Isn't it reasonable to doubt Young Earth Creationism?

[Stuu]

I do not see the question of existence as a problem. Why don't you start with the assumption that you don't exist and see where that gets you.

That's it. I think you see the problem now. You have to assume you exist because you can't prove it. But it's not like it's an unreasonable thing to assume!

By explaining the things that hard science is not equipped to deal with. They why of existence. Science just explains how things work. That is all science can do.

Can you frame that why question specifically? It is possible to have a platitude question, one that sounds deep but actually is asking nothing. Why you exist is explained by Big Bang cosmology, stellar nucleogenesis, star formation and planetary accretion, and evolution by natural selection. You really are the product of gravity appearing and acting, obviously with some other resultant effects. Now, what else do you specifically want to know? I think very often when people ask that 'why' question, they are trying to justify a prior belief or feeling they have. Do such questioners often get to 'why would I feel this way'? I think scientific investigation has a great capacity for answering that question.

But why should I care about the people around me? Evolutionary theory says that I should you and your family under the bus so that my family does better. According to evolution (survival of the fittest) there is no benefit to me in caring for those who cannot make my life better.

I think before you go down this route it would be worth clearing out a misconception about evolution by natural selection. Mutation and natural selection are both brutal things, but in humans the outcome of that is a social species, where the interactions within the tribe and the interactions between tribes are fine-tuned by natural selection. And I think if you consider the different structures, from individuals in families, to communities, to nations and global geopolitics, essentially those same tribal instincts play out.

'Survival of the fittest' is often cited incorrectly, and what Darwin wrote about that expression is interesting. It certainly is not a matter of killing others for your own supremacy. Your genes do not benefit from that very much at all, although obviously killing does happen. Think about it in terms of the psychology of a primitive tribal existence with intertribal rivalries and rivalries within the tribe, and sometimes the killing is explained.

'Survival of the fittest' actually means that the members of the species that are fittest for surviving and reproducing in that environment are more likely to pass on their genes, which will then become more common in the population than the genes of the less-fit. This is the tautology of natural selection!

It is not unproven to me. I have experienced His hand on my soul and I know it to be real. It is not my job to convince you of God's existence. Your faith is between you and God. My job is to answer your questions regarding the hope that lives within me. You must make your own decisions.

I am interested in the 'experiences' that you and others describe. I think I probably have the same experiences but just interpret them in a different way. That is not to belittle the level of your experiences, but I don't think your human experience is any more special than mine, in principle.

God exists. You see Stuu, I was not argued into believing by some crafty Christian. If I can be argued into belief then I can be argued out of belief. My faith comes from God so it stands up to human wisdom.

But does it stand up to knowledge and reason? Humans are notorious for behaving irrationally despite their knowledge and reasoning ability, you and me included. You are an intelligent person and you know full well that humans don't walk again after they have been executed, or are born of just one human parent. Invisible entities claimed to be known by others are delusions. But we all allow ourselves to behave against our knowledge and rational thinking. It is usually behaviour that leads belief, and it sounds to be like you have changed your behaviour and your beliefs have followed. I find myself doing that kind of thing quite often, but just not in regard to invisible friends. You might then say, 'not yet...'.

Maybe to you but certainly not to me.

I still don't see how. As soon as you stick a god into any question of natural history, you open up a whole book full of questions, none of which lead in the direction of a more parsimonious explanation as per Occam's Razor. The addition of a god decreases the quality of the knowledge. Don't you seek better quality knowledge when you are looking for an understanding? Surely it is better to ignore the god hypothesis for as long as you can, because nothing is added by it. You are not seeking to convert me, of course, and I appreciate that, but the more I think through the issues you raise the more I understand just how poisonous god belief is. We are the one species best placed to discover what is 'really going on' in the universe. The certitudes of a conspiracy of invisible friends running the universe is a poor starting point.

The problem here is that you cannot prove that it is an illusion. There are brain scans showing that the human brain has a physical response when people pray. Argue it any way you will but when I see that, I see that we have a brain that has evolved to physically respond to God.

Yes, I have no doubt we have brains that have evolved to respond to gods. If you think again about that primitive tribal situation, your survival is enhanced by you following a leader in the tribe so you can act as a coherent group. It is going to be much easier if tribal leaders, whether they are aware of the delusion or not, can threaten dissenters with powerful, invisible entities. That is basically the 'Old Testament' in a nutshell.

Add to that the selection pressure of living on the African Savannah and being attacked by sabre tooths: not every rustle of the bushes is a sabre tooth, but you have a survival advantage if you assume it is. Those who ignored the rustle when it was a sabre-tooth died, and so today we seek patterns even when no pattern really exists. The illusion of design in the universe is an example. Why do we have brains that leap to the god conclusion? There is no unambiguous evidence for that. But our brains are primed for it.

People who claim to be Jesus incarnate can be tested against scripture. When they fail that test, they need to be helped. I also hold that the human bran is exceptional.

Hang on a minute, you would use scripture as a diagnostic tool in psychology to diagnose mental illness??

God knows that we are not and cannot be perfect. He knows that no matter how hard we try, we will always fall short. That is why He sent Jesus. So even though I am far from perfect, I will stand before God as though I am. Read what Paul has to say about freedom in Christ. Scares the bloody hell out people, especially Christians. But it is an incredible example of how completely we are forgiven by God when we stand in Christ.

Which leads directly to Armando Iannucci's (the maker of the film The Death of Stalin and other political satires) question: why did Jesus have to die?

