DescentBB

Sergeant Thorne wrote:

callmeslick wrote:the entire distinction between 'historical' or 'observational' science is ludicrous. ALL science is observational and experimental by definition. History is just that, history. What the hell does 'historical science' really mean to a scientist? To this trained scientist, those words have no real meaning.

I would say historical science is simply any branch of science when used to attempt to determine the way things were at some point in the past. [/counter argument]

well, that is your definition, but no scientist I've ever heard of makes that distinction as somehow separate from the body of science as a whole.

flip wrote:Only 2 to go with Slick. On the rock, where everything built there will fall to pieces, or under the rock, crushed and not going anywhere.

or, in a comfy,small boat, sailing around the rock, drink in hand. Works for me, at least.

that 'prophet test' above is implicitly bogus, or as the old saying has it, 'hindsight is 20/20'. That sort of thinking gets folks to give creedence to Nostradamus, and others.

I think that if you can get 40 different people, who never read each other's works, and lived over a thousand years apart to completely agree is the real feat. It points towards a common source of inspiration.

....or, a shared, oral history, Flip. My explanation reflects the reality of the times, and a study of history of the region will show you how much of Egyptian oral history and theology morphed into Judaic religion, right up to many details around Jesus.

callmeslick wrote:that 'prophet test' above is implicitly bogus, or as the old saying has it, 'hindsight is 20/20'. That sort of thinking gets folks to give creedence to Nostradamus, and others.

You need to come up with the tests *before* the events predicted happened. Nostradamus was so vague so as to make this impossible, so people try to fit Nostradamus to the events after the fact, which is not scientific at all. But if I claimed to be a prophet and if I gave you the places and times that hurricanes would hit large cities in the next five years, then you would easily be able to test my claim that I were a prophet.

I've heard that argument before but the truth is, if the Genesis account is true, of course it would be common among all cultures. Just distorted over time. Slick, I started reading the Bible when I was 6. I didn't have anyone else to indoctrinate me and I never strayed outside of its pages. It's true there has been tampering, with the New Testament, but if you never stray from it, you will find them and mainly has obscured the person of Jesus Christ. Yet my faith is also based on sight, so nothing anyone could say would convince me otherwise. That's about 37 years of sole Bible study, fortified with much historical and scientific exploration, not trying to prove anything to anyone but myself. Me and my still, small voice are in perfect agreement.

Jeff250 wrote:

callmeslick wrote:that 'prophet test' above is implicitly bogus, or as the old saying has it, 'hindsight is 20/20'. That sort of thinking gets folks to give creedence to Nostradamus, and others.

You need to come up with the tests *before* the events predicted happened. Nostradamus was so vague so as to make this impossible, so people try to fit Nostradamus to the events after the fact, which is not scientific at all. But if I claimed to be a prophet and if I gave you the places and times that hurricanes would hit large cities in the next five years, then you would easily be able to test my claim that I were a prophet.

OK with that, Jeff.....it's just that most folks try to fit the events back to the predictions/prophecies, and Biblical believers are ESPECIALLY prone to this.

I agree. I think we should be very suspicious as to why most claims of the supernatural aren't easily testable. It's not some magical weakness of the scientific method that it can't be used to test supernatural claims, as we can imagine all kinds of scenarios where it could test such claims. It's just that the supernatural claims that people do make, especially the ones that persist over time, aren't easily testable ones. And that makes me very suspicious of them.

We all know that a one paragraph comment can launch a multi-page topic around here. What I propose that we try to follow a more disciplined format for the sake of the topic, in order to go further with less time involved, and less distraction.

I want to make sure my suggested format is clear, so to reiterate/clarify: a reply should only be one of 4 things--1) Argument introduction, 2) Counter-argument, 3) Agreement, 4) Ending an argument. Try not to introduce a new argument unofficially in making a counter-argument--arguments or counter-arguments should stand on their own. Ending an argument can be a conclusion, or bowing out--state your reason.

flip wrote:I've heard that argument before but the truth is, if the Genesis account is true, of course it would be common among all cultures.

bogus logic. It would just reflect the common ignorance of older cultures. The Genesis account is so verifiably far from factual it isn't funny.

....my faith is also based on sight, so nothing anyone could say would convince me otherwise. That's about 37 years of sole Bible study, fortified with much historical and scientific exploration, not trying to prove anything to anyone but myself. Me and my still, small voice are in perfect agreement.

that conviction that nothing(including cold, hard FACTS) can change one's mind is the exact closemindedness that makes religion antithetical to science, in practice. I am not of the feeling that the two should be in such a relationship, but closed minds seal the deal.

