Here's my problem, I believe in evolution, and it brings up doubts especially in the OT...

[PsychoSarah]

Why should I expect them too, they are separate species..... You just proved my point not even realizing it.

The point of what? That people on one side of a debate won't usually present evidence against their own side? Well, gee, would you present evidence against creationism intentionally? Also, I have gone against standard debate protocol and have presented some of the weaker points of evolution. I haven't presented anything that would disprove it, because I don't know of any evidence found that does, and if I did, then I wouldn't support the theory.

 

[BobRyan]

I love the title of this thread, the OP, and the the swarm of atheist and agnostic posts that basically justify the OP "concerns" about where the T.E-against-the-Bible doctrines are leading.

 

[BobRyan]

Do you know what quote mining means, Bob?

IN certain more academic contexts it has "real meaning" and "substance. But on this thread it means "you found something inconvenient to true believers in blind-faith-evolultionism. We can't refute it , we can't deny it - so we will try out a few false accusations where we don't think we need to support any accusation that we make against that quote".

Which is transparently "fluff" for most of us to see -- but a few blind-faith-evolutionists here love to pretend that "nobody notices".

And that is a bit of a fantasy on their part which I am happy to indulge since it is so transparently flawed.

Nobody is intimidated by threats, Bob. To me, it's morally reprehensible to threaten someone

I never threaten anyone. I never claim to be "in charge" of the Bible or "in charge of Rev 20". Rather I offer the escape plan, the solution that we find in the Bible.

And the idea of "avoiding excape at all costs and teach my children to do the same" might "seem" logical and sensible to some blind faith evolutionists - but on a Christian message board most of us think it makes no sense at all.

As for that last point - I believe both sides here will agree that it is --- "irrefutable".

Evolution has been repeatedly tested and confirmed for over 150 years.

Just not in "real life" -- hence that statements from your own professor "Patterson".

And 'hence' the fact that NOTHING like that is found in actual hard - solid - confirmed sciences like Math, chemistry, Physics, Engineering over the past 150 years ... as we all know. (here again -- 'irrefutable' --)

 

[JonFromMinnesota]

IN certain more academic contexts it has "real meaning" and "substance.

No, Bob. You don't understand. You got caught dishonestly quote mining. Quote mining means taking a quote out of context and passing it off as in favor of your argument without including the context of the quote. It's basically a lie. Are you a liar, Bob?

But on this thread it means "you found something in convenient to true believers in blind-faith-evolultionism. We can't refute it , we can't deny it - so we will try out a few false accusations where we don't think we need to support any accusation that we make against that quote".

It's not my fault you can't have an honest discussion and must resort to dishonest tactics such as quote mining. Look back at the thread of others pointing out your dishonesty. You completely ignore when your argument is shown to be in error. That is intellectually dishonest.

I never threaten anyone. I never claim to be "in charge" of the Bible or "in charge of Rev 20". Rather I offer the escape plan, the solution that we find in the Bible.

You missed the point Bob. You won't find any agnostic, atheist or humanist on this board that is intimidated by the threat of hell. It's a scare tactic and to use it on children is child abuse. It may work on the young and gullible.

Just not in "real life" -- hence that statements from your own professor "Patterson".

And 'hence' the fact that NOTHING like that is found in actual hard - solid - confirmed sciences like Math, chemistry, Physics, Engineering over the past 150 years ... as we all know. (here again -- 'irrefutable' --)

Doubling down on the dishonest quote mining huh? You were shown to be in error using this before. This makes you a liar.

If you would like to discuss evolution, then ask questions. Dismissing it out of hand makes you look willfully ignorant.

 

[BobRyan]

IN certain more academic contexts it has "real meaning" and "substance. But on this thread it means "you found something inconvenient to true believers in blind-faith-evolultionism. We can't refute it , we can't deny it - so we will try out a few false accusations where we don't think we need to support any accusation that we make against that quote".