I don't believe in a God of the Gaps, rather I believe that we catch glimpses of God through those gaps. Science is used to turn people away from God. That is not the intent of an honest scientist but it certainly does happen. But since I see the study of science as the study of how GOd did things, each new discovery leads me to say, "Wow! God is incredibly smart and detailed!"

I can see no intellectual satisfaction in that at all. You still haven't said what your god actually does when it interferes in evolutionary processes, so how can you claim to know that you have discovered anything about how 'god does stuff'? How did your god inflate space-time? Have you discovered anything about that? Of course not, this is a celebration of ignorance, completely in line with the writings of Paul.

Christianity and science both require mystery: the difference is that science seeks to conquer mystery whereas christianity seeks to protect mystery in the meme's interests. I suppose that is the way that science has corroded christianity, and I think that has been a great thing for humanity. Prejudice and moronic certainly about dogma has been replaced with better knowledge and less cocksure confidence as we discover more, and discover how much we don't know.

I don't think that requires a particular forced agenda of atheistic conversion, it should be obvious to anyone who can think independently. That wasn't allowed 500 years ago, remember.

Many people don't want there to be a God because they do not want to be judged for their actions. Yes, God will judge us. By denying the existence of God they can feel safe that they can do what they will with no chance of retribution.

And what about judging your god? How is that one going? Is it worth worshiping this god, given what it says in scripture about it? Does it let go the things it made, showing that it loves them? No it does not. Love is compulsory, on pain of judgment and burning in sulfur. I think if there really is a god of the kind described in scripture then it has no moral authority to judge me at all. I would be happy to stand up to it and demand answers for its injustices. Maybe it will destroy me then. Maybe it will turn out that I was supposed to be a robot in a small-minded, vengeful totalitarian matrix. That would be a shame. But the universe appears to be too beautiful for that to be true.

Paul was most certainly not saying that faith in God is a childish thing. Taking things out of context is never a wise thing to do. And God is not imaginary to me. I feel His presence every day in my life. I am not ashamed to say that. God has made me a better person.

And did you reach from depravity to the stars? Or instead of the stars did you find something that judged you as depraved when you were born?

(I remain convinced you are not actually depraved. Don't let them tell you that!)

Stuart

 

[Stripe]

Explain what you glean from Genesis 2:4. Can you see that "day" does not necessarily mean a 24-hour period? Obviously it can have the meaning of a stretch of time not necessarily defined. Can you discuss without insults?

Hold on a second, sunshine. The Bible says "six days." You explain your assertion that it does not say "six days."

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[Stuu]

Nonsense. It isn't difficult to tell the difference between something created by intelligence, and something eroded by the wind.

So, a rock. Was that designed?

You remind me of a funny YouTube video (I think I have it saved). Richard Dawkins and another fellow are discussing anatomy. They both keep using the word 'design'. But Dawkins kept 'correcting' the other fellow and himself.Dawkins would say 'But it isn't designed, it only has the appearance of design'.

Yes, he does that all the time. It's quite amusing. Just shows you how obsessed with design our brains are.

(Darwinism is religion)

Not by definition of the word religion. It would have to involve god beliefs. But the better argument is that all efforts in biology are ideally directed at disproving all ideas in biology, so the ideas that survive a robust process are the ones that are provisionally accepted. When did you ever hear of a religion trying to disprove itself?

Repeating failed arguments doesn't make it true. Would you like examples where evolutionists pompously made that same argument, but later proven wrong by science?

No, because you are never interested in engaging. You just Gish Gallop and claim a non-existent victory. If someone else who really cared wanted to discuss it, I would be keen.

(Pompous because they assume they know everything there is to know and that it fits their belief system)

I've met exactly the kind of people you mean. But they are usually taken down a peg or two by the master of all science: empirical evidence.

The biochemistry of our cell is strong evidence of an intelligent creator. The mutation rate and genetic load is clear evidence that your belief system in billions of years is false and illogical.

So biochemistry isn't brilliant?

Proud? I am humbled to think that He who designed me, willingly suffered a brutal death in my place. Amazing Love!

And have you been genuinely set free to be yourself by this creator in an ultimate act of love, or is love compulsory? Will you be judged and burned in sulfur if you express your freedom incorrectly?

Stuu: It is not the wastefulness of the 'poor design' in the giraffe that is the main point about the recurrent laryngeal nerve. The point is that the nerve was a good 'design'/adaptation in our fish ancestors.

Again... your arguments against design are no different than all the other evolutionist failed 'design's arguments, that are now proven wrong by science. You start with lack of knowledge on the design.... add in your belief about fish ancestors...and VOILA, another false evolutionary conclusion.

That's not really an answer, is it. More of a lazy smear.

Haha....Well, I may, or may not have used my plantaris vut it would be psuedoscience to then imagine that muscle is a remnant from a "fish like ancestor'. SURE, lets talk vestigial.... i thought evolutionists were abandoning that faulty belief?

The vestigiality is more recent than that. Should I bother explaining any further? Doesn't seem any point really.

Stuu: And again, as I explained to you in some detail, it is not evidence against a creator. It is evidence against an omnipotent, omniscient, benign creator.

Your 'explanations' are evidence that you are unwilling to follow evidence to our Creator. You start with a conclusion, then invent stories to TRY make things fit... until science forces yet another change in the story.

You sure are a master of non-sequitur.

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

Or you, perhaps? What is YOUR PhD in?

Sorry I don't share personal information online. I hope you understand.