Sergeant Thorne wrote:We all know that a one paragraph comment can launch a multi-page topic around here. What I propose that we try to follow a more disciplined format for the sake of the topic, in order to go further with less time involved, and less distraction.

I want to make sure my suggested format is clear, so to reiterate/clarify: a reply should only be one of 4 things--1) Argument introduction, 2) Counter-argument, 3) Agreement, 4) Ending an argument. Try not to introduce a new argument unofficially in making a counter-argument--arguments or counter-arguments should stand on their own. Ending an argument can be a conclusion, or bowing out--state your reason.

you new to Interweb forum discussions?

The Genesis account is a condensed account with a lot of truth in it . Let me tell you a little story too about asking for signs and miracles before one has faith, in contrast to one having evidential faith. I believe only God can tell the ending from the beginning. Especially in dreams, which always seem to come true, but about 2 years ago, there was this huge storm coming. The sky was completely overcast and the front was only a few miles away. Well, since from the time I was a kid I've had this inner voice, which we all do, but I also had a spirit of Sonship to go along with it. I walked out on porch, looked up to heaven and asked God to protect me and my family. As 'soon' as I did, the sky opened up a blue sky circle right above my head, opening up from the center. Well, anyone here that knows me knows just how excited I would get Got excited and called my wife. "Look!,See!" Well, I have strong suspicions that wasn't God at all now, and I seriously doubt the dogfood too . God is the only one that can tell the ending from the beginning, there is none like Him. You guys better watch out, because you are prime targets, me? I don't believe anything I see from now on.

flip wrote:The Genesis account is a condensed account with a lot of truth in it .

examples, please?


lovely, but completely irrelevant, story, in terms of the discussion at hand. Well, I suppose one could say your little tale and explanation thereof further shows that science and religious belief are completely separate.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/82483 ... nteractive

Looks like an ant mound to me.

Top Gun wrote:

Sergeant Thorne wrote:The past is not directly observable, so I would say there is a very straightforward reason the scientific method becomes less useful. You can't test history, you can only test the present and make calculated guesses using assumptions of linearity.[/counter argument]

We can directly observe evidence from the past (e.g. almost the entire fields of both geology and astronomy), so why should we not be able to test it? Data one gathers from a rock layer that's millions of years old is no different than data one gathered in the lab yesterday.

What you can directly observe is data one, which as you say is no different from a rock layer than from in the lab. Knowledge of the past is a requirement to infer evidence of the past.[/counter argument]

Top Gun wrote:

Sergeant Thorne wrote:If science doesn't, and I'm pretty sure it does (how does one test something that is not natural?), the majority of people involved in science are certainly predisposed or even beholden to naturalistic hypotheses.

The only thing the scientific method concerns itself with is if a given hypothesis is testable and falsifiable..if it's not, then by definition it's not a scientific question. The easiest example would be the existence of God: there's no experiment you could design to prove or disprove it, so from a scientific standpoint the question doesn't really matter either way.

I argue that this is an assumption on your part, and you can only say that because disproving the existence of God scientifically is nowhere in sight... in science that means what?

The existence of God is logically and scientifically testable, you just can't put him in a test-tube and have it turn pink if it's God--it's a much harder problem to approach.[/counter argument]

Slick, honestly, someone like you wouldn't believe if somebody came back from the dead. It is only for the true seekers, and those are very few these days I think.

[youtube]aBQalkIeE7s[/youtube]

flip wrote:Slick, honestly, someone like you wouldn't believe if somebody came back from the dead.

nah, you're wrong. I work on facts, and if the facts around that one were provable and verifiable, I'd definitely pay attention. A bit of dodge on your part.
I asked for examples of where Genesis is in any way accurate, you come back with, "you would believe anyway". And, to return to the original topic, this was the level of debate skill that Ken Ham brought to the table.

Well, I've done it many times in the past and always seems to fall on deaf ears. Plus, my wife had an severe asthma attack last night so I'm a little pre-occupied. Maybe I'll bother later but I seriously doubt it would be anything but a waste of time. I'll make a bargain with you. You read it first then share your insights first.

flip wrote:Well, I've done it many times in the past and always seems to fall on deaf ears. Plus, my wife had an severe asthma attack last night so I'm a little pre-occupied.

FAR more important. Understood.

Maybe I'll bother later but I seriously doubt it would be anything but a waste of time. I'll make a bargain with you. You read it first then share your insights first.

what? Genesis? Done so, many times.

Evolution says man was made from the dirt.

Genesis says man was made from the dirt.

Science says man reached a point of enlightenment.

Genesis says man ate at the tree of knowledge.

Not really trying to make the point that Genesis is literally correct, but I am amazed at the insight.

