Evolutiongeek has been working on his undergraduate thesis via the blogosphere, spending precious hours of his waning youth jousting against the windmills of reality in defense of the honor and integrity of the beautiful Dulcinea. Of course, our Quixotic hero has no insights into the coarseness and debauched irrelevance of his true love. Although it is a tenet of progressive thought and a free country that people are entitled to their own opinon, it doesn't mean we have to allow enormously flawed pseudo-science to be preached as Gospel without a reality check.
Darwinism is a foundational premise of the culture war. Although culture warriors (CWs) like Geek hide behind a pretension of intellectually acceptable deism, the reality check unveils old-fashioned agnosticism/atheism in disguise. Geek may not have even seriously considered his own epistemological underpinnings; he only wants to discuss horribly flawed pseudo-science, holding it up and shouting it from the rooftops as though he had found the Holy Grail and that the TRUTH is evident.
The culture war has been initiated by the losers of the Cold War and their enablers and supporters. The battle is really between Marxism and American style democracy and its traditional values founded in Judeo-Christian principles and values. I am a Christian. I believe the Christian point-of-view that I have learned over the last many years, and happily embrace, reflects the clearest perspective of reality. I realize people who do not embrace Christianity may disagree violently with my observations; but that is why it is called a culture WAR.
I came to Christ (I rejected Him, by ignoring Him, all through my 7 years of college until he nailed me unexpectedly at age 28) after I had learned all my science, formed my opinions regarding Darwinism (I believed it was true because that was what I was taught), etc. For many years I was a nominal Christian until I began a serious, in-depth Bible study 11 years ago. I surrendered the last of my agnosticims 8 years ago when I first taught a year-long study on Genesis to adult men and became convicted (by the Holy Spirit, Who is the Spirit of Jesus) of the COMPLETE truth of God's Word. It was an acquiescence, not necessarily an assent, at that moment I embraced Creationism. Last year I taught the same Genesis course (32 weekly lessons requiring about 6 hours a week of study) to high school students. During the 7 years between the two Genesis studies I have realized Creationism is a faith issue; it is certainly not science likely to be empirically demonstrated via the scientific method (the same is true of metaphysically founded Darwinism). Nevertheless, it does involve facets of "how God did it". I am convinced not of a young earth but of a very old universe and probably a "non-dogmatic" interpretation of the earth's age. While the great Gospel message of the entire Bible is "NO Condemnation" (see Romans 8), I cannot find anything requiring the word "day" (as used in Genesis 1) to equate to 24 hours (other than the context-ignoring literal meaning of the Hebrew word). Certainly the first 4 days did not include the earth rotating about the sun, because it didn't get created until day 4.
The bottom line is, Genesis, like all of the Bible, can only be understood as it is taught by the Holy Spirit to a regenerate child of God. Otherwise, as Paul points out below, it is foolishness to those who remain spiritually dead in Adam.
I hate Darwinism (hate is the proper term when used to describe feelings toward a lie) because it is so pathetically fraudulent; a tool of culture warriors. The naive true believers like Geek cannot believe that altruistic science would ever be disingenuously doctored to serve a "higher calling". But that is exactly the case. Intelligent Design science has blown the lid off of Darwin's fraud, but like anything political, no ground is given without a fight. That's what the battle is over, using the true believing Darwin Youth as Mujaheddin, who will put on the suicide vests for the cause.
The culture war is the great battle of our post-Cold War time. It is the battle of socialism versus capitalism, of true freedom of religion versus political correctness in order to stifle ONLY Christianity and traditional values, which are the real enemies of the culture war. New Age "religions", including the Hollywood nutcase varieties, are where the left side of the CWs want America to go. New Age is essentially the ecumenism of the "I do my thing, you do your thing..." mantra of the 60's; an "a la carte" melding of whatever makes life the most fun with the least work; an "anything-goes-except-Christianity" philosophy rooted in doping the masses so they'll be easier to manage. But at the foundations, its nothing much more sophisticated than Marxist-Leninism revisited. It's about the "intellectual" revolution; the best and brightest taking the world from the business people and Christians (essentially the foundational mix of our form of government, also known as FREEDOM) so THEY (the "intellectuals"/atheists/Marxists) can be the potentates and put into practice their theory of how to make everyone behave the way THEY want.
Read BF Skinner's classic novel "Walden 2". That's the fantasy world the self-anointed few believe they can force on us all, so we can have John Lennon's "Imagine" world, with that song as the "World Anthem"; another Beatles tune, which will be the "New Age-New Order" equivalent to "America the Beautiful" will be "Why Don't We Do It in the Road". But in reality, the lefts culture war is just socialism re-mixed with "A Clockwork Orange" behavior modification, indoctrination technology, cleverly repackaged with an effort to dodge Orwell's warnings against it in the process.
My advice to readers is to not patronize or tacitly approve Darwinism by trying to engage the debate arguing Darwinian scientific "proofs". Darwinism is metaphysically founded on Methodological Materialism, which creates a predetermined outcome in favor of...Darwinism! A recent study found that a majority of all "peer-reviewed scientific studies" published by PhD scientists were found to be not accurate 10 years later. And it was due to flawed foundational paradigms that ultimately couldn't stand the light of day once technology advanced to the point where the BS could really be checked. Of course, most bad science is just over-zealous PhDs needing to get published so they can reach the Promised Land of tenure. But Darwinism is different. It is metaphysical musings masquerading as science. During the 70s when I was in college, it wasn't rammed down my throat; it was clearly presented as just a theory with lots of problems; the professors were essentially agnostic on Darwin, sort of a "who knows" attitude. But now, with the fall of Marxism, it has become FACT. Just as the Bible has been the foundation for the civilization of the western world for 2000 years, the culture warriors now see Darwin as the great apostle and his theory as the ultimate proof for their religion: atheism.
In reality Darwinism is atheist philosophy of the first rank, not empirical science; but the rank and file in academia will not let it go or call it what it is because they are for the most part conscripts in the lefts culture war army. The Intelligent Design scientists (guys like Behe and Dembski) are on to something new and interesting, it appears. But I'm ultimately jaded and wary of all science except for that which actually produces something tangible. If science tries to prove "origins of everything", it is by definition "religion". The only thing Darwinism produces is atheists, who ultimately become cannon fodder for the New Age movement and foot soldier of the culture war.
The apostle Paul described the fundamental divide of the culture war. He was addressing the formerly pagan people of Corinth who had become converts for Christ. Paul told them:
18For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."[c]
20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. (1 Corinthians 1:18-25)
The culture war is raging. You must choose a side; there are no Switzerlands in this conflict. Where do you stand? Is Darwin your path to insight and light, or is it our traditional American values and beliefs? There are only so many options; I believe just these two.
I'll take Darwinism, thanks.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
I just don't remember there being anything about morality in "Origin of Species."
I didn't read a moral lesson out of Einstein's General Relativity and I think that does a lot more to shake up the universe than ol' Charlie ever did.
about my immorality comments. Darwinism as proposed by Charlie was not immoral; it was a well thought out hypothesis. At the time science believed life was essentially simple, not impossibly complex like we now know. Even in the early 20th century, life was thought to be something we would be able to create with the right organic chemicals. Mary Shelley even wrote a novel about the ease of creating life: Frankenstein.
We now know that we cannot create life in a test tube (unless we start with already living tissues). That potentiality is not in the realm of possibility (I don't need SS or other peanut gallery trolls citing 3rd rate pulp science (like their discredited, so-called "punctuated equilibrium") to claim otherwise: when the Nobel prize is awarded, I'll admit I was wrong).
So the point is, much has changed since Darwin's time; if his theory was culturally neutral, it would have been on the ash-heap of history many decades ago. But it has been artificially propped-up by culture warriors who like what Darwinism does for the arguments to atheism. As Darwin-nut and major biologist Richard Dawkins says: "Darwinism makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." Furthermore, the theory has been given a pass on objective peer review because of its "special status" as a cornerstone of the culture war. A straw man of Darwinism is Methodological Materialism, which dictates what a possible outcome of supposedly "empirical" science experiments may be. It is essentially "anything except 1. complexity due to intelligent causation", or 2. "I Don't Know". MM says that any answer to the mysteries of life can be any impossible, preposterous fabrication out of whole cloth, and it will be considered feasible. But if you say "DNA is more complex than Microsoft Windows XP Professional, how did we get this level of complexity without a computer programmer?", the only allowed answers is some poppycock, "just so" hypothetical story. It is then taught in schools and colleges as fact because Darwinians hate a 3 little word phrase almost as much as they hate the word "design". That phrase they hate is: "I DON'T KNOW". So over the decades, more and more nonsense and outright lies (that's right, SS) have been foisted on the public at large for the sake of preserving the clout and false integrity of the fraudulent theory of Darwinism. Now we have so-called empirical studies on foundational biology in which are analyzed "empirically" through the filter of old, fraudulent MM "proofs of fact".
Is it immoral to teach false information? Last time I checked, that concept is known as PROPAGANDA and teaching propaganda to people is called "indoctrination". I realize you've probably been taught this garbage your entire life. You've been indoctrinated. It's not your fault. Teaching lies to school children is highly immoral.
If Darwinists were less militant, and they said this was a theory that may have some merit, and they taught it warts and all, I might not be quite has hard on them. But the leaders of this movement insist Darwinism is settled science. But there is ZERO tangible proof, just straw man upon straw man; decade after decade.
Be honest with yourself. Doesn't this sound like immorality to you? Of course, if you're like SS, a bag lady for the Darwin-blog, you'll set-off the suicide vest in a bus full of kids rather than admit your religion (Darwinism) is not 100% correct. More IMMORALITY, at best.
At the risk of sounding incredibly tupid at this point...The life from a test tube was not C. Darwin's idea it was E. Darwin's right?...the great grandfather to Charels. That is what I thought i read in the back of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein...which was written before the theory if i remember correctly...dang i wish i did not sell that book back.
all truths are easy to understand once discovered; the point is to discover them ~galileo
Thanks for the help.
in saying: "At the time science believed life was essentially simple, not impossibly complex like we know now.", you're missing the whole basis for Darwin's theory.
Darwin was trying to account for the diversity of life. His theory hasn't been thrown out because, in its pure scientific form where it neither advocates nor denies God, it's still the best theory we have today to account for the diversity of life. The idea of separate creation, whether those separate creations got here by God or not, doesn't account for that diversity--or, for between species, the varying degrees of similarity that crop up in ways that should be impossible were all life not related in ways evolution explains.
--
~I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.~
Well, if I understood Evolution in the incorrect manner you seem to, then yes, it'd all seem like misinformation, ergo propaganda. But as you seem as completely unwilling to do much more than repeat the same outmoded canards as every other creationist, it's really not worth arguing. If you're going to rail against the close-mindedness of these so-called "darwinists", then you'd best not fall into the same mindset.
I freely admit that evolution is not 100% correct. Nobody in their right mind would do that. If it were 100% correct, nobody would still be researching it. All I'm saying is that ID is a pretty feeble alternative. It's a combination of bad science and worse theology. Basing and argument for morality on either evolution or ID is just, well, tenuous. Right and wrong wouldn't change whether the earth was created in 7 days or whether life evolved over billions of years.
(And for the record, I am not a bagman for any particular blog. Other than my own, of course, but that one's mostly about what restaurants I visited last weekend.)
homunculus has way too much time on his hands, and any attempt to argue with him will probably end in frustration. His logical skills are incredibly bad, but he doesn't seem to know, or care. If your going to argue with this guy, then your going to need more than just facts, because reality doesn't seem to phase him.
He also seems to have a lot of time on his hands. As evidence I offer some of his previous rants:here, here, and here.
If you still feel like arguing with this guy after viewing his tendeny for ad-hominem, circular logic, dismissal of evidence, non-sequiters... go for it.
as for me, I've had a more productive time arguing with my cat.
You will ALWAYS lose if you argue with a cat. Its a proven fact.
www.worldcantwait.com
That's because cats are the only beings absolutely insane enough to understand absolutely everything, and they have no reason to explain it to you.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
Ok...not get blasphemous here and start the fighting all over again.
But if your statement is true "cats are the only beings absolutely insane enough to understand absolutely everything," (And I believe every word of it is) doesn't that, if inserted into the argument about God knowing everything...doesn't that mean *whispers* cats are God?
*ducks and runs for cover*
*peers from behind her rock*
I mean, it could be true right?
www.worldcantwait.com
It's as likely as anything else. So far they have been benevolent masters, unassuming and uninvolved and willing to let us live our lives. Why bother them, or be afraid. Come out from hiding and see the new world order.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
ohh, cats are not beneveolent. They are disinterested, or we are beneath them. When they become interested they become old testament Gods. But usually not for too long because they quickly become disinterested.
I'm not afraid of cats. I'm afraid of the stone throwing...but since it was really more of a product of the way I was formulating my thoughts in my head rather than how I posted them, I think I shall come out from behind the rock, as I am acutally safe, and people are staring, lest I be labelled more paranoid.
*whistles and avoids eye contact as she walks away from the rock*
www.worldcantwait.com
You are absolutely right of course. Disinterested is much more accurate than benevolent.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, cats were once worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
If Death himself reveres cats, who are we mere mortals to disagree? :)-
--
~I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.~
they were worshipped as gods by the egyptains. and they do act like they should be worshipped.
held by those innocents who have been indoctrinated by government schools their entire lives.
I do make fun of people who NEVER address my corrections of their erroneous paradigms, but instead get nasty by leading with inanities like saying I'm ignorant, stupid or wrong, yet NEVER address the points I make. When my points are ignored, I assume my point has been made and I go on to the next thing.
