, Ignorance, and Entropy. There opposites are divine states I seek to attain, Joy, Love, Enlightenment, and Creativity. To Love like God, to be Enlightened like God, to Create like God and to give Joy like God, these are my goals. Are they the evil, Nazi, eugenics goal you assume all Evolutionists harbor? I am sorry to disappoint.
I'm LDS, and this is what I believe as well. Not all members agree with me, and in fact I'd say the majority do not.
What does time mean to God if He is truly infinite and all-powerful?
In Genesis, it says God essentially created the universe in six days. How would you explain eternity to someone? It is like explaining what salt tastes like. We literally cannot comprehend eternity, because we have never experienced it. How would God explain eternity to beings whose lives are governed by time?
If you look at the creation story in Genesis, it states that the creation of the universe was a process. The concept of time is never really dealt with in the bible. It simply calls the time periods "days" and leaves it at that.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Geraine, the Genesis account of Creation says "the evening and the morning were the first day," etc. And on the seventh day He rested, and He ordained and sanctified that day to stand as a memorial to His Creation of earth, codified within the Ten Commandments, written by His own finger on tablets of stone. That is pretty explicit and precise. The account does not indicate that the whole universe was created during the Genesis Creation week; obviously something existed prior to the Creation of life on earth, since it says that the "Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters." (Gen. 1:1; NASB)
But there is no physical evidence that indicates we must conclude the universe is billions of years old. Some claim there is; but they are willfully blind to the persuasive arguments against that interpretation of the evidence. Belief in a vast age for the universe is based solely upon the desperation of evolutionists to provide enough time for the impossibility of evolution to seem somehow less implausible. It is the hand-waving of con-men, hoping the masses will be flummoxed and impressed by the trumpeted credentials of the liars.
Nor does the Bible indicate that the universe always existed. There is an eternity future spoken of in the Bible. But not eternity in the past. Obviously time as well as space had to have a beginning. It is not a valid question to ask what time it was before time was created--because there was no time before time was created, so the question by definition is meaningless. The first words of the Bible are: "In the beginning God...." That is what was first.
I find it difficult to believe that God would have the universe go on for billions of years, before finally dealing with the cataclysmic problem of the rise of sinful rebellion against the Creator. The Bible indicates that an angel named Lucifer is the one who originated sin, and likely was the first angel God created (since he is called the "son of the morning" in Isaiah 14:12). The Bible also flatly declares that God knows "the end from the beginning" (Isaiah 46:10). So this indicates to me that God purposed to deal with the sin problem proactively, as soon as possible; therefore He created Lucifer first. For a time Lucifer lived harmoniously in Heaven. He lead the choirs of angels. He was one of the two covering cherubs, who were closest to God, flanking the throne of God. It does not seem likely to me that it took billions of years for the apostasy of Lucifer to develop and ripen into open rebellion. These things speak of a mere duration of thousands of years, not billions.
[ November 25, 2013, 04:43 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Samprimary, most of what you and your snarling cohorts have to say is unworthy of response. But I will note this: I was originally an evolutionist. I believed in evolution, until sometime after the age of 15 I began re-examining the issue objectively, and I concluded that the scientific evidence favored Creation by God.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Strange, isn't it-that actual scientists, those people who make the pursuit of verifiable truth and are the ones who make useful discoveries whose benefits we can plainly see here in the real world...they almost never, ever follow that same path.
What useful discoveries has your Creationism based 'science' led to? Prayer healing? I look around for all of these marvels I ought to be able to attribute to your belief system, and all I see is a bunch of 'it's so obvious' and 'it's already been proven' and 'if you didn't rebel against God, you would see...' I don't look around and see any medical breakthroughs. I don't look around and see any advancements in agriculture. I don't see any bridges built using Creationist 'science'. I don't even see any new weapons systems or computer programs.
Oh, and again-whine and lie all you like about Samprimary's 'cohorts', but (if there's even the slightest chance) don't lie to yourself: you are reliably and loudly more insulting than anything said to you. Unprompted you attributed the Holocaust and anti-Semiti and even WWII to evolution, and labelled science teachers child abusers. You're a bully but at least as can be thankful that your fawning, toadying behavior to your deity no longer has the protection of just the status quo, and so it has to stand and fall on its own merits.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Samprimary, most of what you and your snarling cohorts have to say is unworthy of response.
But why, exactly? Are you going to claim that what I'm saying is offensive and in a uselessly antagonistic tone? One that I should not use if I want to prove I'm intent on honestly debating the issue with you?
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
The speed of light is a constant, for the light of even the closest stars to reach us, they would've had to travel for something at the order of 20,000 years minimum.
Literal Biblical account is disproven, I'll be providing you some crow.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Well now, technically the closest star is only 4.3 lightyears away. Additionally, Ron is about to claim either that the speed of light isn't constant, or that the light was created already on the way here.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
And it's that claim which completely invalidates his model. As pointed out earlier, if everything could be created 6000 years ago with the apparent age of billions of years, then it could just as easily have been created 20 minutes ago, again with the apparently much greater age. Certainly it's within God's capacity to do so.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
The dawn of creation was actually the premiere episode of Magic Johnson's The Magic Hour, with all of humankind experiencing either an implanted hallucinatory vision of false prior time, or the gradual descent and inexorable loss of our zenith after the cancellation of our Genesis.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Well now, technically the closest star is only 4.3 lightyears away. Additionally, Ron is about to claim either that the speed of light isn't constant, or that the light was created already on the way here.