Which is transparently "fluff" for most of us to see -- but a few blind-faith-evolutionists here love to pretend that "nobody notices".

And that is a bit of a fantasy on their part which I am happy to indulge since it is so transparently flawed.

No evidence at all to support their much-repeated high-fiction and false accusations

No, Bob. You don't understand. You got caught dishonestly quote mining.

And so "again" you repeat your 'high-fiction and false accusation' - without any proof at all for it.

How "instructive" for the unbiased objective reader.

Quote mining means taking a quote out of context

Normally that would be true - if actual substance were shown in the accusation -- but so far we have a factless accusation -- that is merely 'repeated' as you keep demonstrating for us.

Where we simply "not supposed to notice"???

Real life does not work that way.

You merely repeat your accusation as if "the accusation alone is its own supporting proof" -- how sad.

But much expected in the methods of blind faith evolutionism.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Looking at the title of this thread - and the OP -- it is easy to understand why it is that atheist settle for ignoring the entire subject - and confine themselves to 'repeating false accusations' accompanied by "no evidence whatsoever" other than the "repeat of the accusation".

How sad.

Even more sad is that some feel this is their justification for choosing what the Bible calls 'the lake of fire' for themselves and those family members "influenced" by them.

I myself would rather see them choosing life - over the Rev 20 "alternative"

 

[JonFromMinnesota]

No evidence at all to support their much-repeated high-fiction and false accusations
And so "again" you repeat your 'high-fiction and false accusation' - without any proof at all for it.

Bob

Did you forget that these links were provided to you to show you the many dishonest quote mines that creationists use? You clearly disregarded it and doubled down on the dishonesty.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/project.html

But much expected in the methods of blind faith evolutionism.

Would you care to discuss the evidence for evolution instead of dismissing it out of hand.
Where would you like to begin? Should we talk about how evolution accurately predicts a nested hierarchy? How about we look at the fossil record, embryology, comparative anatomy? Or we could go right to DNA and molecular genetics since they demonstrate the irrefutable facts of evolution.

Where should we begin Bob? If you want to have a discussion, you have to present an argument. Dismissing it out of hand and using quote mines make you look dishonest.

I myself would rather see them choosing life - over the Rev 20 "alternative"

We do choose life, Bob. The one I have right now. The one I am certain to get I enjoy it, while you seem to be to live in fear.

 

[BobRyan]

Did you forget that these links were provided to you to show you the many dishonest quote mines that creationists use?

But none of them identified a single substantive flaw in any post of mine.

Were we simply supposed to "imagine it" for you??

Please be serious.

 

[BobRyan]

your problem is that you apparently can't remember what I posted ... here let me help you.

This is an example of one of your own atheist scientists - a diehard "believer" in evolutionism - saying that which NO well-known scientists in the field of math, physics, chemistry, engineering would ever say about their own field of study.

Here is evidence from one of your own atheist scientists - a high priest in the religion of evolutionism.

=====================================================

Agnostics may not think much of the OP - but in the OP the question is asked by a Christian regarding the conflict between the Bible and blind-faith-evolutionism.

Patterson noted this --

Collin Patterson (atheist and diehard evolutionist to the day he died in 1998) - Paleontologist British Museum of Natural history speaking at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 - said:

Patterson - quotes Gillespie's arguing that Christians

"'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'"

Patterson countered, "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact (saying):'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"

"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here...

"...,Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge , apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."

================================================

Patterson (the diehard evolutionist right to the end ) -- at that same meeting -

"...I'm speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it's true to say that I know nothing whatever about either...One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, well, let's call it non-evolutionary , was last year I had a sudden realization.

"For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff fortwenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. "That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long...

It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and perhaps that's all we know about it...

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

 

[BobRyan]

here is another quote debunking the idea that "all news is good news" - that apparently you "forgot" in the imagination that those links address this detail.



The "hope-against-hope" among some here is that "bad news" or at least "all inconvenient news" is simply "news taken out of context". -- but in the real world that simply is not true.

