Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.
The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.
– Albert Einstein
And today’s news :
The first-ever naturally occurring gears are found on an insect’s legs
The first-ever naturally occurring gears are found on an insect’s legs | The Verge
Schoolchildren are taught that all of this incredible order in the universe, is the result of chaos and entropy.
“Schoolchildren are taught that all of this incredible order in the universe, is the result of chaos and entropy.” Yep.
Witness what Dr. David P. Barash, a Professor of Psychology and Evolutionary Biologist, has to say: “It’s irresponsible to teach biology without evolution, and yet many students worry about reconciling their beliefs with evolutionary science. Just as many Americans don’t grasp the fact that evolution is not merely a “theory,” but the underpinning of all biological science..”
And, “…we have come to understand that an entirely natural and undirected process, namely random variation plus natural selection, contains all that is needed to generate extraordinary levels of nonrandomness. Living things are indeed wonderfully complex, but altogether within the range of a statistically powerful, entirely mechanical phenomenon.”
There you go!
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/10/04/4204477_god-darwin-and-my-college-biology.html?rh=1
Which means that the love you have for your child is nothing more than an evolutionary burp of no more authenticity or meaning than indigestion.
Ditto your rational thoughts which, under materialism, amount to nothing more than molecules bouncing around inside your developed brain. Free will and “you” are illusions.
Of course, no one actually lives this way. Atheism, and the philosophies it engenders, is unliveable in practice.
Yes I, as an atheist, believe so! And I am living perfectly fine! Religious people talk of “free will”, at the same time they talk about “Gods plan” ??? If God exists, who made him? (Always been there?). That is not an explanation! If there is something you don’t understand, then why are you substituting it with something else – you don’t understand?
Why not admit, that there are many things we are not capable to understand. Why invent more things (Gods) not to understand. It does not make sense! 😉
To be fair, Dr. Barash did arrive at his belief in an entirely mechanical fashion …
Oh, a person that claims to be an agnostic, or atheistic, is considered to be an “intellectual”.
Go figure….
For some time now I have noticed the parallels between climate science and darwinism, but didn’t want to muddy the debate. Both strike me as equally adaptive to evidence which contradicts earlier formulations, and elastic with respect to post-hoc rationalizations.
E.g., “there will be no more snow”. After a season of massive amounts of snow, “this is to be expected; this is what happens under climate change”. It will get dry, it will get wet. It will get hot. It will get cold. Infinitely flexible. And all evidence back-dated to the theory.
E.g., “convergent evolution”; “punctuated equilibrium”, post-hoc explanations for the Cambrian, etc.
Both fields are also fiercely defended by ideologues and require the requisite bow of the knee to the theory to be published. Critics are equally derided. Both exhibit a kind of circle the wagons defensiveness.
There are limits to the predictive power of Darwanism, and I think most sensible people accept that. I might point out there are also limits to the predictive power of God as well.
You can see the same post-hoc elasticity of explanation. E.g. God is infinitely good and omnipotent, “Why evil?” must be part of God’s plan somehow. “Why Ebola?” stops the evil, or something, pray harder. “Why zealots killing in the name of?” they need free will so they can get it wrong, so they can choose to get it right later.
So tell my what exactly God is going to do next? You can’t… because God works in mysterious ways, we don’t understand God. It is possible to make broad statements about evolution, for example when a new virus is introduced into a population, eventually the population will adapt and mortality will decrease. However, it might kill all of them, or a vaccine might come along, or the virus itself might mutate… lots of things are possible, one of those possibilities will lead to a survivor who will be declared “fittest”. By definition post-hoc discovery.
Churchill had a good handle on on Darwin: “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it!”
Okay, guys, WTF is Darwinism?
“Darwinism” is a codeword use by creationists to link evolution to “Social Darwinism,” and then make claims like these:
Creationist Claim CA002.1. Evolution leads to social Darwinism.
Creationist Claim CA002.2. Marx admired and corresponded with Darwin.
Creationist Claim CA006.1. Hitler based his views on Darwinism.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
Sorry but my reply to your latest is at the bottom of the page.
I would recommend visiting Sean Pitman’s website
http://www.detectingdesign.com/
Wait, what? You don’t believe in evolution? How utterly ignorant.
I didn’t mention evolution. Read much?
Creationist Claim CF001.2: The entire universe is a closed system, so the second law of thermodynamics dictates that within it, things are tending to break down. The second law applies universally.
Response:
The second law of thermodynamics applies universally, but, as everyone can see, that does not mean that everything everywhere is always breaking down. The second law allows local decreases in entropy offset by increases elsewhere. The second law does not say that order from disorder is impossible; in fact, as anyone can see, order from disorder happens all the time.
The maximum entropy of a closed system of fixed volume is constant, but because the universe is expanding, its maximum entropy is ever increasing, giving ever more room for order to form (Stenger 1995, 228).
Disorder and entropy are not the same (Styer 2000). The second law of thermodynamics deals with entropy. There are no laws about things tending to “break down.”
References:
Stenger, Victor J., 1995. The Unconscious Quantum, Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
Styer, Daniel F. 2000. Insight into entropy. American Journal of Physics 68(12): 1090-1096.
Index to Creationist Claims
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
Toppleton, as you have the floor, please explain your own words:
“The second law does not say that order from disorder is impossible; in fact, as anyone can see, order from disorder happens all the time.”
Just one example should be sufficient….
@geran, RE: example of disorder to order.
Just one? Nah. Choose from about 2,520,000 results of search disorder+to+order at scholar.google
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=disorder+to+order
Sorry, no need to debunk all, just give me one.
In fact, give it your best shot.
Debunk just one. Go on, give it your best shot. 2.5 million to choose from, so chose the weakest journal article you can find.
I take it that your house self-cleans, and your cakes build themselves. And 50,000 monkeys wrote Hamlet.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=disorder+to+order+house+self-clean+cakes+50,000+monkeys+hamlet
Nope. Zero results.
“2.5 million to choose from”
Yet you cannot provide one that supports your claim “order from disorder happens all the time”.
Guess you have to go back for more kool-aid….
Creationist Claim CF002: Complexity does not arise from simplicity.
Response:
Complexity arises from simplicity all the time. The Mandelbrot set is an example (Dewey 1996). Real-life examples include the following: A pan of water with heat applied uniformly to its bottom will develop convection currents that are more complex than the still water; complex hurricanes arise from similar principles; complex planetary ring systems arise from simple laws of gravitation; complex ant nests arise from simple behaviors; and complex organisms arise from simpler seeds and embryos.