One last thought; I can type as fast as I can think, which is at the 99th percentile. So most of my posts only take a few seconds or minutes. Otherwise, I'm plenty busy with business, public service, family, friends, reading, tennis, lots of hobbies, my kids sports and lately playing Santa. The part you are observing is several of my hobbies, but primarily writing. I enjoy writing and would like to write (I'm somewhat embarrassed to say) an historical novel. So thanks for being concerned about my use of free time. And I really appreciate your posting links to my old blogs on RedState. Those were from over a year ago and were a great success; they were commented on by the Discovery Institute and created a meltdown on several of the big evolution blogs; link is somewhere below for Discovery but you'll have to search my RedState posts for the Panda's Thumb seizure.
Another last thought. When I'm wrong I am quick to admit it. When I'm correct I am unwavering. And I have been blessed to know the difference most of the time on the big issues. I love to be corrected; I feel like someone has done me a good service when I am properly corrected. Unfortunately, culture war issues are battle lines. The other side believes their mistaken thinking is correct as fervently as the correct side KNOWs they are correct. In fact, I've found that the erroneous side is generally more emphatic about their muddled thinking than the correct side is about their accurate thinking. Unfortunately, when individuals are indoctrinated into either incorrect thinking or, at times delusional thinking, it's very hard for them to see reality except through their straight-jacket mono-vision paradigms. My quote from Paul at the end of the blog teaches as much and more.
Thank you for commenting.
I would most certainly agree with the second to last three sentances.
www.worldcantwait.com
Is the way I go.
You touched breifly on another interesting point too...capitalism killed the disintrested inquiry of science
Excellent blog
all truths are easy to understand once discovered; the point is to discover them ~galileo
because I find people who ignore and argue with truths all the time. Of course, if he means "discover" in the sense of "gaining insight" instead of just "reading the news", then he's absolutely on target.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
Could you cite the study on PhD research? I'd be interested in reading it.
a study from Nature, probably within the last 12 months. I read so much and I've just developed the habit of "bookmarking" my sources. If I get some time I'll look for it; it probably will show up on a well-phrased Google.
I'll try to look for it after dinner!
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
I heard this reported on a radio program and, given my advancing age and my internal RAM being limited, I mistakenly said Nature.
Here is the link. The author is from Tufts Medical School in Boston.
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124
Interesting article, although I don't know if you can apply it to "all science." My background in statistical analysis is shaky so off the top of my head I can't say for sure if it scales up, but, although it's written in general terms, the study refers specifically to errors in findings involving human clinical trials - hence all the stuff about pre-trial and post-trial findings and reliances on statistical cutoffs and prior probabilities.
It's an interesting article though, from a medical perspective. Really makes you think about drug studies.
The converse of the claim that most studies on macro-evolutionary theory are false with regards to the study you cited is that some are actually correct. The researchers found that even in the worst possible scenario the PPV for any particular research study was .001. Even if one were to assume that all evolutionary research had a strong financial incentive for bias, a strong ideological incentive for bias, entirely exploratory study with no post-study attempts at confirmation, the several thousand positive relationships found in studies on macroevolutionary would still yield a small sum of successful results.
Looking at the Discovery Institutes page citing a variety of peer-reviewed material in support of Intelligent Design, I count about 50 scientific citations (they also include philisophical ones which I discounted as irrelevant to this particular conversation). According to this study the standards for research by intelligent design theorists would have to be pretty high even to get a small handful of "hits," something that would be unlikely in a field made up primarily of exploratory research.
In summary, even if all macro-evolutionary studies were done using the absolute lousiest science posssible of publication in peer-reviewed journals, at least a few of these studies must have been accurate. As such this study cannot be used to categorically discount all parts of macroevolutionary theory as it virtually proves that some aspects of macro-evolution must, by virtue of pure probability, be correct.
How many times, using worst case scenarios, is it ever proven that say, Panspermia is true? Or "homunculus theory"? Or "flat earth". Never, and those things (except Panspermia, which, like Darwin, argues in a circle) are easy to discount regardless of outcomes. Meanwhile, "macro-evolution" is the same as "micro-evolution" except for the part that muses it proceeding to yield a net new species. One would expect to get lots of hits on "micro". But to get "macro" you still are chasing your tail; it can't be proven, just like Panspermia.
Still, an excellent use of the old noodle, James. (My 13 year old son is James too; a fine name his old daddy gave him!)
"Observed Instances of Speciation" by Joseph Boxhorn published in 2002 describes more than a dozen instances of macro-evolution. Mice, a marine worm and 8 species of fruit flies in the laboratory. There are some others, but I find the fruit flys most interesting since we have been using them as population models for so long. So we can all stop chasing our tails. I imagine geek has many more examples of macro evolution, but even a poor amateur such as myself found pretty conclusive evidence for macro taking place.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
"Speciation". Show me a fruit fly that turns into a bat and you can win a Nobel prize; county-fair, prize winning hybrid bugs are still bugs.
I'm finally going to spit this out. I wrote the parent post of this thread hoping to spark some comments about the culture war. I hit some really hot-button issues like Walden 2 utopianism as a disguise for Marxism, with some Clockwork Orange horror technology thrown in. Of course, they've been using this technology in the public schools for 20 years, resulting in the above referenced indoctrination. Maybe it's just the generation and they're not teaching foundational premises to "liberal" thought.
Of course, it may be that the majority of the posters over here are simply more trolls from the Darwin blogs. I'm an unassuming guy willing to give people a break (unless they're truly rude like SS). That was the good thing about doing the Darwin / ID stuff on RedState. It's a tightly run ship over there and trolls are blasted out of the conversation when they rear their ugly heads.
I sort of imagine the kind of speciation you want to see is not observable on the human time scale. At best we could maybe see some bacteria band together into a multicelled animal. If you are waiting for observables for things that are basically theoretical then well, I totally see where you are coming from. I happen to think that that is putting the bar a bit too high in an intentional bid to make sure your views don't need to be evaluated, but that is just me.
All school and learning involves indoctrination. At home, at school, at church. If indoctrination is a bad thing then I suggest you go in for a lobotomy. The best we could do is study all sorts of cultural indoctrination and become aware and able to choose what to believe.
To me the basic culture item up for grabs in the ID/evo debate is whether humans are the center of the universe. ID advocates are free to believe that our species is the most advanced and most intelligent entity that will ever be. This planet, and ultimately the universe were created purely for us and we are the top dogs. Evolution forces us to see our entire species, and all its wonderful "accomplishments" as simply part of a process that will continue after we are gone.
You can talk about gov. conspiracies to brain wash our children and bogus science in the schools, but in reality nobody is focusing the schools that sharply. It is more a product of schools in a culture being run by people within that culture, based on books written by those in the culture that perpetuates a culture. You seem to want to invoke some conspiracy to tear down religion, when many people in the gov't would obviously wish to do the opposite, and all that is really happening is science pushes God's role farther and farther back. PEople are so focused on the "God of the gaps" that as those gaps close they see their god being taken away.
You might want to check out Tim Leary and others in the acid generation. They were intimately involved in breaking social conditioning and dropping out of the status quo. Judging by your background in business though I rather figure that you sold out and bought in instead of tuning in, turning on and dropping out. Walden II is all well and good, but I don't think our gov't has the focus and resources to achieve anything so nightmarish.
Read "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn. It is all about the stories and mythologies we tell ourselves and don't even recognize as mythology. WE simply accept them as fact.
I don't get the impression you take me terribly seriously though, so just consider this my two cents.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
Thanks for the comments. Part of my method (as a magazine editor told me several years ago regarding an article he published) is to polarize my readership. Since here I'm writing incognita, I've actually got a chance to present a rational/emotive view of deism/Christianity to a readership that is not likely to pay attention to a more traditional, "Jesus loves you" approach.
1. AS I've posted numerous times, I have a personal relationship with Christ. I know it is true and I have my first 28 years of disbelief as a counterpoint to my last 25 of regenerate life. In terms of being lost, as we boomers smugly put it, "been there and done that".
2. It is indisputable that God has been taken out of the government school classrooms for decades, rotting the system and the culture in the process. In the 1960s, when I was in elementary school, high school teachers reported the worst problems they had with students were excessive talking and chewing gum. What are our worst problems today? The change coincides with throwing God out of the classroom.
3. My "indoctrination" comments have to do with the fact that there are at least 2 generations of school kids that have generally little to no knowledge of God. Not only that, but liberal culture warriors are trying to take out public references to Christianity, trampling freedom and the Constitution in the process.
4. So my abrupt and confrontational approach is my probably weak effort at getting some people some exposure (maybe for the first time) of "the message of the Cross" and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But as the old evangelist says, get the Gospel in front of the lost any way you can and let God do the work. So far we've already had 700+ reads; if one person comes to Christ from that group due in part to reading these posts, it was worth the effort.
So there, I've blown my cover. I've never uttered any fact that I don't believe to be true. I probably read more books for fun per year than college kids read for school. There is no doubt that macro-evolution is not provable, and I'm glad to see you acknowledge that, although you're speaking from an empirical basis. But the big problem with macro is its flawed philosophical foundations, as I've repeated without rebuttal until I'm blue. Science requires both empiricism and a firm foundation; Darwinism has neither. But evolutionists (a small club in terms of actual scientists working in the "field") continue to build more garbage on a foundation of garbage.
I really don't like contention in conversation. I do take you seriously but I think it's important to not tacitly accept indoctrination in contrast to original thinking, questioning everything, not just the things you desire to question. It's a tired truism to say many college kids aren't interested in the Christian faith. But few of those who have no interest have ever studied the Bible. So how do you KNOW what it says? Try reading the NIV version of the book of John one chapter per day until you are through. Ask God to reveal Himself to you before you read each morning or night (or whenever). If you don't harden your heart, He will speak to you. If you do keep your heart hard, you're still in the same place you are now, but you'll know a little more Bible.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=jn%201&version=31
Gotta go.
Later
this is powerfully and poetically written. you have some excellent points and references though I happen to disagree with the end judgement.
Some of it was rather offensive, and defensive in a fairly blinded manner.
Orwell was speaking out against capitalism as hijacked by the business people and the "righteous" (animal farm...1984)
I stand by my theory that it was in fact aliens that seeded us here and the bible was written out of their paternalism for us and our lack of context with which to know them. And thats realy only because I couldn't give a rats jibouti about darwinism or creationism.
In the culture war, I pick neither Darwinism or creationism, but if you're gonna make it a battle, i'm gonna have to side with the "newagers" of you do your thing I do mine. Even Christians win unless winning means total cultural and political domination. In this perspective anything less is considered by Christians to be "political correctness in order to stifle ONLY Christianity and traditional values,".
I know, I understand, its tough to share, moving over to share and make room for others is often viewed as a loss for the power holders rather than a gain for all.
I like Imagine, and John Lennon. God forbid that we use religion to dehumanize people rather than take care of our own inner spirituality. Please. i'm serious. God forbid it.
That kind of take only works if its not you being dehumanized.
Frankly, a lot of the bitterness and lash backa against Christians as a group are getting comes more from their century old propensity to destroy people, religions and way of life through war and enforced social control, including violence and dehumanization.
Not all Christians advocate that, but as a group sociology it tends to be a dominant and serious behavior. No wonder they get a bad rap. Perhaps if Christians could play nicely (which means don't destroy my toys and call me fatty cause you didn't get your way, not meaning passive and kowtowing) the lashback would subside.
Regardless, you are extremely talented at writing and that added enjoyability to reading your post entirely through.
www.worldcantwait.com
...you turn a wanna-be writers head with all that sweet talk.
Regarding, Christianity, the only person ever legitimately murdered in it's name is Jesus Christ. I say legitimately because He came to earth for that reason. The Bible is the good news that tells us there is No Condemnation of mankind for those who accept Christ's gift of propitiation and ultimately justification for all our horrors as humans. Those that maim and murder in the name of Christ are not Christians. His name has been used for all sorts of nastiness for 2000 years, but it's merely lost people profaning His sweetness and love. That's what lost people do. But listen to the call of my precious Lord:
28"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30
Those are the words of the Creator of the universe. If He were a space alien, he would have said so. Maybe you could even think of Him that way. The difference is, no matter how advanced the aliens might be, the infinite issues remain. Who made the space aliens? The Big Bang theory, as revealed by Einstein's theory of General Relativity, demonstrates a finite BEGINNING of the universe, about 14 billion years ago. That sounds very old, and it is, but in terms of how high numbers can go, it is far from infinity; infinity never stops. Whatever the highest number anyone can come up, it can be multiplied by itself infinite times. So what was going on prior to the Big Bang? General Relativity also demonstrates that the laws of physics (which hold the universe and everything else together) break down nano-seconds prior to the Big Bang. Even devoted atheists like genius cosmologist Stephen Hawking admit that science as we know it appears to require a creator. Of course, he is trying desperately to find a way to eliminate the creator through his work on what he call his "theory of everything". Even his advocates do not believe he will do it. Optimists say "maybe in the next 400 years". Yeah, and maybe in that time Jesus returns to earth and ends the discussion
I read Orwell about the same time I read Don Quixote; both books made powerful impressions on me as a young man, but I remember the philosophies taught, not so much the details of the story line. I'll stand by my comments and the context I used.
Thanks for reading.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
"The difference is, no matter how advanced the aliens might be, the infinite issues remain. Who made the space aliens? "
If with the space alien theory..no musing is more like it, one tries to say that God is still the creator who created the space aliens who created us, that is to open ones self up to mysticism, which requires not the bible at all.
But I don't seek to take your book away from you (not that I could, but why try) since it seems to bring you so much peace, which is always a blessed candle in the storm.
