DescentBB

Ford Prefect wrote:Still in all it looks pretty random to me as to who suffers the most and who gets to have a "happily ever after" life.

Yes it does. It was Mankind who rejected God, not God who rejected us. We are the living result of that bad decision. Death and suffering is all this life has to offer in the end. "Everything is vanity and a striving after wind," said King Solomon. People die, suffer illness, crime, starvation, war, all because the original family thought they could do just fine without God around. We were all born into a loosing proposition - no one can win in this world, man has proven his inability to rule himself.
Any attention given to us by God is indeed an undeserved kindness - or mercy, as many call it. And yet, through all the ages of suffering (modern atrocities are tame compared to what some ancient societies did to their own people), God has held out his hand to those who want his help, and who prove they want to live by his standards. All the pain will end one day. "And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, pain and suffering will be no more; the former things will pass away."

Shoku wrote:

Ford Prefect wrote:Still in all it looks pretty random to me as to who suffers the most and who gets to have a "happily ever after" life.

Yes it does. It was Mankind who rejected God, not God who rejected us. We are the living result of that bad decision. Death and suffering is all this life has to offer in the end. "Everything is vanity and a striving after wind," said King Solomon. People die, suffer illness, crime, starvation, war, all because the original family thought they could do just fine without God around. We were all born into a loosing proposition - no one can win in this world, man has proven his inability to rule himself.
Any attention given to us by God is indeed an undeserved kindness - or mercy, as many call it. And yet, through all the ages of suffering (modern atrocities are tame compared to what some ancient societies did to their own people), God has held out his hand to those who want his help, and who prove they want to live by his standards. All the pain will end one day. "And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, pain and suffering will be no more; the former things will pass away."

"It was mankind who rejected god"
So god is getting even.....talk about holding a grudge. What about the poor little girl he just mentioned. Why should she have to suffer because of some rule that was broken a long time ago.
If your god, assuming it exists, is playing a warped minded game for his own sadistic pleasure, then I wish he was dead. I don't want him in my life, and I've rejected him years ago. He isn't good enough to speak for me.
And if I die tommorrow from lightning, it will be because of luck....not him.

Bettina

wow, i had bettina pegged all wrong

kurupt wrote:wow, i had bettina pegged all wrong

x 2

/me admires Bettina's critical thinking skillz

Woodchip, I'm afraid that the point of my post didn't come across very well; this is a very difficult subject to really resolve into words. Lothar/Drakona would do a much better job than I. No one can really say why bad things happen to good people; the entire book of Job in the Bible is dedicated to answering that question. Some have said that it's a test of faith. I've seen evidence of this; a family in my parish lost their 3rd-grade daughter to leukemia, and they have kept a very strong faith throughout the ordeal. I'm definitely not saying that the people beheaded in Iraq "deserved" to die because they were "stupid" enough to go there; nothing could be further from the truth. The same applies for tornado victims. What I am saying is what Shoku has mentioned before; the very fact that evil exists in the world has to do with the original sin, with man's natural tendency to turn away from God. If not for this, then Eden would be a reality; there would be no murders, no natural disasters, no death, no sorrow. It is the greatest tragedy in the world that all of this was lost.

Another thing you have to understand is that, to someone who believes in God, the sadness of losing a loved one is tempered by the knowledge that that loved one is in a better place. They are free from the suffering inherent to this world; they are in a state of peace and absolute joy. This is my view of heaven, at least: a place where you can be re-joined with all of your lost loved ones, a state of blessed union with God. Seen in that light, death might not seem so bad.

Edit: Bettina, you're missing the point here. God is not "getting even," as you put it. That little girl suffered because of the evil in the hearts of those horrible men, not because of some sort of "revenge" from God. God is anything but vengeful; He is endlessly forgiving and welcoming. Even after all the times mankind has sinned and turned away from God, God is still there, still willing to accept those who repent. This is, indeed, the whole crux of the life of Christ, according to what Christians believe: by sacrificing himself on the cross, he broke the power of death, and by rising from the dead, he gave eternal life to us all. Death has no more power; it cannot enslave us. Because of Christ's death and resurrection, those who die are able to experience eternal joy, instead of eternal death. As it was said, "For God so loved the world that He sent his only son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life." That is the heart of Christian faith.

Stryker wrote:http://www.stryker2.com/microbiology_report.doc

You don't understand because you have poor teachers, unsound logic, no training, are poorly read and furthermore, you don't understand the theory of evolution.

The point of this rather long discussion is to prove that science can be wrong.

Yes, science can be wrong - but science ALWAYS uncovers mistakes. Your pointless diatribe looking at "science" in 330AD is a waste of words. The "Scientific Method" was not established until well after your quoted examples. Please note: discoveries prior to the Scientific Method were good luck, rather than good management.

Modern scientists have revived the idea of spontaneous generation under a new name: abiogenesis

Name them. Quote the papers. They aren't scientists. Simple. They might be "Creation Scientists" - but that term is a non seqitur, and meaningless.

Life itself seems to agree with the creationistsâ?? beliefs.

Sorry - wrong. YOU seem to agree with them though!

As with all Creation "Science" ideas - the concept of life is lost on those who do not understand the early evolution of life from chemistry. You are trying to say that "LIFE" springs instantly. Whereas, "life" does not. We would be hard-pressed to assign the designation of "Life" to the chemistry which ultimately became life. And there is no clear point as which we would say that chemistry has become life.

As with many things, your black and white views are NOT reflected in the facts. you dont have chemistry and then all of a sudden - BOOM - LIFE! You have countless million of years of complex chemistry forming complex oragnic molecules, being encapsulated by soapy membranes - some of which happen to produce other chemicals which are similar to, or the same as themselves.

The first life must have been photosynthetic (able to gather energy from sunlight), because there was nothing else to get energy from at the time.

TOTALLY FALSE. The world was AWASH with chemical energy, heat energy, and the organic seas were laden with amino acids, and ATP. Get your facts right. Photosynthesis didn't develop until long after the first "life" did.

The rest of your uninformed "report" is as empty and pointless as the initial parts. The conclusions formed are in actual fact "delusions formed" on the back of flakey thinking, inaccurate "facts", crap statistics, unsound knowledge of both biology and evolution, and a determination to prove your theory despite the facts instead of because of them.

Simply put: YOU CAN NEVER PROVE GOD'S EXISTANCE.

Look, there's only two possible alternatives: The world is 4.6 billion years old, and life evolved naturally, OR, God created Earth 10,000 years ago (or whatever number is this week's fav) and made the Earth appear to be 4.6 Billion years old. In this case, God will also have covered ALL his tracks, and EVERYTHING in the universe is designed to be absolutely, and without question to be a natural phenonema.

Remember - if you can prove he exists, God ceases to be a faith, and instead becomes an object of study. In other words, SCIENCE. So - if you want to kill God for good - by all means, prove he exists.

Now, go and read "Christianity Without God" by Lloyd Geering, and learn some biology.

You might benefit from reading Michael Schermer's "Why people believe weird things" too.

/me reads thread. Ops out

DCrazy wrote:

kurupt wrote:wow, i had bettina pegged all wrong

x 2

/me admires Bettina's critical thinking skillz

Geez...I hope I didn't offend you two. I'm not sure how to take your remarks, and I don't want to lose you.

And Lothar and Drakona may well come up with some other explanations, but once I break it down into smaller bits, the answer always comes out unproven.

I believe in Evolution. That's what I'm taught in School, and am shown evidence to back it up.
When I go to religious classes, I see nothing in Creationism except someone's interpretation of someone else's writings. "Thou shalt heed the written word"....noway, and if I challenge them, they frown on you as disrupting the class.

Bettina

i just figured you for a catholic school girl is all

I don't know how evolutionists choose to explain abiogenesis these days. All I do know is that they've been trying for some time to make it feasible, but it really is quite difficult.