Which is hilarious, because you can't argue against "magic". After all, I can say all day long that a great Spaghetti Monster created the universe in three days and that we've only been alive for five thousand years. You can't disprove it. Every piece of evidence you provide, I can dismiss. The light stuff? Spaghetti Monster made the light instantly appear here. All those dinosaur bones? Placed there because the Spaghetti Monster wanted to test our faith.
Obviously.
And this is why people like Ron can't be reasoned with. You guys shouldn't even try anymore. He is going to keep believing in that narrow minded, mightier-than-thou philosophy and there's nothing you can do about it. It's sad, but that's how it is.
Also, Ron, you have not disproven evolution. You're a fool if you think that. You are playing with pseudo-science, which is to say, it isn't science at all. Anytime you answer a question with "God did it", it stops being science and it starts becoming religion. Your belief is religious and biased and completely irrational. Stop fooling yourself.
I mean, come on. What's more likely? That there's a vast conspiracy between all scientists across every known field all over the world, or that you simply are wrong?
Personally, I'm sticking with the PhD's on this one.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Bear in mind, the important "scientific" proof of the Bible, to Ron, is not to be found in Genesis; it is to be found in Daniel.
The belief that Daniel was written decades after the historical events it describes, and that the later books of the New Testament laying out the genealogy and actions of the Messiah were written specifically to comply with the requirements of Daniel and Isaiah, is one that would completely invalidate his faith. But pointing out that the Genesis account is ridiculous is always going to wind up with a "But...Magic!" response from him, since his faith is actually rooted somewhere else.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Geraine, the Genesis account of Creation says "the evening and the morning were the first day," etc. And on the seventh day He rested, and He ordained and sanctified that day to stand as a memorial to His Creation of earth, codified within the Ten Commandments, written by His own finger on tablets of stone. That is pretty explicit and precise. The account does not indicate that the whole universe was created during the Genesis Creation week; obviously something existed prior to the Creation of life on earth, since it says that the "Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters." (Gen. 1:1; NASB)
But there is no physical evidence that indicates we must conclude the universe is billions of years old. Some claim there is; but they are willfully blind to the persuasive arguments against that interpretation of the evidence. Belief in a vast age for the universe is based solely upon the desperation of evolutionists to provide enough time for the impossibility of evolution to seem somehow less implausible. It is the hand-waving of con-men, hoping the masses will be flummoxed and impressed by the trumpeted credentials of the liars.
Nor does the Bible indicate that the universe always existed. There is an eternity future spoken of in the Bible. But not eternity in the past. Obviously time as well as space had to have a beginning. It is not a valid question to ask what time it was before time was created--because there was no time before time was created, so the question by definition is meaningless. The first words of the Bible are: "In the beginning God...." That is what was first.
I find it difficult to believe that God would have the universe go on for billions of years, before finally dealing with the cataclysmic problem of the rise of sinful rebellion against the Creator. The Bible indicates that an angel named Lucifer is the one who originated sin, and likely was the first angel God created (since he is called the "son of the morning" in Isaiah 14:12). The Bible also flatly declares that God knows "the end from the beginning" (Isaiah 46:10). So this indicates to me that God purposed to deal with the sin problem proactively, as soon as possible; therefore He created Lucifer first. For a time Lucifer lived harmoniously in Heaven. He lead the choirs of angels. He was one of the two covering cherubs, who were closest to God, flanking the throne of God. It does not seem likely to me that it took billions of years for the apostasy of Lucifer to develop and ripen into open rebellion. These things speak of a mere duration of thousands of years, not billions.
You are using "time" to rationalize your way of thinking though Ron. Do you know how long it took God to create the Earth? The Universe? How long Satan/Lucifer and the rest of us resided with God before we came to this planet?
Again, time is a man made creation. If in the Bible it said "In the beginning God spent 4 billion years causing the emptiness of space to expand into a universe from a singularity" do you think most people would understand what that meant? When a vision of the creation was shown to Moses, how do you think he could interpret how long it took to create the earth?
In 2nd Peter it actually says a day to God is "Like unto a thousand years." Notice the statement wasn't "It is a thousand years." it was "LIKE UNTO." In other words, a very long time. Look at that in the scope of the creation. Major events took place, and each of them took time. Billions of years for the universe to expand. The earth's core and crust being formed. Water receding from the land. Life evolving and becoming plants and animals.
God setting these events in motion doesn't diminish his power. Ask yourself this: Why did God take 7 days to make the earth? Why didn't he just snap his fingers and make the universe and earth appear instantaneously?
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Tom, I have previously referred you to the best, most recent scholarship that proves that the book of Daniel was written when it purports to be written, in about 600 B.C. Even if it had been written in 200 B.C., as some skeptics claim, in hopes of explaining away the precision of the prophetic outline of history given in Daniel 11, that still does not do away with the fact that Daniel's prophecies correctly outline world history clear up to the present. Consider again Daniel two, with its prediction that the Roman Empire would not give rise to yet another world empire, as had happened previously four times, but instead would be changed into a religio-political entity, and after that would be divided into the "ten toes," as the barbarian tribes who conquered Rome went on to found the modern nations of Europe. Then I could take you through the seven seals, which predicted the great World Wars (the second seal), and the dominion of the "command economy" of Soviet-style communism, plus the fall of the same as the people finally judged the system wanting (the third seal).
The prophecies of Daniel 9:24-27, which correctly points to the exact year that Yeshua Messiah was annointed, and when He would be sacrificed (but "not for Himself"), was in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and no one disputes that those date from at least 100 years before the birth of Christ.