If you read rebuttals from such as oldworld.org, their very argument against the planes objection CAN be applied to their other assumptions themselves.

My browser told me not to go there...

OW, it is the hypothesis that drives the data, rather than the data driving the hypothesis. Said another way: If you assume an old earth, you WILL find and old earth (same with YEC). The question is, if all we are doing is boistering assumptions, which assumption then is right? Simply the one the majority thinks? :nono: Never was. Never will be. If YOU don't want to look like an 'idiot' as you call these, then you too should avoid joining up sides until all the data, unmolested, is in. To be honest, the unmolested data is all I care about. I've seen FAR too many faulty interpretations and don't really appreciate them. Scientists, pontificating, have gotten it wrong far too often not to take any interpretation of data, without a grain of salt.

I agree with all of that, especially the scientists pontificating part. But I think some of the blame rests with the mass media: some study comes up with a very specific piece of specialist information, then a reporter is told by the science editor to get a comment from some other scientist in the field, and the complexity of the information is lost in the headline: "Cure to cancer found", or the like, and then the media training of the scientist who never even wrote the paper fails, as he or she is invited to speculate wildly, and does so way off-piste.

But what is the truth here? Papers are written and published in journals, and science is so specialised these days that nothing you read should be taken in isolation: you need the scientists to go to their conferences and argue widely, and resolve the irregularities in the data, and modify the hypotheses, and come up with new experiments to weed out that which was wrong all along. And then, after some considerable period of review, you might have cause to pick up the phone and cautiously talk to a reporter. There is some science reporting that is excellent, and done by people who have at least an understanding of all of this from their own experience.

I don't think it is unreasonable to assume an old earth for most purposes, because that is so well established in so many independent fields, supported by so much evidence, that a scientist should be allowed to start somewhere. There are certainly assumptions made about volcanic layers in regards to dating very old specimens, and so forth, but it would be ridiculous to make every scientist go back and revise the science on which all of that is based, every time they do an experiment. And don't forget, this is a very competitive business. Sorry if I am repeating myself here, but if you don't believe that competitiveness works in science then you shouldn't believe in capitalism either.

You can call counter-arguments whatever you like. Without the where-with-all to prove them false, it is simply assertion. I 'tend' to find assertions very much lack academic prowess of any sorts, so I'm not really swayed by 'idiocy.' Cry it as you like. Such is of no value or consequence and to be honest, looks like academic lack from this side. Jose tried the same ill-attempt. It does make one HAVE to ask why (if he/she is anywise intelligent and seeking REAL answers). "Idiocy"

Well you have really brought it on yourself. I know it's difficult to keep track of which arguments have been fought out already on ToL, but the planes thing is old, and so obviously wrong, that to anyone who has seen it before it is tedious.

I'm fairly certain, neither of you has a PhD. Perhaps a Masters? The article sited IS from a PhD. If you can't meet a PhD with intelligent rebuttal, 'idiot' nor 'anti-science/anti-education' is sufficient, even for short discussions like TOL. It just doesn't have any traction, neither of them.

I've met people with PhDs who are clearly idiots, even though they have a capacity for academic endeavour. One of them became a prominent creationist: one of the brightest people I have met, but a complete idiot. I could pick holes in his arguments off the top of my head, but he just carried on his dogmatic narratives. A very strange thing.

Stuart

 

[Stripe]

I don't share personal information online.

That's wise, Stuart. :thumb:

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[Apple7]

I got into a discussion about young Earth creationism recently. My position was that YECism is completely debunked because it is obvious that there are objects in the night sky that are much older than 6,000 years. For instance, the galaxy Andromeda is roughly 2.5 million light years away. That means that when we look at Andromeda, we don't see it as it is today. We see what it looked like two-and-a-half million years ago. (It takes the light from that galaxy that long to reach us.)

My friend, who is a Christian (but not a YEC) agreed with me, but introduced me to a bit of apologetics that says this: just as God made Adam in a mature state, so too he made the cosmos appear mature. I guess this works, but it sounds a little bit like squaring the circle. After all, in doing this, God has given anyone with a telescope very good reason to doubt the literal accounts in Genesis. My friend even added a nice counter argument along this same vein: we can see stars that are much farther than 6,000 light years years away enter their dying phase. By creationist logic, when we see this, we are in fact seeing stars die that were never born in the first place. That makes no sense!

Unless you are going to see God as a cosmic practical joker, the "mature universe" apologetics are not very plausible. But my reason for starting this thread wasn't just to push that point. My question is for YECs: Isn't it reasonable for a person to conclude that the universe is older than 6,000 years? I mean, it seems pretty obvious that it is. Can you really fault anyone for coming to that very sensible conclusion? After all, even if the accounts in Genesis ARE literally true, God went through a lot of trouble to make it look otherwise. Whether it turns out to be true or not, isn't it reasonable to doubt young earth creationism?

The YEC polemic that Adam and Eve were created in a mature state simply is at odds with the Hebrew scripture.

If the YEC literalists want to be consistent in their argument, then Adam and Eve were literally created from the ground-up....and NOT as full grown adults.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

Mature creation isn't like antiquing an object to make it look older than it really is by artificial means. Rather, the theory of mature creation is that to create anything ex nihilo is to go from absolutely nothing to something concrete, thereby skipping over what would normally be the intervening stages in a cyclical process to arrive at that instantaneous result. Once a cycle is in place, there's a continuum to how things come into being, persist, and cease to exist. But creating the initial conditions is discontinuous with the status quo.