Complexity should be expected from evolution. In computer simulations, complex organisms were more robust than simple ones (Lenski et al. 1999), and natural selection forced complexity to increase (Adami et al. 2000). Theoretically, complexity is expected because complexity-generating processes dissipate the entropy from solar energy influxes, in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics (Wicken 1979). Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize “for his contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures” (Nobel Foundation 1977). According to Prigogine, “it is shown that non-equilibrium may become a source of order and that irreversible processes may lead to a new type of dynamic states of matter called ‘dissipative structures’ ” (Prigogine 1977, 22).
References:
Adami, C., C. Ofria and T. C. Collier, 2000. Evolution of biological complexity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 97(9): 4463-4468. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/9/4463
Dewey, David, 1996. Introduction to the Mandelbrot set. http://www.ddewey.net/mandelbrot/
Lenski, R. E., C. Ofria, T. C. Collier and C. Adami, 1999. Genome complexity, robustness and genetic interactions in digital organisms. Nature 400: 661-664.
Nobel Foundation 1977. The Nobel Prize in chemistry 1977. http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1977
Prigogine, Ilya, 1977. Time, structure, and fluctuations, http://www.nobel.se/chemistry/laureates/1977/prigogine-lecture.pdf
Wicken, Jeffrey S., 1979. The generation of complexity in evolution: A thermodynamic and information-theoretical discussion. Journal of Theoretical Biology 77: 349-365.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF002.html
WHAT?
THIS is your best shot? You use nature as your “order from disorder happens all the time”? An seed growing into a tree is proof entropy is violated? You do not understand entropy.
Okay, this is like dealing with someone that thinks CO2 can warm the planet.
Which “disorder-to-order” article do you think you can debunk the easiest?
Transformation—Disorder to Order in Ni3Mn
MJ Marcinkowski, N Brown – Journal of Applied Physics, 1961 – scitation.aip.org
A disorder-to-order transition coupled to DNA binding in the essential zinc-finger DNA-binding domain of yeast ADR1
DE Hyre, RE Klevit – Journal of molecular biology, 1998 – Elsevier
MoRFpred, a computational tool for sequence-based prediction and characterization of short disorder-to-order transitioning binding regions in proteins
FM Disfani, WL Hsu, MJ Mizianty, CJ Oldfield… – …, 2012 – Oxford Univ Press
Disorder-to-order phase transition and multiple melting behavior of poly (l-lactide) investigated by simultaneous measurements of WAXD and DSC
J Zhang, K Tashiro, H Tsuji, AJ Domb – Macromolecules, 2008 – ACS Publications
Toppleton,
Using seeds growing into trees as an example shows you are apparently ignorant of most science much less biology. Try and explain all the physics and biology included in the genetics alone much less the overall gross bulk growth…
None of it is disorderly or random as they all follow physical laws and the genetics even includes backup processes to insure that damage can be repaired to maintain those huge data bases of instructions that make us and everything else.
I can never understand the loony logic that accepts a necessarily more complex supreme being to
explain the complexity of nature! Who or what designed the designer or is that question not allowed?
Some folks just need an invisible friend to sleep at night when things are going bump 😉
So, you’re invisible friend is your own “logic”. You must be an “intellectual”.
Go figure.
Are you one of those who accept abject “nonsense?”
For the message about the cross is NONSENSE to those who are being destroyed, but it is God’s power to us who are being saved. For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the intelligence of the intelligent I will reject.”
Where is the wise person? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? God has turned the wisdom of the world into NONSENSE, hasn’t he? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased to save those who believe through the NONSENSE of our preaching.
1CO 3:18-21
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+1%3A18-21&version=ISV
Religion is a great curse used to harness the ignorant in the service of the powerful.
Evolution is a religion. Therefore, “Evolution” is a great curse used to harness the ignorant in the service of the powerful”.
Creationist claim CA610. Evolution is a religion. [Debunked]
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA610.html
Evolution is a ‘religion’?
Sing me one Evolutionary hymn?
Sing me one Druid hymn.
Charles, how about a monastic type chant.
There is no God.
No wheel. Still no wheel. I’m still waiting to see if God ever came up with the wheel, and I’d allow a ball bearing, even a log roller of some sort.
Ball and socket joint comes close, but no cigar
Morgan, my poor lost puppy, have your ever heard of orbital rotation?
Not satisfied with a flat earth cosmology anymore?
The Flat-Earth Bible by Robert J. Schadewald
The Bulletin of the Tychonian Society #44 (July 1987)
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm
Graphic of Biblical cosmological Flat Earth:
http://fast1.onesite.com/community.beliefnet.com/user/udcstb/3983e34ec23b7c1d62ac4fc038591575.jpg
I’d be happy to ban you if make another comment like that.
You must also believe in the “energy budget”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget
Toppleton,
Love when your type continues to show your ignorance. When Columbus set out the only real question was the circumference of the earth, not whether it was round. You are basing your arguments on propaganda. In fact, few people since the Greeks, if not before, have thought the earth was flat!! Remember that cool old map of a HEMISPHERE sitting on a turtle?? Not even then did they think it was flat!! Yet, that would appear to be your ignorant argument, that the Church, which supported science through the Dark Ages and after, thought the earth was flat. PLEASE give us a blibical quote to support YOUR belief!!
Seems only MORONS think the church believed the earth was flat!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
By the way, the actual quotes in your silly pic do NOT in any way suggest the interpretation the artist put on them. Come on, keep on trying boy.
Now, let me point out YOUR religion believes in strings and a multiverse. I could just as easily translate those verses into your modern physical hallucinations. It would still be wrong.
It’s not a wheel. No cigar. No tiparillo. Maybe a virginia slim.
Dunhill.
Hmm… where have you been during the last decade?
Schematic of a bacterial flagellum:
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/webpictures/lifesciences-bacterial_motor_diagram.jpg
Creationist Claim Claim CB200.1:Bacterial flagella and eukaryotic cilia are irreducibly complex, Since nonfunctional intermediates cannot be preserved by natural selection, these systems can only be explained by intelligent design.
Debunked here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_1.html
Entropy has nothing to do with order or complexity or chaos. Entropy is about heat and energy – and that is all! . Speaking from BSME, PE and 30 plus years in power generation.
“Entropy has nothing to do with order or complexity or chaos.”
There is much $$$ to be made from BSME-PE’s that believe this. I know….
Nick, with respect, the concept of entropy also plays a large part in the science of data transmission (Morse Code, image compression, etc.) Uncompressed data has low entropy and makes poor use of the available bandwidth, compressed data has high entropy and uses more of the bandwidth.