I should also point out that the 'age' of the Earth due to radioactive dating has varied a lot more than Biblical creationists' purported age has.

There are also plenty of questions as to whether that 'age' is anywhere NEAR accurate. Radioactive dating assumes basically no interference, which doesn't happen so much in nature.

Hence it's quite easy to defend that the Earth doesn't appear to be 4.6 billion years old. Fossils, strata, tectonic movement... everything can happen quite a lot faster than that.

But yeah, attempts to debunk standard biological theories these days are more often than not unsound themselves, or at least sound for no longer than a dozen years or so.

Attempts to debunk creationist theories are no better, on the other hand.

Disputing the material you're being taught is a problem that isn't unique to such classes... I guarantee if you try telling your Biology teacher that those theories are wrong he'll get pretty incensed as well.

But people will believe what people want to believe.

bet51987 wrote:I'm not attacking anyone. I honor everyone's TRUE beliefs, and never poke fun at anyone for it. I just get annoyed when the "believers" look at the "unbelievers" as being dead wrong. Looking at the world today, the unbelievers are more correct.

No one is attaching you, either. Two mutually exclusive answers cannot be both right. A christian (like myself) would say you're wrong. You just said christians are wrong- then how are you any different than them? The only difference is that you don't vocalize your opinion, because you don't want to be seen as close-minded. At the root of it, though, you're the same as the people who annoy you.

You say you see nothing scientific in creationism, likewise it can be said that there is nothing scientific in extrapolating a micro process to assume that it applies macroscopically. Our origins really come down to nothing more than a matter of belief.

You keep returning to God being evil because He allows evil to occur. Well, that's quite a jump- evaluate it for yourself, is that really the only possible answer? Yes, it might be one, but it isn't necessarily the right one. Realize that if you are going to acknowledge God's existance, you have taken a large step toward acknowledging that the Bible is true, and if this is the case, then your answer reguarding God's nature has been proven wrong.

Basically, you can prove that my beliefs as a christian are based on faith, and that they cannot be proven- but be aware of the fact that you are standing on equally shaky ground.

Mobius wrote:Simply put: YOU CAN NEVER PROVE GOD'S EXISTANCE

And you can never disprove God's existance, so I guess we are standing on equal ground.

So since the science that is used to date objects by their radioactive half life does not work then I guess all those cyclotrons must be myths and the use of mesons in radiotherapy of cancer tumours must be blind luck since the same theory determines the life span of a meson and so the point where it will detonate and destroy the tumour. I suppose we will have to send home all those physicists wasting their time at CERN and TRIUMF and all the rest of those flawed, usless particle beam generators. I suppose the good news is that the bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were myths too since they are based on nuclear science that some church somewhere has declared does not work. That is a relief.


I have another possibility in mind. Perhaps this life contains so much suffering and random luck because it is not the reality we belong in. Perhaps we are here because we have become distracted from our real existence. I am told that in order to understand the reality that relieves us of this suffering we do not require faith but can experience the truth for ourselves. If only I could purge myself of my negative emotions such as hate, envy, anger and encourage my positive emotions such as compassion, then sit quietly, follow my breath and empty my mind of thought then I could understand for myself my true nature and the true nature of the physical world that surrounds me. I would not need "faith" since I could see the reality for myself. I would not need others to tell me what was and wasn't, their words were created in this false reality and cannot describe the true world.

Or maybe not. Who knows.

Bettina: I hope you don't take too much of this discussion as gospel truth. We talk, we push our own opinions, we sometimes belittle the faith of others. Your lack of faith in your fathers religion is not unusual at your age (which I guess to be between 15 and 20 but you don't need to correct me if I am wrong. This is the internet, protect your privacy.) at some point you may come to some kind of understanding with your father's faith and you may come to his faith or find some similar faith of your own as you gain more independence. I'm sure your father loves you and probably feels his faith is your best hope for salvation as he understands it. Don't fall into the trap of thinking the world contains only horror and suffering there are many beautiful things to experience and joy can come from unexpected places if you let it.

Ford Prefect wrote:So since the science that is used to date objects by their radioactive half life does not work then I guess all those cyclotrons must be myths and the use of mesons in radiotherapy of cancer tumours must be blind luck since the same theory determines the life span of a meson and so the point where it will detonate and destroy the tumour. I suppose we will have to send home all those physicists wasting their time at CERN and TRIUMF and all the rest of those flawed, usless particle beam generators. I suppose the good news is that the bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were myths too since they are based on nuclear science that some church somewhere has declared does not work. That is a relief.

That's not what I said.

I know more about radioactivity than most people (and I only mean the general public there), and I know it exists. I know atoms have a nucleus and that in heavy enough elements it can be unstable and eventually decay.

I also agree that if you know the original concentration of a radioactive material and its half-life, and can measure its concentration accurately enough, you can determine how long it's been sitting there.

In a lab.

In real life, you are making a few potentially flaky assumptions. Firstly, you are assuming that no new radioactive material was added or taken away. With other elements decaying to the same derivative isotope, and others decaying into the parent isotope, plus the problem of some of the material being leached away or added to, this doesn't necessarily hold true. Hence why carbon-dating can yield wildly inaccurate results; not everything is predictable.

Dating based on heavier elements is more reliable, but you also have more time in which to screw up the balance. You also have to know what the concentration was in the first place.

So basically, it's just a guide rather than a rule. While this doesn't prove the earth is younger than 4 billion years old, it is one of the reasons it's not as infeasible as it's made out to be to believe that the earth could be younger.

Hmm, this thread's splitting in half a dozen different directions. Let me do a drive-by on a few topics.

To Tricord:
Goodness, I don't know that much cosmology. Most of my experience with the Anthropic Principle has been in a philosophical context. Be that as it may (and flamingly ignorant as this proves me), all the talk about parallel universes strikes me as pretty bogus. There can't really be evidence for that sort of thing, can there?


To Shoku:

A few posts ago (not relevant any more, but this sort of thing interests me), you were arguing that the ancient Jews were polytheistic (at least, for certain values of "theist"). Your logic seemed a bit odd to me. You said that "A 'god' can be anyone who has power or authority over someone else." and then argued that multiple people are called 'gods' in the Bible. Isn't that essentially saying that the ancient Jews believed that there were people in power over others. Hardly remarkable! And hardly warrant for calling a society polythestic. I'm curious, though, if you meant more by the statement. (I ask because I study Biblical interpretation, and it seems to me that interpreting those passages as literal 'gods' and defining 'god' to mean 'anyone with power' is a very odd method of interpretation indeed. Isn't it simpler to just assume the term is a metaphor? Unless, of course, you meant something else entirely.)

In any case, I think it's fairly evident that the way the Jews are portrayed in the Bible is as monotheists--at least, in principle. Sort of the same way that our society is scientifically minded--in principle. Sometimes that's wildly wrong on a popular level...


To MehYam:

You said that what I hear in prayer is most likely myself, and suggested that it comforts me like a teddy bear--not as the result of some supernatural force, but just because I find the thought of prayer comforting. This is hard to respond to shortly because the subject is so big.

It is often the case that when someone has no experience with something, they think it's simple and easy to explain. Creationists often think evolution is simple--a theory that can be fully taught in ten minutes. Atheists often think the Bible is simple--something you can read cover to cover in a week, and understand as much as there is to know. Math is full of theorems that seem utterly simple until you try to prove them. And people who put prayer down to psychology always strike me that way--as explaining in simple terms something they have no real experience with.

I don't think the experience of the Christian can be dismissed so lightly. God changes people. Prayer changes people. Sometimes when I pray, I hear God, and I don't think I'm making it up--he's too big for that. And I've learned things through prayer that have changed my thinking, and changed my life--a lot of times.

I don't mean to defend things too deeply, and I know subjective experiences are things you can't share. But here are three examples that should at least shake you up a bit.

