A simple question

[all things through Christ]

This is futility! The question and answer is so simple, but deceitful because that is not what people are interested in! This all amounts to nothing! I suggest the participants find a better use of their time, please!

 

[GenemZ]

Informative post GeneZ, thanks again. Though this inspires more interesting questions as well.

Some specalute that demons are the pre-adamites and are differant than fallen angles that followed lucifer. This seems plosible if all the pre-adamites followed Lucifer. As demons seek bodies, but angles are spirit beings and have no need for bodies.

Demons can not materialize. Satan can not either. Remember! Satan will possess the antichrist! He is in the same state as demons! He can not materialize any more!


Angels can materialize. The two angels in Sodom? The city folk thought were men. Yet, we see no account of Satan materializing in the Bible. The fallen angels lost their right to their bodies at some point in God's judgement. That was their first death. The second death will be when they are thrown into the Lake of Fire. Unbelievers will join them in that second death.

I forget where it is at, but I believe lucifer was also Gods master musician. AQny clue as were to find it?

I have heard something along this line years ago.
The King James says he had "pipes" set in him. Some take that to mean pipes like in an organ. Yet, other translations render that to mean sockets in which gems were placed.

KJV Ezekiel 28:13
"Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created."

NIV
"You were in Eden,
the garden of God;
every precious stone adorned you:
ruby, topaz and emerald,
chrysolite, onyx and jasper,
sapphire, turquoise and beryl.
Your settings and mountings were made of gold;
on the day you were created they were prepared."

I think that'e where the idea came from.

Grace and peace, GeneZ

 

[GenemZ]

You know genez, that was sure interesting. I've heard some of that before so I am familiar with it and perhaps for all I know you just gave us an accurate discription of what really took place.

I don't feel too comfortable with going into detail like you just did when I don't see it in God's word, yet.

Not everything is to be spelled out in black and white....

Philippians 1:9 niv
"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight."

There are somethings that I can believe without the word specifically stateing it however. For instance the Hebrew used in Gen. 1:2 for formless and void is "tohu" and "bohu". Tohu signifies desolation and bohu signifies emptiness and when both are used together it has always signified judgment from God. So I don't need Gen. 1:2 to specifically tell me that God had passed judgment but the meaning of the words and how they're used together does tell me this.

"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight."

The thing is though, I can only do this up to a certain point. I see God had passed judgment and that is what made the earth tohu and bohu, formless and void, but when I look for more specifics I tend to get lost. I can read Isa. 14 and Eze. 28 and see that some beautiful, glorious creature God had made sinned and decided he was going to trump God. In Rev.12 He is the great red dragon who took with him an army(stars) out of heaven and in Job 41 he is leviathan, the king over all the children of pride but how can we glean any real history about this being with more specifics?

We have no clue as to what is going on with learning only basic doctrine. Many believers can not even get past that point because they get bogged down with pet doctrines that they spend their whole life trying to prove to others, i.e., "you can lose your salvation." "God chose you to be saved, and you have no choice about that," etc... Yet, the Lord wants to mature into advance doctrines.

One thing I do believe. Lucifer means light bearer. Morning stars are self explanitory..... Yet, we also see the following.

Daniel 12:2-3 niv
"Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. "

There is something going on that I believe the angels do understand. Something that we have very little to go on. But, I believe God is going to have his lights once more in the future. He did it before, and he will do it again. And, I also think this infuriates the fallen angels who thought they were more important because of their gifts, than the giver of those gifts. God will be showing them that others can be trusted with what they blame God was the cause of their downfall. "If you did not make us so special and different from the others? We would have never become arrogant and conceited!" "Its your fault, God, for making us the way we were that caused our downfall!"

God's answer to them? The same type of ability will be given to certain believers in the future to show its not the gifts God gives that corrupt the person!

There are so much wonderful things going on here! Yet, too many are bogged down over petty things because they refuse to even grasp basic sound doctrinal teachings!

Philippians 1:9 niv
"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight."

The folks arguing we can lose our salvation? They will be doing the same thing twenty years from now.

Grace and peace, GeneZ

 

[gluadys]

Common sense.

Not usually a good judge of science. Most science is counter-intuitive. It was ancient common sense which said the earth was 1)flat, 2) motionless and 3) located at the centre of the universe. It took scientific observation and reasoning to show that all this common sense was false.

If the root of life doesn't isn't strong enough to stand up under scrutiny then why should I look at any of the branches?