Phone companies hated fax signals because they used up bandwidth that the phone companies had otherwise used to “cram” multiple voice signals onto the same line.
There are formal means to calculate the entropy of a data signal. And it does affect the amount of power consumed to transmit the signal (in most cases). A digital circuit switching faster consumes more power (it goes into charging the internal capacitance more often).
Cheers, Kevin.
Nature is strangely anti-entropic.
That is to say under normal condition where there is no life, matter and energy decay away to a low level. Life however gathers up low-level energy and small amounts of matter to parcel-up into strange new subtances. Concentrating both matter and energy.
Think of how the seed can make a tree.
Using meager amounts of sunlight, water, CO2, nitrogen, and minute diversity of other chemicals from the soil, a tree if formed. If this tree dies and over time become coal, it is still a strange aggregation of chemicals and potential energy. All from a small seed!
This is, for a short period within the universe’s lifetime, against the generally accepted teaching of how entropy works. How long it continues is anyones guess.
That’s crap. It’s quite obvious from the picture on the website that the insect is rocket powered.
The ‘supreme intelligence’ is in nature/the universe itself.
As soon as matter came into existence it organised itself, first into elements, then compounds and then the compounds reacted to form more complex compounds…this formative impulse which is apparent in the ‘simplest’ materials, rock crystals for example.
How inert materials like these eventually collaborated to form living entities is a great mystery but not an insurmountable one.
The problem with intelligent design is the ‘designer’…who would have to by definition encompass all the variety of the universe and control it.
Much more wonderful to leave him out and marvel at the fact that at the very core of matter is a: handedness, spin, a kink, an imbalance, call it what you will, which ultimately produces such an immense variety of living creatures…not to mention intelligence and self awareness.
My position is simple, leave God out of it, he’s simply not necessary!
You might enjoy reading Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine (yeah, that Thomas Paine).
Or Ethan Allen’s book “Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man.”
They’re both covered wonderfully in a great new text called “Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic” (W. W. Norton & Company, 2014) by Matthew Stewart.
One can get a foretaste of the book in an article he wrote last month, as follows:
The Original Tea Partier Was an Atheist
Remembering America’s forgotten founding father.
By MATTHEW STEWART, September 01, 2014
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/original-tea-partier-atheist-thomas-young-110497.html
Paine WAS NOT AN ATHIEST!!! He believed God was responsible for creation, and we should be thankful for that. Beyond that basic, religion is humanistic, not of God.
Paine, Jefferson, Allen, etal were deists. However, they were all called atheists in their day by the believers in supernatural miracles, etc. So Stewart is running with what they were called in the day, and what believers call people today who believe in the same deistic providence.
Things really haven’t changed much in 214 years, since the election of 1800, when Jefferson was called a “howling atheist.”
[source][/source] The Election of 1800-1801 by Richard J. Behn
http://www.lehrmaninstitute.org/history/1800.html
Although I do admire how he cleverly turned the atheist mudslinging against his distractors.
“I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.” -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, January, 8, 1789
“Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god….I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, from Monticello, April 11, 1823
Replying at this level since the next level down does not offer it…
Here we have an easy indication that Toppelton here is full of shit. Below he’s spouted the liberal lie that the founders were “deists”. How many deists would do this?? From WallBuilders.com:
“Jefferson also signed presidential documents, closing them with the appellation, “In the Year of our Lord Christ.”
Visit that site and others to see how may of the founders were either very religious, or actually ordained Christian ministers. Spout the talkorigins crap all you want, as much of it is hand waving in tune with explanations for the warming pause, but no the founders were not deists.
“My position is simple, leave God out of it, he’s simply not necessary!”
Gosh, Charles, it’s almost as if you have all the answers….
Gosh,geran, are you some sort of America-hater? Charles alludes to the same deistic “nature’s God” that is written into America’s Declaration of Independence.
David Voelker (1993) “Who is Nature’s God?” The Hanover Historical Review.
history.hanover.edu/hhr/hhr93_1.html
And if you think the DoI author was talking about your kind of belief system, you’d better reconsider.
“Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.” -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787
Does your house self-clean?
No, it doesn’t. Toppelton must do all the heavy lifting himself and it makes him cranky when anyone brings up the darn thing.
Evolutionary mechanisms do account for the evolution of COMPLEXITY, since non-lethal mutations tend to add more components to simple systems than they remove (Soyer and Bonhoeffer 2006). The abstract of Lenski et al. (2003, 139) is worth quoting in full:
A long-standing challenge to evolutionary theory has been whether it can explain the origin of complex organismal features. We examined this issue using digital organisms — computer programs that self-replicate, mutate, compete and evolve. Populations of digital organisms often evolved the ability to perform complex logic functions requiring the coordinated execution of many genomic instructions. Complex functions evolved by building on simpler functions that had evolved earlier, provided that these were also selectively favoured. However, no particular intermediate stage was essential for evolving complex functions. The first genotypes able to perform complex functions differed from their non-performing parents by only one or two mutations, but differed from the ancestor by many mutations that were also crucial to the new functions. In some cases, mutations that were deleterious when they appeared served as stepping-stones in the evolution of complex features. These findings show how complex functions can originate by random mutation and natural selection.
Lenski, Richard E., Charles Ofria, Robert T. Pennock and Christoph Adami. 2003. The evolutionary origin of complex features Nature 423: 139-144. http://myxo.css.msu.edu/papers/nature2003
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB300.html
Gosh Top, it’s almost as if you have all the answers….
Gosh, geran, it’s almost as if you are annoyed at Lenski, et al, for debunking your oft-parroted challenge to evolutionary theory.
The religious battle against understanding the world non-magically has been a long one, as R.G. Price explains in the following article under the heading “The Early Christian Fight Against Naturalism:”
Understanding Evolution: History, Theory, Evidence, and Implications
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/understanding_evolution.htm
Another good example of Man copying nature;
There is an insect (a moth species I believe) that has evolved a “trick” to fool hungry bats. The moth hears the sonic “ping” that the bat uses to find prey in the dark. The moth “re-transmits” the ping back towards the bat at a higher volume. The bat thinks the moth is closer (higher volume = closer) than it really is and opens it’s mouth to catch the moth ahead of where the moth really is.
Man (or perhaps a woman) devised an electronic countermeasure to “fool” enemy radar systems that works exactly like this. The planes from the US Air Force that deployed this equipment had a picture of the moth as a logo on their planes.
Does make you wonder how that behavior evolved.
Cheers, Kevin.
Einstein was known to have held all sorts of idiotic, crackpot views in the areas beyond his immediate field of expertize. For example, he was an ardent believer in socialism:
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
quote: “This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.”