Story #1:

When I was in high school, I participated in a program in my church in which I was matched up with an older woman and we developed a friendship--we were supposed to spend time together, and she was supposed to be sort of a mentor to me. Sandy and I never really did spend much time together--in fact, over the course of the year we were supposed to be spending together, we only had one long conversation.

The night before, I had gone to a friend's birthday party, and found some (mildly) illegal things going on there that I didn't want to be a part of--and worse, my best friend of three years (and sorta kinda boyfriend) was in the thick of it. I was devastated (you know... high school... emotions run high), and stormed out. And then the next day I didn't know what to do. Couldn't talk to my parents, because I was embarrassed about having ended up at the party in the first place, and... you know... boy stuff. And lo and behold, my friend who hadn't spoken to me in four months calls me out of the blue and asks if I need to talk. Surprised, I answer yes, and she commented that she had been praying and had a feeling she should call.

So we went out and talked. And it was helpful--she helped me put things in perspective, and advised me to patch things up with my friend, and basically assured me that the world wasn't falling apart. (Oh, I know, high school drama... give me a break, I was 14 at the time.)

Coincidence that the one day she decides to call me with a feeling we should talk is that one? Meh, I guess. Could be. Seems cool, though, doesn't it?

Story #2:

When my dad was a youth pastor at a church some years ago, the staff had a planning meeting at the pastor's house. My dad rode his motercycle up to the house, only to find that no one was there. Confused, he prayed about it, and heard from God, "Get on your motorcycle and ride a bit." So he did. And as he rode through town he was given directions--turn left here, stop here, and eventually came to a restaurant. He was told "go inside and look around"--and feeling foolish he did. Seeing no one he recognized, he came back outside and was told again, "go inside and look around." He did, and lo and behold, there were the pastors having the meeting.

Was that a coincidence? It was a long shot if it was. Did he make that up or exaggerate or something when he told the story? Possibly. I doubt it.

Story #3:

My pastor Heath told a story once, about how he had been driving, and had some bags of groceries in his car, and on a freeway off-ramp he saw a homeless guy, and God told him to give him the groceries. It actually took three commands before Heath gave in and did it--and the guy was amazed, he'd been praying for God to do something for him. And then when Heath got where he was going, a guy from the church there walks up to him and hands him an envelope full of money, saying "God told me to give you this." Heath told him the story of what had happened on the way, and the guy laughed and said, "Yeah, I figured it was something like that."

To quote some famous guy--I forget who--"Coincidence? Perhaps. But the coincidences happen more often when I pray."

Do I suppose these are proofs that God is out there and gives people direction? Certainly not--these sorts of stories are anecdotal at best, and only one of them was my personal experience (though the other two were people I personally know). And the probabilities of those sorts of things happening by chance aren't really all that low. But still, it should surprise you a bit. That sort of thing happens occasionally--and if it's unusual, it's nothing extraordinary.

People always go nuts over those stories, because they contain an element of the objective--yet the most powerful evidence to me that God is there when I pray isn't objective at all, but subjective. It's who he is. What he says. How he changes me. How he has changed me--who I am today is a totally different person than I was before I truly knew him, and I can even mark the date when I changed.

You think prayer is easily explained by comparing it to a teddy bear? I don't think so. I think most people that say that have never experienced it--have never gone to God honestly looking for him, have never nurtured a relationship with him, have probably never even been very close to someone who has. I don't know. I could be wrong. It's best to be humble about this sort of thing, but honestly... I can't see it.


Interjecting to the whole discussion about creation and evolution:

I have been studying the origins debate very closely over the last couple years, and a funny thing has happened to me. I grew up a young-earth creationist. I later became an old-earth creationists. I read about the intelligent design movement and loved it, and then as I studied it became skeptical toward it, and now count it quite flawed. The more I have studied, it seems, the less I know. I don't claim to know anything anymore--not even what I would have so boldly said two years ago, that I didn't think evolution was true. I have held almost every possible view, and these days I hold no view.

Origins remains a puzzle to me. I tried to solve it, and found I knew a lot less than I thought I did. Still, all that studying hasn't been fruitless--I've learned a few things.

I've learned that reality goes a lot deeper than people who debate on the internet have any clue about. I've learned that a lot of people on all sides are badly scientifically illiterate, and don't know it. And I've learned that the Christians are typically the worst offenders here. The church is superstitious, illiterate, and fearful when it comes to origins, and it breaks my heart. I wish it wasn't so--and I wish it wasn't so widespread. (It's not just origins--the worst of it is, the church as a whole is ignorant, superstitious, and fearful when it comes to how to read the Bible!)

All that is to say, I honestly don't know what happened, don't know where life came from historically. But at least I know enough to know that I don't know, which is more than most people know on the topic.



To Bettina (and regaurding the whole discussion about the evil and corrupt world):

The world is and ugly place, and it's an old argument that goes from that to declaring that God either isn't there or isn't worth talking to. There's a difference between having the explanation for a bit of evil, and making one up.

Some bits, we have the explanation. Some 2000 years ago, a man who was nothing worse than a moral teacher--an innocent man--was killed in an awfully painful way. By any standard you choose, that's evil. And yet it doesn't bother anyone wondering if God exists--at least, not people with some background in Christian thinking--because they know the explanation. He died to save all of humanity. There was a greater, good purpose behind the evil, and furthermore we know what it is because God has told us.

Some other things, we have no explanation. When a villiage is overrun by a cruel army that terrorizes the population, literally killing babies in their mothers' arms, we don't know why. When a hurricane strikes and destroys a sweet old woman's husband, home, and livelihood, we don't know why. When an old man strips a young boy naked, turns him loose in the woods, and hunts him like an animal with dogs and a gun, we don't know why. When a convict escapes from prison and terrorizes, rapes, and eventually kills a young couple on their honeymoon, we don't know why. Those of us who believe in God know there must be some reason--and often the temptation is to make things up--but we don't really know, for a lot of things.

If you ask me, free will only gets you so far. People do some pretty warped things to each other--sometimes you wonder if it's even worth free will. But then above and beyond that, some people are just unlucky. What about those who burn to death in forest fires, caused by lighting--humanity hardly caused that! And why did God make humans the way they are, anyway, if they're so prone to being evil? And what about Satan--didn't God make him, too? And what about hell? Didn't God make that--and doesn't he send people there?

A lot of people think they have answers for this stuff, and a lot of those answers are just speculation. Most stuff, we don't actually know why God allowed it--because he hasn't told us. So we guess. I sure don't claim to know everything, but there are some things I do know.

I know that this world isn't the end-product of everything God's doing. Life here is temporary, but life in heaven is eternal; this world exists to set up that one, I think. And I suspect that a lot of things that are evil in this life accomplish good for the next one. For some things, I know that's the case--people who cause me pain often also cause me to draw closer to God, and that's actually much more important. Pain's just temporary.

I know that part of what God's trying to accomplish is to create mature, good followers, and ultimately a good people for himself. (Someone I saw recently put it--"What's wrong with the world? Nothing. It was meant to be a proving ground for God's people, and it's serving that purpose quite well. What's wrong with the people on the other hand...") And I know that evil is a necessary counterpart to strong, mature goodness. You can't have forgiveness without injury, you can't have compassion without grievous pain, and you can't have courage without danger. Heroes don't come from idyllic places and peaceful times, they show up in the midst of war, pain, and grand evil. You know how children can't mature if their parents are over-protective? I think people are the same way. I think we need to experience some pain and evil--and a lot of it--to become the sort of people God means us to be.

I know that part of what God plans for evil is to eventually destroy it. The Bible even says that somewhere--God has created everything, even the wicked for the "day of evil"--i.e., to take vengeance. I know that evil won't endure forever, and that in the end God plans to enact justice out of the mess that the world's left in. The Bible says that a lot--the Lord will repay. Whatever damage evil does, he promises to one day make it right. And I know that several times the Bible hints that God gives evil a chance to grow, to flourish, to absolutely prove itself evil before he steps in and destroys it.