And so I will ignore this point about christianity which has driven me batty to no end since I was 11
"there is No Condemnation of mankind for those who accept Christ's gift of propitiation and ultimately justification for all our horrors as humans. Those that maim and murder in the name of Christ are not Christians. His name has been used for all sorts of nastiness for 2000 years, but it's merely lost people profaning His sweetness and love."
I agree and disagree and argue whether accepting Jesus really means anything. All it led me to is this conclusion:
If there is a God as the bible describes, then such being nows what is in a persons heart, and all the accepting of christ means nothing until god reads your heart. but thats a conversation that leads into blasphemy as surely as left over turkey dinner leads to a fattened little puppy.
I'm not sure the Big bang required a creator; Just because we don't know what happens outside of the boundaries finite time. If we think of time as such, as linear, then we must ask, well then, who created the creator?
But if we think of time as existing at the same point, then infinity does not stretch at all. There is no before or after. There simply is all at one point, and time is stretched out in linear perception for our particular consciousness...what I call the human filter.
If we think of that point compressed and then exploding into the universe from which consciousness was born, and that explosion itself is the source of creation, then we are all pieces of God, regardless of redemption. Then god is in everything and everywhere is is no being in the image of man, except that man being a product of the God particle arose. But everything else is also in the image of God.
mmm, slipppping intooo blasphemy.
anyway, I choose to muse that everything we know is an illusion of consciouness, and if there is a thoughtful being out there responsible, it is laughing so hard right now its on its back out of breath.
www.worldcantwait.com
First of all, you're still using the bad habit of writing with incomplete sentences, bad punctuation, and incomplete and sometimes incomprehensible thoughts. If you're going to take the time to write, do it with some respect for the written word. You're a smart girl and you might even have a profound thought or two if it could fight through the clutter of your chicken-scratch.
2 comments:
1. What begins to exist must have a cause. The universe (according to Big Bang) began to exist (14 billion years ago). Therefore, the universe had a cause. There are only so many options. You must consider the ramifications of "no universe". That doesn't mean empty space with no stars or stuff; it means NO SPACE, NO NOTHING. The only scientific options (Hawking, Einstein, name any GENIUS) via General Relativity are A. A Creator or B. Magic (with NO magician). I suspect you may muse and pick B, but the only sane answer is A.
2. You don't have to ask who made God. God is not created. The only options are: there is no God and the universe is eternal, but that flies in the face of General Relativity. Plus, matter, energy or anything tangible CANNOT be infinite. Only intangible "things" can be infinite, like numbers. God is not tangible; the Bible says He is Spirit. It says He is invisible. It says He is all powerful, but not power in the tangible sense of atomic or molecular action; His power is the power that made the tangible power. So it is not at all impossible for God to be eternal. After all, the only other option is for something tangible and lifeless to be without a beginning, or eternal. God is the only sane option.
SS would say I lied... I'm going to make a 3rd comment when I promised only 2:
3. Nix, stop musing and start thinking. And God loves you. If bad people have been ugly about God with you, I'm sorry. God is love and even people who know him are still capable of being terribly sinful. And don't misunderstand; salvation is not something you can do for yourself. We cannot "save ourselves". God must work a miracle to do that. We are certainly able to reject His call to Himself. As He says in the book of Hebrews: Today, if you hear His voice, don't harden your heart. I rejected Him for years. Then, one day I forgot to reject Him and He saved me before I realized what was happening. And it is real; He is real. You cannot know that until you stop "kicking against the goads".
God bless you.
Today, if you hear His voice, don't harden your heart.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
1. At the density of a singularity and on the quantum level things do, in fact, happen without any cause at all. Vacuum fluctuations and radioactive decay are two examples of uncaused events. The former has been posited as a "cause" for our universe. I understand the latter has a reason, the nucleus being too dense, but the actual time at which the nucleaus decays can't be determined. As of now we are pretty sure these things really are uncaused, not that we simply are missing a variable.
2.The Christian idea of God contains some very interesting logicla impossibilities. I won't bother with the whole problem of evil and god's existence, since most Christians are well versed in the illogical propaganda used to turn that argument into a pointless circle. Not because it is a bad argument, but because we cease to argue the same points.
Instead, let us try free will and an all knowing god. The Christian god is all knowing. He knows all things from all perspectives in all times, past, present and future, correct? If he didn't know these things, he wouldn't be god. We have defined all-knowing, let's define know. Anything you know cannot be false. If it turned out to be false, you did not know it, you only thought or guessed it. God does not guess, he knows, anything he knows cannot be false.
So does God know if I am going to eat a ham sandwich for lunch? This seems a simple question right? Well, if he does know it, and isn't guessing, then I have no free will. If I did have free will, up until the point I actually ate the sandwich God would only be reasonably certain that I was going to eat that sandwich. God can know the present and the past perhaps, but if he does KNOW the future then we are all on causal tracks and unable to make any decision other than the ones we make.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
Just because God knows what we are going to do does not mean that we do not choose it. They are not logically connected.
"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."-C.S. Lewis
Yes, they are. If God cannot be mistaken about what actions we will take in the future, i.e. he knows exactly what we will all do from birth until death, then we cannot have free will. If we had free will God would only be able to know what we had decided to do, he could not KNOW with 100% certainty what we actually will do. He may be able to make the most accurate guess possible, but could not KNOW it.
If we have free will then God can only know what we decide. Up until the moment we perform an action God does not know we will follow through, or if we will have someone else's last second change of action make our decision impossible. At best God can calculate probabilities for the future.
Plese stick the definition of KNOW- what God knows cannot be false.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
heisenberg and the schroedinger equation make me swoon.
www.worldcantwait.com
Damnit, I know you are smart, how can you not be able to make that logical leap?
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
Are you talking to me?
I'm off my game lately, what did I miss? Ot are you talking to others.
www.worldcantwait.com
No, I was talking to ransom. Apparently an all-knowing god has no effect on my free will.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
Secondly, what is logic, and how do you know that it exists?
"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."-C.S. Lewis
Haha, ok, points for creativity. The quick answer is that logic doesn't exist. It is simply a process of thought and grouping of parameters that must be met. Essentially if all of the points that lead to a conclusion are true, and the conclusion follows from the points then the conclusion is true. Also nothing can violate the most basic law of logic by both having a quality and lacking it. Nothing can be both holy and unholy and fire can't be wet.
It is a process of thought most likely to lead towards truth, and less likely to lead towards falsehood. Occam's razor is also a big part of logic. the simplest answer that invokes the least number of entities is usually the best. THis sort of prejudices logic against God because he is an extra entity unneccesary to the workings of the natural world. Frankly I am inclined to believe human logic will answer more of my questions and bring me greater comfort and truth than a mysterious bearded man in the sky who is so elusive he refuses to reveal himslef to his most beloved creation in any way.
But you knew all that already, didn't you?
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
or logic. The universe had a beginning, 14 billion years ago (a mere drop in the bucket of eternity). Physics died nanoseconds prior to the Big Bang (looking backwards). Answer what was before the Big Bang and win the Nobel Prize. 2 options, God or ??? If something begins to exist, it had a cause. 14 billion years ago, the universe began to exist. What's the cause? Occam's options: Billions of unprovable (and mathematically impossible) previous universes ("it's universes all the way down"), OR one all powerful, eternal "spirit" entity that transcends the material. Occam votes for God. When you win the Nobel Prize, I'll congratulate you and Mr. Occam will have to get a Norelco electric shaver; but God still did it all.
Finally, He doesn't refuse to reveal Himself to creation; just some in creation refuse to see or hear Him. I talk to Him every day and know He's real. You may just be an electronic phantom out in cyberspace, but God "walks with me and He talks to me and He tells me I am His own...". That's not just mushy feeling. I'm a man's man, John Wayne kind of guy (if the Duke had gotten time in grad school post-masters in psychology and biochemistry). I sing that song because it's true. But you cannot know it because you won't see God; you don't want Him to be real. And you can't trick Him or rope-a-dope Him. He knew you from eternity past and He knows where you're headed, regardless of your (somewhat) free will.
Bon nuit
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
None of my options are provable. God's existence cannot be proven and physics hasn't, maybe even can't, determine how the universe began. So the only "proof" that might sway me from one side to the other is my own intellect and feelings. I don't feel your God, and I can't even get a straight answer about what God even IS. Maybe Occam fell with God, but that doesn't mean it is the simplest solution(to my mind).
I find the entire idea of a God interested in our affairs entirely unconvincing. Most mysteries get solved, but God gets worshipped? Most people don't even know what they are directing their prayers at. Most people can't or refuse to solidify their ideas of God, he is a nebulous infinite spirit that will forgive and punish me, wants me to love him and fear him... That seems to level out to just about nothing.
God seems to take perfectly reasonable people with perfectly reasonable morals and turn them into missionary monsters and xenophobic witch hunters. All the morals of Jesus stand without God to back them up. If anything the addition of God corrupts those morals into Dogma. His idea is not only unnecessary but hurtful.
We have far more proof for aliens, ghosts or psychics than the God of Moses and Jesus and Muhammed. And none of those defies bounds of logic(since, by definition, God seems to be outside human logic), yet these things go in the paranormal whacko files and God's followers get to stomp all over the world turning the words, "Love your neighbor as yourself," into something entirely unrecognizable? You love God cause your belief in him makes you feel better, it gives you strength that you are too weak to attribute to yourself.
I don't rail against the idea of God the way I do because I hate Christians or because I am stupid enough to hate God. It simply seems to me that the idea of Him does a lot of damage for no reason at all. Buddha said, "Believe nothing that your reason disagrees with, even if I myself should speak it."(slight paraphrase) That is love, and that is power and that is confidence in a message and in people. Christianity runs on pure belief and blind faith in a God beyond the reach of our minds.
How does this whole free will and divine foreknowledge work btw? I am sure you see they are connected, and I can't get them to reconcile and leave God with his and us with ours.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
and heartfelt questions. You ask very reasonable questions and I hope you'll bear with me to hear what I believe (and millions of others) is true.
You make my point in some of your above post. One good question you apparently are asking is: "why do all these competent people for thousands of years (many who have genius intellects, success beyond imagination, and live lives of peace, joy, and humility) believe in something that (for you) is so foreign, ridiculous and ultimately damaging to so many people"? Is that a fair summary of one of your above thoughts / questions?
I can answer that, and I hope God will give me the grace to answer in a way that makes sense and is not condescending or contentious. (I was a high school debater and since then have been a political partisan; contentious arguments are a stock in trade; but in my personal and business life, as Rush Limbaugh says and means, I'm a harmless little fuzz-ball; most people know me as a "sweet guy" although my dear wife might add a caveat or two to that concept!).
ON with the reply. I hope you will try to understand the answer. We are born into a world not knowing anything. Then, when we're young, we "wake-up" into awareness of our personhood and our environment around us. My first recollections of "waking up" are memories from when (I was told by my Mom) I was still 2 years old. They are just flashes of scenes I remember: a six year old girl jumping on my parents bed in their lamp-lit bedroom; with a white bedspread, the girl was blond. I've been told her name but don't recall it right now. I was raised part of the time in my parents apartment when I was little, and I have a few memories of that (my Dad was a physician and was in his residency at that time, so I have virtually no memories of him until I was 3 and a half, when we moved into our first house). Most of the time prior to moving, my Mom kept me and my younger brother at her parents farm in western North Carolina (the apartment was in Charlotte about an hour southeast of the farm). One of my earliest memories is a powerful but general realization that my grandmother (Granny) LOVED ME. I remember no origin of that thought, I just have a warm and certain awareness of her love and care for me when we were at the farm, which was probably the majority of my infancy and toddler years. The same is true (but to lesser strength or awareness) of my grandfather and my Mom's younger brother who lived on the farm at that time: he was 14 when I was born. It was a very happy early childhood, full of vivid memories of love and sweetness, not to mention a fully functioning farm with animals, crops, a big barn and lots of farm implements. We lived on a farm that had been in my Mom's family since the Revolutionary War. The two-story, classic farmhouse we lived in was built in 1868; had a green tin roof, no central heat and one small bathroom (but 3 bedrooms). All of this gives me a foundational history of love and nurture as a toddler. My parents had 4 children and after we moved away to the small North Carolina town where I grew up, we still had a happy and loving life.
We went to church all my years of growing up; I remember church from the time I was probably 4 or 5. But I was never taught the Gospel. I heard about God and Jesus, but we attended the "big Methodist church downtown" (today it still is a smaller but still grand copy of Duke University Chapel, which is about an hour away from my hometown). This church was always staffed by Duke seminarians, and most of them (I now believe) were at best agnostics. They didn't know Jesus in a personal way (if they did, they never shared it). I sat in that enormous cathedral each Sunday morning as a teen trying to understand what the pastors were talking about. But I never did figure it out, to this day.
In my confirmation class at age 12, our youth pastor told me that much of the Bible was a work of fiction and that Adam and Eve were just a story developed to teach us how God worked. That was a blow to me, albeit one that had it's impact over time. I didn't know who Jesus was (except as the founder of the church, which He was NOT) but I guess I had somehow developed the notion that the Bible was true and now this smart, young pastor was saying it was not.
By the time I was driving age I was a "cool" teenager heavily into music and popular culture. I had girlfriends and although I was considered one of the "smart" group (we were in the "academically talented" class beginning in the 7th grade), my friendships were always (and continue to be) diverse. My best friend was not "one of us" (today one of my dearest friends is an African American man; I'm a WASP, but in our social circle, which is large and diverse, we're all family, brothers and sisters in Christ; I also have many friends who are not believers, yet).