Does this mean that all of us should believe in socialism because Einstein did so?
“I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.”
Richard Feynman
Probably best to ignore Einstein’s views on the economy
Harry D Huffman believes in Intelligent Design. So I guess you must now accept his Venus / Earth comparison regarding CO2 …
Einstein’s Forward to Homer W. Smith’s Man and His Gods (Little Brown, 1952) might provide some perspective on the nature of Einstein’s god. He says
“The work is a broadly conceived attempt to portray man’s fear-induced animistic and mythic ideas with all their far-flung transformations and interrelations. It relates the impact of these phantasmagorias on human destiny and the causal relationships by which they have become crystallized into organized religion.
This is a biologist speaking, whose scientific training has disciplined him in a grim objectivity rarely found in a pure historian. This objectivity has not, however, hindered him from emphasizing the boundless suffering which, in its end results, this mythic thought has brought upon man.”
Homer Smith’s out-of-print book is a fascinating story of how the creator god in whose image man is said to be made has really been created by man. I have no need for a posited god, no need for a poor human-designed god, though I would be happy to know an admirable being with the essential property of existence.
Just because you may have talent in one very technical field, and can think very deeply about the minutia within that specialism, does not (IMO) give you any other insight to the broader picture of the universe and our place in it, than any other specialist or generalist. You may, using your intellect come up with a novel way of seeing the universe and man’s place in it but that insight may not be any better, or any more understandable, than anybody elses view.
The universe and it’s processes continue whether we exist or not, and without our ability to understand them. What is known is that life on this planet acts against entrope, trapping low levels of energy and concentrating them up to form the life we see about us. How long this process can maintain itself is anyones guess. What I know is that it is a marvel in itself, and we are fated to use and understand it.
But that is our burden – to understand. Mankind endless quest is to make sense of ourselve, our place with others, our world, and the universe outside. To say that it is Gods gift to us to maintain this struggle, or that it is born in our genes is neither here nor there, the fact that we can do it honestly and to the best benefit for our fellow travellers is surely all we need to do.
IMO God and religion is a private and personal task of reconciliation that each must judge and come to terms with in the space of our short lifetime.
Enjoy the ride and may your God go with you.
It is the hubris evident with some of mankind that they believe they know universal laws and constants, and what these might mean. We do not. We have a feeble collection of approximations to the truth. This fact should be explained to all would be scientists and leaders.
The Intelligent Designer must hate us, giving us Ebola and Crotalus adamanteus and Plantar fasciitis.
I like how Epicurus put it:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
I think Epicurus had a great influence on the author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence when he included the non-miraculous, non-revelatory deistic concept of “nature’s God” in the document.
“As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.” -Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, Oct. 31, 1819
I’ll fix the confusion both of you have, but I wonder if you will then admit the conclusion that follows from that: that God may indeed be both real, and good.
It’s very simple. He created man with free will to sin, but also desiring that man not exercise this free will by choosing to sin. In other words, man should have been obedient, which was his natural instinct at the time. Therefore, if he had ignored the deceiver, and chosen to remain loyal to his Creator, he would have lived his entire life in perfection, happiness, and without grief or suffering. But despite that this was God’s initial plan for man, man sinned anyway. Sin produced a curse, not because of hatred, but because of love, so that we could learn not to want to sin, which is a good thing, but can only be achieved through consequences. If you are a parent, or have had a good parent for yourself, this shouldn’t be hard to comprehend. Now, if a person who is in rebellion says to God that the curse is God’s doing, when it has already been explained to him in simple terms that sin is man’s fault and not at all God’s fault, he is committing yet another sin and will bring even more consequences on himself. We caused the curse to happen; we did it to ourselves. We are responsible. The importance of having obedience to God in our heart cannot be overstated, because without it the entire world falls apart.
Another, independent reason for being cursed, is because we have to learn why our free will to sin must ultimately be taken away, in the world to come. Only if we understand it, will we ever accept it. And we must ultimately accept it in order to have any part with God, because it is part of God’s plan for us. The seal of the Cross in the forehead of those who have everlasting life will be a sign of this lack of free will. The angels in Heaven have already gone through this process of having free will, and then after a failure, those who survived the test were sealed and had their free will taken away.
Now as far as I can see, this leaves only one crucial question, and that is why God would have ever wanted to create any person with free will, if it is so easy for them to fall into the enemy’s grip and thereby create all the suffering we see around us. The answer is because there is no glory for Him in creating the Heavens and the Earth, if all of His children are only marionettes, who can only do what God makes them do. He certainly has the ability to create such a type of children, but He also has the ability to create non-marionettes, and if those non-marionettes, having the ability to sin, turn away from sin, then He truly is proven to be a magnificent One, for his children voluntarily choose to obey Him. Therefore, he has created a place in which righteousness is on display in all its glory, proven to be the superior way, and so proven, by the judgments of those servants He has created. So this state of affairs glorifies the servants as well … and in what other way could they bring such glory, and credit, to themselves? Can they wreak what God has wrought, or even a quadrillionth of it? So this is the only way.
One other thought that follows from the foregoing: true justice is good, good is always 100% just, and evil is in no way just. So the only way we can have perfection in our lives is for justice to be done toward all, at all times. Therefore, while we have forgiveness for our sins if we meet the requirements for receiving it, we will still have to pay a price for our sins. But the difference is that we will be spared the ultimate punishment. And God has set up a plan in which being spared this ultimate punishment is justice. But there is a condition: there still is a consequence to be borne, even though the consequence is no longer as great. And that consequence is the temporary curse we are under. Since this is an integral part of God’s plan to work justice for all, it is and must be good. Therefore, the inescapable conclusion from the foregoing premises is that we are not permitted to be angry about it. We are required to accept it with happiness in our heart, knowing that all this must come to pass, in order for His will and plan for us to be fulfilled. He has an infinite number of plans for us, because we still have free will and are capable of messing up the current plan. Each plan is less favorable than the previous, but they are all preferable to His having no plan at all, and not even caring what happens to us. So, I choose to be happy about the justice I have, and I encourage you to do the same.
Do remember there was no death prior to sin, and it is we and not God who are 100% responsible for our sins, and therefore, by extension, responsible for all the death and destruction that results. (We tried to be the boss, when we weren’t even spiritual toddlers yet, so to speak. What a mockery!) This death and destruction will all be set right, but first the enemy must be allowed to come to the zenith of his potential. Otherwise there can be no justice in utterly destroying him. He must be made to be the principal witness against himself, for only such stark testimony as he, himself, can provide, would prove sufficient for the indictment which is necessary against him.