I know that the pain in the world makes God sad, too--so whatever reasons he has for allowing it, they must be good ones. Jesus was overflowing with compassion, and constantly healing and taking care of people. He wept at the death of his friend. In the old testament, God mourns with giant tears over the broken state of his people--brokenness that his own punishment has brought on them. I know God mourns.

There are other things I could say--things indeed that professional philosophers say, or that I say when I'm feeling more philosophical, and there's one thing these explanations have in common: they answer the question and still feel empty. Sure, it logically explains things well enough if evil could exist to make good people greater, or if God will one day make it right. That doesn't help when you're facing some very real bit of it and wondering, why does there have to be so much of it? Look at this child born with half a brain and diseased, who will live a short, painful, meaningless life and die. God will someday make that right? HOW?

The philosophical answers don't answer because the question isn't looking for a philosophical answer. And that's because the question isn't about reason after all, even though everybody seems to think it is. It's about faith.

I have a wonderful husband who I know is faithful to me. How do I know he is faithful to me? Because I know what sort of person he is, and I know he has always been faithful to me. So if I see him flying around with a pilot named "ILuvBettina," I don't wonder if he's flirting with another girl. He flies away for a night and day to go to his old best friend's wedding, and I don't wonder what he's doing while he's away. If I know he spends a lot of time alone with his (female) boss, is very good friends with her, and talks to her about a lot of serious things, I don't wonder if there's something between them. And why don't I? Because I have faith in him.

Faith is trusting in something that deserves to be trusted. I may not rationally know why my husband chooses the pilot names he does. I may not rationally have any way to know what my husband is doing when he's out of town. I may not rationally ever be able to determine the content of my husband's conversations with his boss. But I don't have to rationally know because I trust him--and furthermore he deserves that trust.

You see, a question like this isn't about having a rational explanation for everything. It's about believing that the person is trustworthy. To a woman whose husband has already cheated on her, every email, every lunch break, every contact with other women is suspect and requires a rational explanation. To a woman who has faith in her husband, he could disappear all night and though she would worry about his safety, she would never worry about his faithfulness. The difference is not that one knows his reasoning and the other doesn't. The difference is faith.

For me, that's where the only satisfying and peaceful answer lies. I may not know why God allowed a small child to be beaten, raped, and killed. But I know he is the God who mourns with us when we suffer. I know he's the same God who loves us so much that we can't hurt him enough to drive him away. I know he's the God who embraced Israel, mourned her hurts, desperately desired a great future for her, and watched her continue to fail and hurt him. I know he's the God who gladly laid down the life of his own son to save those who hated him. I know he's the God who speaks of rejoicing over his people with dancing, prizing them like a treasure, and quieting them with his love. And I know he's trying to accomplish some grand things in the world--and that the process often causes him pain.

Is that enough for me to trust that he knows what he's doing? That my own petty hurts and gripes are worth whatever he's trying to accomplish? That all the suffering in the world will some day be made right?

I think so. Some people don't. I say it depends on how well you know God, but for me, with what I've seen, I have enough faith in him. I am very, very sure he is a passionate, compassionate, and loving God. So what I don't know, and what I can't explain doesn't haunt me. Does it haunt you? Then you have a choice. You can simply decide that the pain you see is bad enough that faith in God is unjustified--it's just gone so far that he can't be good. If you go that route, you stop looking for answers from God, and start looking for answers elsewhere. Or you can try to learn more about God, try to understand him, and see if the faith he inspires outweighs the pain you've seen. I guess I personally took the second route, and I came back with faith in God, but my word is only good for so much. And my world may be different than yours--so even if you go that way, your mileage may vary.

But there's my answer for you. There are philosophical answers, and they're good for certain things--but in the end, it's about faith. For the believer, that's where peace on the topic comes from.


[... heh, some drive by. I need to go to bed now.]

Drakona wrote:To Tricord:
Goodness, I don't know that much cosmology. Most of my experience with the Anthropic Principle has been in a philosophical context. Be that as it may (and flamingly ignorant as this proves me), all the talk about parallel universes strikes me as pretty bogus. There can't really be evidence for that sort of thing, can there?

You're completely missing my point. I'm just trying to say that mathematics can be used to build a model that describes aspects of the universe. However, we humans invent the model according to the universe, it's not the universe that was built after the model. That is the difference with religion. Religion tries to tell why things are (God created them that way), so the question "how?" is irrelevent. Science (and theoretical physics in particular) tries to tell how things work, so the question "why?" is irrelevant.

I'm a minimalist, I don't need answers to "why?" questions. I don't need a concept of God to fill this in. I believe God exists in the spirit of some people, but definitely not me. God is a concept, believing is a state of mind. God didn't define you Drak, you defined Him. For yourself.

Religion used to be much more than just this in earlier days, it was the foundation of society. However, institutional power has been separated from religion since quite some time now (in western countries), so religion lost a great deal of functionality. It still has that functionality in arab and muslim countries, at our expense.


I think that God starts with the need of an individual to believe. That need can be genuine, or can be indoctrinated by a religious regime, or whatever. However, when the need stops, God will cease to exist. The concept of God is much more human than any of you dare to believe.

I'm just an interested outside observer, that's all..

Good post Tri.



Bloody forigners English is better than mine....what a git!!!!!

Mobius wrote:

Stryker wrote:http://www.stryker2.com/microbiology_report.doc

You don't understand because you have poor teachers, unsound logic, no training, are poorly read and furthermore, you don't understand the theory of evolution.

The point of this rather long discussion is to prove that science can be wrong.

Yes, science can be wrong - but science ALWAYS uncovers mistakes. Your pointless diatribe looking at "science" in 330AD is a waste of words. The "Scientific Method" was not established until well after your quoted examples. Please note: discoveries prior to the Scientific Method were good luck, rather than good management.

Modern scientists have revived the idea of spontaneous generation under a new name: abiogenesis

Name them. Quote the papers. They aren't scientists. Simple. They might be "Creation Scientists" - but that term is a non seqitur, and meaningless.

Life itself seems to agree with the creationistsâ?? beliefs.

Sorry - wrong. YOU seem to agree with them though!

As with all Creation "Science" ideas - the concept of life is lost on those who do not understand the early evolution of life from chemistry. You are trying to say that "LIFE" springs instantly. Whereas, "life" does not. We would be hard-pressed to assign the designation of "Life" to the chemistry which ultimately became life. And there is no clear point as which we would say that chemistry has become life.

As with many things, your black and white views are NOT reflected in the facts. you dont have chemistry and then all of a sudden - BOOM - LIFE! You have countless million of years of complex chemistry forming complex oragnic molecules, being encapsulated by soapy membranes - some of which happen to produce other chemicals which are similar to, or the same as themselves.

The first life must have been photosynthetic (able to gather energy from sunlight), because there was nothing else to get energy from at the time.

TOTALLY FALSE. The world was AWASH with chemical energy, heat energy, and the organic seas were laden with amino acids, and ATP. Get your facts right. Photosynthesis didn't develop until long after the first "life" did.

The rest of your uninformed "report" is as empty and pointless as the initial parts. The conclusions formed are in actual fact "delusions formed" on the back of flakey thinking, inaccurate "facts", crap statistics, unsound knowledge of both biology and evolution, and a determination to prove your theory despite the facts instead of because of them.

Simply put: YOU CAN NEVER PROVE GOD'S EXISTANCE.

Look, there's only two possible alternatives: The world is 4.6 billion years old, and life evolved naturally, OR, God created Earth 10,000 years ago (or whatever number is this week's fav) and made the Earth appear to be 4.6 Billion years old. In this case, God will also have covered ALL his tracks, and EVERYTHING in the universe is designed to be absolutely, and without question to be a natural phenonema.

Remember - if you can prove he exists, God ceases to be a faith, and instead becomes an object of study. In other words, SCIENCE. So - if you want to kill God for good - by all means, prove he exists.