By the way, there are many qualified scientists with actual Ph.D.s who admit that the Intelligent Design hypothesis makes a lot more sense, and better explains the observed phenomena, than does evolution. I have provided this information previously, but you evidently ignored it. If you dare to expose yourself to the actual reality of how many scientists support Creation/Intelligent Design, check the website for the Creation Research Society Quarterly: http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq.html
And of the majority of scientists who pay lip-service to evolution, I wonder how many of them have serious reservations about it, but are afraid to speak openly about it because they have seen what has happened to others who have spoken out--denial of grants, denial of tenure, and other forms of overt persecution. As documented in the movie Ben Stein made, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. A movie I highly recommend.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Tom, I have previously referred you to the best, most recent scholarship...
*sigh* Ron, please understand that I do not believe you capable of evaluating Biblical scholarship.
quote:By the way, there are many qualified scientists with actual Ph.D.s who admit that the Intelligent Design hypothesis makes a lot more sense, and better explains the observed phenomena, than does evolution. I have provided this information previously, but you evidently ignored it.
Ron, we've discussed this at length. I remember your points, because I read what you write and am capable of remembering things. Do you remember how I destroyed you in that last conversation? Do you recall what my rebuttals were?
I don't need you to agree to those rebuttals, mind. I'm just curious if you remember what they were. I suspect that they failed to penetrate the forcefield you have set up around your cerebellum.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Tom, you are not a very trustworthy evaluator of the merits of our debate. You have never "destroyed" me in any conversation, ever, except obviously in your own mind. Any rebuttals you actually attempted (beyond resorting to sheer insult and ridicule) were invalid, as I showed. You show yourself unworthy of being taken seriously.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Hands up, anyone here who thinks I have failed to destroy Ron in argument?
For that matter, anyone who thinks that Ron has managed to conclusively prove any of his assertions -- ever -- can speak up now. Except for Ron. We know how he feels about it.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I don't think polling the forum is going to convince Ron either.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yes, Ron's made it clear that persons and authorities to be listened to and respected on these matters are carefully pre-selected. By definition, disagreement means you're not to be paid any mind and in fact the very act of disagreeing serves (in his mind at least) as a further criticism of the one disagreeing and praise for Ron and his point of view.
It's all a very neat arrangement, but the good part about it is that it's very easy to recognize that sort of thinking for what it is. To those not captured by it, approaching the conversation for the first time, Ron might appear to be honest when he says he respects science and scientists. He even puts on a decent show to those who might not know him. But it's easy to illustrate the confirmation-bias-run-wild by calling to mind that when he or people like him bring forth an expert, it's not the product of careful consideration and research the way we usually think of it. Instead, each authority that's respected, each article that's linked, is the deliberate result of a conscious or unconscious selection process that pressupposes the answer. A google search won't read 'how old is the universe', for instance, but 'Biblical age of the universe' or 'creationist timeline' or something. The question won't be 'what was the major source of anti-semitism prior to WWII', it'll be 'how was Evolution responsible for the Holocaust?'
So there's that at least. As obstinate, dishonest, hypocritical, and insulting a participant as you routinely are, Ron, at least you serve as a cautionary tale. And if anyone takes issue with that characterization, I'm happy to refer them to scientists as fraudulent child abusers and evolution believers as Holocaust causers.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
God is the final Judge, whom we must all face. And His knowledge and understanding are complete and perfect.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
A question on the justice of God-we were all created last Thursday along with the entire universe, but human beings were created with memories. Many of us have sinful memories of course, since God creates complicated false memories. But my question is, if I die tomorrow with a whole lot of sinful memories of 30 years or so I didn't actually live, does that count against me in judgment?
I don't want to hear about how any of this is nonsense, either. It's my faith and it cannot be challenged, questioned, criticized, or disregarded. All those who do are either disrespectful bigots or pawns of the enemy.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Ron:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Samprimary, most of what you and your snarling cohorts have to say is unworthy of response.
But why, exactly? Are you going to claim that what I'm saying is offensive and in a uselessly antagonistic tone? One that I should not use if I want to prove I'm intent on honestly debating the issue with you?
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
Blaming the belief in Evolution for Hitler's actions is like blaming Jesus for the invasion of Iraq. Bush Jr said God told him to do it, after all. Let's not forget the Crusades and every other major war fought with God's will as its justification.
Blaming Evolution is stupid and ignorant. Hitler was a Christian, but we don't shun Christianity because of it, so why shun Evolution? No, Ron is just using this as an excuse, trying to shift the spotlight onto something else because he knows he's running out of material. It's a move of desparation and nothing more.
Posted by narrativium (Member # 3230) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: God is the final Judge, whom we must all face. And His knowledge and understanding are complete and perfect.
Or maybe your god does not exist. We'll probably never know conclusively within our lifetimes.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jeff C.: Blaming the belief in Evolution for Hitler's actions is like blaming Jesus for the invasion of Iraq.
Jeff, that is a pretty stupid thing to say. Adolph Hitler himself SAID that evolution was his justification for his campaign to wipe out the Jews. He called it "survival of the fittest," and he meant to prove that the "Aryan" race was the fittest. This is documented. Why do you presume to lie about history so blatantly?
Have you ever read the full, original title of Charles Darwin's book, "Origins of Species"? Here it is: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Can't you manage at least a modicum of honesty to acknowledge that that title has just a hint of racism in it? What is to keep anyone from concluding that the way to prove that his race is the one that is favored, is by killing off the competition?
narrativium, I think it is most likely that most people here in this forum will live to see the end of the world, very soon. Those who die will rise in either the first or second general resurrections, to receive their ajudicated rewards. No one will escape. You can be on the good side of the Judgment, if you place your faith in the goodness of God, and worship the Creator instead of the creature. (Everyone worships one or the other, without exception.)