Bottom line: God is able, and willing, but not willing at the present time, because when He gave us our free will, that constituted a promise that He would not exercise His ability to stop man from making the choice. And God is a person of His word. If He makes a promise, you may rest assured that A) He has a good reason for it, and B) He will honor that promise 100.0%, without fail. And that makes Him, not malevolent, but good, righteous and just. And there is no other way that He, as Creator, could be good, righteous, and just toward us, unless he created us as deterministic automatons or marionettes, which besides being very dull, would not have fulfilled His objectives that He had in creating the universe and its occupants.
For further information on the foregoing if you are interested in it, I could recommend to you the book of Isaiah — though obviously, there are other scriptural routes (including New-Testament ones) to the conclusions I have laid out here.
So there you are. I have taken your reasoning and shown you the option that you failed to list. And it happens to be the only explanation that fits all the known facts.
RTF
Thank-you.
“as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder”
http://www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/reason11.htm
Thomas Paine:
“From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea and acting upon it by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the Christian system or thought it to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which it was, but I well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee of the Church, upon the subject of what is called redemption by the death of the Son of God. After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and as I was going down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son when he could not revenge himself in any other way, and as I was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons. This was not one of that kind of thoughts that had anything in it of childish levity; it was to me a serious reflection, arising from the idea I had that God was too good to do such an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity of doing it. I believe in the same manner at this moment; and I moreover believe, that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.
It seems as if parents of the Christian profession were ashamed to tell their children anything about the principles of their religion. They sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of what they call Providence, for the Christian mythology has five deities — there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the God Providence, and the Goddess Nature. But the Christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it (for that is the plain language of the story) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better is making the story still worse — as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.”
I’m well aware of your “option” and reject it as immoral, as did America’s seven primary founders (minus John Jay.) When you believe in the efficacy of human sacrifice, there’s no end to the brutality that can be justified.
“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved—the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!” ~John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, September 3, 1816
“Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.” ~Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
What you actually believe, Robert, is as old as Homer (c.800BCE,) whom Plato quotes, regarding “mystery” religions promising redemption through sacrifice.
“[…] they perform their ritual, and persuade not only individuals, but whole cities, that expiations and atonements for sin may be made by sacrifices and amusements which fill a vacant hour, and are equally at the service of the living and the dead; the latter sort they call mysteries, and they redeem us from the pains of hell, but if we neglect them no one knows what awaits us.”
~Plato (4th century BCE) “The Republic.” Book II.
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html
Here is what Jefferson thought of such anti-freedom religious nonsense:
Gregory Lawrence Knittel (1993) “The Euthanasia of Platonic Christianity: Thomas Jefferson, Plato, Religion and Human Freedom.” San Jose State University.
http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/689/
Oh really, you’re “well aware” of it? Then why didn’t you list it? Answer, either you didn’t think of it, or you were trying to deceptively suggest to others that the list was complete.
Christians do not believe in human sacrifice as atonement. The only reason animal sacrifice came about was because there was death. Whose fault was that? Again, not God’s. God required man to spill blood because it is a reminder of the first blood to be spilt, which never should have happened. Before that, all spilling of blood was abhorrent to God. (The life is in the blood.) So again, this is a function of the Fall which I referred to before. And how was it acceptable for the animal to suffer? The answer is that the animal was comforted supernaturally during the process, and rewarded above others afterward. The Bible specifically says this about human beings who are given up in the service of God, that we will be comforted, which clearly means that the suffering will not be nearly as bad as we are imagining.
Finally, Christ did not really die, spiritually, and his physical death was only temporary, and therefore was more akin to an attempted murder than an actual one. Therefore, the references to his “death” are actually metaphorical, again a lesson that in the New Covenant, there is no more sacrifice, since it can no longer work any atonement; and also a reminder that there is no everlasting life in this world. Perfection, and immortality, can only come by transitioning to another one. We, mankind, have permanently ruined the one we have. It will have to be junked, and replaced with a new and perfect one, whose perfection will be permanent.
The above, then, shows the reason why the Lord’s voluntary offering of himself (self-sacrifice) which was a spiritual and not a physical offering, was necessary. Again, as with other things, it is necessitated by our sins, and not by the original plan of God. This is the backup plan, and if we reject it, there is no other option for full restoration.
God the Father did not kill His only begotten Son. He consented to the murder of that Son, because it was the only was to save all his other children, who would not have been able to extricate themselves from Satan’s trap, had they chosen to voluntary get themselves into it.
There is absolutely nothing immoral about what I’m telling you, though I can understand your feelings about it, since I used to share them. God’s plan is not something that we are able to fully comprehend. His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways. (Isaiah 55:9). But through prayer and reason, we can sometimes greatly improve our understanding, sufficient to realize that what we thought was immoral, is actually the greatest morality. There is no shame in trusting the One who created you. The shame is to refuse to give Him any benefit of the doubt, so that you can proceed to the state where you can be shown the proof, and doubt no longer. To withhold that trust is shameful, because it constitutes casting one’s lot with Satan, which does in fact result not only in one’s own death, but in the death of many others as well.
A final reminder: God did not “kill” or “murder” his Son. That would, of course, be obscene, which was the entire point of those events happening in Genesis and in the Gospel. Responsibility for Christ’s death is borne by all those who refuse to accept Him as their Lord and Creator. Calling God a murderer, when he does not even wish for a drop of oyster blood to ever be shed, is the actual obscenity. You are repeating the error Cain made in his reasoning. I pray that the two of you will rethink your positions.
RTF
More people have died in the last month from malaria than have died in all known outbreaks of Ebola since its identification. Eeeeeek!
Hysteria from global warming (or the coming ice age) to the ebola scare to simple haunted houses alleviates the hopeless boredom of the average American, as this fellow explains in a short three minutes for the British TV show Newswipe.
“And the reason people are buying fear so easily and stock piling it is […] That’s far more palatable for people to buy, than to accept the reality, which is that probably—a statistical high Vegas odds probability—is that nothing of any significance will ever happen to you in your entire boring life.”
~Comedian Doug Stanhope
Voice of America – FEAR IN THE U.S. NEWS MEDIA
youtube (.) com/watch?v=Irc_9cA_bBs
Nearly as hystical as not tolerating the belief in a creator, but insisting that some how all life that we see began through a mystical process of evolution. Evolution is not a proven scientific process, it is a theory and therefore demands belief. You have shown youself to be intolerant and hubristic believer, nothing more.
Oh, my. “A mystical process of evolution?”
All that is needed for evolution is:
1. Reproduction;
2. Inheritance of triats;
3. Variability of traits.
Note that everyone knows of and has seen all 3 of these. You characterize this as a “mystical process?” You reject the obvious.