Ever draw up your family tree? Ever notice that it is pretty easy to fill in the most recent parts of it: your siblings, your parents, your grandparents... But the older parts of the tree become harder and harder to fill in because there are fewer and fewer reliable records.

Same with phylogeny. Recent evolution such as human, horse or elephant evolution is much easier to validate than older evolution. Getting right back to the root is very difficult indeed.

So, yes, you should look at the more recent branches first because that is where the most compelling evidence is.

Not in my world they don't. I'm not evolving.

That's right, you are not evolving. But your species is. Individuals do not evolve. Evolution is a change in the population, not changes in individuals.

Remember the dictionary definition of evolution I gave earlier: A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form.

The editors of that dictionary should be informed that their defiinition of evolution is lousy. It is completely off base.

The most succinct definition of evolution that adheres to scientific knowledge about is "A change in the distribution of alleles in a population from one generation to another."

Now that contains the technical term "alleles" and I expect you would need a definition of that. So here goes.

You are probably familiar with the concept that the visible characteristics of a species are based on genes. Variations in those characteristics are based on variations of those genes. (One can think of a gene as being a recipe for a characteristic. Just as one can vary a recipe, such that Aunt Suzy's recipe for pumpkin pie will be different from Aunt Mary's, so gene "recipes" for say eye colour can also vary.) Genes are located at specific points on a chromosome, and if a population shows variation in a characteristic, that means the gene pool (total number of genes in a population) contains two or more "recipes" that can go into that spot. The particular version of the characterisitic any one individual has will depend on which gene "recipe" s/he inherited.

Alleles are what I have been calling "recipes". They are different versions of the gene that sits at one spot on one chromosome.

Now to go back to our definition. Evolution is a change in the frequency of alleles in a population from one generation to another.

The first thing this means is that of two or more alleles, one will likely be more common than the others. In humans, for example, brown eye colour is much more common than blue eye colour. This is not only because blue is recessive. It is also because there are fewer blue alleles in the total population than there are brown alleles. There are large populations of East Asians, South Asians and Africans where eye colour is never blue, because there are no blue alleles in the population at all, or so very few that they never meet up to produce blue eyes.

Now if something were to happen that increased the proportion of blue eye alleles in the population by 1%, that would be evolution.

That is evolution within the species of course, but no evolution occurs except as a result of this process of changing the distribution of alleles in a population.

I don't know much about scientific sense but I have a bit of horse sense. For me devolution means simply what I said earlier, where something loses genetic information, e.g., a white artic hare at one time had genetic information to be brown but today, unless it is bred with something other than another white artic hare, it will only produce white hares(kind of like those that are making themselves known on my head ). It has lost the genetic material to produce anything other than white offspring. This isn't a retreat to a former state because there isn't a former state because it always was a hare, it's just a loss of code.
Agreed, see above.

But your facts are wrong. Arctic hares have not lost the ability to be brown. They change from white to brown every summer and from brown to white every winter.

You are also overlooking the fact that mutations can change the current species norm by opening up new (or retrieved) possibilities.

 

[gluadys]

Well it was a nice way of saying there just wasn't anything of substance there regarding regarding transitional forms. If I miss it please do show and tell.

First you would have to tell me what you would recognize as something "of substance". I take it you are looking for something which you don't see. It may be that you are looking for a straw man but don't know that.

Obviously not, what I am saying is that since we what we do know is so very little, it makes it all the more absurd to use it to contradict God's Word.

No one here is trying to do that.

How can you make such an assertion? My response was as honest as I knew how to be.

I believe you. I am just letting you know that that is not the way it looked.

1. No, all truth belongs to God. He is the author of truth.
2. No, it couldn't be truth if it contradicted God's truth.

2nd set:

1. All truth is from God.
2. To the carnal mind it might, but not to me.

I would even leave out the reference to the carnal mind. All truth is from God. No truth, by definition, can contradict God's truth.

That is not to say that we cannot be mistaken about what truth is. But if we have reason to be confident that something is true, we can also be confident that it does not contradict God's truth.

Now scientists, especially biologists, are very confident that evolution is true. This is so not only of those scientists who are not theists, but also of those who are. And most scientists who are theists are Christians. So we have a lot of scientists who are Christians who are very confident that evolution is true.

If they are right evolution cannot, by definition, contradict God's truth.

It may contradict a fallible human understanding of God's truth, but it cannot, by definition, actually contradict God's truth.