Another interesting quote - that is also linked to that meeting.

"I was sitting in the front row next to an AMNH (American Museum of Natural Hist) curator of mammals, Karl Koopman, who, obviously very agitated kept slamming his pencil down in front of him. Niles Eldredge in the Department of Invertebrates at AMNH was standing by the left wall (as one looks toward the speaker). Beside Eldredge stood a high school biology teacher, Roy Slingo, from the prestigious Scarsdale NY district.

Slingo later informed me that at one stage of the talk Niles Eldredge (well known for his anti-creationist perspective) grabbed his forehead and slid down the wall proclaiming, "My G__, how can he be doing this to us."

==========================

So in answer to the un-asked question "hey - if we look into the details here - doesn't it all just come up as - more good news for blind-faith-evolutionism?" -- the answer is "No!"

Still - evolutionism IS the sort of junk-science "fluff" that some are willing to trade in their bibles for.

 

[BobRyan]

A few more "details" totally missed in the "non-discussion" at the links you provide.

And we saw that again in the case of the fraudulent horse series

"I admit that an awful lot of that [imaginary stories] has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs [in the American Museum of Natural History] is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable ..."
Niles Eldredge, as quoted in Luther D Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, 4th ed. 1988, pg 78.


"The uniform continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature."—G.G. Simpson, Life of the Past (1953), p. 119.

============================

The sorts of things world class scientists were not saying about gravity and thermodynamics in the 1980's and 1950's

You have not provided any facts.

Here is a fact already in evidence.

After the bold equivocation between junk-science evolutionism and actual science like the law of Gravity and the laws of thermodynamics - I pointed out the blunder - showing that in real life even you don't see world class scientists saying the sorts of thing about gravity as your own atheist scientists say about evolutionism.

============


Collin Patterson (atheist and diehard evolutionist to the day he died in 1998) - Paleontologist British Museum of Natural history speaking at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 - said:


Patterson - quotes Gillespie's arguing that Christians

"'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'"

Patterson countered, "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact (saying):'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"


"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here...


"...,Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge , apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."

========================

Now on this thread we are being "told" to equivocate between blind faith evolutionism - and ... 'Gravity' and 'the law of thermodynamics'. AS IF our top scientists today ALSO come out saying "the law of thermodynamics conveys no knowledge.. in fact it seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge. apparent knowledge that is harmful to physics".

AS IF our top scientists today would say "Gravity --and the gravitational constant so near and dear to science text books today - NEVER HAPPENED in nature".

REALLY?? That is what you see happening???

========================================================

Thus the perfect contrast was given - exposing that sort of "equivocation" as was attempted trying to get evolutionism in the "legit box" of science - that has Gravity and Thermodynamics in it.

 

[BobRyan]

Those are posts already found on this thread - details not at all known to your links ... where we find diehard evolutionists making frank observations about their own belief system that we do NOT find among well respected scientists in the fields of math, physics, chemistry, software engineering over the past 50-150 years.

And that is because the junk-science-religion of blind faith evolutionism -- is "exactly that" when viewed by the "objective unbiased reader".

Why then choose the Rev 20 lake of fire -- just for the joy of a few years of being confused and befuddled in the religion of blind faith evolutionism? Why choose that for those family members most at risk from your influence?

Hint: in real life a pile of dirt does NOT turn into a rabbit!! No matter how many convoluted "stories" about the "Dust, and gas' nature of that "pile of dirt" -- no matter how many convoluted stories about the "sun shining" on that pile of dirt... no matter how many convoluted stories about "a sufficiently LARGE pile of dirt and a sufficiently LONG period of time"... and no matter how many "just so stories of incredibly unlikely never-observed events".

 

[BobRyan]

Dawkins admits to the design observed in nature.

"“biology is the study of complicated things that appear to have been designed for a purpose.”
The Blind Watchmaker, 1996, p. 1.