It is your belief. Base on mystical theory nothing more.
You have no proof of evolution. By that I mean, for instance, that a fish becomes a different animal, there is no proof for such an event. There are no examples.
Your example just gives variations of the same type of life. No evolution there just variations.
Reply below on the page.
Wordpress does not allow me to reply to you latest, as it runs off the page. As I use a magnifier, I cannot get to the reply button – sorry.
“Evolution is not a proven scientific process, it is a theory and therefore demands belief.”
BS.
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html
“Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don’t go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein’s theory of gravitation replaced Newton’s in this century, but apples didn’t suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin’s proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.” – Stephen J. Gould
I’ve just shown myself to be a red-blooded American who doesn’t bow to Ugaritic concepts of a deity scratched into clay tablets that were plagiarized by Pharisees. See: Mark Smith (2001) “The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts.” Oxford University Press.
The “Creator” (in the Declaration of Independence) I do accept as a deistic “nature’s God.” Of course, deism rejects both your revealed religion and the atheism. See “Deism vs. Atheism and Christianity” http://www.deism.com/deism_vs.htm
Fact is, tomomason, you’re creating atheists faster than Dawkins himself. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his letter to John Adams, from Monticello, April 11, 1823, “Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god.”
Regarding your Creationist Claim CA201: Evolution is only a theory…
Debunked here: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA201.html
Anyone who believes this all happened accidentally is not using their brain. At all. Not one cell of it.
🙂 To true.
“You have no proof of evolution. By that I mean, for instance, that a fish becomes a different animal, there is no proof for such an event. There are no examples.”
You are not satisfied by fish with lungs, nor reptiles with feathers.
When you provide evidence that fish with lungs can be anything but a fish, when you show reptiles with or without feathers is something other than reptiles, then yes. Till then these examples are just variations within species or animal type, that is not evolution, just adaption.
I consider that this theory may have more to it. But until evident is shown, it is just baseless flimflam of an exotic belief system. Just like global warming.
Tom, there is no way you can reconcile the two belief systems. They are mutually exclusive. There was no death, illness, or misfortune on Earth prior to the Fall. Therefore, acceptance of evolution is rejection of the very foundation of the Word. If evolution were possible, then the entire Word would be a fraudulent composition of men, which would mean that faith in God, and service to Him, would be impossible.
I see no reason that the two can not coexist. The theory of evolution has (IMO) a lot of merit but most versions have a flaw (from human hubristic over-reach). Life does ‘evolve’ in the sense that any animal, plant, microbe, etc., will change in order to adapt to the changing environment. Change or die and some other life will take over that niche. The stretch in the theory is saying something like “all land animals (and all sea mammals) came from some prehistoric lung fish.” Unbelievable and obvious bunk, and has no merit in science.
You just said, “change or die”, which means you do not accept that there was no death. This is tantamount to saying there was no Fall, and thus no need for redemption, no need for a Gospel. You “reconciled” the two systems by changing one of them, and then saying you see no contradiction. The statement of seeing no contradiction is trivial, because the change was made for the express purpose of trying to bring the historical record into alignment with evolution. If the Word is of God, it cannot be changed. If it is not of God, then it has zero credibility and must not be relied upon in the pursuit of knowledge.
Evolution, therefore, seems irrational for a reason: it is not simply an honest scientific attempt to describe reality, but a polemic tool deliberately devised to attack and take down people’s faith in the divine inspiration of the Word.
RTF
Oh dear, I seems I have irritated both sides of the house today.
“You just said, “change or die”, which means you do not accept that there was no death. ”
Of course I do not. The species must change or die (as in become extinct, die-out, have no more progeny, become history, is no more!) when the environment changes. This my friend is evidentially provable as it adaptions from surviving mutation have happened.
As far as I can see this statement does not invalidate any part of your religious belief. I “reconciled” the two ideas because the evolutionary one has a gross overstatement in it. Removing it does (IMO) reconcile the situation, and adds some scientific rigor to the process.
As for ” faith in the divine inspiration of the Word.” I sincerely wish I had your certainty, your utter belief. You are so lucky, I muddle through as best I can, trying my best, using the Bible as a guide.
Your comment explains how you ended up at the position you currently occupy: you started out without assuming that the Word is true. If you want to know whether it’s true, step one is to assume for the sake of argument that it is, and then say, What would this mean? What would that mean? If the Word passes these tests, give it more tests. But you have to be willing in advance to admit that the entire Scripture could be true. Otherwise, you will not conduct a fair test, and the Scripture will give the appearance of failing. Anyone, no matter how well prepared, can fail a test if the test is rigged against them. Ockham’s razor doesn’t apply here, because the simplest thing for God to have done would have been to never create anything in the first place.
Also, if you don’t believe that the Word is of God, then why on Earth would you even want to reconcile it with anything??
Because I want to believe.
I’m trying to understand what you’re saying. It sounds like you’re saying that in your view, belief in Scripture or God is impossible without there being some kind of evolution in which man is descended from animals, and the Earth is millions of years old. Have I adequately characterized your thoughts?
I loath WordPress! I apologize for this late reply, this is my forth attempt grrrragh!
I know that within the animal kingdom, animals can adapt to best suit the local circumstances. From that, different variations within an animal group can arise. In this Darwin is quite correct (Darwin’s finch studies). As with all science though, there are no absolutes, and we human’s have probably mis-attributed some animals to incorrect groups.
Human too show different human types that are adaptions to different local conditions; dark or light skinned, milk tolerance, alcohol tolerance, lung capacity in mountainous areas, etc. These are all evolutionary adaptations for humans. Human’s have not changed to or from a different animal type. All are still humans.
Are ideas that humans are some kind of evolved ape is an over-stretch in evolutionary theory? In this, is Darwin pushing his model too far, extrapolating from the real – his studies on the voyages and in the Galapagos Islands – to the otherworldliness of human from apes?
Consider that nowhere is there evidence showing one animal species morphing to a different animal type. Fish to a different closely related fish – yes; ducks to a different related duck – yes; humans from apes – not possible for the same reason there are no duck to eagle changes, or eels to sharks, it is over-reach, a stretch too far. Humans have evolved as a variant range of humans, just as apes are, and were, apes.
I also see no reason not to believe the age of this planet to be millions if not billions of years old. I see no reason not to believe that dinosaurs existed, or that they survived for a very long period of time. As humans, we were not there at the time, we can never know the true conditions then.
And yet, I see in a comment right below this subthread that you wrote:
I don’t know about no evidence, but a careful examination shows that the evidence proffered is misleading us to a false conclusion. So no credible evidence.