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
If the end of the world is coming you should be more prompt in addressing my question to you.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Samprimary: still unworthy of response.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
But you haven't explained WHY my statement is unworthy of response. That's the most important thing. If you don't, it's like you're just ignoring it because it's inconveniently difficult for you to address without admitting some hypocrisy on your part.
Which is fine, of course. If you want to just grant me that victory, your silence will speak volumes.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
The only thing my silence speaks, Samprimary, is that I do not respect the intelligence of your comments enough to make them worthy of further response.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
George W Bush is an exception. He was killing Muslims, so that is ok. Ron needs the Jews alive so they can convert to Christianity and/or kill all the Muslims in the holy land to bring about the end of the world.
Of course if the world is ending, why are creationists wasting time on pushing their agenda. Shouldn't they, I don't know, be spreading the more important aspects of their faith and try to convert people?
Back before my atheism I was in line to take one of the Praxis tests (to become a teacher in Maryland). An older (soon to be science) teacher in front of me started up a conversation with me. I mentioned I would not be celebrating Christmas being Jewish, and he had lots of questions about Judaism. He asked me how I resolved my faith with teaching evolution and the Big Bang. I told him that in my mind there were lots more important things in the bible than the opening story. He actually liked that.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: The only thing my silence speaks, Samprimary, is that I do not respect the intelligence of your comments enough to make them worthy of further response.
really? That's funny. Because I've been intentionally copy-pasting your own text and your own language, switching the target of its vitriol to creationists, and then seeing how you respond to YOUR OWN tone. YOUR OWN hubristic arrogance. Not anyone else's, just your own.
What do you do when you're confronted with the way that YOU SPEAK to others? You call it too unintelligent to make it worthy of further response.
Yeah, sounds about right.
see, this?
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Ron Lambert, you coccoon yourself in swaths of self-affirming terminology which you think amounts to a scientific discipline, when actually it is you who have have no idea what genuine, actual reality is.
Another way to say it is that you have been brainwashed by creationists in positions of authority over you "teaching" you their "truth" since childhood on.
When all other argument and what you think is persuasion fail, you resort to insults and ridicule, because at the heart of it you cannot respect challenges to your world view. You cannot agree to disagree, you cannot admit that your opponents have reasonable positions that are supported by real evidence; you have to despise. I have witnessed this over and over again, so that I can only conclude that this must be an inherent characteristic of all defenders of creationism that eventually turns up sooner or later. It is not just your brainwashed world view that scientists must contend with, they must also endure your hatred. Have you ever asked yourselves who is really pulling your strings, and making you feel the things that you feel?
Why, that was actually pretty much you, when you said this.
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Samprimary, et al., you coccoon yourself in swaths of self-affirming terminology which you think amounts to a scientific discipline, when actually it is you who have have no idea what genuine, actual reality is.
Another way to say it is that you have been brainwashed by evolutionists in positions of authority over you "teaching" you their "truth" since childhood on.
And when all other argument and what you think is persuasion fail, you resort to insults and ridicule, because at the heart of it you cannot respect challenges to your world view. You cannot agree to disagree, you cannot admit that your opponents have reasonable positions that are supported by real evidence; you have to despise. I have witnessed this over and over again, so that I can only conclude that this must be an inherent characteristic of all defenders of evolution that eventually turns up sooner or later. It is not just your brainwashed world view that creationists must contend with, they must also endure your hatred. Have you ever asked yourselves who is really pulling your strings, and making you feel the things that you feel?
And I chose this as a specific example because it was a point at which you first started really getting into making it that I argued with you because i was demonically influenced.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
It's a trap!
Posted by narrativium (Member # 3230) on :
Holy crap, Sam. That's. . . brilliant.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
I stand by every word, Samprimary. And you never said anything worthy of serious consideration, for the reasons I stated. If you choose to be deliberately stupid and unreasoning, then I have no obligation to follow you into such irrational underbrush. Your falsely characterizing the nature of my comments does not constitute a rational argument. Deal with my actual arguments substantively and directly, confronting facts, and answering fact for fact, citing sources, and then perhaps I will consider you worthy of my time.
Your sophomoric arguing does not constitute mature debating.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Ron, you are doing the same thing you condemn Sam for. You don't get to slide by because you believe you are right.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Your sophomoric arguing does not constitute mature debating.
Yeah, that's the point. I'm debating you using your own rhetoric, copied almost word for word. You are condemning your own immature, sophomoric "debating" and calling it too immature to warrant a response. You pretty much totally just called your own behavior too unintelligent to consider worth addressing. Welcome to how nearly everyone else has felt about you for a long time. Welcome to your blindness to your own lack of credibility.
You're just completely proving my point. I argued with you as you argue with everyone, and it's too much even for you. Yet, somehow, when you're acting this way, you're supremely blind to your own actions.
Congratulations.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
Dude, Ron, it's over. You just got all pissy about the tone of your own words. I thought Sam's text was a bit out of character for him, but I had no idea it was because he was parroting you. Oh my bloody hell, I'm in awe on so many levels.
/tips sam a libation of his choosing (do you take BTC?)
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Jeff [Ron], that is a pretty stupid thing to say. Adolph Hitler [George Bush] himself SAID that evolution [Jesus] was his justification for his campaign to wipe out the Jews [invade Iraq].
quote:Why do you presume to lie about history so blatantly?