God did not "manufacture evidence" for that purpose. Man observes what is done and arrives at conclusions. It would be presumptuous of man to suppose that his specific conclusions, being based on premises which exclude God in the first place, must have been something God intended. Once it is recognized that God did not intend for man to form these specific conclusions from the data there is no basis for alleging that it is "misleading."

The question quickly arises, But then aren't Christians forced to leave God out of their science?

It is not that we leave "God" out of science, but that we leave the consideration of the "supernatural" works of God out of our experimentation as we come to understand the world God has created which we call "natural." By so doing we set fairly strict limits to "science," and understand that we are dealing with a specific area of human knowledge. When "science" then attempts to make statements about God (theology), it is clearly over-stepping its self-imposed limitations.

Questions pertaining to "time" and "space" are a unique category. Some of the old philosophical problems relating to measurement demonstrate that human observation can only "describe" time and space in relation to other things in time and space. It cannot give any "explanation" of it. Hence all scientific claims to age are by default relative terms that are meaningless without an absolute. We should be more than happy to allow a scientist to hypothesize all the dates that are necessary for him to make his observations, but those dates are only relative to his science, and in no way explanatory of absolute reality. The wine drunk at the wedding at Cana would, relatively speaking, have taken some time to make, but the Maker, as the absolute determiner of all reality, was able to make it in a moment of time.

Objection: That God certainly knew what people could and would draw from the data, and so it still is misleading for God to have created things that way? After all, God knew the good and necessary consequences people could and would draw from Scripture, and we usually say that God provided for that; why not for the universe?

Quite simply, these conclusions are neither "good" nor "necessary." They are not "good" because they suppose man is free to draw conclusions and hold God to account for them; and they are not "necessary" because we have already imposed strict limitations on science, which should in turn limit the field of conclusions it draws.

What has been created now only comes before our observation as a "product." The act of creation as a "process" is beyond human investigation. We only come to understand the process by divine testimony. On the other hand, the sciences are observing processes. In either case, whether young earth or old earth is the hypothesis, the attempt is to convert the "process" into a "product" which cannot itself be investigated. Hence the "ism." The young earther is beginning with the "process" as he understands it from special revelation, and trying to reduce it down to smaller pieces of evidence. The old earther is beginning with the smaller piece of evidence and building up to a larger process without any evidence that the larger process could take place naturally.

You imply the evidence "suggests" a certain hypothesis and then ask if I "deny" or "believe" the hypothesis. A rational man does not form beliefs based on suggestions. At most he could entertain it as something requiring further investigation.

This reveals a problem with the way people tend to respond to the scientific process. Science changes, and even has its own forms of revolution, but people treat it as if it intends to speak finally and infallibly.

My answer is, I "deny" the conclusion has sufficient evidence to support it.

Another educational point: the fallacy of reification is ascribing human like intent to inanimate or abstract entities. Evidence does not "suggest" anything. Evidence is interpreted within a framework.

It's not wholly inappropriate to use the term 'the evidence suggest'—so long as you implicitly recognize that what you are really saying is that the evidence is incorporated into and inferred to suggest some thing according to one interpretive mechanism. It does not mean something on its own, and other mechanisms can interpret it to mean something else, possibly more conclusively.

There are epistemic limitations of scientific discovery.

First, it is limited to natural phenomena.
Secondly, it is bound to observable fact.
Thirdly, is only ever descriptive, never explanatory.
Fourthly, deals with probability.
Fifthly, is always open to re-evaluation.

With these limitations we can accept everything natural science teaches. The fact that it conflicts with the plain teaching of God's word does not require us to adopt a pseudo-science or to re-evaluate God's word in the light of it. Sarah's womb was dead and Sarah had a child in her old age. The two facts conflict with each other. Both are legitimately maintained in the belief that God calleth those things which be not as though they were (Romans 4:17)

Quite simply evolution negate divine revelation. Apparently, whatever man happened to think would be a product of the same mechanism, force of necessity, and process of development which has evolved everything else. This renders belief as assent to truth an illusion, and it turns revelation as the basis of assent into a delusion.

In terms of the hypothesis of evolution as it is usually stated, it is a purposeless mechanism, which means the content of divine revelation would have no basis in the reality of things. There would be no reason to think that anything revealed bears any correspondence or connection to existence.

Then, as far as evolution is concerned, nothing is finished. Everything simply keeps on developing. To what, then, could divine revelation address itself?

Divine revelation requires intelligent and responsible creation, purposeful creation, a finished creation—just the kind of reality that divine revelation itself makes known.

Summarizing, for all the disparagement given it by moderns, the "appearance of age" still strikes me as one of the simplest and least problematic explanations available.

The objection: that such an explanation is "deceptive" on God's part, overthrows not just the miracle of creation of the universe, but almost any miracle one can think of. Was Adam formed a fully grown man? If so, wouldn't this be "deceptive" if the implication was that he should have been a zygote at an earlier time? If he had a "belly button," would that be further "deception?"

The apparently finely-aged wine at Cana, created by Jesus in an instant: was that deceptive of him? Was he obliged to send word to the master of the feast (John 2:9-10) that his impression was false? Similar questions could be formulated for any miracle of the Bible. Why did the iron ax-head float? Did its molecular nature shift? Did something happen to the water's density? If there's no "scientific" explanation, must we doubt the event? Must we develop an explanation in each case that is consistent with our present understanding of physics, chemistry, math, and time (to name a few), or relegate the story to the realm of mythos?