But now, I am baffled as to what your view is of scriptural history. You say you “want to believe” it, and that’s why you would want to “reconcile” it with evolution. But your belief about evolution seems to be that it is limited to intraspecies adaptations. Obviously, then, there is no other way for species to form than through being created from nothing as a fully formed organism. What is it about the Scriptural account of the origin of species that seems wrong to you? Or have I totally misunderstood what you meant by “reconcile”?
RTF
Looks like we cross-posted. You answered most of my questions, for which I thank you. The only other thing I’m still wondering about is why you think the Biblical account of creation is compatible with your view of the Earth’s age.
“You are not satisfied by fish with lungs, nor reptiles with feathers.”
My my, so individually created things are seen as being intermediates. Not an uncommon fallacy, but, when all you have is your BELIEF in no God or Designer you have to believe in fantasy.
Basically y’all are so insecure that the idea of superior something that could have designed you and could come back and JUDGE you on what you have done with their gifts scares the heck out of you.
Repeating parts of a very suspect web page that just says evolution is fact does not make it so. Where is your evidence? I am a skeptic, and I wish to see evidence, physical proof for these baseless claims. Can you show how humans evolved from a fish or bateria or anything else? No as there is no evidence.
Gamecock
quoting S.J. Gould does not make it so.
Reply to
Toppelton Geardom says:
October 18, 2014 at 11:51 am
You evolutionary theory is just that. There is no proof that –
“Species are related via common descent from one or a few common ancestors;
Natural selection is a significant factor affecting how species change.
Many other facts are explained by the theory of evolution as well. ”
as your beloved website aserts.
Just because this website says it is fact does not make it so. Show me were I can see all these common ancestors and all the link to all the animals, plants and micro that are live today.
Additionally you seem to believe this website when there is no evidential proof.
It is as I said just yours and other belief, nothing more.
Entropy is term used to describe energy states in a thermodynamic system. “Thermo-“ for heat. It’s not “Order-o-dynamics” or “Complexi-o-dyamics.” The term Entropy has been hijacked, mis-interpreted, mis-defined to lend a false impression of science in support of the multiple bogus arguments of intelligent design and creation science. I believe the interpretation goes something like this.
The order/disorder concept of entropy is that natural systems tend to become more disordered/chaotic, i.e. decay from order to disorder. Therefore when life forms become more complex/ordered/less chaotic that is opposite entropy and requires the intervention of some force/hand/designer.
However, entropy states that the heat/energy level of a system will tend to move from a higher energy level/more chaotic/disordered state to a lower energy level/less chaotic/more orderly state and opposite the intelligent design interpretation.
I enjoyed Neumann’s observation about entropy. See the link for context.
“My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it ‘information’, but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it ‘uncertainty’. When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, ‘You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, nobody knows what entropy really is (Well, I do!), so in a debate you will always have the advantage.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_entropy#Popular_use
Another excellent link.
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/thermo.htm
“However, entropy states that the heat/energy level of a system will tend to move from a higher energy level/more chaotic/disordered state to a lower energy level/less chaotic/more orderly state and opposite the intelligent design interpretation.”
Life does not take the higher level energy, it takes the low level and corrals it, concentrating it to a new more useful versions. This is the true wonder of life and it is in a real sense anti-entropic.
You can squirm and argue all you like but just think of all those niche places life is, all of them are very low energy level areas. Every living thing there will concentrate the meager resources of that locality in to high values, at least during this planet’s time.
And there is the point. This anti-entropic process here, can and will last only as long as life on this planet. It has only a finite time of existance. Till then enjoy the way a leaf, or a bird, any living thing fights and succeeds again universal decay.
A religion of happy accidents! Now there is a church for optimistic insurance salesmen.
😆
But won’t some sue even then?
Won’t they sue when through a series of lucky genetic accidents their newborns’ lungs start taking CO2 out of the air and their bodies excrete carbon logs for sequestration, saving life on Earth, mankind and beachfront properties from certain doom?
Won’t they sue, if not for damages, for carbon credits at least?
Global warming is the second biggest scientific fraud ever perpetrated on the ignorant masses.
I would be curious what you might think the biggest scientific fraud was/is?
I found the following website to be an excellent resource.
http://scienceagainstevolution.info/topics.htm
At this site, “Do-While-Jones” does for evolution, what this website
does for global-warming.
tom0mason says:
October 18, 2014 at 1:13 pm
When you provide evidence that fish with lungs can be anything but a fish, when you show reptiles with or without feathers is something other than reptiles, then yes.
========================
Footed, lunged fish to salamander is a behavioral change, not a genetic change. The footed, lunged fish simply chooses to stay out of the water until it is time to lay eggs.
Keeled, hollow-boned, feathered dinosaurs are birds. Birds are not “dinosaur-like,” they are dinosaurs.
“Footed, lunged fish to salamander is a behavioral change, not a genetic change. The footed, lunged fish simply chooses to stay out of the water until it is time to lay eggs.”
And your scientifically verified evidence is……………
Ooops I don’t see any.
“Keeled, hollow-boned, feathered dinosaurs are birds. Birds are not “dinosaur-like,” they are dinosaurs.”
see above!
So your lunged fish and your salamanda have exactly the same DNA?
No I didn’t think so.
“…The footed, lunged fish simply chooses to stay out of the water…” so your science assigns traits of human-like conscientiousness and decision making to this, err, fish.
Are you sure it did not speak too, or write its intentions?
“Keeled, hollow-boned, feathered dinosaurs are birds. Birds are not “dinosaur-like,” they are dinosaurs.”
Yes modern science, cocksure knowledge of unverified non-facts and wild assertions.
stevengoddard says:
October 18, 2014 at 12:42 pm
Anyone who believes this all happened accidentally is not using their brain. At all. Not one cell of it.
============================
I brush aside your ad hominem in search of common ground.
I believe that 70 million years ago, there were no Triceratops. I believe 68 million years ago, there were Triceratops. I believe that 60 million years ago, there were no Triceratops.
Where am I going wrong? You do believe there was a 70 million years ago, don’t you?
You have misunderstood, anyone who believes this all happened accidentally is not using their brain. At all. Not one cell of it.
Do you get it now?
I believe we know far less about ANYTHING more than 50,000 years ago than Mikey Mann knows about temperature in the MWP. Evolution, and the 4.3 billion year old earth idea, started with one or more wild guesses. And then those wild guesses were built on with more wild guesses and pure speculation. The net result being a ridiculously unlikely fantasy, unless you have absolute faith in Darwin. I don’t have enough faith to believe in a 4.3 billion year string of chances.