If was lying about history, I would have said that it never happened, Ron. Stop twisting my words. I made a comparison. You clearly do not understand the difference.
quote:Have you ever read the full, original title of Charles Darwin's book, "Origins of Species"? Here it is: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Can't you manage at least a modicum of honesty to acknowledge that that title has just a hint of racism in it?
Is it racism when a lion kills a zebra? How about when a fish adapts to a polluted river in Idaho because of all the toxic waste? No, Ron, facts are not racist. They are facts. Just because you do not like something, does not mean it isn't true.
quote:What is to keep anyone from concluding that the way to prove that his race is the one that is favored, is by killing off the competition?
Ron, science has shown that human beings, no matter the race, are almost completely identical. There are small genetic differences, but they are almost completely the same. Evolution does not propose that we self-eliminate. It simply states that the envirnment will force the animals to adapt, and those that adapt will survive. Human beings are at fault for whatever they do, not a factual scientific theory.
quote:narrativium, I think it is most likely that most people here in this forum will live to see the end of the world, very soon. Those who die will rise in either the first or second general resurrections, to receive their ajudicated rewards. No one will escape. You can be on the good side of the Judgment, if you place your faith in the goodness of God, and worship the Creator instead of the creature. (Everyone worships one or the other, without exception.) [/QB]
Ron, this is why you will always lose every debate you get into, at least with an intelligent and well informed person. You cannot argue science with scripture. It doesn't work. Scripture is biased and faith based. Science requires nothing other than facts and observation.
Believe whatever you want, Ron, but you will never convince anyone here, because most of these people are actually informed.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by MattP: /tips sam a libation of his choosing (do you take BTC?)
oh, jeez. i .. have stayed as far away from btc as i possibly could, but the notion of being able to say i once owned ron so hard I was given a drink????
dude thanks
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
What's BTC?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
bitcoin
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
It's magic pretend money that you buy for no reason and then someone else buys it from you for much more money, again for no reason.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by MattP: It's magic pretend money that you buy for no reason and then someone else buys it from you for much more money, again for no reason.
I was referring to the way they killed the joke by trying to explain the punchline. I knew it was going to be a blank list before I clicked the link. And yet I found not only a notice stating that there was indeed no list, but tumbleweeds and cricket chirps just in case I didn't get it. (Upon clicking the link again, it appears that the notice that there is no list has been edited away--making it marginally funnier.)
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
my post was unrelated, I just think that Project Steve has to be brought up from time to time, especially when we get a massive load of lists and sources from places like answers in genesis
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I know one of those Steves.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Tickets cost $25 so I assume Nye is getting paid. But I really wish he wouldn't. When you debate someone, it kind of lends some credence to their argument. And they have none. At all. Zero. Zilch.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Even the topic, “Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific world?”, makes the whole thing about creationism. It would be like inviting Stephen Hawking to debate the merits of following Voldemort.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Yuck.
Posted by Mr. Y (Member # 11590) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: He told us His purpose in doing so--so there would be a universe filled with light.
Because God is afraid of the dark.
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Have you ever read the full, original title of Charles Darwin's book, "Origins of Species"? Here it is: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Can't you manage at least a modicum of honesty to acknowledge that that title has just a hint of racism in it? What is to keep anyone from concluding that the way to prove that his race is the one that is favored, is by killing off the competition?
Because the systematic extermination of a 'competing' race is not Natural Selection. Should it be succesful, it does not prove that the survivors are better in all respects. It only proves that they are more ruthless.
It is like destroying your neighbour's brand new car by nudging it off a cliff with your own vehicle that is held together only by rust and some duct tape and then claiming that this proves your car is the better one.
[ January 03, 2014, 05:50 AM: Message edited by: Mr. Y ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I should also point out that there is nothing systematic about natural selection, nor any suggestion of the kind in Darwin's title.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Here is the thread where I previously presented arguments and evidences that favor Creation and contradict Evolution. I do have more to add, even more conclusive arguments and evidences.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Oh this is the thread that I owned you so hard in it that I was offered a congratulatory drink. Thanks for bringing it up to remind everyone that that happened. It's been a weird month so I needed the levity.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Samprimary, you said nothing substantive to counter my arguments and evidences. Once again, you are merely pretending you won a debate when you never did. Let anyone read through the thread and see for themselves who has the real weight of evidence behind him.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Evidences Concerning the Real Age of the Universe
Main argument for vast ages (billions of years) for the universe:
The speed of light in a vacuum is approximately 186,000 miles per second. Since the universe has been estimated to be billions of light years across, it must have taken billions of years for the light of the most distant stellar objects to reach earth.
Counter argument:
God’s first command in creating earth was “Let there be light.” He did not want a dark universe, where we would have to wait millions of years for the light even of the nearby stellar objects to reach earth. So did God create the universe so that the light from every point in space was already reaching every other point in space? He did create the trees of Eden with apparent age. Isaiah 42:5 says that God “Spread out” the heavens.
Test:
If light has been travelling for billions of years to get to earth, then we should be able to see portions of deep space, at the very limits of our most powerful telescopes, where there are blank areas, then later those blank areas become filled with more stellar objects—because the light from those distant stellar objects is just now reaching earth. But no one has ever seen anything like that.
Some arguments for relative youth of the universe (perhaps only 12,000 years):
1) Stellar nebulas are clouds of expanding “star stuff” from stars that have exploded. In no case has any stellar nebula been expanding for over 12,000 years.
2) Astrophysicists have analyzed the rings of Saturn and the smaller ones of some of the other outer gas giants in the solar system, and it has been determined that those ring systems are inherently unstable, and could not possibly persist for more than 12,000 years.