When I left for college it was the same year the Sexual Revolution hit the southeastern United States. Most of my friends who are up to 10 years older than me date the year it began as the fall of 1971. Things changed. Yes, sex between committed "boyfriend-girlfriend" couples was not uncommon, that getting started in the late 60s. And there was no reason not to do it, once the Pill was on the scene. My high school girlfriend and I did it when we were 16; she got on the Pill to relieve menstrual cramps. I don't think her parents really cared; I was considered a "good catch" (smart doctor's son). Nobody railed about "abstinence" or staying "pure before marriage", not even my devout mother; she and Dad loved my high school girlfriend and assumed we'd get married after college (we broke up after college).
But in the fall of '71, at my big university with a high ratio of females to males, recreational sex became the favorite sport on campus. Score was kept; the hat trick was from time to time accomplished (not by average me, but by some of my wilder and more driven buddies). Almost everybody was sexually active. One-night stands were common, along with lots of generalized partying. There are 3 guys from my fraternity pledge class alone that died before age 30 from the hard living we began in college.
But most of us got serious with our studies and achieved varying levels of success. One of my best friends today makes millions a year; my other best friend and I are behind him but still do better than we ever expected. Some of my other close friends have done far better than average, but their careers were more conventional and less entrepreneurial than mine and my best buddies (tip: if you want to make money, don't get a job, find a passion and MAKE IT HAPPEN). But all during my "formative" years through college, I knew nothing about God, just the Methodist religion, with which I was not much impressed.
So I was raised with much family love, grew up in "Leave it to Beaver" land, and then went a little wild in college. So how did I wind up a sold-out servant and lover of my precious Lord Jesus? You mention free-will. That is a tough issue, and I'm a pretty accomplished (for a "layman"; I've probably studied the Bible more than 90% of Christian pastors) theologian.
The free-will question is at the heart of my lengthy story of my life (hope I didn't bore you too much). Free-will is also at the heart of why some people are incredulous at the idea of the Christian God (I believe I hear anger in you also, and I KNOW there is anger with almost all atheists). I am going to respectfully request that you look at the God issue from my Christian perspective and paradigm, and I will not digress to clarify "this is what I believe". Bear with me.
Here is reality. I was born with a free-will, as far as I could understand the concept. I gave little thought to God as a youngster even though I went to Sunday School and church as a child. As I said, the Gospel message of Christ was never taught at my church; if it was, maybe I would have had a different experience. But by the time a scant few of my high school peers began talking about being "born again", I wanted nothing to do with it. I had already read Einstein's authorized biography and was much impressed that if the smartest guy who had recently lived believed in only a minimal, non-revealed god, then I had no interest in this new, somewhat weird notion (to me) of being a "born-again Christian". I wasn't antagonistic to my friends who went that way, I just let them know that I was a Methodist, and that ended the issue (most of my "born again" classmates were Southern Baptist. Of course, I could have just as easily been a devout atheist; my theological interest was about the same.
Was this my free-will at work, to discount and ignore faith in favor of fun and friends? As far as I was concerned, I was a maker of my own destiny and God was no more real than He seems to be to you. But I certainly was not angry at Him and would go to church with my family whenever it was appropriate. But maybe that was because of my relatively good life. I wasn't' raised rich by the standards of what I consider rich, but we were certainly upper-middle class in an area of the country where most were struggling to achieve just middle class. I also had a foundation of love from a large, intact family. Divorce has never been a part of my family as far back as we can go, which is to our original ancestors from Switzerland and England in the early 1700s.
So in my life, I have been "blessed", as we believers say, by good birth, being born the "right" race, and into a professional, blond, blue-eyed family. So how do we explain my almost instant "regeneration" as a Christian at age 28, when I was a successful young business man and favorite with many ladies about town? Was that my free will or God's sovereignty "calling the elect"? I can assure you "getting saved" was the last thing on my mind the slightly hungover Sunday morning when it happened. I merely neglected to turn off a church service that came on TV after "Meet the Press". It was an evangelical, Bible teaching southern Baptist service which I had previously thought (if I gave it any thought at all) to be a little low-brow and creepy. I was reading the paper, ignoring the church music until I heard the pastor begin reading from and teaching the Bible. Hearing the teaching began to interfere with my newspaper reading, and instead of turning the channel (which would have been my normal procedure), I began to listen. By the end of the service, I was a child of the living God, saved by God's grace. It was like being struck by lightening. I did nothing to make it happen, it just happened. My free-will didn't stop me from listening to the message, but it had nothing to do with my getting saved. That was the turning point in my life, and I never expected it or saw it coming. I was not depressed, looking for God or even giving it a thought. It was just "Today", and when I heard His voice I didn't harden my heart. I just said what all unbelievers say if their heart isn't hardened: "yes, Lord". And "yes, Lord" is said, even though you have no clue as to what that means or why you are saying it. Maybe, at the time you are saying it is the time He is actually saving you. I don't know; you're right in that much of this is a mystery. God is kind of like the CIA; He tells us all we need to know, but there is much left to faith and submission and trust in Him and His mercy and grace.
Here is what I know about free-will. God made man in His own image. He did not make man to be God or little "gods". He is our adopted father. We are His creation, not his peers. But He loves us and considers us His children (weak analogy: like some extreme pet lovers love their dogs). Since we are made in His image and "likeness", we have many of His physical attributes: we see, speak, think and (unlike His angels) have free-will. Now our free-will is not unlimited, like His. And Being sovereign, His trumps ours upon His pleasure. But in general, we can pick and choose our life.
But God wants "none to perish but all to come to eternal life". That is His desire. But He limits His own free will by allowing us to reject Him if we desire (read William Lane Craig's "Reasonable Faith" for a much better insight into all of this). That is best described by the Biblical admonition "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart". In retrospect, I realize I had been hearing God's voice all of my life; I just didn't recognize it.
People are born spiritually dead. God told Adam that if he ate from the forbidden tree he would "surely die". The moment he ate, he died spiritually as his "eyes were opened" and realized he and Eve were naked. We are all progeny of Adam and Eve, and as such we are born with dead spirits, just like they achieved by the original sin. Our dead spirits cannot understand spiritual things, including God's voice. Since lost people (that would be you, and it was me prior to salvation) are spiritually dead, they can do nothing to change that. A physically dead person cannot get up from their grave; they are dead. A spiritually dead person has NO FREE WILL regarding spiritual matters. A spiritually dead person is dead, so they don't recognize God's call. Now spiritually dead people are still alive both physically and intellectually; they have a live body and an eternal soul. But without a living spirit, their free will is limited in contrast to the spiritually alive in Christ who has been regenerated (their dead spirit has been "resurrected" by God's miraculous power).
I know this is a long and somewhat rambling post. There are numerous reasons for it. One is that our "waking into life" as a child is limited by our dead spirits. I awoke into the love of a Christian family, although they were "nominal" Christians in contrast to where God has grown us in these later years. So from early life, God's Spirit was ministering to me through my grandmother and other family. That didn't make me a Christian, but it showed me a standard of love that cannot be achieved in a family where Christ does not live. My grandmother died when I was almost 7, in 1960. She is revered to this date by all who knew her as the most loving person anyone has ever known. That is not hyperbole; it is said even by her nieces, one of whom is still living and considers her more loving than her own mother and father; she was also known as a strong, humble and devoted Christian who "loved Jesus", at a time when that kind of thing was not much discussed.
So I'm the lucky (?) first grandson of a true saint of God. The only standard of love that would fulfill me was her standard. So in the midst of my fun, wild days in my late 20s, with all the world on my doorstep, when I finally didn't reject that love that had been shown me by Granny, I let God love me. I didn't harden my heart against His call, and HE saved me that slightly hung over Sunday morning, all alone in my living room with the local church service on TV serving as God's voice.
I know this was long. It is absolutely my true story and my reality. I realize most are born into far worse conditions, and some far better. But God loves us where we are. You have anger at Christians who manipulate and "hate", etc. But you are confusing flawed humans with God. Yes, Christians sometimes act as though they are God's worst enemy. They defile all He IS. We get saved and then we still have our ability to sin.
The Christian walk is individual and personal in many ways. Yet God intends us to be a fellowship of believers who will bring glory to Him and be seen by the world as doing good, not evil. Yet you see Christians as weak, deluded and all kinds of bad things.
I've got to go for now but I'll say don't confuse the worst of Christians with God or His love for you. And never forget that many who claim to be Christians are not Christians at all. Saying you're a Christian does not make you one. Only God doing a His miracle of spiritual re-birth makes a person a Christian. And He does all the saving; we cannot save ourselves.
That is my long post. I will try to be more concise and brief if you have questions or want to discuss further. Thanks for your post and our discussion. I've got to go do some work.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
I am not quite so worried with the ridiculousness of the belief. That is simply the easiest route to reach the peak of dis-belief. Of course it doesn't work for a God outside human logic, and if we get into that whole ball of wax this post is going to get grim and dirty pretty fast.
I don't believe in God, and see the belief in God corrupting what should be perfectly good morals. I don't expect every Christian to act perfectly, but I see so much bad behavior because Christians believe they are acting in accordance with divine will. A bad idea or a hateful idea suddenly becomes a divine bad idea. I see the attachment of a divine figure to the morals of Jesus leading to those morals being destroyed.
I see the bad behavior of Christians as quite often coming from their belief in God. It is less the behavior that bothers me and more the reason for that behavior. Since God has a will and a certain amount of humanity about him people believe that they can interpret his will or communicate with him or take something like the Bible far too seriously. When an idea is backed by the divine it suddenly becomes blasphemy to say otherwise. There is no arguing because God says it is so.
So you see I see God, the idea, destroying and generally laying waste to many possibly good people. I see the idea of God and his worship destroying what a great philosopher, Jesus, said. The God not only adds nothing to the morals except punishment, but actually destroys those morals by turning them into a religion based upon divine opinion. Take away all of the miracles and the God talk and you have a perfectly good and reasonable way to live. People get killed and raped and persecuted because of the God, not because of the morals or ideas that Christians are supposed to adhere to.
Have you lived your life substantially better since being saved? I don't mean in feeling better or more fulfilled. I mean in action, have you been kinder to people, have you given more to the poor, have you devoted your life to this new God? He saves your eternal soul and you sit on your nice pile of cash garnered in whatever business you work in(I seem to remember you mentioning being at least well off).
Sorry, that last bit was generalization, let's get back on track.
I know I rarely come off like this, but I honestly don't expect to convert any true believers. I don't expect you to come back with something like,"My word, Doc, you've opened my eyes and I see the fallacy of the last 25 years of my belief system, thank you." If I have any impact I wish to drive people to solidify their idea of God so that they can argue about it with me, and at the most extreme drive the belief in God to where it belongs, and where you have largely placed it, in faith. There is no arguing faith or belief. Logic can always be argued, but if you believe something un-provable because something inside tells you to I may as well speak to a brick wall.
So in the end I see God as illogical and dangerous. I don't have faith in him, nor can anyone even tell me what I should have faith in except a nebulous infinite being, who loves me. Most of the time I don't even find the God I am presented with worthy of worship or reverence even if he did exist. I have no reason to believe, and every reason to argue the point.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
...softballs, Doc. Your post has the kind of comments I believe I can answer and demonstrate a more realistic and more likely scenario. And I want to go into this first by clarifying one important issue. I tend to be contentious in my delivery. I don't intend it to be off-putting, but invariably I am interpreted that way by folks who don't agree with my strongly held convictions and beliefs.
So I want to say upfront that I highly value you as a person who appears to be seeking the truth. None of my comments to follow (or in the past) are intended to be disrespectful. In another post I mentioned to a young lady that I have been debating these issues for decades with people who are name callers and attackers rather that searching to know the truth. Now I believe you consider yourself to be poured in concrete in your beliefs. But that's why God invented jackhammers. Nevertheless, I have now discerned that you are interested in discussion and do not consider this debate war. I actually do consider it war, but not against you. The war I am fighting is "...not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil...".
And frankly, I am fighting for YOUR immortal soul. Remember that if I am right and you are wrong, you wind up HERE:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rev%2020.11-15;&version=31;
If you are right and I am wrong, I will still have lived the best possible life albeit delusional. But the interesting thing is, the Christian life is so much different from the secular life; so much love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
You asked me if my life was different. I told you about my salvation experience in an earlier post, I believe. I was 28 at the time. If you recall, I was "saved" through the work of a local church TV telecast. The thing you must remember is that a "salvation experience" is not the same thing as an intellectual assent. It's not like I said, "hey, I can believe in that". Never crossed my mind. Now I was an agnostic in the time preceding my salvation. But on that day I was not thinking "does this prove God exists?"
Instead, I was convicted that I am a sinner. IT was really all about that. But it was also far more than just the conviction. I had nothing to do with that salvation except I didn't slam the door and reject it. I probably would have if I had gone to that church that morning and sat there hearing the same message. My heart would have been "hardened" against what I considered mindless religion. But at home in my own easy chair, reading my paper while my TV was on, there were no threatening messages. I could have chosen to turn it off, yet I didn't. I can honestly tell you it only crossed my mind to change the channel when the program first started. But once I realized my remote control batteries were gone, I decided to simply ignore the telecast. But once something caught my interest, once the pastor started reading from and explaining the Bible, my interest was piqued and I listened. I certainly wasn't AFRAID to hear what he was teaching. And I considered myself and honest seeker of the truth, prepared to go where the evidence lead me.
So I got saved and it was a miracle of God, not human assent or intellectual acquiescence by me. And frankly, it's not really possible to explain. All I know is that I was spiritually dead and didn't know it, and then became spiritually alive "in the twinkling of an eye".