Here’s my problem with you ankle biters: you reject evolution for spurious reasons, but offer up no other explanation for the diversity of life on earth. Some of you recognize an old earth. Others seem not to recognize anything, other than you don’t like evolution.
Time for you guys to share your beliefs on the diversity of life. Try not to use the mysterious or incredible or supernatural in your explanations.
The concept that life is an accident is absolutely absurd.
You are trolling now. What is your explanation of the diversity of life on earth?
I have brown eyes. My brother has blue eyes. Accident, or Hand of God?
Note that most organisms contain within the seed of change.
Not sure if that was intended for me, but I’d be happy to give my answer to it. We are not discussing how color changes in a pre-existing eye. We are discussing, e.g., how eyes, including their color display, arose in the first place.
Would you agree that if God exists, it would be unbelievable for Him not to be involved in the creation of new kinds of life?
God could involve himself, or not. As a human, I have no idea of God, as an ant has no idea of me.
All right. An ant may be aware of you, if you interact with it, but yet not really understand what motivates you to do what you do. But if God exists, what possible reason could He have for not creating any life, after He has created the universe? Especially if He’s going let it tool around for 13 billion years?
Not that I am an ‘ankle biter’, but I feel that I can throw in my POV as well, since we are all coming from different angles (maybe that makes me an ‘angle biter’). The theory of evolution does not challenge my belief in a higher being, and I carry no ‘dislike’ for theories. It is very simple for a logical mind, the theory of evolution is just that, a theory. And the only people I find who cannot accept this, are those zealots who hate religion.
I debunk your only a theory dodge at October 18, 2014 at 11:41 am.
What is your explanation of the diversity of life on earth?
“The theory of evolution does not challenge my belief in a higher being, and I carry no ‘dislike’ for theories.”
I don’t disagree. Evolution could have occurred with a Guiding Hand, as I think Richard T. Fowler hints. I don’t see The Guiding Hand as necessary, but I can’t refute it, either.
Evolution is only a theory. Get over it. There is no ‘change of kind’.
You sound like a Gorebot.
The evidence for Darwinian evolution makes less sense than the evidence for CAGW.
“There is no ‘change of kind’.”
Feet on fish works fine for me.
A fish with ‘feet’ is still a fish.
Gator, we had this conversation a year or two ago. I gave you the example of Helacyton gartleri. Your refusal to accept it as a “change of kind” means you have your own private definition of “kind.”
Was it a ‘fish’ or a ‘football player’?Your refusal to call a fish a fish is your own individualistic problem.
Define “kind.”
You can substitute ‘species’ for ‘kind’.
Now who cannot answer the question? Is it a fish or a football player?
Every now and then it is beneficial to re-read the original post and what it actually says, and just as importantly, what it doesn’t say.
Do they not see how Allah begins the Creation, then repeats it? That is easy for Allah
To the good little Darwinists here, I propose the following thought experiment. Suppose that you are able to travel the known universe at will, moving across trillions of light years in the blink of an eye. And within the universe let’s says there is actually a googleplex (a google to the power of a google) of earth like planets revolving around sun like stars, and you are able to watch all of them continuously for a googleplex of years.
As you watch all these planets for all these years, observing the effects of solar energy, gravity, wind, water, gases, volcanic activity, magnetism, comet impacts, tremors, etc., etc. etc., what do you suppose the odds are that you will see a Stonehenge structure formed by chance??? The original Stonehenge of course, with all the stones nicely shaped and squared off, all of the horizontal top stones resting in order on the vertical “leg” stones, in a neat circle (roughly) with no damage, etc. What do you suppose the odds are of that simple structure being formed by natural forces somewhere on that googleplex of planets in a googleplex of years??? How about zero?
Maybe you’re a hard core believer though, so ponder the great pyramids at Giza with all their cut stones and internal chambers? Zero chance. How about a steel I beam somewhere, even just 10 feet long?? Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Now ponder just how much more complex even a single celled organism is than any of those? And now we’ve got that same set of forces above acting on our theoretical chemical blobs in all the oceans. If you’re going to tell me you’re perfectly convinced that the complex miracle of DNA developed out of that blob by chance, you’re delusional if you’re claiming that’s not a huge leap of faith.
There is room for both the science and spirituality in my mind and soul. I cannot fathom how a person can look up at the heavens on a clear night and not wonder at it all and still believe there is not a creator. How a person that delivers an infant or sees the delivery of one and witnesses the miracle of life coming into the world can think that it all came from nothing more than pure chance in a totally chaotic universe. The very idea that the essential elements that make our existence possible came from star stuff projected across the vast spaces by the explosive action of dieing stars in one of the most destructive forces we have ever observed indicates to me that we inhabit a system so vast and complex that it is unthinkable to me that it all came about from chaos. I am not mocking or challenging those that do not believe here. Just stating as best I can in as brief as manner as I can, why I believe.
On another thread Steve commented that he had camped out doors in -20 f weather. To live out doors in a wilderness in those conditions when the snow is piled high is a magical thing. The stark beauty of it all. The almost eerie silence because all sounds are muffled and yet one senses are at their height. They have to be because when your moving and living in those conditions every move is planned. Every simple act is thought over because it has to be. It focuses the mind and thus heightens the senses like few other things can. It is at times like that I have been closest to my creator.
I see there are some believers here that also adhere to science… good news. Who is to say evolution is not his way?
So many high-minded university academics that have so little problem grasping onto the thought and believing in higher dimensions in the string theory yet cannot see the angels that exist in dimensions six through eight ??
I have never had a problem with both my faith and my fascination with science which is just our organized and yet feeble knowledge of why the universe is even here, why we are even here. We as humans can now investigate into some sixty magnitudes of scale of matter but who is to say some ‘entity’ has not mastered them all, the dimensions above our senses all if they exist, and has a hand on why we are here as intelligent self-aware beings? Who knows, but I personally have even left open the possibility the our Lord could be some collective presenting themselves to us as a singular word ‘God’ along with the angels and if that is true would not you bow to them as supreme? In at least the Word it says his influence is removed during this period of time from this world but will return and is Satan who has dominance our own arrogant knowledge and the temptation to use that knowledge and deception to claim power over others though commanded not to do so? I see no reason not to believe, I accepted Christ and my insignificance in this universe long ago, there are so many truths if someone will only read and get the constant theme flowing all of the way through the Word. It is as fascinating or more so to me than the science i follow.
I have to keep foremost in my mind that as we delve down the Mandelbrot-like fractal filaments of knowledge there are always an infinite number of layers further below with which we are not yet even aware.