3) Short-period comets, that pass within the inner solar system, should all burn up and be vaporized by the sun in 12,000 years. In an attempt to explain how short-period comets could still exist, astrophysicists have postulated the existence of an “Oort Cloud” of cometary bodies that orbit one-half light year to a light year out from the sun, and have suggested that from time to time, large gravitational bodies pass through this Oort Cloud and disrupt it, sending some inward to replenish the short-period comets. BUT no one has ever confirmed the existence of the Oort Cloud, nor have any large gravitational bodies that could have disrupted it been detected.
4) Before the Apollo Moon landings, scientists were very concerned that since cosmic dust has (supposedly) been infalling on the Moon for billions of years, there could be a layer of dust on the lunar surface hundreds of feet thick, so that the lunar lander might sink down through it out of sight. This was taken so seriously that the early lunar landers had large, snow-shoe like disks on the ends of the landing struts. But the Apollo astronauts discovered that the layer of dust on the lunar surface was only one-half to three-fourths of an inch thick. The NASA website for Apollo 11 shows Buzz Aldrin standing beside landing strut of luna lander, showing snowshoe-like pad on landing strut, and Buzz Aldrin’s footprint.
5) God knows the end from the beginning. So He knew that the problem of sin would arise and have to be dealt with. Would God wait billions of years to face this problem, or did he decide to deal with it ASAP? Lucifer’s name suggests that he may have been the first angel God created.
It should be added that there are situations where the speed of light constant may be different. E=MC² represents what is involved in the conversion of matter to energy, which happens during nuclear decay. In that equation, C represents the speed of light in a vacuum. It has been found in the laboratory that radioactive isotopes, when heated to the plasma state, may have their rate of radioactive decay multiplied billions of times. In the case of lutetium, the rate of decay is actually increased trillions of times. Now, was not all matter in the universe in a plasma state for the first instant of Creation? Is it not likely that at the very moment of creation of the universe, God may have allowed the constant of the speed of light in a vacuum to be very different from what it is now? Materialists talk about a "Big Bang," in an effort to mock Creation. (But what they propose is even more absurd, the idea that without God, in the beginning was nothing, and then nothing exploded and became the ordered universe.) But Isaiah 45:12; 48:13; and numerous other texts say God "stretched out the heavens."
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Scientists Beginning to Doubt Discovery Once Touted as Evidence for Evolution
By Garrett Haley on May 29, 2016390 Comments 2363 24 Share4 10 2409
quote:An influential scientific discovery that was once celebrated as compelling evidence for evolution may require reinterpretation, according to a growing number of scientists and researchers. In 2008, biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University jubilantly announced that he had witnessed a “major evolutionary innovation.”
Lenski, as part of his Long-Term Experimental Evolution (LTEE) project, had been carefully observing the bacteria Escherichia coli (E. coli) reproduce in a lab. Finally, after 20 years and 31,000 E. coli generations, Lenski noticed that one of the bacteria populations had seemingly mutated and acquired the ability to process the chemical citrate when oxygen was present.
Lenski detailed his findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and claimed that the E. coli development was a “fascinating case of evolution in action.” Other sources described the discovery as “dramatic” and “profound.” “Lenski’s experiment is also yet another poke in the eye for anti-evolutionists,” reported the website NewScientist.com. The site also quoted evolution promoter Jerry Coyne as saying, “The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events. That’s just what creationists say can’t happen.”
Later, in a 2011 article in Microbe Magazine, Lenski wrote a “salute to Charles Darwin” and asserted that his LTEE project confirmed Darwin’s ideas. Then, in a 2012 journal article published in Nature, Lenski again drew attention to the supposed evolution of the E. coli bacteria, stating that the ability to process citrate was “a novel trait” made possible by evolution.
However, a growing number of scientists are now calling Lenski’s findings into question. In February, a journal article from the American Society for Microbiology written by a team of biologists from the University of Idaho rebutted one of Lenski’s central claims.
“Here we show why [Lenski’s discovery] probably was not a speciation event,” the biologists wrote. As it turns out, E. coli populations tested by the University of Idaho biologists rapidly acquired the ability to process citrate when oxygen was present. So it wasn’t a rare evolutionary event—it was simply the bacteria adapting to their environment.
“We conclude that the rarity of the LTEE mutant was an artifact of the experimental conditions and not a unique evolutionary event,” the researchers wrote. “No new genetic information (novel gene function) evolved.”
Another journal article published this year by the American Society for Microbiology cast further doubt on the celebrated LTEE discovery and proposed that Lenski’s findings “may require interpretation.”
In a May 16 blog post, Dr. Jay Wile said these recent developments should come as no surprise. In fact, Wile noted, a Christian molecular geneticist—Dr. Georgia Purdom with Answers in Genesis—predicted that the E. coli in LTEE did not mutate. They simply adapted to function better in their environment.
“This was definitely not any kind of speciation event,” he wrote in reference to the E. coli adaptations. “Instead, the same genetic changes seen in the LTEE were achieved repeatedly after a short amount of time. This tells us that the ability to use citrate in the presence of oxygen is the result of adaptive mutation, as predicted by Dr. Purdom nearly 8 years ago.”
Therefore, Dr. Wile wrote, these recent developments have “specifically confirmed a creationist prediction while, at the same time, falsifying an evolutionary one.”
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Quote from Aldous Huxley on his motive for rejecting Christian morality:
quote:“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.”