Now, go and read "Christianity Without God" by Lloyd Geering, and learn some biology.

You might benefit from reading Michael Schermer's "Why people believe weird things" too.

I get it. The only people who know biology are evolutionists, and everyone else is a crackhead. Right.

As for these teachers, they have received international recognition for their work. They have debated numerous evolutionists and won. They have PhDs, doctorates, honors from all colleges they attended. They aren't dumb. Mobius, please note that the report consists mostly of hard, sound facts, while your post consists mostly of pointing out a phrase and saying "that's wrong!" If you're going to say that, I want statistics, numbers, hard evidence, actual missing links, whatever you can drag out to prove me wrong.

As for the earth appearing to be 4.6 billion years old, that's an often-refuted and almost worthless theory. Not that you'd ever consider reading anything written by a creationist but try reading The Amazing Story of Creation from Science and the Bible by Duane T. Gish, a Ph.D., or possibly The Young Earth by John D. Morris, also a Ph.D. While a Ph.D. doesn't mean you're smart, it does tend to lend itself to the idea that you're not a total idiot, as you seem to think of all creationists who oppose your almighty view. As for all dating methods, most of them we've seen are flawed. How ironic that tree-ring dating is the best our scientists can do.

As for a cell gathering energy in those manners you suggested: What you're suggesting is that a CELL, an extremely primitive (comparatively) being, can somehow figure out how to convert energy from heat sources around it. Uh-uh. I don't think so. One can't just absorb energy and use it directly, ya know. You have to have a very complex mechanism to convert that energy into a usable form. You can't use energy by osmosis. You have to have a method of using that energy to reproduce. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a cell to reproduce? You have to replicate the original cell's DNA (and that without killing the original cell, if the population is supposed to grow). The cell has to be large enough to be able to split apart and give the new cell enough resources that it can survive beyond .000001 microseconds. The cell has to be able to regulate incoming energy, so it's not overwhelmed with energy to the point of exploding (think potato in microwave).

As for abiogenesis, try this on for size: Proteins are the building blocks of life. Without them, life cannot exist. The simplest protein known to us, ribonuclease, is composed of 124 amino acids! If any one of these amino acids is missing or in the wrong place, the protein will not do its job, or it will become a different protein. The odds of this protein coming into existence are 1 in 10^152. For those of you that don't do math, that's 1 out of 10 followed by 152 zeros. That's assuming that the only 17 amino acids in the area are the 17 different types necessary to form this particular protein, which wouldn't happen if there was enough amino acids to form all the proteins necessary for a simple cell. This is also assuming that these 17 amino acids were physically forced to join together. That's akin to the odds of a poker player drawing a royal flush 19 times in a row. Remember, this is the SIMPLEST protein known to mankind. Remember that many, many of these proteins are needed to form a simple cell. Ouch.

Evolutionist scientists have tried to make cells from chemicals ere now. So far, they've managed to make one amino acid. ONE. AMINO ACID. Now all they need is another 123 of them, and they can create a protein, then a bunch of other proteins, so they can make a part of a cell that might be able to gather energy. But oh, wait, they've forgotten the DNA! They'll have to spend the next 10-15 years unravelling a simple DNA strand and decoding its information so that they can see how the cell is put together. Oops, now they have to put it back together so that they can put it in the cell so the cell will have the genetic information, or "instinct," to gather energy.

...DOH. they forgot to put in reproductive means. The cell dies, leaving no offspring, and a bunch of people mad at the scientists.

Seriously. If our best applied research by admittedly brilliant scientists can produce ONE 1 uno singular amino acid out of the 123 necessary to form one of the smallest building blocks of life, and that using only the chemicals and materials necessary, and in an enclosed, controlled environment...

How can chance do that?

Oh, and for your information, abiogenesis is an EVOLUTIONIST theory. It's the idea that a cell can be produced from chemicals through random occurrances. See above post for refutation.

There's one thing I personally can't understand about the whole "age of the Earth" or "creationism/evolutionism" debates. Why can't the two sides be reconciled? For example, why can't God have created the Earth 4.6 billion of our years ago? We know that the Genesis account isn't scientifically accurate, and it was never meant to be; it was written to emphasize that God is responsible for all of creation and that human beings are the pinnacle of that creation. No one can say that they know how God created the universe; to me, an event like the Big Bang is concrete proof that God exists. Something cannot come of nothing, therefore something had to exist before everything else. Going on to the evolutionary debate, what Stryker posted is true regarding amino acids; we know so little about protein structure and function. Therefore, if we accept that complex organisms had to arise out of simple chemicals, does this not also give credence to the idea of a guiding hand in the process? I don't think I'm the only person who takes this view of the issue, but I'd like to hear your opinions.

I've heard this theory before. It's called the "old earth" theory by some, though it has many other names as well. I'm not particularly well-informed on this theory, but I know enough to say that it's somewhat feasible, unlike evolution. However, the old earth idea has a few problems.

There was no death in the Garden of Eden. The Bible gives a very specific age in years that Adam lived (somewhere on the order of 900+). That is not a generalization.

With the current rate of expansion of the sun, an old-earth idea would put our sun as being much, much closer to dying than the new-earth theory. It would also be much bigger.

There would be much, MUCH more erosion than is seen today. Any place with flowing water would look a lot like the grand canyon in depth. Erosion is slow, but in 4.6 billion years, it could wreak some serious havoc.

Also, according to the definition of science, there is no way science can ever prove anything that occurred in the past is true or untrue. If you're discussing the truth of history, leave science out of it. By this same definition, evolution fails to fall under the definition of "science". Evolution is no more or less scientific that Christianity.

Tricord wrote:I'm just trying to say that mathematics can be used to build a model that describes aspects of the universe. However, we humans invent the model according to the universe, it's not the universe that was built after the model. That is the difference with religion. Religion tries to tell why things are (God created them that way), so the question "how?" is irrelevent. Science (and theoretical physics in particular) tries to tell how things work, so the question "why?" is irrelevant.

I disagree. I think "how" and "why" are irreversably intertwined. I don't think you can separate one from the other- what drives the scientific process is a blend of both "why" and "how." Ultimately, the "how" of a physical principle explains the "why" of a physical observation. Pure religion should never try to state that "how" is irrelavant, but it does state that we don't always know how. Likewise, science answers how, and why is many times unknown. I think it's this lack of knowledge that drives progress. It is the pursuit of the answer for "why" and drives scientists to more fully define "how." Likewise, it is the pursuit of the answer for "how" that drives the christian to more fully define "why."

From there, you made quite a jump Tri. Running with your model of the world, and man's definition thereof, it seems that you should be drawing the opposite conclusion. (The difference is that you are starting with an assumption that God does not exist, where I would start with the assumption that God does exist.) You say that man develops a model of the world with mathematics that approximates what it really is, never will never get it quite right. Likewise, I would say that man's understanding of God approaches what it really is, but never quite attains exactly what it is. We humans invent a model (understanding) of God according to our tools, yet our tools are imperfect, therefore our knowledge of God is always flawed. Just as we did not invent the universe, we didn't invent God. Drak's understanding of God is indeed an invention of her own- but that has no bearing on God's true nature. The understanding of God is a concept; yet God himself is as real and complex as the universe we live in.

