Earth

[JohnR7]

a simple yes or no answer will suffice:

if you are faced with evidence that entirely contradicts the bible, will you ignore it, yes or no?

That basicly is a hypothetical question. I do not answer hypothetical questions. You would have to be more specific.

 

[Arikay]

So you wont tell us?

 

[Jet Black]

That basicly is a hypothetical question. I do not answer hypothetical questions. You would have to be more specific.

but you appear to be happy with hypothetical situations like this one:

Even if you have millions of articals, if they do not line up with the word of God, then they are in error and do not represent the truth.

 

[lucaspa]

That basicly is a hypothetical question. I do not answer hypothetical questions. You would have to be more specific.

Christians have already answered that one [evidence contradicting the Bible]

"If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault." Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437

Someday you are going to have to stop running from that one. Because I'm going to keep throwing it at you until you do stop running and face it.

 

[lucaspa]

I say creationists have more too lose if their wrong.

Science thrives on evidence that falsifies its own observations. If the scientific method could falsify evolutionary theory with evidence that explains better, Scientists around the world would be having parties to celebrate.

The fact that creationism does not welcome evidence that falsifies, shows that creationism is NOT SCIENCE

CreationISM is a scientific theory: a falsified one.

CreaitonISTS are not good scientists.

You have to separate the people who advocate the theory from the theory.

Creationists ignore evidence that falsifies creationism for emotional reasons. The evidence still falsifies creationism whether they admit it or not.

 

[JohnR7]

"If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault." Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437

No, I do not accept that statement. Esp. when you use the word: "appears".

Mark 13:22
for false Christs and false prophets will arise, and will show signs and wonders, in order, if possible, to lead the elect astray.

 

[Jet Black]

Is God one of these false prophets then? he made science after all.

 

[JohnR7]

but you appear to be happy with hypothetical situations like this one:Originally Posted by JohnR7
Even if you have millions of articals, if they do not line up with the word of God, then they are in error and do not represent the truth.

There is nothing hypothetical about that statement. Either something lines up with the living word of the living God, or it does not. There is no middle ground. You are either for God, or against Him. Your either saved or your lost.

 

[Arikay]

And of course John, you are with god right?
Even though you deny his creation.

 

[lucaspa]

I noticed that you guys loved to talk about odds. I agree with you to a point, odds are not that important in day to day activities, yet when your talking about the beginning of life, or life from non-life i think its important. When a odd is so high the only chance you have to make it is thur eternity i believe it needs some discussion. This is a good site just about evolution and odds. Yes, its a christian site, go away, say it baised. When are you people going to stop seeing a christian site and turn it away for fear of bais. http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?t=43841&page=3&pp=10

I am not turning away in bias against "Christian". I am refuting it based on the fact that the calculations are based on wrong premises. If you start out with garbage, the math is only going to give you garbage.

But to put you guys at ease, this is a non christian site about the same subject http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html

Science and reason are based on observation of evidence and logical inference. What do we observe? That life comes only from existing life and not from inanimate matter.

Unfortunately, that is NOT what we observe. We have observed life coming from non-living matter.
http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/
http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

I've posted this to you at least 2 other times. When are you going to pay attention?

If the odds of life forming on its own are even as low as one in a trillion, then the odds of life not forming on its own must be a trillion to one.

But that "If" that starts off the sentence is wrong. The odds are not a trillion to one, but only about 1.2 to one. IOW, it's nearly a virtural certainty that life will form by chemistry.

Wouldn't these observations and inferences lead anyone acting without bias or preconceptions about God and religion to conclude that intelligent design is far more reasonable than life happening on its own?

If we liked god-of-the-gaps theology, we might be impressed. But since your whole argument is non-Biblical and non-Christian, I'm not impressed theologically. Instead, the data is pretty clear that it is easy by chemistry to make life from non-life.

Everything that we know with certainty to have been created in our own lifetime was only done so with purpose and intelligence. We've never observed non-living matter to have either intelligence or the ability to create life, so how and why would matter have created it to begin with?

The premise is that you have to have mind to make life. It is that premise that we are saying is in error. You DO NOT NEED MIND to make life. You need chemistry. And we have observed non-living matter give rise, through chemical reactions, to life. Also, there are designs created in our own lifetime -- such as DNA enzymes -- that were not created by purpose and intelligence but by natural selection.

An intelligence and power capable of creating the universe is far beyond our comprehension, yet it shouldn't be difficult to see that this is the more reasonable choice of faith. It's just putting mind over matter.

And right here you have the pre-Darwin philosophy in a nutshell. The top down universe with Mind at the top, creating Design, then with Order under Design, and Chaos under Order.

But when Darwin discovered natural selection and the way that Order could make Design WITHOUT mind, that blew this philosophy (and proof of God) away. Chaos by self-organization thru the laws of physics and chemistry can give Order. Natural selection makes Design out of Order, and can even make Mind -- our human minds.