Of course, nothing lends itself better to the philosophy of meaninglessness than the theory (philosophy) of evolution.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Was Aldous Huxley a scientist, he asked, knowing the answer.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
So, you do not know the importance of Aldous Huxley to evolutionism's whole philosophy of science.
I said I could cite "proponents of evolution." Evolution is a philosophy, not a science.
[ November 23, 2016, 02:02 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Here is am excellent statement concerning the philosophy of naturalism, which is at the heart of evolution theory. It is not written by an evolutionist scientist, but it states the issues succinctly and with inarguable reason:
Naturalism has replaced Christianity as the main religion of the Western world. Though the teaching that natural evolutionary processes can account of the origin of all living species has never been proven, that teaching is central to the philosophy that now dominates Western scholarly thinking. Even evangelicals have become less willing to defend the early chapters of Genesis against the encroachments of evolutionary thought, although in actuality affirming an “old earth” theory and remaining evangelical is an inconsistency. A “framework” approach to those chapters does not square with a consistent hermeneutical approach to Scripture, because the first chapter of Genesis teaches that God created the world in a normal week of seven days. The purpose of evolution is to explain away the God of the Bible. The absurd teaching of the Big Bang theory of evolution is that nobody times nothing equals everything. It is a theory that raises an almost endless array of unsolvable problems. It is degrading to humanity, hostile to reasons, and antithetical to the truth that God has revealed. When one starts adapting the Word of God to fit scientific theories based on naturalistic beliefs, he has begun his journey on the road to skepticism.
Introduction
Thanks to the theory of evolution, naturalism is now the dominant religion of modern society. Less than a century and a half ago, Charles Darwin popularized the credo for this secular religion with his book The Origin of Species. Although most of Darwin’s theories about the mechanisms of evolution were discarded long ago, the doctrine of evolution itself has managed to achieve the status of a fundamental article of faith in the popular modern mind. Naturalism has now replaced Christianity as the main religion of the Western world, and evolution has become naturalism’s principal dogma.
Naturalism is the view that every law and every force operating in the universe is natural rather than moral, spiritual, or supernatural. Naturalism is inherently anti-theistic, rejecting the very concept of a personal God. Many assume naturalism therefore has nothing to do with religion. In fact, it is a common misconception that naturalism embodies the very essence of scientific objectivity. Naturalists themselves like to portray their system as a philosophy that stands in opposition to all faith-based worldviews, pretending that it is scientifically and intellectually superior precisely because of its supposed non-religious character.
Not so. Religion is exactly the right word to describe naturalism. The entire philosophy is built on a faith-based premise. Its basic presupposition—an a priori rejection of everything supernatural—requires a giant leap of faith. And nearly all its supporting theories must be taken by faith as well.
Posted by NobleHunter (Member # 12043) on :
I like how the "scientific" arguments are riddled with "God did it." Real empirical that.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
So, NobleHunter, it is reasonable to you to say that "In the beginning there was nothing--no time, no space, no matter, no energy--and then suddenly nothing exploded and became the whole highly-ordered universe." Real empirical that!
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: So, you do not know the importance of Aldous Huxley to your side's whole philosophy of science.
I said I could cite "proponents of evolution." Evolution is a philosophy, not a science.
I don't know much about him, actually. One thing I do know is that he's not what I challenged you to provide. Anyway, you were pretty shifty about who you could quote saying what. You went from talking about scientists to mere 'proponents' of evolution.
Still waiting for a scientist saying the things you said.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
There are plenty of such scientists--literally hundreds, even thousands of them. But you will not accept them, because they are Creationists. Scientists who are honest enough to admit the real reasons for clinging to evolution, usually throw out Darwin and embrace Intelligent Design, because they know it makes more sense, scientifically, and better explains all the observed evidence.
Posted by NobleHunter (Member # 12043) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: So, NobleHunter, it is reasonable to you to say that "In the beginning there was nothing--no time, no space, no matter, no energy--and then suddenly nothing exploded and became the whole highly-ordered universe." Real empirical that!
I don't think that's how scientists describe the state of the universe prior to the big bang. I'd be surprised if there was any actual agreement on it.
All this, btw, has sfa to do with evolution. The theory of the Big Bang could be complete nonsense and it wouldn't matter one jot or tittle to the theory of evolution.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Samprimary, you said nothing substantive to counter my arguments and evidences. Once again, you are merely pretending you won a debate when you never did. Let anyone read through the thread and see for themselves who has the real weight of evidence behind him.
You said something essentially identical to this in several situations where you'd been pinned to the wall. This is your default way of saying "Yes, you owned me, but I will never admit it. Let anyone read the thread and decide for themselves!"
So ok, want to put it to a vote?
Let's have the thread vote on if I revealed your hypocrisy at all.
Want a vote?
(ron will come up with an excuse if the vote of active participants fails)
(no surprise)
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: So, NobleHunter, it is reasonable to you to say that "In the beginning there was nothing--no time, no space, no matter, no energy--and then suddenly nothing exploded and became the whole highly-ordered universe." Real empirical that!
It's not like you're accurately describing the big bang or any related cosmological origin theories but do you even literally understand that "the big bang" and "evolution" are two completely different things, the scientific falsifiability/observable evidence of which are not requisitely interconnected?
(ron does not understand this)
(ron will come up with a stupid argument that you have to accept both or something)
if you conflate evolutionary theory with abiogenesis/cosmological origin theory, you accomplish nothing; it is a stupid move.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Vote if you want. But truth is not determined by majority vote, in any case. The universe is not a democracy. You may vote that the sun has always risen in the east, but there is a fellow named Velikovsky who presented some very good evidence that it used to rise in the west.