You truly do not understand what you believe you oppose so stridently. You ask did I change. Yes and no. Yes, I did feel different, which I didn't think I would. You cannot open your eyes for the first time in spiritual life and not know things are different and will never be the same. I'm convinced that if there is not some difference in perception or insight, then justification has not happened. Many people claim a salvation experience, but it was all so much self-serving intellectual or emotional response. Salvation is a surrender of oneself to the sovereign God of everything. When it happens, although there may be intellectual or emotional components, the primary emotion is peace and somewhat stunned amazement.
But besides that, did I change, you ask? Yes and no. NO, I was still watching church on TV several years later. But yes, I was reading my Bible. I was still single and fancied myself a ladies man and a front-line "60" minute-man in the Sexual Revolution. But the darndest thing happened. I found myself saying no to attractive young ladies. I started reading my "salvation verse" to them: (the following is that great philosopher you cite, Jesus, speaking, hardly as a philosopher but as God incarnate explaining reality to His followers the night before He was crucified) :
John 15: 1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Now one night I had this beautiful young lady over whom I had admired from afar for many years. I fixed my famous roast Cornish game hens, steamed artichokes with hollandaise, and a nice French Chablis. Much to my surprise she was impressed with my dinner and apparently found me an acceptable date for the evening. But when I tried to explain my new found Christian beliefs, she decided I was too weird. I took her home, making it an early evening.
That was a big change for me. But the real change began happening after I did two important things: 1. I joined a Bible believing, Bible teaching church. 2. I began attending a structured, outside of church Bible study with a group of men. I can assure you that in the churches I have attended (I moved to a new city twice since I was 28) the members, in contrast to other secular organizations I've known, are 1. better educated 2. more affluent as a group 3. intellectually more aware, even for the less-educated of the group 4. far more generous with their time and money and 5. truly more concerned for the well-being of their fellow members, their "brothers and sisters in Christ", and for the widows and orphans, the less fortunate and lost people in general, like you.
I became convicted to start giving at least a tenth of my income to my church when I was not making lots of money and was in debt. Over the last 20 years since I began giving, the Lord has blessed me. I have no personal debt (only real estate investment debt, which is business debt that is covered by assets and contractual cash flow). Quite unintentionally, my giving has exceeded the tithe; giving is a joy. I also give of my time. I have taught students and adults Bible study for 11 years. This is not anything I'm proud of; I'm just answering your question about "did I change". Yes and No; I'm still a work in progress, but compared to where I was when I was lost, the answer is really ONLY YES.
Through all of this, the Lord has grown my net worth. IT's HIS money, not mine. He could take it back today. But He continues to bless me with wealth. The cardinal point Jesus makes is:
28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6)
Jesus said over and over that He was the only way to God. You cannot call him a "great philosopher". He said He was God and only He could give people entrance into heaven and eternal life. How could a great philosopher say those things? He said: "I am THE WAY, and THE TRUTH, and THE LIFE. NO ONE comes to the Father except through ME". Is that exclusionary enough for you? Only God or a maniac or a con man could say those things. You might think Him maniac or con artist, but He is no philosopher; He is incarnate REALITY; the Author and Perfecter of Life. He is God Almighty. Saying He's a great philosopher is the psychobabble of people who want to be "tolerant" and yet not bend a knee to the God of everything.
You said Jesus was a great philosopher. Not really. He is God Who took on the flesh of a man to solve the sin problem that happened in the Garden of Eden. Adam's sin caused he and Eve's spirits to die; essentially, the Holy Spirit, Who was indwelling them upon their creation by God, left them; they were spiritually dead and thrown out of the Garden. All their children were born spiritually dead. Their first child, Cain, murdered his brother Abel. All their children right up to now have been born spiritually dead.
And that is why all that I say is "foolishness" to you. As Paul says below in my signature line, what I say is delusional foolishness as far as you're concerned; but it's because you are spiritually dead; dead people have NO INSIGHT. I was too until He saved me that unlikely Sunday morning. He would save you too if you wouldn't harden your heart against His call. But as long as you do, He will let you go your own way.
YOUR atheism is a self-fulfilling prophesy. You see no evidence of God because you don't want to see Him. As Antony Flew said after he had to admit that atheism was not possible, "my fondest hope is that there is not an afterlife". The 20th century's preeminent atheist mind, after 50 years as the chief apologist for atheistic thought, finally could not logically, rationally, scientifically or mathematically make the case that God does not exist. But holding firm that God (he hopes) is not the God of the Bible, he weakly trembles at the thought that he is wrong. Of course his good friend, Dr. Gary Habermas, has been teaching him the Gospel. And remember this, the word of the Gospel is supernatural; it is the word that saves people if they hear it; God's word, Who is the Spirit of Jesus. And I do believe Dr. Flew has taken the first step: as Solomon said "the fear of God is the BEGINNING of WISDOM". Fearing God indicates you are getting some inkling of your personal sin. Until you really get convicted that you are imperfect and do stupid, bad and even evil things every day, you won't fear God. But once you get that insight, you're only a hard heart and a prideful soul away from knowing God. And yes, that might as well be billions of light years, because you can't close that gap. But God will if you just remember His call: "Today, if you hear His voice do not harden your heart".
There is a story about a eastern mystic sage who was asked about his belief that the world was supported on the back of a giant turtle. His answer was "another turtle". When asked about what was holding up the second turtle, he was nonplussed: "it's just turtles all the way down".
When Einstein and others understood that general relativity postulated that the Big Bang was a moment in time 14.2 billion years ago, and that the universe had a finite, distinct beginning, before which it did not exist, it left a huge question. Where did it come from. Remember, whatever BEGINS to exist must have a CAUSE. General Relativity says the universe began to exist. So what was the cause? Occam's Razor says the simplest answer is the right answer. But atheists/naturalists didn't like the only reasonable answer: a single, infinite, all powerful, intangible spirit entity that operates at a level we cannot know and is not material, so infinite and eternal are no problem.
Instead, guys like Stephen Hawking began searching for a back door out through quantum theory. He has failed and he is dying. Yet yahoo pseudo-scientists/cosmologists cook up impossible to prove nonsense like "multiple universe theory". Or to paraphrase the "eastern mystic sage", "...it's just universes all the way down".
To say the universe created itself is to say it existed before it existed; nonsense. As I have explained before, the study of origins ALWAYS ends up at the same point: 1. God or 2. magic without a magician. Show me a third option and I'll be glad to consider it.
You cannot know God as long as you harden your heart against Him. Your paradigm about "evil Christians" is all convoluted and frankly a likely psychological projection really aimed at yourself. Antony Flew, while he was still an atheist said the BEST thing for the world was a Christian religion. He was amazed at the transformed lives, the true love and compassion that to him seemed to prove God existed, if he could just find THAT proof. Now Dr. Flew believes in God and is open to consider further the possibility of a revealed God.
In summary, Doc, I'm glad you are having these conversations. Again, I would like to get stuck on an elevator with you for about 12 hours with my Bible. My specialty is hard cases like you. I once was one myself. Now I know the truth; I fell fast once the truth spoke to me and I was willing to hear.
I've ignored important work that I need to do because I wanted to finish this post to you; God told me to do it (I believe), so I'm doing it. The fact that we're having this conversation is indicative of your interest in the subject, and that is a start.
One of my best friends makes millions a year, and has done so for years. He recently accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior, after years of ignoring Him and thinking all who believed in Him was a weakling and boring. He was a tough case; he quit many good friends (and almost me, one of his 2 or 3 best friends in the world) because he just didn't want to think or talk about it. It took over 20 years, and with damage to his family and friends. Now he believes and his life is changing at age 54. He keeps getting richer, but he is now healing of the nonsense his lost life caused. There are scars, but he is now spiritually alive. He sees the truth now. He is a physician and one of the truly brilliant minds and brilliant personalities you will ever meet. Now he believes.
For further references, many of my close friends are professional / business people with high incomes and net worth. They aren't stupid and they do much good with their wealth. They give of their time and their money. Most of their kids are believers, and the ones that are not are in confusion, trouble or pain; the ones that are believers are joyful, happy and for the most part successful.
But don't get the idea that everyone is healthy, wealthy and wise. Christians aren't perfect, they're just forgiven of their mistakes and evil. The Holy Spirit helps us live above our sinful nature. And yes, there are legitimate, believing Christians who lose their way. God never takes our free will away.
The most miserable people in the world are true believers who have tried to turn away from God. Those that "successfully" turn away from Him were never really saved. Only God saves, remember, and He makes no mistakes and loses none. Judas saw Jesus raise 3 dead people back to life, heal many, walk on water, and many other miracles. Yet he was absorbed in the world and politics, not in the "Kingdom of God". So even though he saw God face to face, he betrayed Him to the cross. Of course, as Jesus said, it was for that very reason He came to earth; to SAVE the people on earth from their sins. Because sin is not allowed in God's perfect presence.
All I can do for now. I may re-read your post and follow-up on anything glaring that I missed. Please let me know what you think.
In His hand.
David
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
I think we have a good conversation going, but I am rushed just at the moment. It seems to me that you are most worried about saving souls and getting people into heaven and I am most worried about getting people to act well. Religion is a moral force, as well as a passageway to eternal life. Since I don't believe in that eternal life I am more worried about the moral force. Since you believe in that eternal life, that is what you are focused on.
Right on about Jesus as a philosopher being psychobabble btw. I find that it usually helps to value someone's guru on one level or another and not dismiss them completely; even if it does destroy something like 3/4ths of the message.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
And you're right, I want everyone to find God and get saved because the Lord commands me to do so; He wants none to perish, and saving souls from eternal misery is why Jesus came to earth. He is first and foremost "Savior". If people didn't need to be saved, He didn't have to come to earth.
But I like what you said was your most important thing; you want people to "act well". I'll go out on a limb and add some insights about what "acting well" means to you. You want them to mind their own business except when someone is in trouble, but then you would prefer selfless acts of heroism, even if it meant giving of one's life for a complete stranger, or at least your own child or good friend. You expect people to obey the all the laws that you agree with, but give them a pass on the ones with which you don't agree. You may even want (this is getting into the political realm, but I'll take a stab) people to work hard, play by the rules, and be responsible citizens. You sound as though you may be more conservative socially, expecting people to get a job, work hard and be a good citizen. You don't strike me as a "bleeding heart liberal" who is concerned about the core reasons for the poverty of the underprivileged masses. You strike me more of the Ayn Rand flavor of atheist as opposed to the Karl Marx wing. I do suspect that you're nonplussed about abortion and with who's sleeping with who, so you're probably a Libertarian, whether you realize it or not
I may be wrong on some of that but in general you want people to quit the crime, quit the nonsense and if they can't do that, then get out of the way. And while you're at it, keep your religion out of the way of my enjoying my drugs, sex, rock n roll and whatever else I deem groovy (I'm not saying you find those three groovy; just an example).
The problem you've got with all of that is it flies in the face of what atheism stands for. Let's consider reality if there is NO GOD:
1. the universe, "EVERYTHING", is a product of blind, naturalistic, random chance.
2. their is no Superior Intellect; all intelligence is merely a product of random chance, mutation and survival of the fittest. No matter how wonderful the music, how inspired the prose, how eloquent the oratory, how beautiful the woman, how noble and selfless the hero, it's all just brainwaves that originated in the impossible void of nothingness before their was "ANYTHING". At best it can be said that the thoughts of man find their home in the random collision of inorganic molecules. So what on earth can be meaningful about them?
3. There is NO MORALITY, except the morality of the individual or the conscripted morality of the mob. Because in this life, if it is all there is, means the only moral thing I can do is have the best life possible for me, everyone else be hanged, except for the ones that can serve to make my life better.
4. Twentieth century British atheist Bertrand Russell wrote extensively about how science had presented humanity with a world view that was "purposeless" and "void of meaning" in his book "Why I Am Not a Christian" (1957). Russell ominously states:
"That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction...that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built".
I could go on. But the point is, if you are an atheist you are being disingenuous if you don't go for all the gusto you can. Because you're alive but for a moment, and then you're toast. So getting people to "act well", from the perspective of the atheist, would best be defined as people giving you everything you want at their own expense, making you the god of the universe at least as long as you live. That is the only reasonable perspective for an atheist, although the point is, if atheism is true, then ultimately nothing is true or reasonable. Everything is meaningless. Just ask Bertrand Russell.
Playing with atheism is playing in the big leagues, Doc. Agnosticism is more honest; the agnostic admits the impossibility of KNOWING there is no God.
But if you want people to behave properly, then like the most honest atheist I know of, Dr. Flew, you should desire all become "true" (regenerated) Christians. We are the ones that die for our friends and even the ones we don't know; give our money to great missionary outreaches to help those truly suffering, we turn the other cheek (sometimes, when we're not arguing theology or Darwinism). You fail to see that without the civilizing impact of Christianity for the last 4000 years (remember my clarification of that), the world would most likely still be in some primitive state.
Doc, I think you're like most atheists; you're mad at God about something. I don't know what that might be. But I can hear your heart all the way here in cyberspace. "Just leave me alone and get those wretched Christians out of my face". That's what it sounds like, although you never say that and are polite and mild mannered. (What does your Latin at the end of your post say? I assume it's Latin; I keep trying to ask my son, who takes Latin, but he's just in the 7th grade and probably doesn't know.)
God is real. Bertrand Russell was correct that he couldn't prove "for sure" there is no God, but it's "nearly sure", he said. Probably the darkest days for Christianity were actually in the 20th century. "Rationalism" had taken hold of Christian theology. Antisupernaturalism became the theme of the intelligentsia. But they had no foundation for it; they didn't do the heavy lifting of formal logic, nor did they investigate the realities of mathematics. And during that time the Bible was considered to be full of errors. Today the facts are their are ZERO proven errors in the Bible. Archaeology has never once disproven a tangible fact stated in the Bible.