Dawkins illustrates the point that a sufficiently talented “story teller” can spin a story to convince himself to ignore the observations in nature even though he can see complicated biological systems that appear to have been designed for a purpose.

 

[TLK Valentine]

Dawkins admits to the design observed in nature.

"“biology is the study of complicated things that appear to have been designed for a purpose.”
The Blind Watchmaker, 1996, p. 1.

Key word: "appear"

 

[Subduction Zone]

A few more "details" totally missed in the "non-discussion" at the links you provide.

And we saw that again in the case of the fraudulent horse series

What are you nattering about? The horse series was never shown to be fraudulent, it is merely more complex than as represented in some museums.

"I admit that an awful lot of that [imaginary stories] has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs [in the American Museum of Natural History] is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable ..."
Niles Eldredge, as quoted in Luther D Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, 4th ed. 1988, pg 78.

I see that you did not understand this writing of his. You do not seem to understand that over time more fossils are found and the picture is clarified, he was complaining because there had been 50 years of more fossils found and some of the species over lapped, that is to be expected with evolution. It is not a case of one species instantly changing into another one. Eldredge would be happy today since museums have clarified their exhibits. Here is a quote from the American Museum of Natural History:

"The earliest known horses evolved 55 million years ago and for much of this time, multiple horse species lived at the same time, often side by side, as seen in this diorama."

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/horse/the-evolution-of-horses

And if you want to educate yourself this article goes into much more detail:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html

You need to remember that museums can only give small pictures of the past. Even if they cover something as recent and well documented as the American Civil War that the displays will be very limited in what they can show and probably incorrect because they will at times try to incorporated too much in one display.

"The uniform continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature."—G.G. Simpson, Life of the Past (1953), p. 119.

That is correct, horse evolution was not simple and linear, it went in fits and starts. Again, the picture of evolution has cleared up over the years. We know far more details than we did a mere 100 years ago. Read the second article that I linked for you.

============================

The sorts of things world class scientists were not saying about gravity and thermodynamics in the 1980's and 1950's

So what? Different sciences advance at different times. This is not a valid argument at all on your part.

Here is a fact already in evidence.

After the bold equivocation between junk-science evolutionism and actual science like the law of Gravity and the laws of thermodynamics - I pointed out the blunder - showing that in real life even you don't see world class scientists saying the sorts of thing about gravity as your own atheist scientists say about evolutionism.

Don't be silly. There is no "blunder" and we are still learning more about the details of gravity and thermodynamics today. Scientists finally observed the first gravity wave that they could detect late last year and they were predicted to occur over 100 years ago. Quantum dynamics shows that on the quantum level individual reactions do not follow the laws of thermodynamics. That occurs on the macro scale.

Collin Patterson (atheist and diehard evolutionist to the day he died in 1998) - Paleontologist British Museum of Natural history speaking at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 - said:


Patterson - quotes Gillespie's arguing that Christians

"'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'"

Patterson countered, "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact (saying):'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"


"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here...


"...,Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge , apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."

========================

Sorry, but quotes of others taken out of context by lying creationists is not evidence. You really need to do a lot better than this. Also when you rely on people that are openly lying it makes it look like you are lying too and as a Christian I am sure that you want to avoid that.

Now on this thread we are being "told" to equivocate between blind faith evolutionism - and ... 'Gravity' and 'the law of thermodynamics'. AS IF our top scientists today ALSO come out saying "the law of thermodynamics conveys no knowledge.. in fact it seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge. apparent knowledge that is harmful to physics".

Sorry, but there is no "blind faith in evolution". If you don't understand the theory of evolution that is your fault. Others have offered you sources that answer some of your questions as have I. You keep relying on dishonest sources. You won't learn anything that way.

AS IF our top scientists today would say "Gravity --and the gravitational constant so near and dear to science text books today - NEVER HAPPENED in nature".

REALLY?? That is what you see happening???