NobleHunter, I am surprised you do not see the logical connection between the idea of a Big Bang with evolution. All evolutionists agree on the necessity for there to be vast ages for the universe--billions of years--so the improbable idea of chance mutations rewriting DNA to produce more complex and advanced species from less complex species can somehow be made to appear plausible.
Evidence such as the fact that no stellar nebula spreading from a single, identifiable explosion center has ever been observed to have been expanding for more the 12,000 years (even assuming the ejecta is traveling close to the speed of light) is anathema to evolutionists, because it pretty strongly indicates there is not billions of years to play around with, and the essential, mathematical IMPROBABILITY of evolution cannot be gotten around.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Samprimary, you never "pinned me to the wall." This is just you trying to rewrite history, and claim a victory you never attained. That is a pretty lazy way of debating. I gave you a multitude of evidences that are not honestly arguable. Just because you babble something does not mean you have given an intelligent answer to what was actually said.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever heard of Aldous Huxley? Do you appreciate his instrumental role in the development of naturalistic evolution as a philosophy of science?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Don't talk about mathematical improbability, Ron. It is incredibly less probable that the cause of so much complexity is a being of *infinite, inexplicable* complexity.
You can complain and scoff, "Aha! The world is far too complex to have arisen by 'mere chance'!" (Setting aside that this is not the scientific explanation.) But you can't answer that problem of complexity with God, because the Christian God is incalculably more complex than the supposedly too-complex universe.
Now yes, I realize that you don't quite do this. In keeping with your profoundly dishonest discussion practices you will initially refer to complexities when dismissing something you don't like, but when you hold up your infinitely more complex explanation suddenly the complexity problem doesn't matter.
And yes, I know that if you respond to this at all you'll lie and refuse to acknowledge the shifting goalposts of evidence you've used, isn't it sad liberals God etc etc. Just wanted you to hear it pointed out that you didn't get away with it.
Still waiting to hear from a scientist who states they support evolution because they fear the possibility of God'a Judgement. And none of your horseshit about evolution as a 'philosophy', either. One of these hedonistic scientists you talk about.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
I don't have to let you put words in my mouth, Rakeesh. You don't know who Aldous Huxley was, so you are not informed enough to be qualified to engage in this present discussion. It is sad that your professors did such a poor job of educating you about the basics of the history of science.
Which is more likely? That immense complexity emerged out of nothing all by itself? Or that God existed to begin with, all by Himself, the First Thing of all, and all existence came from Him? We are here--the universe is here. So something did come first. Which was it? Which was first? Nothing, or God?
You may believe that you are a child of nothing, a spawn of blind chance, if you wish. I believe it is infinitely more reasonable to conclude that I am a child of God. Why don't you want to see yourself that way?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:You don't know who Aldous Huxley was...
I'm actually pretty sure that Rakeesh does. Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Actually I said I didn't know much about him, but that he wasn't a scientist. Which he wasn't. And, again, don't talk about qualifications when you make sure to exclude tens of thousands of scientists despite their qualifications because they WrongThink.
Also for god's sake it's times like this that makes me wonder if you're trolling: you tried to use Milton Bradley board gaming experience as valid experience in the study of history. Qualified, pah.
Anyway, I notice that you're doing exactly as predicted: pretending you didn't try to shift the goalposts. Before I answer your question, answer one for me: which is more complex? A living world that operates on the basis of evolution, or a supernatural deity outside time and space and natural law that created the world? I wait with held breath.
To answer your question, my response is to point out first that you posed another dishonest question in that there are only two choices-nothing or God. But my own answer is that I don't know how Reality started.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Just because you babble something does not mean you have given an intelligent answer to what was actually said.
Are you just repeating things that people say to you when you are debating badly? Anyway, like I said, I figured you'd find some way to excuse not putting it to a vote.
That's the benefit to that what actually happened in this thread actually happened. I'll bet you still even deny that people had you pinned to the wall over that you were falsely claiming your video showed us obama's grandmother saying he was born outside of the U.S., because you're Ron Lambert.
quote:Just out of curiosity, have you ever heard of Aldous Huxley? Do you appreciate his instrumental role in the development of naturalistic evolution as a philosophy of science?
I am very versed in Aldous Huxley. It's why I know that your attempt to shoehorn him into the issue of evolutionary science is typical Ronlambertian scientific and intellectual bankruptcy.
You saying to Rakeesh 'you don't know who Aldous Huxley was, so you are not informed enough to be qualified to engage in this present discussion' is like saying 'you don't play Milton Bradley tabletop wargames so you are not informed enough to be qualified to engage in this World War 2 discussion'
which is just to remind people that just this week you tried to use your tabletop wargaming experience to make 'qualified' arguments on WW2 history
like that is totally a thing you just did
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
and before i forget what else you did this week, you also got your facebook account phished and decided that there was sufficient concern that i was the one who hacked your account, because i was able to put any words into a quote box that said 'ron lambert' let me also mention that happened
if you get tired of people bringing up all this stuff that you do, you should consider not constantly doing things which make you look ridiculous in ways you don't even really understand, and which provide a constant supply of your baffling inability to debate rationally in any way, shape, or form about a host of subjects.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Samprimary, you said nothing substantive to counter my arguments and evidences. Once again, you are merely pretending you won a debate when you never did. Let anyone read through the thread and see for themselves who has the real weight of evidence behind him.
Challenge accepted.
I will read the posts tonight and declare a winner tomorrow
![[Hat]](graemlins/hat.gif)