The violation of natural laws or limits is the very nature of miracle. Forming a world and the universe containing it, where the existence of distance supplies the helpful conditions for various activities such as navigation—this is perfectly compatible with the goodness and wisdom of God. A distant supernova, that would have presumably exploded so many millions of years ago if the universe of time was as old as that is no more incredible (or deceptive) than a woman formed from Adam's rib. All appearances are subject to an authoritative explanation, or revelatory limits.

Furthermore, we simply do not have all the information we might like to have, regarding the manner and mechanisms God used in forming the observable universe; or his reasons for including this or that phenomenon. How many intricacies have men discovered, for which the one explanation seems to be: because it's cool, that's why? The secret things belong to God; the things revealed, to us and to our children.

The lights in the sky actually have a given telos, they were set up for "signs, seasons, days, and years," Gen.1:14. From this I know one certainty: the supernova previously referred to was ordained to exist as a sign from God, I know not what for other than to bear witness to the Creator; but perhaps for some other specific reason also but unnamed. I know this by corollary: that this supernova was not the product of purposeless chance, plus matter and motion, no matter when it began to be according to man's reckoning of time; it did not come to have another meaning imposed on it by men due to its discovery by them. And it most certainly does not mean that Gen.1 is an explanation for our reality imposed on brute facts.

AMR

In a word: prolepsis. The already/not yet of God's timelessness interacting with all forms of created time.

The Omphalos view of creation is most plausible and tenable, as you have well delineated.

(And this is also where my long-time assertions relative to created and uncreated phenomena and God's noumena impact Theology Proper as they do any consideration of origins for intangible and tangible creation.)

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

If you have an intelligent counter, post it.

Hi, Lon. In this or other threads on the topic, has anyone broached the aspect of considering that the form of time we now know as chronology may not have been the form of time originally governing the natural creation before the onset of spiritual death and sin?

There is no real mandate for local terran chronological time to have functioned in arrears in linearity since whatever anyone would postulate as origin and source for tangible existence.

Localized chronological time is always presumed. That's a huge fallacy of presupposition on many levels.

 

[JudgeRightly]

Explain what you glean from Genesis 2:4. Can you see that "day" does not necessarily mean a 24-hour period? Obviously it can have the meaning of a stretch of time not necessarily defined. Can you discuss without insults?

Mayhaps you've heard it before, but the word "day" (Hebrew "yom") is always, ALWAYS defined by the context in which it is used.

Genesis 1 uses day as a literal 24 hour day.

Genesis 2:4 uses day as an epoch of time, specifically as "the time period which includes the creation week." Today we would use day in the same way by saying, "back in the day, ..." or "in my day, ..." or "in this day and age, ...".

See how that works?

 

[Stuu]

Once again, you go with nonsense and bald assertions instead of evidence.

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A pretty ironic reply, don't you think?

It would require you to supply evidence to disprove the claims of 800,000 countable years of ice core, not including the layers that can't be resolved, but for some reason you are asking for evidence.

Is the record broken, Stripe?

Stuart

 

[CabinetMaker]

That's it. I think you see the problem now. You have to assume you exist because you can't prove it. But it's not like it's an unreasonable thing to assume!

No, I don't see the problem. I still think it is a BS argument. It may be fun to talk about over a couple of beers but it is meaningless otherwise. Existence is a given. We exist. The Earth exists. By every scientific experiment ever done, things exist.

Can you frame that why question specifically? It is possible to have a platitude question, one that sounds deep but actually is asking nothing. Why you exist is explained by Big Bang cosmology, stellar nucleogenesis, star formation and planetary accretion, and evolution by natural selection. You really are the product of gravity appearing and acting, obviously with some other resultant effects. Now, what else do you specifically want to know? I think very often when people ask that 'why' question, they are trying to justify a prior belief or feeling they have. Do such questioners often get to 'why would I feel this way'? I think scientific investigation has a great capacity for answering that question.

Why am I here? Not as a physical entity but as an sentient, self aware being. What purpose does life serve? Is this all there is? I think those questions are important to each of us at some point or another in life. Those are not questions that science is equipped to answer.

I think before you go down this route it would be worth clearing out a misconception about evolution by natural selection. Mutation and natural selection are both brutal things, but in humans the outcome of that is a social species, where the interactions within the tribe and the interactions between tribes are fine-tuned by natural selection. And I think if you consider the different structures, from individuals in families, to communities, to nations and global geopolitics, essentially those same tribal instincts play out.

'Survival of the fittest' is often cited incorrectly, and what Darwin wrote about that expression is interesting. It certainly is not a matter of killing others for your own supremacy. Your genes do not benefit from that very much at all, although obviously killing does happen. Think about it in terms of the psychology of a primitive tribal existence with intertribal rivalries and rivalries within the tribe, and sometimes the killing is explained.

'Survival of the fittest' actually means that the members of the species that are fittest for surviving and reproducing in that environment are more likely to pass on their genes, which will then become more common in the population than the genes of the less-fit. This is the tautology of natural selection!

If my tribe wipes out your tribe, my tribe gets more resources and your genes end. Which genes were ultimately more successful? We have seen this in the animal kingdom.

I am interested in the 'experiences' that you and others describe. I think I probably have the same experiences but just interpret them in a different way. That is not to belittle the level of your experiences, but I don't think your human experience is any more special than mine, in principle.

I don't think that you have had the same experience. From talking with people, those that experience God find their lives changed and their faith generally unshakable.