The fact is that if there is no God, there is no rational, logical or scientific way the universe can exist, much less man. There are no other options.
Man makes airplanes that fly millions of people everyday without a crash sometimes for years. Man makes medicines that cure diseases that once killed millions. Man can do lots of things. So if man has no alternative except that God must exist, at this late date (given our technology, which is greater in the last 100 years than in all the years of history since Creation), why do the few still say they know for sure He doesn't exist? Again, Dr. Flew. He wrote "God and Philosophy", maybe the greatest book for atheists ever written. Yet he changed his mind.
The harm of the world is not Christianity. Real Christians are harmless. Yes, we get excited about abortion and homosexuality. They are sins that separate people from God and injure (or kill) the people involved, hurting their lives. But real Christians really do hate sin but love the sinner. We're fighting for the lost souls bound for eternal misery. And yes, we're not perfect. Don't call us hypocrits; no one can live perfectly in this world. But we are trying to live better and when surrendered to the will of God's Spirit, many Christians do look like Jesus. I know selfless, godly Christians like that.
Please consider what I say. Christ is your maker, not you enemy. He loves you and wants you to know Him personally. He knows everything about you. You can learn much about Him in this life if you will just not harden your heart against Him.
He will do you no harm.
Gotta go to bed.
Later, pal.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
Before I forget my signature means, "The thing speaks for itself" essentially, "it is obvious." It is a legal term. The second phrase is actually a bastard mix of latin and Hawaiian, "Remember you will die, thank you." It just sort of strikes a chord with me. It is a reminder of mortality and a thankfulness for the experience of life. After all I am not looking forward to an afterlife, am I. ;)
You've misread my political stances quite a bit, but that is likely due to my more fascistic impulses coming out on this site, as opposed to my more socio-anarchistic side. That particular screw on which things turn is a rather personal deal, and not something I am prepared to explain right now. Suffice to say that I generally lean extremely liberally in the social world, but tend to be willing to sacrifice the rich and wealthy of the world for the poor. Ayn Rand frankly disgusts me because she sees the world in almost entirely economic terms. To her the expansion of industry is the absolute highest call in the world and it pisses me the hell off.
Atheists can have hearts too you know. We don't just want to grab everything for ourselves. I may want to have fun, but I still have morals because I value people beyond the weight of their soul in heaven. They are my equals, at least in principle. I certainly have little flashes of complete disillusion with the human, well... everything, but that doesn't mean I think the whole world should bow to me.
Nothing sets me above all other people so that they should sacrifice themselves for me. I wouldn't mind a little extra taxes to give people some damn healthcare and things like that, but that isn't really a sacrifice just for me.
I do want to left alone when what I am doing has no bearing on others. I am not gay, but if I were my "sin" would not affect you in the least beyond the possibility of high divorce rates. When I do indulge in drugs it affects nobody but me. I am smart enough to avoid driving and the hospital and even addiction. Christians hide their meddling behind a sort of fatherly disapproval and paternal head shaking. Instead of live and let live they get up in peoples' faces in an attempt to save them from burning in eternal hell fire. The message is out their, you don't have to legislate or shove it down people's throats.
I don't think I can prove that there is no God, but I am pretty sure their isn't, and if there is I don't think he is the Christian god. Furthermore, I don't find the general conception of the Christian God even worth worshipping. He is essentially another tyrant setting up rules that are unnecessary except to please him and then sending people to eternal punishment if they don't follow those rules.
All your proof for God comes from the creation of the universe. "All things that begin to exist are caused." THis isn't true, as has been pointed out before. So we must turn this to, "Most things that begin to exist are caused," at best. All your conclusions are based on an untrue statement.
Besides how can you say that all people before Christ, or who haven't heard Christ's words are condemned? That means millions of people died before they even had the choice of being saved. Word dind't spread quite so fast 2000 years ago. God condemned entire continents to hell, or do they get a reprieve until someone comes to them and explains the saving words of the Lord?
The Bible isn't meant to be a historical document, it is a mythology meant to tell the story of Jesus and the Jews. It is nor more a historical document than any other mythology.
This muddled and disorganized. Hmm... I think I will stop here for now.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
Sorry I missed this; work has been busy and I've been out of the blogosphere lately. Wow, you give me lots of fodder to address; wish I had time now. In case you haven't noticed, this stuff is fun for me. I believe, upon introspection, (something my more "wide open" long-time buddies and former agnostic / atheists still contend I do too much of), that the Holy Spirit is the One who leads me to do this stuff and the payoff for me is the joy I get in writing, the opportunity to articulate the intellectual debate and also the thought that maybe someone will be reached for Him. I certainly hope it will be you one day; time and salvation is His alone.
I look forward to explaining why the Christian God is the only One that is even possible; my source authority for that is someone you should respect. That would be the aforementioned Dr. Antony Flew. I'll give you something to read from him when I have time (written in 2004) after he changed his mind about atheism after over 60 years, due in part to the scientific discoveries of Intelligent Design. In that article Flew acknowledges that the Christian God is the only one conceivable. Of course, when His Spirit indwells you, He reveals that information. Dr. Flew's insights come from his lifetime in study of all religions as the great former apologist for all atheists.
Look forward to continuing this when I have more time.
Best regards,
David
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
This is powerful and fascinating reading, Doc. Be sure to read it all; the end of the interview deals with the issue about Christianity being possible but other religions are either philosophy or political manifestos (Islam). Flew is not much impressed with Islam.
Hope you enjoy it. You will be able to discern from the interview that Habermas and Flew are great friends. Habermas is a brilliant Christian scholar. You should read his book on the proofs for the Resurrection of Christ.
Here it is:
http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/index.cfm
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
First I must admit ignorance of most of the sideline ideas and names mentioned. Aristotle and Russel I am reasonably familiar with, but most of the other names are near gibberish to me.
I must now say that this didn't seem a terribly compelling interview. Flew has moved from atheism to deism. He explicitly states that no revealed religion appears reasonable to him, including Christianity, because of the problem of evil. He doesn't believe or hope for an after-life, which is basically the biggest part of being "saved." He doesn't seem to believe that God does anything but design and shape, with no interest in revealing himself to man.
He seems to find Christianity the least repugnant of the three main monotheistic religions, not really the most likely true option. He certainly views Islam in a dim light though.
He also believes in the "supernatural" which I can sympathize with. One of my main beefs with many rationalists is that they dismiss too much that is supernormal, a term I prefer over supernatural. Ghosts and near death experience can certainly be natural, as opposed to God, the only true supernatural being proposed. Any study into ghosts or aliens or near death experiences will turn up some good evidence. Flew also doesn't see such things as near death experience proving some kind of after life.
I suppose this could be considered a baby step towards Christianity, but I doubt it.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
No other religions are addressed by the way, like Hinduism, Bddhism or Taoism. The three monotheistic faiths, all dedicated to same God, are discussed exclusively.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
...for a little fishing. A great time in warm weather; back to the cold.
Antony Flew is the foremost atheist thinker; Google his name and you will see those accolades from the mainstream media. The bottom line is he is "open" to the revealed God of Christianity, as he acknowledges in his discussion with Habermas. It must be another source where he discusses the "philosophies" of the eastern religions.
The fact that the most heralded atheist of modern times has changed his mind is monumental. I realize this is hard times for atheists (at least the ones that have grown in their atheism by way of his thought and commentary). Atheism is not agnosticism. Your post seems to make that differentiation a quibble. To claim atheism is claiming a knowledge or faith that there is certainly no God. And that is why atheism is a religion; it is a faith, because atheism is not empirically provable any more than theism. In every instance it is about the preponderance of the evidence and logic. On both of those cases, theism and Christianity win, hands down.
It has been my experience that atheists (and Flew demonstrates this) do not want God to exist. It's is more of an emotional feeling. Flew said his fondest desire is that there is no afterlife. Of course, he is aware of his destiny if there is an afterlife and Christianity is the true faith.
I'd like to write more and I will soon. Gotta go for now. Later, Doc.
David
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
I'm just going to say one thing to this post. It's about your first post. Saying that God had to create the Universe, because everything that exists has to have a cause. Ok, I follow you. Who created God? Where did he come from? Is he some sort of exception to the rule? What makes him special? Now hold your breath, I know what you will say. It is what everyone says to me in debate. They say that God does not have to have a creator, as he was already here. He is Omnipresent. Some also say that God created himself. Ok, I'll buy into that. With that SAME LOGIC I can now say that the Universe could have already existed. Or that the Universe created itself. Now, think logically. Put EVERYTIHNG out of your head, and use logic. Which is more reasonable:
A) A cosmic mass creating itself
or
B) A cosmic mass being created by an unidentifiable deity that has already been here or created itself.
Which is the more rasonable of the two?
Ahh, but wait. There is more. You say that those are the only two options? Wrong. There are others out there that Scientists are considering. The Big Bang theory is still there, but there are others there. The newest one to hit the block is Superstring theory. That states that our 4 dimensional Universe actually was part of a 10-dimensional Universe that somehow fragmented and split. We have no way of knowing for sure, but current science leads some to that conclusion. I will research it further to clarify later.
Also is the theory that the Universe is ever-lasting. It has no beginning or end, just an endless existance. Sounds familiar? Yes, it is the logic supporting God. What is to say that the Universe has simply existed. There is no end or beginning. Sort of like God. No beginning, no end. That sounds reasonable to me.
Homki890
arguing against theories with a priori commitments to proving a metaphysical assumption; ie, there is no God. Super-strings, multiple universe, inflation theory, Panspermia, ad nauseum are all just question-beggars. Darwinism is another. Intellectual junk food. Vomit.
You obviously missed my post of this to Nix. Try this on for size:
2. You don't have to ask who made God. God is not created. The only options are: there is no God and the universe is eternal, but that flies in the face of General Relativity. Plus, matter, energy or anything tangible CANNOT be infinite. Only intangible "things" can be infinite, like numbers. God is not tangible; the Bible says He is Spirit. It says He is invisible. It says He is all powerful, but not power in the tangible sense of atomic or molecular action; His power is the power that made the tangible power. So it is not at all impossible for God to be eternal. After all, the only other option is for something tangible and lifeless to be without a beginning, or eternal. God is the only sane option.
So the only options are:
1. an eternal universe or eternal, tangible THINGS that were components that made the universe; where did they come from?
2. an eternal SPIRIT that is not tangible in any quantifiable way. If there is such a thing as a spirit possessing a mind, then that could be a cause because a spirit is not limited by the finite. That Spirit would be God.
So either matter and energy created themselves out of nothingness (magic, but no magician) or a spiritual God existed eternally. If I have to choose between self-creating, tangible matter making itself out of absolute nothingness (no vacuum fluctuations, no time, no space, nothing means NO THING) or an eternal Spirit that is the cause of EVERYTHING, it's not even close.
Thanks for the interesting and on-point reply. I enjoy answering these. But if you don't like my answer, give intelligent and persuasive arguments from fact, not just name calling or derision. That's not persuasive, it's childish.
Well, let me answer in the language of someone who is not childish. I'll go slow so you can understand.
Your options basically prove my point. Which is simpler to understand? The first one of course. The second has to have an assumption that someone, something was here before all. How is that possible? Of course God is a magician, cause It's a mystery to me how he was here! If he is so intangible, then what reason is there to say that nothing ELSE can be intangible. If we must allow one exception, then all else can now come under the same light. If God existed eternally, then why can't the Universe exist eternally? God was created, or has always existed, or created himself, whichever you choose, out of nothingness. This is of course assuming that God has had a beginning. Well, you could say that God doesn't have a begging or an end. He is ever-lasting, Omnipresent. Ok, then what prevents me from saying that the Universe can't have always existed? Why would God be so special? And also, how do we know that everything we touch is real? How do we know that everything is tangible? For example, you sit in a chair. You FEEL the chair, you SEE the chair, but this is all based on your senses. You ask someone else. They SEE the chair and FEEL the chair, but that is also based on their senses. Can't senses be decieved? Can't they play tricks on us? How do we know that everything we know exists? One must really think about, and not just discard it.
Besides, you CAN NOT just cast away the other theories as mush. You obviously can't say anything against them, so you just discard them without any notion or thought for them. This, my friend, is Childish. I could just as easily toss out the notion of God and ID as simply "fantasy" or "science-fiction." No how is THAT for an oxy-moron? But you would claim that doing so is wrong, and that I should take the evidence and weigh it and see what it says. Well, that is what YOU should do with Darwinism, Evolution, and all of this "other side" commentary. The best way to effectlively (sp?) argue with someone is to know what he or she is talking about, and this requires to learn about what they are saying. To not do so is plain ignorance.
Homki890
... with condescension and ranker. He who name-calls first loses; it is perfectly fine to call the name-caller on their name-calling. I don't call anyone's mistaken thoughts "ignorant" or, as Christianity teaches, delusional, until I'm provoked. You'll be much more successful in making your points with clear thinking and concise epistemology.
Understand that when we're talking about origins one only gets so many options. I realize universities are populated with professors desperately seeking relevance, teaching what outlandish nonsense they can get away with (i.e. Ward Churchill). Tolerance and inclusion is a fine thing when dealing with ethnicity and in general dealing with our fellow man in love and respect. But in the arena of reality, tolerance has no place. 1+1 has the same answer no matter how you slice and dice it. Using unfounded 3rd rate pulp science to explain origins is typical for sitting around toked up and musing, to paraphrase Nixie. But reality only allows so many options.