Along the lines of what Drak was saying- you can find a whole book of the bible that is dedicated to the question "why does God allow evil to happen" - Job. If you read through the whole book, you will find an equally "empty" philosophical answer. Bet: think about this- in trying to understand why a given evil thing was allowed to happen, we are trying to set ourselves up as judge. We are basically deciding that we have a better sense of justice than God. I'm sure you have heard many times that there are always two sides to an argument. You have probably seen examples of this- if you only hear one side, it usually seems like a really simple issue- obviously the person that you talked to is right, and the other person is wrong. If you hear both sides, however, things are rarely so clear. Similarly, most of the time we don't know God's side on things. From our perspective, it's pretty obvious that bad stuff happens to good people for no apparant reason, and we jump to the conclusion that God's screwed up because we don't see any possible way that He could be justified in allowing that to happen. The problem is: we only have one side of the argument. What's more, God doesn't feel that He has to justify himself to us. I can't blame Him- if He is God, all knowing- who are we to judge if he's right or wrong in some issue? So, alot of times we want to hear both sides, so we can decide if God is really good or not, but He doesn't give us both sides. From there, there are two things that we can do. We can either choose to believe God, and believe that there is a reason for evil even if we don't know what it is. Or, we can choose not to believe God, and judge for ourselves concerning the issue with our blatantly incomplete set of evidence. Either way, we don't necessarily get an answer as to why a specific thing happened. Pain and suffering is a funny thing- we humans want something or someone on whom to place the blame for it, when sometimes there is no blame to be given out. As I pointed out earlier, there are many things in life that are a matter of faith. Neither side can be proven, neither side can be disproven objectively, therefore people lean back on subjective understanding to draw conclusions. Subjectively, I believe that God exists, and that He is good because I have expirienced Him. I con't prove that to anyone objectively, but that doesn't change the fact that I fully believe that I am right.

Just to get this topic back on track:

All domesticated dogs share a common ancestor. In just a few thousand years of selective breeding, we've managed to create everything from the Teacup Chihuahua to the Mastiff breeds.

It's not hard to imagine natural selection doing similar things, albeit with much crueler culling methods. In terms of results, the only difference between selective breeding (UNnatural selection) and natural selection is the traits that are selected for.

Of course, the Anti-Evolutionists would rather insult your intelligence, and tell you that it's impossible for such a thing to happen, despite the evidence of husbandry throughout history.

That something so self-evident could be denied by supposedly educated people is beyond me.

Snoopy, in science everything starts and ends with verifiable facts. Like I said, a physical theory is worthless if it doesn't concur with experiments and doesn't predict new things that can experimentally be tested. Every step in science has a well-defined reason and was taken according to sound rules, which means that the succession of steps into a theory is sound as a whole.

You are right, I start with an assumption that God does not exist. No "model" of God, or man's understanding thereof, can be used to verify facts on paper or predict new facts. Science will do that for you.

I never denied the existence of God -- I just deny it's supposedly absolute power, it's omnipresence and it's intervention in the world and all that. I say God exists -- only in the mind of those who believe in Him (it?).

You are right though when you say that "how" and "why" are always connected. However, science can only answer "how" so you don't get yourself caught up in the "why" question as you work out your equations. You can make studies that make sense while ignoring that question. The search for a rational answer to "why" questions is the domain of meta-physics and philosophy.

WarAdvocat wrote:Just to get this topic back on track:

All domesticated dogs share a common ancestor. In just a few thousand years of selective breeding, we've managed to create everything from the Teacup Chihuahua to the Mastiff breeds.

It's not hard to imagine natural selection doing similar things, albeit with much crueler culling methods. In terms of results, the only difference between selective breeding (UNnatural selection) and natural selection is the traits that are selected for.

Of course, the Anti-Evolutionists would rather insult your intelligence, and tell you that it's impossible for such a thing to happen, despite the evidence of husbandry throughout history.

That something so self-evident could be denied by supposedly educated people is beyond me.

Havn't we gone over the micro/macro evolution thing, WA? No one is arguing that micro evolution doesn't happen. What creationists say is this: prove that macro evolution has indeed happened.

Have you head of the agnostic dislexic? He wonders if there is a dog.

kurupt wrote:i just figured you for a catholic school girl is all

I mentioned what kind of girl I am in my other posts, I'm 16, and have high morals and values that my Dad gave me and you would see this if you ever met me. I am quiet, and very much a "catholic school girl" on the outside, but deep inside I'm just not a "believer".
Bettina

Tricord wrote:You're completely missing my point. I'm just trying to say that mathematics can be used to build a model that describes aspects of the universe. However, we humans invent the model according to the universe, it's not the universe that was built after the model. That is the difference with religion. Religion tries to tell why things are (God created them that way), so the question "how?" is irrelevent. Science (and theoretical physics in particular) tries to tell how things work, so the question "why?" is irrelevant.

I feel like I'm still missing your point, Tricord. What are you saying here? I understand how mathematical modelling works, more or less, but I don't see what it has to do with the questions of how and why, or what it has to do with the Anthropic Principle.

As I understand things, models are built as approximations of reality that we can work with, and they're experimented on and revised as time goes on. But this is a process that I use everywhere, in religion, in other mushy areas like love, just as much as in the natural world. I have a 'model' for how my husband thinks, a 'model' for who God is, a 'model' for why God made the world. Not mathematical models, to be sure, but models nonetheless--simplifications, rules, abstract representations of reality. And those are things that are continually tested and revised in the light of my new experiences. How can that be a difference between science and religion, then?

One of the rules for me is that models--really, ideas about how things are--have to hold up under scrutiny and through time. I'm very slow to accept things without some sort of independant verification, and that's my beef with those multiverse ideas. The proving point of a model isn't whether it has math attached to it--math is only useful for describing certain things. It's that there's evidence for it--that you can ask questions about it, and check reality to see if they're true. Perhaps this shows me terribly ignorant of cosmology (okay, it probably does), but I can't see how you could ever have evidence for multiple universes. Aren't other universes, by definition, things you can't interact with?

(And regaurding what you say about God being in the mind of those who believe, you may want to look over what I said to MehYam above. I talked about that a bit...)



Stryker:

Here is a paper about radiometric dating that you might want to read. By no means am I interjecting it into the debate as something you must answer--rather, I'm recommending it to you as a resource. It's long, but it's very good and very thorough. It was written by a Christian with scientific expertise in the area, and gives a very good picture of the evidence for an old earth. In particular, it talks about how they know how much parent and daughter material was in a rock originally, how they calibrate C-14 dating, and how they detect if the rock has gone through things that would mess up the date. It also talks a lot about cross-checking with multiple dating methods, and even some non-radiometric methods--for example, layers in ice cores that go back over a hundred thousand years. Very interesting stuff, and very well worth the afternoon it takes to read, if you're into the whole young/old earth debate.

WarAdvocat wrote:Just to get this topic back on track:

All domesticated dogs share a common ancestor. In just a few thousand years of selective breeding, we've managed to create everything from the Teacup Chihuahua to the Mastiff breeds.

It's not hard to imagine natural selection doing similar things, albeit with much crueler culling methods. In terms of results, the only difference between selective breeding (UNnatural selection) and natural selection is the traits that are selected for.

Of course, the Anti-Evolutionists would rather insult your intelligence, and tell you that it's impossible for such a thing to happen, despite the evidence of husbandry throughout history.

That something so self-evident could be denied by supposedly educated people is beyond me.

What you are describing is microevolution. Microevolution is evolution within a species. It's not that hard to prove.

Macroevolution is the biggest bunch of balogney I've ever heard of. According to the laws of natural selection, something evolves a trait that none of its ancestors had the genes for before. Say we have a dog. We breed said dog billions of times, over thousands of years. After billions of generations, we come down to the end results. Depending on the richness/content of the original dog's gene pool, we can get some very interesting results. But, at any point in these breedings, do we get something other than a dog? NO! At no point do we get a dog with feathers, a dog with wings, a flying dog, a dog with scales, a fish-dog, or any other combination you can think of. It just doesn't happen. You will never get a NEW gene out of the lot of dogs, no matter how many times you breed them. All you will get is more versions of the same dog.

And say some of these dogs die and are buried in natural disasters (volcano eruptions, etc). Not many, considering the total number of dogs, but still, there are billions of generations of dog, and about 1,000 will get buried, partially decompose, fossilize, and be preserved. Now obviously, 1000 of these dogs won't give you a complete cross-section of the one billion dogs you've bred; but you can get a pretty good idea chronologically of the changes between the dogs and their generations.