But does it stand up to knowledge and reason? Humans are notorious for behaving irrationally despite their knowledge and reasoning ability, you and me included. You are an intelligent person and you know full well that humans don't walk again after they have been executed, or are born of just one human parent. Invisible entities claimed to be known by others are delusions. But we all allow ourselves to behave against our knowledge and rational thinking. It is usually behaviour that leads belief, and it sounds to be like you have changed your behaviour and your beliefs have followed. I find myself doing that kind of thing quite often, but just not in regard to invisible friends. You might then say, 'not yet...'.

I know that God can work semicircles that defy our human wisdom and rationality. For me, the belief proceed the behavior.

I still don't see how. As soon as you stick a god into any question of natural history, you open up a whole book full of questions, none of which lead in the direction of a more parsimonious explanation as per Occam's Razor. The addition of a god decreases the quality of the knowledge. Don't you seek better quality knowledge when you are looking for an understanding? Surely it is better to ignore the god hypothesis for as long as you can, because nothing is added by it. You are not seeking to convert me, of course, and I appreciate that, but the more I think through the issues you raise the more I understand just how poisonous god belief is. We are the one species best placed to discover what is 'really going on' in the universe. The certitudes of a conspiracy of invisible friends running the universe is a poor starting point.

My life is richer and better because of God. As God and science are not at odds to me, faith and knowledge to not conflict with each other. God adds richness and meaning to life in a way that science cannot hope to match. At this time in history, we cannot explain what existed before the Big Bang. All of the science that we know and love simply did not exist. If science can never answer that question, is there another possible answer that could explain it?

Yes, I have no doubt we have brains that have evolved to respond to gods. If you think again about that primitive tribal situation, your survival is enhanced by you following a leader in the tribe so you can act as a coherent group. It is going to be much easier if tribal leaders, whether they are aware of the delusion or not, can threaten dissenters with powerful, invisible entities. That is basically the 'Old Testament' in a nutshell.
Add to that the selection pressure of living on the African Savannah and being attacked by sabre tooths: not every rustle of the bushes is a sabre tooth, but you have a survival advantage if you assume it is. Those who ignored the rustle when it was a sabre-tooth died, and so today we seek patterns even when no pattern really exists. The illusion of design in the universe is an example. Why do we have brains that leap to the god conclusion? There is no unambiguous evidence for that. But our brains are primed for it.

It could also be thatour brains evolved to respond to God because God is real.

Hang on a minute, you would use scripture as a diagnostic tool in psychology to diagnose mental illness??

If somebody is claiming to be God or Jesus, what other standard would you use? Someone claims to be Jesus incarnate. Does this person act consistently with what scripture shows us about Jesus?

Which leads directly to Armando Iannucci's (the maker of the film The Death of Stalin and other political satires) question: why did Jesus have to die?

To complete the law of the Old Covenant so that we can are redeemed to the Father. God created that law and we could not live according to it. But it had to be completed and Jesus did that for us. Jesus dies that we may live. Jesus rose from that dead that we may live again with God.

I can see no intellectual satisfaction in that at all. You still haven't said what your god actually does when it interferes in evolutionary processes, so how can you claim to know that you have discovered anything about how 'god does stuff'? How did your god inflate space-time? Have you discovered anything about that? Of course not, this is a celebration of ignorance, completely in line with the writings of Paul.

Nor have you discovered how the Big Band could have possible happened. You have an uncaused first cause. I have no doubt that God said,'Let there be light!" and that kicked the Big Bang off. How does God influance evolution? We don't understand nearly enough to answer that question. But I have no doubt that God put a finger to a gene when needed to accomplish the next step of His plan.

Christianity and science both require mystery: the difference is that science seeks to conquer mystery whereas christianity seeks to protect mystery in the meme's interests. I suppose that is the way that science has corroded christianity, and I think that has been a great thing for humanity. Prejudice and moronic certainly about dogma has been replaced with better knowledge and less cocksure confidence as we discover more, and discover how much we don't know.

People have lulled themselves into a sense of false security. Consider: If you are right and there is no God, I will never know that. When I die, gameover. However, If I am right, you will know that when you die. Al the science and knowledge and reason in the universe will not help you answer a simple question, "What did you do with my Son?"

And what about judging your god? How is that one going? Is it worth worshiping this god, given what it says in scripture about it? Does it let go the things it made, showing that it loves them? No it does not. Love is compulsory, on pain of judgment and burning in sulfur. I think if there really is a god of the kind described in scripture then it has no moral authority to judge me at all. I would be happy to stand up to it and demand answers for its injustices. Maybe it will destroy me then. Maybe it will turn out that I was supposed to be a robot in a small-minded, vengeful totalitarian matrix. That would be a shame. But the universe appears to be too beautiful for that to be true.

As a created person I do not get to judge the creator. Yes, He is worth worshiping. Love is not compulsory. However, after death there are two and only two places to go: someplace with God or someplace without God. God will honor your choice. God is the ONLY moral authority fit to judge that which He created.

And did you reach from depravity to the stars? Or instead of the stars did you find something that judged you as depraved when you were born?

(I remain convinced you are not actually depraved. Don't let them tell you that!)

Stuart

I was raised from depravity to live everlasting with God.

 

[Stripe]

It would require you to supply evidence to disprove the claims of 800,000 countable years of ice core, not including the layers that can't be resolved, but for some reason you are asking for evidence.

Desperate much?

I am not required to prove anything.

I ask you to stick to evidence when you start ranting about how lots of people believe something.