========================================================

Thus the perfect contrast was given - exposing that sort of "equivocation" as was attempted trying to get evolutionism in the "legit box" of science - that has Gravity and Thermodynamics in it.

Sorry, but you have no understanding of any of these sciences so you are in no position to judge. If you want to learn people will help you to learn. But if all you have are quotes out of context, then you your standards the Bible says that "There is no God" twelve times. Taking quotes out of context can be extremely dishonest. If you can't link to the original source of a quote, and your book that you referred to is not the original source, then your quotes are worthless. I could honestly write "There is no God": From the Bible. Today you can find those verses very quickly since the Bible is so well represented on the internet. Finding the original sources for your quotes out of context are not so easy since creationist articles pollute the webscape. I notice that you never use any actual sources that attempt to refute evolution, all you can find are quote miners. You will only fool the extremely ignorant with this tactic. You won't fool anyone that has actually studied the science so why use such a strategy.

Here is a simple question: How many Christians do you think that I could fool by quoting the Bible out of context and claim that the Bible says twelve times that "There is no God"?

 

[moonphantom]

I have three points for people with doubts, read thoroughly, I hope they be the reason to guide you:
"We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth. But is it not sufficient concerning your Lord that He is, over all things, a Witness?" (41:53)
"O People, if you should be in doubt about the Resurrection, then [consider that] indeed, We created you from dust, then from a sperm-drop, then from a clinging clot, and then from a lump of flesh, formed and unformed - that We may show you. And We settle in the wombs whom We will for a specified term, then We bring you out as a child, and then [We develop you] that you may reach your [time of] maturity. And among you is he who is taken in [early] death, and among you is he who is returned to the most decrepit [old] age so that he knows, after [once having] knowledge, nothing. And you see the earth barren, but when We send down upon it rain, it quivers and swells and grows [something] of every beautiful kind." (22:5)

"Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?" (21:30)
"I will turn away from My signs those who are arrogant upon the earth without right; and if they should see every sign, they will not believe in it. And if they see the way of consciousness, they will not adopt it as a way; but if they see the way of error, they will adopt it as a way. That is because they have denied Our signs and they were heedless of them."
(7:146)

 

[Kylie]

Correction - there is "no evidence at all" that a pile of "dirt" - well EVER "turn into a rabbit" - no matter how much "dirt" no matter how much time.

It is only blind faith evolutionism - that simply "hopes and believes" that some day dirt will be found to have in it - the inherent properties to "be a rabbit".

DNA alone is a huge piece of evidence for evolution.

And the fact that you even make the argument like this shows you have no knowledge about what evolution is.

Here is evidence from one of your own atheist scientists - a high priest in the religion of evolutionism.

I love how you try to insult evolution by calling it a religion, apparently not noticing that you are also insulting Christianity by saying that religion is an insulting term.

=====================================================

Agnostics may not think much of the OP - but in the OP the question is asked by a Christian regarding the conflict between the Bible and blind-faith-evolutionism.

Patterson noted this --


Collin Patterson (atheist and diehard evolutionist to the day he died in 1998) - Paleontologist British Museum of Natural history speaking at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 - said:



Patterson - quotes Gillespie's arguing that Christians

"'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'"

Patterson countered, "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact (saying):'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"

"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here...

"...,Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge , apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."


================================================


Patterson (the diehard evolutionist right to the end ) -- at that same meeting -

"...I'm speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it's true to say that I know nothing whatever about either...One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, well, let's call it non-evolutionary , was last year I had a sudden realization.

"For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff fortwenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. "That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long...

It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and perhaps that's all we know about it...

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."
====================================== end quote

Now, come on, Bob. Let's not be dishonest here. You've already been told that this is dishonest, haven't you? Because what you've got here is just a cut and a paste of something you've posted before on another website, isn't it? Specifically, on clubadventist.com, back in September of 2013 (And more specifically, THIS post.). And you got told back then that what you were doing was wrong, and here you are, doing the same thing to me. You can't even use new words to do it.