We don't see this in the fossil record. There is not one, I repeat not ONE unambigous intermediate link between ANY animal alive today! Either evolutonists are wrong, or natural disasters and the fossilization process have something against evolutionists, and didn't want to preserve any intermediate links in a condition to be properly observed.

Drakona....
I've read all your posts word for word and I've come to the conclusion that your brainwashed. I'm not insulting you because your an adult, respected, and obviously much smarter than me, but I find it interesting that you find certain things so easy to "see" like god, religion, heaven, all the things that are not physical, but just written words, but at the same time find it so difficult to see hard evidence of what science, cosmology and evolution has found. This kind of thinking is what drove me away from the priests.

I learn both evolution and creationism in school, but find creationism lacking evidence on every page. If I ask a religious instructor a question, he talks and talks and talks blah blah blah...but doesn't come up with any proof...he can't. He just says "I hear you, and assure you it's not part of gods plan". He can't assure me of anything.......It's all bull.....I'm forced to take the class because of my Dad and he doesn't know how I feel

Thanks for trying to help here, but I rather fight you in a game. Please don't be mad at me.
Bettina.

"To Tricord:
Goodness, I don't know that much cosmology. Most of my experience with the Anthropic Principle has been in a philosophical context. Be that as it may (and flamingly ignorant as this proves me), all the talk about parallel universes strikes me as pretty bogus. There can't really be evidence for that sort of thing, can there?" Drakona

No evidence yet but there is intriguing evidence of something prescent. When astronymers analyse stars and how they move, they have found gravitational properties that cannot be attributable to existing stars and galaxies. This unseen gravitational influence has been labeled "Dark Matter" and some theorise that parallel universes may indeed exist. I'll let others of you with more knowledge flesh this idea out.

Actually Woodchip our whole model of the universe and grvavity has been thrown into great disarray by the recient evidence that the universe appears to be accelerating it's expansion. This goes against the previous model and will take years to understand. Dark matter and missing matter and many other phenomema are going to give cosmologists and theoretical astronomers generations of work ( and probably research grants too )

Stryker wrote:There would be much, MUCH more erosion than is seen today. Any place with flowing water would look a lot like the grand canyon in depth. Erosion is slow, but in 4.6 billion years, it could wreak some serious havoc.

omfg

holy cow!

Tricord wrote:You're completely missing my point. I'm just trying to say that mathematics can be used to build a model that describes aspects of the universe. However, we humans invent the model according to the universe, it's not the universe that was built after the model. That is the difference with religion. Religion tries to tell why things are (God created them that way), so the question "how?" is irrelevent. Science (and theoretical physics in particular) tries to tell how things work, so the question "why?" is irrelevant.

I know this has been quoted several times already. Just wanted to say that in saying this Try you assume from the getgo that God does not exist, so of course in that context it would not be valid.

religion is not a "thing". True religion is a way of life. Theology and docturine may tell us some of these things, but not religion.

God being the designer, gave us all things and is the beginning of all things. He is a person and not a "thing". Our point of reference is radically different.


Bet.

Brainwashed is a harsh word though I don't think you used it with malice. Even still, in the context I believe in which you it is being used, brainwashing applies to EVERYONE. It would only be relevant in varing degrees and in reference to what. Believing in something is not necessarily brainwashing. Thusly, I could wager the same argument of you. I do not believe you to be brainwashed. In a lot of pain , yes. 14, yes.(which does make a difference, my daughter is your age and is experiancing many of the same things you are)

Stryker wrote:There would be much, MUCH more erosion than is seen today. Any place with flowing water would look a lot like the grand canyon in depth. Erosion is slow, but in 4.6 billion years, it could wreak some serious havoc.

There is a fairly new and somewhat more plausable theory reguarding the Grand Canyon and its formation. It is now thought that it was formed through a singluar catastrophic event where is carved out in a matter of DAYS rather than millinea.




Genghis! Glad to see ya up and running! .. speaking of running.. how's that new job?

To Drakona:
You said: "Isn't that essentially saying that the ancient Jews believed that there were people in power over others. Hardly remarkable! And hardly warrant for calling a society polythestic."

You are correct, it isn't very remarkable. It was just their view of things, the way they conceptualized. The greatest disservice we can give the past is to transport modern thinking back to the ancient world. The ancient world's concepts to a great extent were quite different than what we are familiar with today.

It is a fact of history that the Jews acknowledged the existence of many â??godsâ?

For Bettina:
You Said: "So god is getting even.....talk about holding a grudge. What about the poor little girl he just mentioned. Why should she have to suffer because of some rule that was broken a long time ago.
If your god, assuming it exists, is playing a warped minded game for his own sadistic pleasure, then I wish he was dead. I don't want him in my life, and I've rejected him years ago. He isn't good enough to speak for me.
And if I die tommorrow from lightning, it will be because of luck....not him."


I understand why you feel the way you feel. On the surface this notion about a God does seem rather ridiculous. So I challenge you to read what I'm about to say, read every bit of it. Think about it. Then come back and voice your comments.

So, we must ask, If God created the awesome universe of such marvelous order, surely he must have a good reason for allowing humans to get so disorderly. And would such a Creator not care enough about his own human creation to tell us why he has permitted wickedness? Would it not make sense for him to correct these bad conditions in due time if he has the power to do so? Any loving father would do that for his children if he could. Certainly an all-powerful, all-wise, loving Creator would not do less for his own earthly children.

Who can best answer the questions about Godâ??s permission of wickedness? Well, if you were charged with some fault, would you want people to listen to only what others said about it? Or would you want to speak for yourself to clear up the matter in the mind of anyone who sincerely wanted to know? It is God who is held to be at fault for permitting wickedness. Since he best knows why he permits it, would it not be fair to let him speak for himself?Looking to humans for answers will never be satisfying, since so often they have conflicting ideas about these matters.

Where does God provide the answers? There is only one source that the Creator claims to have authorized to tell us what happened and why. That source is the Bible, which states: â??All Scripture is inspired of God.â?

Regarding the Grand Canyon argument Stryker, if you're taking the age of the Earth as approximately 4.6 billion years, you also have to take into account that, during that time, natural processes were not constant. If you're looking from the scientific viewpoint, early Earth was pretty much barren and waterless, an incredibly hot and hospitable wasteland. Over time, rains fell, and the seas came into being. Distinct continents were eventually formed. (Not to de-rail this, but isn't it interesting that, at least in this regard, scientific theory meshes with the account in Genesis?) Due to tectonic activity and continental drift, these continents were re-formed, collided, and separated again. On the actual land, mountain ranges were created by volcanic uplift or geological disturbance and were worn away over the years by erosion. Rivers and lakes formed and disappeared. Over this whole extended period of time, there hasn't been a single natural feature of this planet that hasn't been changed immensely. The Colorado River, which dug the Grand Canyon through its flow, hasn't been around for 4.6 billion years. Even so, it has been around for millions of years, the time that was required to carve out so massive of a trench in the Earth's surface. The stratification of rock visible in the canyon is visual evidence of this, at least.

Note: This post presupposes a view of Earth's geologic history as being in line with current scientific theory. Shoku's post presents another viewpoint, based on a literal interpretation of Genesis. I do not agree with Shoku's view in this regard, but I think his theological reasoning is good. However, I don't want to start yet another debate in this thread; it's already jam-packed as is.

Interesting look at the world there Shoku... well thought out.

Another interesting idea to note is that we see a LOT of jagged rock today. I mean a LOT of it. Cliffs and mountains have jagged boulders and rocks, etc. If rain has been falling for even a million years or two, wouldn't this rock be smoothed out, softened?