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

 

[Stuu]

Your disdain and arrogance are understood, noted,

Don't forget the baby-eating...

but this is just one atheist's broad brush stroke, Stuart. It is the same with any and every prejudice and your white hood is showing. It is interesting that those without religion desperately seek to think they are smarter than the rest of us. I suppose it is the only thing you have that you 'could' brag about against a theist, having ditched all else? You'll have to take that one up with your Creator. I know what my own intelligence level actually is.

What was that about broad brush stroke?

I'm not sure if you are responding specifically or just having a general rant. If you read what I wrote, this time it is about education. You can have intelligent people who have not been educated. There would have been plenty of people like that in ancient Palestine. And education, where available, would have been all about religious doctrine. And this is true in medieval times, and in the islamic world today also. You have bright people who could run rings around any of us here with their knowledge of scripture and theology. But outside of that, they would appear to be the most ignorant people we had ever met. And that's thanks to the education we did have: take your biblical knowledge back 500 years and you would be laughed at, but take your scientific understanding back 150 years and you would be a world expert, or else derided for being insane.

Again, the white hood comes out. I'm fairly certain several Christians on this website have higher IQ than you possess. You might want to get off that horse. I don't need to contend as, these same individuals have performed better than both you AND I, so there is no contention between you and I. You are just over your head with assumption and 'ignorant' slams that simply fall back from the insurmountable 'brilliant' wall you are trying to façade.

I can see you are upset. You really shouldn't let me do that to you. I am not being personal here, in fact I have made an effort to avoid that. I am sure there are people with higher IQs here than me. I would say that statistically, they are more likely to be atheists than theists. They are also more likely to be deists than theists, I imagine.

There it is again, that ol' false arrogance.

Sorry if it sounds arrogant, but it is true that the Judeo-christian scriptures are historical fiction. That is pretty easily demonstrated, and I think I have shown that enough here in the past.

Per fact, you are not the most intelligent poster on TOL

That fact only seems to be important to you.

you are surrounded by Christian with IQ's much higher than your own.

Opinion noted. It's not that important to me. IQ counts for nothing if all you can do is spout dogma instead of seeking high-quality information. It is only of passing interest that statistically atheists are ahead of theists on IQ. That tells you nothing about individuals.

You can put the hood away. We know who you are when you burn stuff on our lawns, Stuart. Your pride and arrogance in false data is astounding. It is like you hunt for it and collect it all, whether it is true or not. I just read another article about 'atheists are smarter.' Funny thing? It was an atheist rally, as they all are. Or is that a sad thing? Raw data is always better than trash talk. {just don't want you to be a dupe, drinking his own white-hooded Kool-Aid}

Here is a space for you to allow your reptilian brain to give control back to your conscious human neocortex, which has been hijacked by your feeling of rage.








Stuart

 

[Stuu]

Desperate much?

I am not required to prove anything.

I ask you to stick to evidence when you start ranting about how lots of people believe something.

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

Please quote me where I related ice core evidence to 'lots of people believe', or perhaps consider retracting and apologising.

I have stuck exactly to evidence, so there it is. A verifiable fact, entirely supported by evidence and other corroborating evidence that the earth is a minimum of 800,000 years old. Do you just not like this evidence? Would rather it said something else?

Over to you, Stripe. The evidence says 800,000 years plus.

Stuart

 

[Stripe]

The evidence says 800,000 years plus.

That's nice.

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

 

[George Affleck]

Yip. This is a crucial point in discussions with atheists. They present science as if it is the be all and end all, but there is more to life than just science. A theist is justified in appealing to the supernatural — which an atheist who ignores all the other aspects of reality that science is not the right tool for might be justified in doubting — but the atheist's insistence that science eliminates the possibility of the miraculous is simply an assertion of the primacy of his belief and no more credible than an unfettered counterclaim.

This is what the incredible minds of centuries ago knew, and we have lost. They encompassed all disciplines together recognizing that they all have their origin in the God who gave them for us to discover.

We are only beginning to realize again that science and religion are inseparable.

 

[Stuu]

No, I don't see the problem. I still think it is a BS argument. It may be fun to talk about over a couple of beers but it is meaningless otherwise. Existence is a given. We exist. The Earth exists. By every scientific experiment ever done, things exist.

Philosophy disagrees with you. I don't.

Why am I here? Not as a physical entity but as an sentient, self aware being. What purpose does life serve? Is this all there is? I think those questions are important to each of us at some point or another in life. Those are not questions that science is equipped to answer.

Why would you demand that life involves a 'purpose'? What do you mean by 'all there is', or 'this'? The problem 'science' would have with your questions is the same one I have. What do your questions mean? Obviously I am not naive about this, I know these questions are asked all the time, but they aren't really asking anything. Each is more an inarticulate groan of existential angst than a question.

If my tribe wipes out your tribe, my tribe gets more resources and your genes end. Which genes were ultimately more successful? We have seen this in the animal kingdom.

Nope, that's completely wrong. Why do we have families? How does that help survival of genes? Easy so far, right? Now, why tribes of families? Still easy. Now, why would tribes attack other tribes? Easy, too. Now, why would tribes cooperate with other tribes? Because, as with international trade today, there are more ways than killing to share resources for the benefit of both parties.

Now take the species as a whole: the more members the species has, the more genetic variation there is, and the better situation the species is to flourish in a changing environment. Reducing the size of the population is a lousy survival strategy for genes, and we had better believe that the way we behave is almost completely shaped by the selfish needs of our genes, which have learned (blindly and without any intent) how to manipulate our species. That is the power of natural selection.

I don't think that you have had the same experience. From talking with people, those that experience God find their lives changed and their faith generally unshakable.