It is a physical impossibility for material things to be infinite or eternal. Eternal is a brain breaking concept. Take 5 minutes to consider the term. Yet regardless of eternity's distant, ever receding shores, here we are talking across the miles and sharing ideas. Yet our entire universe has only been here for a mere blip if you considers 14 billion years in the set of all possible numbers of years. Ultimately your vacuum fluctuations have to be accounted for, they being energy that requires an origin, because energy is tangible and finite. When we're chasing origins, we're not chasing our tail, we're chasing a beginning. Ultimately no tangibles can be infinite. Ergo, something must be infinite that is not tangible. That's not speculation, that's the default REQUIREMENT.
I'm up late tonight with an awful cold; can't sleep which is rare. That's as much heavy lifting as I'm capable of at this late and stuffy hour.
I'll gladly discuss things with you when you're not declaring you know everything and I'm an idiot. If I'm an idiot, you shouldn't talk to me. Were I an idiot, I don't think so many people would be compelled to read. I don't believe you're an idiot. I do believe the guy to first call names is the loser of the debate. So far, I've never lost!
I HAVE said that I don't know everything. Jesus Christ man, you need not put words into my mouth.
It does not matter how crazy or nutzo the other theory's are, the fact is that they are reputable explinations. Superstring Theory, when it was first presented, was regarded as the craziest thing ever heard. Neils Bohr remarked, "We all agree that is is crazy. We are in debate as to whether it is crazy enough." Besides, these ideas have just as much credibility as God does.
You refute this claim yourself with the claim of God! God is the Exception, not the rule in this case. It is illogical to say that EVERYTHING must come from somewhere...but not God. He's special. Yes, Eternal is a VERY LONG TIME. The projected lifespan of the Sun is around10,000,000,000 to 15,000,000,000 years from now, so Eternal will be quite a ways away. Earth will still be here. And what happens when the Universe is projected to collapse? Nothing will exist. God won't, because there will be nothing to acknowledge God's existance, if He does exist.
This is turning into an Existance question now. Interesting.
Homki890
Peter J. Bussey wrote an excellent article called Physical Infinities: A Substitute for God? in the journal Science and Christian Belief about the very ideas you propose. You should check it out, I think you'd find it interesting.
Also, it was G.K. Chesterton who wrote, "It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into anything."
Two comments about the latter, just for clarification: I disagree with Chesterton's terminology, you can be an evolutionist and believe in God, what he's referring to is the philsophy of naturalistic atheism, and second, it's pretty improbable for the universe to exist at all, however it got here. For nothing to become something or God to create everything are both equally improbably points of view. Neither is invalidated simply because they are improbable. Voltaire put it this way: "It is no more surprising to be born twice than to be born once." In other words, when it comes to all things extremely improbable, in the realm of abstracts and where no real evidence besides logic exists, you can't rule something out just because it's "improbable". Sherlock Holmes had something to say about that, too. When you've ruled out the impossible, whatever's left, however impossible, must be true. Atheists and the religious have ruled out what they see as impossible, and using the same methods, have come to two different conclusions. Thus, no real "proof" exists either way. It takes just as much faith to be an atheist as it does to belive in God.
--
~I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.~
You also have a huge cultural bias to view time as linear. This is one of the basic assumptions all Westerners make. Hindus believe time is circular. There are some scientific theories, though slightly out of date, that support that (the big crunch being the simplest). Right now we believe that the balance of mass-energy is zero, so no big crunch, but who knows, things might come up. You seem to be big on abandoning indoctrination, so I thought you might want to examine the most basic assumptions, stories and mythologies we grow up and now can't even formulate to question unless prodded very hard.
Anyway, don't rely on rationality to back up your faith, it will fail any decent test. Trust your faith, which I am sure you do. Simple belief is the only thing that will avail faith in the Christian god; no rational argument exists for his existence, or any being having the supposed traits he holds.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
Well, then neither one of us has a terribly compelling argument. Alternately we have equally compelling arguments and my point is just as likely to be correct as yours.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
That's all.
What exactly are we adding up here? 1+1=the Christian God exists? You are open to only two options, God exists as you conceive of him, and the Bible is his word to man or atheism. No, wait, you also consider that the Bible is Satan's work, which still supposes the Christian cosmology. This all seems pretty narrowminded to me.
We aren't doing simple math, we are doing algebra, and you sound like the kid in the back bitching about letters in a math class.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
If He does not exist, then inanimate, tangible material "things" (like energy) are eternal, and that dog don't hunt. You were the guy taking potshots at "rationality". We have the ability to be rational and learn about our environment and about algebra and statistics (my specialty). But when you get to Foundations, there is no algebra; options are limited based on the full scope of PROVEN information available on 12/14/06. If the rationale that teaches us how to build airplanes that fly reliably is demonstrably valid, why would we abandon it when investigating Foundations?
I think I smell the fetid stench of post-modern psychobabble working its autistic way into the conversation. That was the point of my original response to your post. Because if rationality isn't valid, then your point that rationality isn't valid is also NOT VALID; dig?
See, sorry. I got my panties all in a bundle cause you were being condescending, when all I really needed to do was re-state my point. It is finals week and random stress has made me... touchy. Anyway. I apologize.
I didn't mean to say that rationality is invalid, mearly that rationality doesn't help the cause of the Abrahamic God very much. Since the idea that matter cannot have existed for an infinite amount of time comes from big bang theory and posits an infinite god as the "first cause." I have already said something here, though it may have been lost, about vacuum fluctuation and the absolute lack of need for this universe to have a cause.
Not to mention the fact even if there was a first cause you would need much more evidence to make a rational conclusion that that first cause was the god you think it is. You heard first cause and infinite being and immediately jumped to the God of your fathers.
General relativity is well and good, but doesn't cover things like quantum dynamics and singularity theory very well.
Also I don't find the idea of an infinite timeline quite as incomprehensible as you do. Take the story of Hercules and the tortise. Infinity doesn't work on such primitive ideas. It drove the ancient philosophers nuts.
Bah, anyway, this post is far too cluttered for any kind of in depth side bar on whether or not God exists as you think. I just don't see rationality doing much for the God of your fathers.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
So the people who do believe are comforted by that belief and those who don't, aren't? THanks for that nugget of wisdom. But I am just playing right into your hands, aren't I? Only two options for Christians, saved or hell. And poor them, those who don't believe the same are simply misguided and expected to lash out out the true believers.
Victory or martyrdom, right my Christian comrades?
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
The message of the cross is summarized in John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[a] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life". This is the Gospel, that Christ came to earth to solve the sin problem for people. God is holy. He doesn't allow anything unholy into His presence on any kind of permanent basis (like eternity in Heaven). Adam and Eve died spiritually (though not physically at that time) when they sinned in the Garden. God confronted them after their sin (Genesis 3:15) and promised the Messiah who would come as the solution to man's sin (this first mention of the Gospel of Christ in Scripture is called the Protoevangelium). All people are children of Adam and Eve, and are therefore born dead spiritually. They are also born under condemnation to hell because of Adam's sin (although God has a caveat for infants and young children). Look what Jesus says in John 3:17: "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." Your question should be, saved from what? Again, it is only hell; Jesus discusses man's condemnation to hell more than He discusses heaven. Look what He says in John 3:18 "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." You're a smart guy; I don't have to explain what Jesus is saying. And don't blame me. I'm just passing the news along; I didn't say it or write it. Jesus is also the One Who said:
John 14:6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
So don't say I am exclusionary or whatever other arguments non-believers use. Jesus said it Himself. If you don't like it, take it up with Him. But never forget He also said these most comforting words:
Matthew 11:28"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
Now one point you have misunderstood. You said: "So the people who do believe are comforted by that belief and those who don't, aren't?"
You are referencing Paul's statement about those who are perishing think the Gospel foolishness, but for those being saved it is God's power. That doesn't mean they are necessarily "comforted", although He sometimes does comfort us; He is the Comforter. But what Paul means is that believers "know" God's power as a certainty in life. It is not something they "learned". It was a miracle of supernatural rebirth. It is gaining spiritual life, with the Holy Spirit indwelling the believer. This spiritual life IS the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, Who takes up residence in the person. The believer still retains His fallen sin nature, but overshadowing it is the presence of the HS Who imputes the righteousness of God on the believer. The believer is therefore able to enter God's presence. The believer also gains spiritual insight and ultimately (over time) wisdom as the Spirit teaches the believer in all things. One other point: for the believer, eternal life begins at the moment of salvation, not when they die.
Conversely, lost people can know nothing about this supernatural life. It is just a fiction to many of them, although there are non-believers with Christian friends who acknowledge their saved friends are indeed different and possess an insight they cannot fathom. But ultimately to lost people the concept of the Christian's "spiritual life" is foolishness, as well as the Gospel, which has the power to save lost people. This is not a dispute between Christians who believe different doctrines. This is about believers and non-believers. A Christian is a follower of Christ. We cannot follow Christ without His Spirit to guide us in His steps.
Does this make sense, Doc?
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
I am surprised at the patronizing tone your writing has taken. Of course, I have not read your posts before...so maybe its not new. but by the philosophical and writing quality of your blog post ( and I'm not talking about grammar and spelling here) I expected more.
1) I don't care about spelling and grammar here. When I need to care, I do. Here is not a place to stress out over it. If people can see the ideas behind them, Bling! they found the hidden treasure, if not, ignorance is bliss.
2) your one and two holds no rational water at all. They are simply beliefs whose initial postulates are extremely narrow and refuse to allow even accounting for other concepts.
I'm really sad to say you do seem to have a poor grasp on general relativity, also you have neatly neglected quantum mechanics and small particle physics, which drove Einstain batty as well because of how it contradicted relativity (don't get me wrong, relativity has a special place in my heart).
Please remember newtonionian mechanics could not resolve questions that ultimately turned out to beresolved through high speed physics, small partivle physics, and quantum mechanics. Newtonian physics could be resolved in einsteins theories, but newtonian physics cuold not do the reverse. A square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square. As such contradictions now simply need an advanced understanding. (sorry I don't know anything about string theory or chaos theory).
Like I said, I'm not here to try to convince you that you should abandon your religion because your attempts to science it up. But your supposed scientific approach becomes weaker with each post. You do far better from the philosophical front.
Besides I'm going to have to agree with the far below. Faith is a wonderful thing, so is belief. Why feel the need to justify it scientifically, especially when it undermines your position.
As for me
1) yes, thank you, I am very smart
2)I usually have people tell me that I over think and I need to stop thinking or think less, not to start thinking more. Very odd to get the reverse. (Usually the only time I get that is when people are getting defensive)
3) I like to muse about things I'm not 100% sure of. It makes me happy, it opens my mind to new possibility, stretches my mind, hones my creativity, provides amusement...in short, there is nothing wrong with pondering, it is a good step in mental health. So...I'm not going to stop. But you might want to try it with breakfast. its a great way to start the day. Musing is delicious.
Peace
www.worldcantwait.com
Gee. News to virtually every Christian I've ever met. Or are you a Holocast denier, as well as a martyr denier?
Ignorance of science is understandable at your age; ignorance of history takes work.
By the way, General Relativity doesn't do what you think it does. Try learning a little about it.
Why does Homunculus wax so wroth over a _scientific_ question? And why does he dispute the science on moral and political grounds?
It seems that all the scientists in the whole world (whether religious or not religious) are in a conspiracy, for some unknown motive, on the side of evolution by natural selection. Everyone on the other side seem to be politicians and true believers who see this theory as immoral for some reason.
Intelligent design is their current flagship, even though ID does not dispute evolution per se, or even common ancestry of all living things---including specifically that humans and apes are related. In fact, their view keeps getting closer and closer to Darwin's theory, to avoid flat collisions with the mounting evidence.
I guess I see the problem this way. If your faith depends upon a god who only does things that humans can't explain, then this god gets smaller and smaller every year. Fortunately, some of us see scientific discoveries as newly revealed patches of the glory of God. You can have your dark corner of the universe with its shrinking god. I'll take the light of discovery where it leads.
Well, it's time to get back to my other task, to prove that quantum physics is immoral and atheistic because it contends that many events happen by pure chance, without divine guidance. Maybe you should give evolution a rest and help me with this one.
==Olorin
to start arguing with another student. Darwinism is junk science based on a metaphysical, question begging, a priori commitment to proving itself. It is just as much religion as, well, religion. If you want to get your Darwinian jollies, go read Evolutiongeek and become his buddy.
Meanwhile, General Relativity via Big Bang cosmology demonstrates that the laws of physics dried up nanoseconds before the Bang and the laws were preceded by the singularity, which promptly ceased to exist. It's driving Hawking nuts. Can you help Steve and me out???
PS Science is immoral only if it is a fabrication, like Darwin's Tree of Life, "The Assent of Man", Archaeopteryx as intermediate, Haeckel's Embryos, Java Man, the list goes on. Immoral. You betcha.
But General Relativity? Good science. Gravity? I'm hangin' in with it. Water wet; fire hot? Why not? Life springing from a bowl of primordial soup? Not in this iteration of punctuated equilibrium (I know I'm repeating my old jokes, but it's bed time and I'm too tired to be original.)
it won't become true.
1. The modern synthesis is one of the best supported theories in science. The fact that your knowledge is out of date doesn't change that fact.
2. Science is not based on metaphysical naturalism; it's based on methodological naturalism - which you, yourself use all the time for everything in your life.
3. The theory of evolution is no more religion that particle physics, chemistry, or history - except to those too ignorant to understand, and too mired in the anti-intellectual swamp of their religion to see.
4. Darwin hasn't had much to do with the theory of evolution in about 150 years. I didn't realize you were that old. Perhaps you should try learning something about a subject before criticizing it.