And as fccool replied to you back then, the opinions of one scientist do not invalidate the huge amount of supporting evidence for evolution. And please, don't repeat things that you know are incorrect, because that's lying.

Oh, and Paterson said his quotes had been taken out of context. And Patterson does accept evolution. http://ncse.com/rncse/20/3/evolution

So stop telling lies about him, okay?

 

[PsychoSarah]

Dawkins admits to the design observed in nature.

"“biology is the study of complicated things that appear to have been designed for a purpose.”
The Blind Watchmaker, 1996, p. 1.

Dawkins illustrates the point that a sufficiently talented “story teller” can spin a story to convince himself to ignore the observations in nature even though he can see complicated biological systems that appear to have been designed for a purpose.

-_- you should obviously know that "appear to have been designed" is not the same as saying something was designed. Many people that say statements like that follow it up with paragraphs as to how looks can be deceiving, etc. If these people actually thought the universe was designed, they'd probably be theists, not agnostics. What would Dawkins have to gain from calling himself an agnostic if he thought the universe was actually designed? Nothing, which is how I know this is not only a quote mine, but not even a good one, because saying something appears designed is just commenting on a detail that has no bearing as to whether or not the universe is actually designed. Tons of things in nature that aren't faces look like faces, so obviously, appearing like a face doesn't mean an object is a face.

 

[Kylie]

Dawkins admits to the design observed in nature.

"“biology is the study of complicated things that appear to have been designed for a purpose.”
The Blind Watchmaker, 1996, p. 1.

Dawkins illustrates the point that a sufficiently talented “story teller” can spin a story to convince himself to ignore the observations in nature even though he can see complicated biological systems that appear to have been designed for a purpose.

Saying that there is the appearance of design does not mean it WAS design.

You juts love doing this, don't you? Either you don't understand what you are talking about, or you are intentionally trying to distort the facts to fit your beliefs. In either case, you seem incapable of continuing an honest discussion.

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

Good question, Paul. I'll try and be brief. As I believe I did mention in previous posts addressed to you, the mind-body dualism has never really worked. Descartes, for example, really pushed it and then never really could explain how the two interact. A better solution, I and many others think, is to simply assume that mind and matter are one reality, not two separate worlds. This also seems realistic, as we never encounter a bunch immaterial minds running around. OK, what about matter? As I believe I mentioned I see no hard-and-fast dividing line between he living and the nonliving or the inorganic and the inorganic, or anything like that. I also hold with evolution. Therefore, I believe that what is the case at the top of the scale is also the case at the bottom, though to a significantly lesser extent. It, on fair, then, that we extend psychological principles down the scale, to explain things. Also, as I said in an earlier post, all perceived characteristics of the external, material world are qualities of feelings. Unless there are feelings out there, I haven't got an inkling what's going on. I'm perceiving what isn't there. Now, I'm still puzzled where you stand. Are you what's called an idealist? Are you holding the eternal world is nothing more than a figment of our imaginations, doesn't really exist, time, space, etc., exist no place else than in the mind of the perceiver, and if not there, then in the mind of God? Are you into Berkeley or Kant, for example? I ask because more than one hardcore scientists today is, in fact, an idealist. Actually, Einstein argued time is just a figment of our imaginations, exists no place else, isn't really out there.

Well as I read your post and you assert blurry lines between matter and life . . . it seems to me you have a mystic idea of life rather than a dynamic idea of life. My idea of life is as an emergent property from reproducing patterns of matter. (Not ruling out plasma forms of matter, either.) As for Kant or Berkeley, I lean towards Berkeley, I suppose, not that I've ever studied much about those fine gentlemen . . .

I do hold that the entire world is a great thought in the mind of God, but I would never use the term "nothing but" as in "nothing but a thought in the mind of God" . . . how would I ever dare to say anything God does can be fairly termed with the phrase "nothing but"? And the world is not a figment of OUR imaginations, it is in God's mind that the tale unfolds.