That's a bit of a slap in the fact for all those atheists who would claim that their lives changed very much for the better once the god delusion had left them. Are they wrong about that?

I know that God can work semicircles that defy our human wisdom and rationality. For me, the belief proceed the behavior.

God works in mysterious ways, right? That is really an expression of the faith card being played. I believe it that you believe it. It's not common ground between us though.

At this time in history, we cannot explain what existed before the Big Bang. All of the science that we know and love simply did not exist. If science can never answer that question, is there another possible answer that could explain it?

There is no such thing as 'before' the Big Bang. That was Stephen Hawking's (rather stilted) argument, that because there was no time before the Big Bang there was no time for a god to do any creating.

It could also be thatour brains evolved to respond to God because God is real.

Well, there is a question, an hypothesis. But unfortunately you cannot use our best method of discovery, the scientific method, to investigate that hypothesis because you have put your god beyond science. Expose your god to testable claims, and perhaps we could investigate them dispassionately. But actually, christians don't want that question answered. That is the mystery that must remain, because the possibility of 'no' is a real private fear, and reality might be too disruptive in their lives and for their dreams of a thing they call 'eternity', a bank draft that is easy to write but difficult to guarantee.

If somebody is claiming to be God or Jesus, what other standard would you use? Someone claims to be Jesus incarnate. Does this person act consistently with what scripture shows us about Jesus?

Robert Powell did in Jesus of Nazareth,the 1977 film. If he was to claim today, in an unironic tone of voice 'I am Jesus', you might have to bow down. But I can see the point here: only atheists are qualified to make the diagnosis because christians have to reserve some credit for the possibility that a man who was executed by the Romans 2000 years ago might walk the earth again today.

Remind me, who are we thinking of locking up for their own good?

To complete the law of the Old Covenant so that we can are redeemed to the Father. God created that law and we could not live according to it. But it had to be completed and Jesus did that for us. Jesus dies that we may live. Jesus rose from that dead that we may live again with God.

That's not really an explanation though. It's a doctrine. Why can't Jesus just come down and say, the god's a bit upset about the way things are going, so it will be making some changes to your human nature, and you are all forgiven and now things will be better? All this vicarious punishment nonsense, what kind of a god is that?

Nor have you discovered how the Big Band could have possible happened. You have an uncaused first cause.

And you don't??

I have no doubt that God said,'Let there be light!" and that kicked the Big Bang off.

Well the Big Bang is meaningless then, for the reasons I gave above. You can't have both of those things together. It doesn't work. Why don't you just say it's all magic? That's pretty much what you are saying anyway.

How does God influance evolution? We don't understand nearly enough to answer that question. But I have no doubt that God put a finger to a gene when needed to accomplish the next step of His plan.

So, we need to investigate this god gene finger hypothesis, don't we. Is it definitely a finger, or could that be a metaphor for your god using radiation to change a gene? And what plan has been enacted by this method, and is the change as is observed, a random mutation, or is this intelligent finger/radiation theory? And if that is the case, what is the mechanism for a gene being changed by a finger, or a specific mutation with intent being induced by a random act of radiation damage?

You see the problem? Now you have inserted a divine finger, you instill a claim for which there is no evidence whatsoever, it's just what you reckon. Obviously it is a grade above the usual things people just reckon about what gods do, but nonetheless this is something about which you have 'no doubt'. You can at least appreciate that others might have some doubt on your behalf.

People have lulled themselves into a sense of false security. Consider: If you are right and there is no God, I will never know that. When I die, gameover. However, If I am right, you will know that when you die. Al the science and knowledge and reason in the universe will not help you answer a simple question, "What did you do with my Son?"

Ha. Even if I accept the impossibility of a human being born of only one human parent, I did nothing 'with your son'. Had I been alive at the time of Jesus's execution I would have done whatever I possibly could to prevent it. I would have worked hard to convince the crowds to appeal for Jesus's release, and possibly incitement of insurrection against the execution of anyone. Then, had I succeeded, where would you be now? No dead Jesus, no salvation, burning sulfur for everyone. What a miserable death-cult.The good news of Jesus is that none of this is true. He was just some bloke, maybe a simple preacher, maybe not.

As a created person I do not get to judge the creator. Yes, He is worth worshiping. Love is not compulsory. However, after death there are two and only two places to go: someplace with God or someplace without God. God will honor your choice. God is the ONLY moral authority fit to judge that which He created.

I can see what you mean about your god not always acting logically.

I was raised from depravity to live everlasting with God.

Is that what they told you.

Stuart

 

[6days]

If the YEC literalists want to be consistent in their argument, then Adam and Eve were literally created from the ground-up....and NOT as full grown adults.

Gen2:21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

 

[Greg Jennings]

Greg... the question was only for people who claim to trust in Jesus. Your 'answer' ignored the question.. (if the question applies to you)... 'If physical death existed before first Adam sinned, (and was part of a very good creation) then why did Last Adam have to defeat physical death?'

I trust in him as my lord and religious role model. I don't trust him as a scientist, and he never claimed to be one. I trust scientists, people who spend their lives doing research for no real personal gain beyond notoriety and maybe a book deal

Or was Jesus formally educated at some Judean university I'm not aware of? And in a scientific discipline? Odds seem low, don't you think?

 

[Stuu]

Gen2:21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

Add these:

Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Matthew 1:18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

Genesis 4:17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch

That's four different ways of making humans, and five if Cain's wife appeared by magic.

Stuart