5. Wow! You can spell "Big Bang"! Amazing. Now if you'd simply learn that statements like, "the laws of physics dried up nanoseconds before the Bang" are complete and utter nonsense based your total ignorance of the field, you'd be onto something!
6. Darwin's "tree of life" is not a fabrication; you're apparently too dumb to spell 'ascent'; Archie is an intermediate; Haeckel's embryos are old news; Java man wasn't a fabrication; shall I go on?
Your ignorance is not evidence of anything but ignorance. Try learning something. I admit you've gone what, about ninety years without it, but you'll really enjoy the experience!
What a powerful refutation of my FACTS. You're a tiresome and unsatisfying target. And let's face it; I've probably written 10,000 words on this site and I've misspelled ONE. Dang! You really got me on that one.
You're right; you're young, beautiful, brilliant, got two (count 'em) 2 PhDs and the greatest orator in print since CS Lewis. I'm sure you could turn him away from his Christianity. I'm close to turning to the dark side myself. If I could just remember that persuasive argument you used again; oh yeah, IGNORANT. Powerful!
Hey, I wonder if I used that against you if it would give me the upper hand? Let's give it a try.
Hey Red Devil Girl.
You're ignorant. You don't know squat about science (or seraphs, for that matter). If you do there is no evidence in any of your mean-spirited and less-than-literate posts. If you've learned anything in life it's how to be ignorant, and you are truly a professional at that; you're PhDs must be in IGNORANCE, awarded for excellent effort from Ignorant U. For example, you're obviously ignorant about the cosmological ramifications Big Bang. If you've got even 1 PhD in anything beside Home Economics, you should understand what Hawking has been whiling his time away fighting to refute, and failing.
Wow, that really worked. I won that argument hands down. That last part about Hawking kinda degraded the effort a little; throwing in a reference to FACT in the midst of strong name-calling probably weakened my case. But bringing up the FACT of your attendance at Ignorant U really won the day. With all those insults, you've probably made me the greatest orator in print since Cicero.
Thanks for showing this old, Alzheimer's ridden coot (I may be old, but I've got a trophy wife with 4 PhDs, an MD and her daddy owns a liquor store, so there), how to really argue effectively. And next time I'll remember to use my spell-checker.
All sincerity aside, SS. You're a boring target; you've got to be a Darwin-blog troll over here to throw hot water on anything that may pose a threat to your religion. But you know so incredibly little, or at least give evidence to that being the case; you're a waste of time. I'm not wasting my time with you going forward.
If the phone doesn't ring, c'est moi.
Is this really the best that you can do? Bombast and rhetoric and a complete lack of facts? Let's dismantle your latest for the benefit of the posters (it's always fun to point out where you haven't actually said anything).
Homu: What a powerful refutation of my FACTS. You're a tiresome and unsatisfying target. And let's face it; I've probably written 10,000 words on this site and I've misspelled ONE. Dang! You really got me on that one."
When you're in the middle of trying to make a rhetorical point, the spelling is important. And the more important issue is that you HAVEN'T provided any facts. Not one.
Quotations from the Bible don't constitute scientific facts. Your personal beliefs don't constitute scientific facts. Your insults, sneers, general complains don't constitute facts.
Facts constitute facts.
Fact: the theory of evolution is supported by an enormous body of empirical evidence and scientific research. Check pubmed for listings.
Fact: the Bible is full of logical contradictions, and disproved historical claims.
Fact: you've explained, quite clearly, the criteria for proper understanding of Behe (and, presumably, intelligent design in general). You don't fit those criteria.
Fact: you don't understand what the theory of evolution says; you don't understand what General Relativity says; you don't even appear to understand the Bible.
Fact: Intelligent design isn't supported by ANY empirical evidence. None.
Happy now? There are lots more lovely facts I can present. Unfortunately, you don't seem to be able to counter any of them.
Homu: "You're right; you're young, beautiful, brilliant, got two (count 'em) 2 PhDs and the greatest orator in print since CS Lewis."
Since I've only made one of these claims, you are ONCE AGAIN KNOWING UTTERING FALSEHOODS. YOU ARE, IN FACT, LYING YOUR HEAD OFF.
Since you probably want to behave in a Christian fashion and avoid bearing false witness, I thought you'd want to know.
Homu: "I'm sure you could turn him away from his Christianity. I'm close to turning to the dark side myself. If I could just remember that persuasive argument you used again; oh yeah, IGNORANT. Powerful!"
It's not intended as an argument; it's intended to point out that until you actually bring some facts and logic to the table, evolgeek will continue to make you look like an ignorant, ranting, Christian fundie - an old fool, in point of fact.
You're not winning here, Homu. You're making yourself look like an idiot because you don't actually bother to deal with arguments being made. Just sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming, "No! No! The Bible is right; evolution is wrong; and Darwin is an old pooper!" aren't terribly convincing to anyone except the brain-dead.
Homu: "Hey, I wonder if I used that against you if it would give me the upper hand? Let's give it a try."
Probably not.
Homu: "Hey Red Devil Girl.
You're ignorant. You don't know squat about science (or seraphs, for that matter). If you do there is no evidence in any of your mean-spirited and less-than-literate posts. If you've learned anything in life it's how to be ignorant, and you are truly a professional at that; you're PhDs must be in IGNORANCE, awarded for excellent effort from Ignorant U. For example, you're obviously ignorant about the cosmological ramifications Big Bang. If you've got even 1 PhD in anything beside Home Economics, you should understand what Hawking has been whiling his time away fighting to refute, and failing."
Didn't work. You still don't understand what Hawking is trying to say. And since that's NOT what you said or what I was objecting to, I note that you AGAIN are
FAILING TO READ THE POSTS BEING MADE.
Tell me - why do you keep doing this? Wouldn't it be more interesting to deal with what people actually write, rather than some dim fantasies in your mind?
Homu: "Wow, that really worked. I won that argument hands down. That last part about Hawking kinda degraded the effort a little; throwing in a reference to FACT in the midst of strong name-calling probably weakened my case. But bringing up the FACT of your attendance at Ignorant U really won the day. With all those insults, you've probably made me the greatest orator in print since Cicero."
But see, you didn't put in any facts. You made a vague and unsupportable statement about what Hawking was doing. How can that even be discussed?
Homu: "Thanks for showing this old, Alzheimer's ridden coot (I may be old, but I've got a trophy wife with 4 PhDs, an MD and her daddy owns a liquor store, so there), how to really argue effectively. And next time I'll remember to use my spell-checker."
When you actually begin a reasonable discussion, we'll discuss. In the meantime, I will point out your inability to do so, mostly to demonstrate to the lurkers the danger of allowing theism to wipe out your critical thinking skills.
Thanks for providing such a beautiful example, by the way. Good work! Keep it up!
Homu: "All sincerity aside, SS. You're a boring target; you've got to be a Darwin-blog troll over here to throw hot water on anything that may pose a threat to your religion."
But I have no religion - at least nothing that you would be able to discuss rationally. Once again: as long as your posts contain falsehoods and nonsense, you will be unable to carry on an actual discussion.
Homu: "But you know so incredibly little, or at least give evidence to that being the case; you're a waste of time. I'm not wasting my time with you going forward."
You've said this before.
You were wrong about the angels.
You were wrong about evolution.
You were wrong about relativity.
You were wrong about cosmology.
You're probably wrong about this....
coupled with no irony receptors.
I promise no matter how whacky you get, I'll dignify your psychosis no further. Try IM prolixin, stat.
1) You claim that the bible is full of contradictions, yet you do not name one of them so we can have a discussion. Thats like me telling you that atheism is wrong, but not expounding on my claim.
2) Do you have a doctorarte in theoretical physics? Or is it theoretical mathematics? Wait I thought it was biochemistry? Do you know what a triple integral is? How about a Wronskian?
3) ID is supported by empirical evidence. Let me ask you a question. If you found a very complicated machine in the middle of a forest, would you say that someone created it, or would you believe that it just appeared? ID is suppported by a philosiphical belief in God, which can be strongly suggested through empirical evidence.
4) Double S I doubt you could even pass elementary physics. I doubt you could pass elementary calculus. So stop trying to tell everyone what Hawkings is trying to say. Actualy you can't even do that; you just tell us that H-man is wrong.
And since you keep lording your doctorates over us simple-minded fools, why not just tell us what they are in? Because as far as I can tell, you have claimed expertise in every subject known to mankind.
"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."-C.S. Lewis
1) Contradictions? Hmm...let me see...well, there is the case of God against incest. But then, why would he allow Lot and his daughters to commit the act? Also, some have told me that God allows free choice, in defense of their being suffering in the world. But then, why dose he punish those that think against him? He turned Lot's Wife (is that right? not completly sure) into salt when she looked around her shoulder. So, It would seem that God contradicts his own words by his actions.
2) Well, no, I don't. I'm just trying to survive High School! However, that does NOT mean that I can't debate on this level. I'm not as well educated as you people are, but I can still have an intellectual discussion if I do enough homework on my own. I have read through the Bible to know what it says. Why? So I can argue effectively. I really can't say much of anything when I don't know anything of what the other says. TAKE NOTE OF THAT HOMU.
3) Great. Wonderful. Still, does that make it fact? Evolution is a Theory. Let us define terms. WE think that a Theory means an idea, or a possible scenerio of something. That is NOT how a scientist views it. They view a Theory as an explination on how things are. Now, you would ask then, why is not a law, if it is an explination? Well, for one, some are trying to do that. And two, they havn't found everything yet. Does Evolution have holes? Yes. However, so does your ID. You still have yet to explain why the Universe can't organize itself. Let us say that a machine has just appeared in the forest. There are a few possibilities. One, someone made it. Two, it just appears. Three, it is an illusion. Four, a big furry monster came from the mountains and made this to help him catch prey. There are a bunch of theories, and all can be ancked up in their own way. It could be made. It also could have just appeared. You have heard of Hindenburg's Uncertainty Principle? Or if that is the guys name, but there is the Principle. It states that, sometime, somewhere, water will fly out of a glass with nothing touching it. Why? Well, all of the atoms are in constant motion, yes? Well, someday, sometime, they will all go up at once. And then the water will fly. So, things appearing could be conceived. And besides, who made this Intelligent Designer? If he is an exception, then why is it unreasonable to say that the Universe can't organize itself?
4) I tried reading a Hawking's book. It is thick and very throughly researched and documented. I know a little about Physics, it interests me. I like Chemistry a lot, but I despise Higher math. It confuses me greatly. I don't like it.
I won't claim the expertise, but I can use logic and reasoning and the power of research to help me out. I like debating with you Ransom. You are very straight-faced. Homu just says stuff and really doesn't say much to the matter.
Homki890
I like triple integrals. *sniff sniff* it was sadly so long since my last calculus class.
www.worldcantwait.com
I was re-reading my culture war blog and discovered something regarding SS's sophomoric efforts to discredit my writings. Here's what I found.
1. SS said I misspelled a word. I didn't give it much credence and assumed that I did actually misspell the word "assent". Then I remembered her post said I misspelled "ascent". I went back and checked; I properly spelled "assent" and used the word properly in context. SS, with her 2 PhDs, misunderstood the context of what I wrote and assumed I meant "ascent". When I first acknowledged my misspelled word in the post two up from this one, (assuming I did actually misspell it), the great lady who claims she has 2 PhDs continued to take me to task for misspelling a word (see the post above this one).
2. I went looking for her original post mentioning the misspelled word; she has apparently deleted it from this thread.
3. Evolutiongeek has given cudos to this uneducated Darwin-blog troll (SS) who claims 2 PhDs. IF they give out PhDs (two of them) to people who don't know the difference between "ascent" and "assent", I'll eat my hat. Geek, your sources are a sign of the Emperor's same old New Clothes I mentioned earlier. Don't get too proud of yourself with winning a few bucks. You've demonstrated with this gaff that you lack discernment.
Why we're debating the proper usages of "assent" and "scent" instead of something actually relevant is beyond me. Also, if you actually read my "thank you" note to my readers, you'd notice that I thanked you for your efforts on my threads as well, but you'd rather launch into personal attacks. I'm tired of the condescending patenalism you direct at me, as if I'm some wayward child that needs to be "saved." Do you not have anything better to do, or even anything to say that is not mere screed? Thus far, it appears not.
"The trouble with having an open mind is people insist on coming along and putting things in it"-Terry Pratchett
I've been busy working and not spending much time here (also went fishing). My above comment aimed at you was all tongue-in-cheek. If I remember correctly, I was excoriating Red Devil Girl for being a troll. I believed her when she claimed to have 2 PhDs at first. I'm a trusting guy, like you. My post that mentions you was just bombastic humor blowing off a troll who probably didn't finish undergraduate work.
Not offense was intended toward you; I was just on a roll having fun. You do indeed need to find Christ and happiness in life; so do all my lost close friends. But I do consider you a buddy; you believe what I believed when I was young and indoctrinated. I know there is hope; you're a smart guy. Reality will find you if you truly seek the truth.
Have a good 2007.
David
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The Apostle Paul
Since we are off topic...isn't Kudos spelt with a 'K"?...hmmm maybe this is on topic but irrelevent... Great posts everyone...some of them crack me up up and i just wanted to be apart of the fun;)
all truths are easy to understand once discovered; the point is to discover them ~galileo
I had forgotten about you, but I hate for people to live in ignorance their entire lives.
You said, "PS Science is immoral only if it is a fabrication, like Darwin's Tree of Life, "The Assent of Man", Archaeopteryx as intermediate, Haeckel's Embryos, Java Man, the list goes on. Immoral. You betcha."
As I noted at the time, you misspelled 'Assent' since the work is actually titled "The Ascent of Man".
And then you're too dumb to find your own error.
Just thought you should know!