Just a quick drive-by post, because I'm tired, but it also says Let there be Light, and everything is made of light, and it says that everyone descended from 2 individuals, and we did. Of course, some people like to take each day as literal human time, and I guess they had an excuse many years ago, but a day to the Lord is as a thousand years. We measure a day as one revolution of the Earth, a year as one revolution around the Sun, yet it takes around 225 million years for the sun to travel one revolution around the center of our Galaxy. Maybe one day to the Lord could be as large as one revolution of the Universe.

flip wrote:Just a quick drive-by post, because I'm tired, but it also says Let there be Light, and everything is made of light, and it says that everyone descended from 2 individuals, and we did. Of course, some people like to take each day as literal human time, and I guess they had an excuse many years ago, but a day to the Lord is as a thousand years. We measure a day as one revolution of the Earth, a year as one revolution around the Sun, yet it takes around 225 million years for the sun to travel one revolution around the center of our Galaxy. Maybe one day to the Lord could be as large as one revolution of the Universe.

Genesis 1 wrote:5 ... And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Do you know what happened on the 4th day? Also this gives you a minimum of 550 million years between the creation of plants and the creation of creeping things (insects) to pollinate them. Of course plants may have been very different during this time anyway, because apparently they thrived for 225 million years without the sun! [/counter argument]

Thorne, considering the atomic nature of everything, it could have been 7 literal days with an all powerful God, although I think that's against His nature. He seems more like a farmer to me than a magician. The point I'm trying to make is it is said by Paul that to the Lord a day is as a thousand years and Jesus said it is not for us to know times or dates that the Father has kept those under His own authority. So, no matter what your personal belief and interpretation, you must take the whole of scripture to interpret itself. Not to mention that science makes a much more compelling argument as far as dates go. There are a lot of things that back then were completely of faith, that science has helped confirm. I believe God to be very clever and likes to hide things for people to seek out. I mean even Paul said that by faith we believe everything that is visible was made from the invisible. That's no longer believed by faith, it's a fact.

EDIT: Also, I don't have the time to search out the details yet, but I'm sure I could, but just to give an idea of where I would look. Plants do not need oxygen to live, they produce oxygen after taking in carbon dioxide. I believe the atmosphere has changed several times over the course of history. As soon as the environment was conducive, bam, Cambrian Explosion, so I think that everytime the atmosphere changed, that same basis of life came back after it's own kind, but just like if you go into space, dormant genes are activated, so the same way with changing environments.

Sergeant Thorne wrote:What you can directly observe is data one, which as you say is no different from a rock layer than from in the lab. Knowledge of the past is a requirement to infer evidence of the past.[/counter argument]

1) A good scientific theory is one that has great predictive power.
2) The theory of evolution successfully makes risky predictions.

Which are you denying?

Sure, as things get further in the past, they get more difficult to study, but that just makes the fact that the theory of evolution is so great at predicting things all the more impressive. The theory being about the past can't take back the fact that it's so great at making predictions. Why should we stop using the theory even though it's been so successful for us?

Spidey wrote:Evolution says man was made from the dirt.

no it doesn't. First off, you are(as so many do) confusing Evolution(a proven fact) with Origin of Species(still a theory). Neither suggests man came from anything other than precedent hominids. Further, the latter does not suggest 'life' came from dirt whatsoever.

Science says man reached a point of enlightenment.

science makes no such claims, and in fact such claims have NOTHING to do with science. Further, a glance through this thread will disprove any such claim.

flip wrote:Thorne, considering the atomic nature of everything, it could have been 7 literal days with an all powerful God, although I think that's against His nature. He seems more like a farmer to me than a magician. The point I'm trying to make is it is said by Paul that to the Lord a day is as a thousand years and Jesus said it is not for us to know times or dates that the Father has kept those under His own authority. So, no matter what your personal belief and interpretation, you must take the whole of scripture to interpret itself. Not to mention that science makes a much more compelling argument as far as dates go. There are a lot of things that back then were completely of faith, that science has helped confirm. I believe God to be very clever and likes to hide things for people to seek out. I mean even Paul said that by faith we believe everything that is visible was made from the invisible. That's no longer believed by faith, it's a fact.

EDIT: Also, I don't have the time to search out the details yet, but I'm sure I could, but just to give an idea of where I would look. Plants do not need oxygen to live, they produce oxygen after taking in carbon dioxide. I believe the atmosphere has changed several times over the course of history. As soon as the environment was conducive, bam, Cambrian Explosion, so I think that everytime the atmosphere changed, that same basis of life came back after it's own kind, but just like if you go into space, dormant genes are activated, so the same way with changing environments.