Also, there is a very strong theory about the earth's atmosphere when it was created. The theory is (and I'm not extremely well versed in knowledge of this, so correct me if I'm wrong) that there was a giant water canopy over the earth. There was no rain until the Flood. A group of scientists, interested because of the supposed correlation between the existence of this water canopy and the length of life of all characters before the flood, and the steady drop of lifespan after the flood, decided to test the theory. They built a greenhouse, and doubled the air pressure. They put enough humidity in there to make a veritable cloud. And they grew tomato plants. BIG tomato plants. These plants were growing to incredible sizes, and seemed to have an absolutely outrageous amount of vitality. They just didn't die. They were less susceptible to diseases, slower aging, producing larger than average tomatos.

Any scientific experiment conducted will agree: higher humidity and air pressure levels make it easier for anything to survive. Animals expend less effort to breath, putting less stress on lungs and other critical body parts, and plants have the high humidity levels they need to grow and function effeciently. This explains the unnaturally long lives of all men in those days, and the sudden dropoff in lifespan after the flood.

Top,

I know that natural processes haven't been constant over even the last thousand years. Therefore, it is more than reasonable to assume that they've been changing since the beginning of time, whenever you believe that is. That is one reason why all of our dating systems, radioactive and carbon-based, are so inaccurate.

Genesis states that when the flood came "the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of heaven were opened." You can take that to mean many different things, but to me it means this: that water canopy over the earth became unbalanced, causing... guess what? RAIN! The springs of the great deep bursting forth can only mean one thing: underground water sources were released, causing massive flooding.

We know today that there is a LOT of water underground. There are subterranean caverns partially filled with water. If you take a cavern of that size, and imagine it filled with water, you get a very large amount of water. Even allowing for about 4000-5000 years of erosion, you still get a considerable amount of subterranean water. Now as you may know, the amount of water on the earth has stayed consistent since who knows when. We haven't really gained or lost any water that we know of. Now imagine our oceans, minus a vast amount of water in a canopy above us, and a vast amount in the ground below us. Where did the oceans go? There certainly couldn't have been very large oceans, if any.

When the flood occurred, all this water was released onto the earth. There IS enough water on this earth to completely cover land, if it was all dumped out onto land in 40 days of solid torrential rain and underground water sources flowing out. Thus comes Noah's story. Noah probably spent about a hundred years of his life creating a giant boat at God's direction. Remember, these people have never seen rain before. There are few, if any, bodies of surface water. They aren't going to know much about making boats.

So Noah gets into this boat that he and his family have expended so much of their lives on, and take aboard enough animals to repopulate the earth. And yes, there probably were dinosaurs and other large animals on there, but who would be dumb enough to take aboard a fully-grown dinosaur weighing 2 tons? Take aboard a young dino, not fully grown. Even a few eggs would work.

The flood occurs. The waters recede, probably due to massive tectonic plate shifting caused by the influx of water, creating the ocean beds as we know them, as well as the natural absorption of water by the ground. Noah and his family get out of the boat onto a much harsher--but still inhabitable--planet.

That amount of water flowing over the earth is guaranteed to get drastic results. You'll suddenly have structures like the grand canyon. Many animals will be quickly buried under thousands of layers of sediment, which hardens, turning into rock, and creating most of what we know as the fossil record.

The lack of the moist water canopy over the earth causes drastic temperature changes, forming such items as the icebergs at the north and south poles, further reducing the amount of liquid water on the earth.

Clouds, a never-before-seen occurrance, appear in the sky from evaporation of previously unreachable groundwater and the water from the water canopy. These further reduce the amount of water on the ground, and create the ecosystem we see today. They also create--amazing how this works out--rainbows! The rainbow that God sent to show Noah's family that the earth would never again be flooded? Well, that just got explained, as did the question of why a rainbow was such a weird occurrance.

Other supporting evidence: Salt! Our oceans have a large amount of salt in them. Had this salt been building up for millions of years, even A million years, there would be such an amount of salt in the ocean that all stationary water bodies would look like the Dead Sea--you simply couldn't sink if you went for a swim!

I've got to do some schoolwork now, but if you want to debate further, I should be on #descent3rookie tonight.

Shoku wrote: Hebrew Terms: Among the Hebrew words that are translated “God” is ´El, probably meaning “Mighty One; Strong One.” (Ge 14:18) It is used with reference to the Creator, Yahweh, to other gods (divine beings), and to men. The Hebrew word ´elo·him´ (gods) appears to be from a root meaning “be strong.” ´Elo·him´ is the plural of ´eloh´ah (god).

This didn't strike me quite right. I'm not 100% fluent so asked a few guys. "El" is god, and it's plural is 'El-im' (-im being the male plural. -ot being the female) 'Elo-him' is for sure not the plural of 'eloh'ah however. There is a theory that the hebrew letter "hey" (which also is a representative of the name God) was stuck in there which leads to the confusion. (and also has cabbalistic overtones) Also, the plural of god in hebrew was taught to a convert freind of mine as meaning the multi-faceted aspects of the one god as opposed to many gods. To further add to that little conundrum you will find religious types saying "elokim" because it's frowned upon to say the name of God. Or even "ha shem" or "the name" (that was a btw...btw)

Anyway i'm waiting for a religious buddie who is a bit of a nerd about these things to come from holidys so i can ask him about it.

Now you see why i prefer to be freelance lol.

SO let me get this straight, you're saying that a process that in a few thousand years can create wildly-divergent breeds within a species (ie: chihuahua & mastiffs), cannot create even more widely divergent offshoots, given more time?

And the whole grand canyon thing...I'm quite literally dumbfounded at the shortcomings in your education.

You wouldn't happen to be in a seminary would you?

Let's put it this way war. In all your human experience, have you EVER seen ANYTHING even REMOTELY approaching a fishdog? a horsedog? a catdog? no? then why do you keep bringing it up?

A chihuahua and mastiff are still DOGS. They still have something of the same genes. They had a common ancestor, rich in the gene pool. Since then, some dogs have lost one gene, some dogs have lost a different gene. They go onto different continents and don't breed together. They become very, VERY different dogs. BUT THEY ARE STILL DOGS! For instance, say a gene for a long tail is dominant. The original 2 dogs both had long tails, 1 chromosome for long and 1 for short apiece. These two dogs breed twice. The first time, both pass on their chromosomes with the genetic information of long tails to their offspring. The second time, only the genetic information for short tails is passed along. So what do you get? Two litters. The first litter has long tails, the second litter has short tails, because the long-tailed gene is no longer present. Humans like the short-tailed dogs, so they breed short-tailed dogs with short-tailed dogs, and eventually the long-tailed dogs die out (this is just an example, remember. If i'm going to give you a lesson in genetics I'm not going to spend a long time thinking up a completely plausible situation in which all long-tailed dogs die out.) Thus, since a short-tailed dog has different genetic information than the long-tailed dog, it survived. It's simple husbandry and familiar theory to anyone with a remote knowledge of genetics.

The problem? NO NEW INFORMATION HAS BEEN CREATED! Nothing new is present in these short-tailed dogs that wasn't present in an ancestor! They have simply LOST the genetic information for long tails! It's genetics 101 man, take it.

New information has never been created through this process. We have never seen a dog with the genes for, say, wings. Or scales. Or feathers. That genetic information simply hasn't been present, because it hasn't been created. KEYWORD. CREATED.

I'm getting really, really tired of people calling me dumb and uneducated because I disprove their theories. I AM NOT YOUR AVERAGE 15-YEAR OLD VILLAGE IDIOT! I don't get straight A-s in almost every subject, score in the 95th percentile on standardized tests, and read more books than the average college-age student for nothing. If you can't take the heat, either admit you're wrong, back off, or at least, LEAVE OFF THE INSULTS AND SUPPORT YOUR POSITION WITH VIABLE FACTS!!!

BTW, this makes 4 ways I've disproved evolution and counting.

1. The existence of matter.
2. The insanity of believing that a cell could form from random chemical processes.
3. The fossil record
4. Genetics

Shall we continue, or shall I call in Dr. Jay L. Wile to give it to you guys?