You are trying to prove God by science. Can't be done. Science has found that the scientific data is inconclusive on the existence of God. What was once thought as proof of God -- designs in nature -- we now know are due proximately to natural selection. The "gap" you have -- first life -- we now know is filled by chemistry.

The god-of-the-gaps road to find God simply isn't going to work. All you do is squeeze God out.

 

[Siliconaut]

I find this quote quite frightening and depressing:

(by John7)Even if you have millions of articals, if they do not line up with the word of God, then they are in error and do not represent the truth.

Not only do you presume to know the only *right* way to interpret the word of god, no, you also - logically, in its delusion - have the arrogance to believe that your interpretation is better than any evidence to the contrary.

That's not divine inspiration speaking, the correct terminus is megalomania. No offence, but that's the image you project to those you pretend to wish to "lead to god".

 

[JohnR7]

that's the image you project to those you pretend to wish to "lead to god".

We do not lead people to God. He knows how to draw people to Himself.

 

[PhantomLlama]

We do not lead people to God. He knows how to draw people to Himself.

Well you are making his job a whole lot harder by projecting the image you do.

 

[JohnR7]

Well you are making his job a whole lot harder by projecting the image you do.

What image is that?

 

[lucaspa]

I said most of that, lucaspe

So I saw as I continued to scroll down the pages. My apologies. However, now worship4ever knows at least 2 of us who independently examined the data and came up with the same thing.

 

[Arikay]

Yeah, it often doesnt hurt to repeat something, 5-10-20 times. Then at least they cant truthfully claim that no one told them.

 

[lucaspa]

They all promote the same error, untill they come up with something better. Or more often until more information comes along.

A better word could be speculation. No one really can argue with the natural record or the evidence. Just their comments about the evidence. What they call theorys, or hypothesis.

We've seen this argument before as you try to get rid of data that you don't like.

Theories and hypotheses are explanations of the natural record or evidence. They last only so long as the evidence does not refute them.

This is what happened to creationism. It is a theory about how the earth came to look like it does today. It was promoted for over 130 years until information came along to definitively show it to be wrong.

Now we have evolution. The evidence is so overwhelmingly for it that, in Gould's words, it is simply "perverse not to accept it as provisionally true."

However, whatever happens to evolution in the future, we already know that creationism is false and will always be false.

 

[lucaspa]

We do not lead people to God. He knows how to draw people to Himself.

Yes, God can draw people to Him. But your god has to have you to lead people to it. I agree with Siliconaut. When you said "Even if you have millions of articals, if they do not line up with the word of God, then they are in error and do not represent the truth." this is not divine inspiration of God, but human ego refusing to listen to God.

I wish you would climb back up the theological cliff before it is too late.

 

[lucaspa]

So, in the long run, anything that does not line up with truth as we find it in the written word of God is more than worthless, it will lead to destruction. Only in the truth is there life.

John, isn't this placing "the written word of God" above God? Worse, since you have to interpret the written word of God, isn't this placing your interpretation above God? When what you claim is "truth" contradicts what God put in His Creation, how can you cling to your interpretation of "the written word of God".

How are you not making a false idol to worship?

 

[lucaspa]

Creationism does not predict anything. people might try and mould creationism to some pseudoscientific framework, but at the end of the day the framework cannot predict anything new that is found. there are no predictions in creationism that state "if the earth was made 6k years ago, we will find such and such features" none at all.

Actually, creationism does make predictions. Just not accurate predictions. The scientific creationists of the 18th and early 19th century did do real science. They made predictions, testable predictions. It's just that the data was contrary to the predictions and the theory was falsified.

""There is another way to be a Creationist. One might offer Creationism as a scientific theory: Life did not evolve over millions of years; rather all forms were created at one time by a particular Creator. Although pure versions of Creationism were no longer in vogue among scientists by the end of the eighteenth century, they had flourished earlier (in the writings of Thomas Bumet, William Whiston, and others). Moreover, variants of Creationism were supported by a number of eminent nineteenth-century scientists-William Buckland, Adam Sedgwick, and Louis Agassiz, for example. These Creationists trusted that their theories would accord with the Bible, interpreted in what they saw as a correct way. However, that fact does not affect the scientific status of those theories. Even postulating an unobserved Creator need be no more unscientific than postulating unobservable particles. What matters is the character of the proposals and the ways in which they are articulated and defended. The great scientific Creationists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries offered problem-solving strategies for many of the questions addressed by evolutionary theory. They struggled hard to explain the observed distribution of fossils. Sedgwick, Buckland, and others practiced genuine science. They stuck their necks out and volunteered information about the catastrophes that they invoked to explain biological and geological findings. Because their theories offered definite proposals, those theories were refutable. Indeed, the theories actually achieved refutation. In 1831, in his presidential address to the Geological Society, Adam Sedgwick publicly announced that his own variant of Creationism had been refuted" Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism pp125-126