Flip, you're an inquisitive person--why don't you check out some of the material Ken Ham's ministry has on the subject. I'll PM you the first video I watched from Answers in Genesis, and you can check that out if you want to. I just want to point out that 1000 years doesn't do anything for the argument, and that it's never used in any other part of the Bible to change times. Seeing that it is so plainly stated in Genesis 1, I don't see why we should accept it as something that the Father has kept under his own authority.

but, Thorne, it CLEARLY isn't true. The fossil record not only proves that on it's merits alone, but everything else around the science of geology concurs. Why cling to some idea that is proven to be wrong? I'm all for faith, but only insofar as it's faith in something real and truthful. A strict, 8,000 year old earth interpretaton of Genesis is simply false.

Thorne, I appreciate it but I'm not interested in Ham's assessment. When I said I don't stray from the word, it was absolute.

Slick, I know that saying people are made of dirt, it overly simplified, but true to the very core. Just like a tomato is just dirt chemically rearranged.

A tomato is made more out of air and water then dirt.

And taste a lot better than dirt too!

I admit to taking poetic license…dirt in this case means inanimate substance, because any dummy knows humans are “ugly bags of mostly water”.

And no I don’t confuse evolution with the origin of species, again I was taking license and using “man” to represent life in general.

So you have to ask the question…did “evolution” start with the beginning of life, or is it a process that was at work from the very beginning of time. (which I tend to lean towards)

So if you can dispute that the beginning of life on this planet was an evolutionary process…then fine, I would concede that…but you can’t.

And I just got finished watching a “science” program on the very subject of how man became a modern thinking animal. (enlightenment) Sorry was that the wrong word?

All this work, because some tool has to split hairs…boring…

flip wrote:And taste a lot better than dirt too!

unless you get those California tomatoes in winter time....yechhhh!

callmeslick wrote:

Spidey wrote:Evolution says man was made from the dirt.

no it doesn't. First off, you are(as so many do) confusing Evolution(a proven fact) with Origin of Species(still a theory). Neither suggests man came from anything other than precedent hominids. Further, the latter does not suggest 'life' came from dirt whatsoever.

Unless you think Hominids didn't evolve from something prior, I suggest you look at how much life was on planet earth when it was formed.

I think all I and Spidey are saying is that man, as everything else on this Earth, is made up of the same trace elements and minerals that is in the Earth. I do not believe that man evolved as the animals did, but he was formed from the same substances. That is all we were saying.

flip wrote:I think all I and Spidey are saying is that man, as everything else on this Earth, is made up of the same trace elements and minerals that is in the Earth. I do not believe that man evolved as the animals did, but he was formed from the same substances. That is all we were saying.

and there is NO evidence to back up your belief. There IS evidence, especially as we learn more about the genetic code, to clearly see that man is evolved from other types of animals, among them birds and reptiles. More accurately, man shares evolutionary paths with birds and reptiles.

I doubt very much cogency of Darwinian evolution , by the way . I'm 99.999 % that the person could not become a man of chimpanzees and the more of an amoeba , without the intervention of our Creator . I note , not God created human rulers to control weight , and the true Creator who created all animate and inanimate objects in the world and the conditions for the existence of life on Earth. See how competently organized balance of our solar system. I do not believe that can arise from Fiat Ferrari only in the process of evolution. For such a transformation is necessary intervention mind that created Fiat to make him a Ferrari . So I have no doubt that the transformation of ape to man could only do our Creator , the Supreme Mind .
I do not understand how adults know that Santa Claus does not and can not be, but believe in God.
My faith in God sewn into our consciousness creator, our psyche , along with the release of enzymes in the body in extremely difficult situations for the human mind in moments of emotional surge , such as a great joy or life-threatening. Man - it Creator, as people grow wheat for their food if very simplistic to say . And in general, read the writings of Tsiolkovsky as anything at your leisure for a change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky

Well Slick, you must find those 223 missing genes first, or at least a direct link. Both of which I venture you will not

sorry, Sigma, but there is ZERO scientific proof to back up your opinions, there. Sorry, but it IS very clear that man evolved from lower primates, and that those primates developed aspects from their physiology from the same processes that gave rise to birds, and reptiles. Is there incontrovertable evidence of the early stages of unicellular life and it's origins? No, but give science time, and there might well be. As for the proof of a 'creator', that will be harder to come up with. Human belief systems are great, comforting to some and make for a lot of time-savings as real answers beyond 'it was the doing of God' take a lot of work to determine. But, they are what they are: belief systems, not facts. Nothing will change about that.

Oh, and Flip, you have to give science time, as I said to Sigma. Merely because something hasn't been found, doesn't mean it can't be explained, or that proof won't be found. I'll put my money on evolutionary origin of species, because the alternative makes no sense whatsoever.

I didn't say they havn't been found, I said you won't find them.