Now, if scientists were somewhat less confident of evolution, we would be justified in waiting for further evidence before calling our understanding of scripture into question. But that is not the case. After 150 years scientists are more convinced than ever that evolution is true and have little hesitation in treating it as a fact. That level of confidence is not built on air and unexamined pre-suppositions. It is based on a solid foundation of experience and experiment. Virtually no one who a)understands the theoretical model of evolution and b) examines the evidence in light of the theory comes away unconvinced.

The reasons why many do not find the evidence compelling come down to three:
a) they do not really understand the theory of evolution. What they think is evolution is a strawman caricature developed by creationist organizations. The result of this deceit is that people come looking for evidence that would actually falsify evolution, not support it, and when they don't find it, they conclude evolution is not true.
b) they do not understand modern scientific method i.e. they don't understand how scientists get from their observations to their conclusions. One consequence of this is that they often mistake conclusion for assumptions. Another is that they tend to look for proof of a theory when scientific method is based on falsification not verification.
c) they are so fully committed to an interpretation of scripture which contradicts evolution that they must, psychologically, deny evolution in order not to disturb their belief. To them, this particular interpretation of scripture is not a human interpretation of the text; it is identical to God's Word. So they see disagreement with this interpretation, not as disagreement with a human person, but as disagreement with God.

The first two hurdles yield to education about evolution and science. The third is the fundamental problem. For, if evolution is true, they have committed themselves to an interpretation of scripture which is false. But having identified that intepretation as the very Word of God, it is extremely difficult to let go of it, because it feels like losing/betraying God.

Unless one is psychologically prepared to accept the possibility that one's long time understanding of God's Word is incorrect, it is not possible to examine evolution with an open mind to determine whether or not it is actually true.

 

[depthdeception]

This is futility! The question and answer is so simple, but deceitful because that is not what people are interested in! This all amounts to nothing! I suggest the participants find a better use of their time, please!

Thanks for the informative, meaningful post...

 

[Scholar in training]

First would be useing carbon-14 dating to claim something is 1747585939020284376595489695490320 years old. We all know carbon-14 is has major problems and is total unreliable, yet they continue to claim things are millions, billions, trillons years old and a thing hapened at these or that time. That extremly dishonest, yet many evolutionists scientists continue to be dishonest about carbon-14 dating. If they where honest they say up front carbon-14 dated this to this time, but carbon-14 is extremly unrelible so it may omnly be 1,000 years old instead. yet this information is never presented, and the iteam is absolutly 100 million years old is presented as FACT, when it is not and they know it.

Carbon 14 dating is useful and reliable.

Whoops! You were not being politically correct! You icon should be more like this:

I don't see what believing in evolution or an old earth has to do with being politically correct. I'm conservative and I still believe in an old earth.

 

[vossler]

Not usually a good judge of science. Most science is counter-intuitive. It was ancient common sense which said the earth was 1)flat, 2) motionless and 3) located at the centre of the universe. It took scientific observation and reasoning to show that all this common sense was false.

I don't have a problem with what you said here, it's true. Common sense isn't the be all end all. However, it is an excellent starting point. Let's use your example: I'll be the flat earther (that's probably how you see me anyway ) and you be the scientist. I'm basing my conviction on common sense and you come and tell me the earth is round and rotates around the sun and my response to you is your nuts and I dismiss you. But then you come back to me and prove, in some very simple and easily demonstrateable ways, how the earth in fact was round and rotated around the sun. The evidence would in fact be upfront to see and I would be easily compelled by the evidence to agree. The evidence for evolution is only compelling to the majority of scientist (who also coincidently are almost all atheists or non-Christians) but the common man is far less convinced, if he is at all. And those that are convinced just trust in the scientist because they don't understand all the complex arguments and don't wish to appear ignorant so they just follow along even though their consciences are probably telling them otherwise.

Ever draw up your family tree? Ever notice that it is pretty easy to fill in the most recent parts of it: your siblings, your parents, your grandparents... But the older parts of the tree become harder and harder to fill in because there are fewer and fewer reliable records.

Agreed, but at least I know at the root no matter what there is another human. Whereas evolutionist want us to believe it is something else.

Same with phylogeny. Recent evolution such as human, horse or elephant evolution is much easier to validate than older evolution. Getting right back to the root is very difficult indeed.

see above

The editors of that dictionary should be informed that their defiinition of evolution is lousy. It is completely off base.

The most succinct definition of evolution that adheres to scientific knowledge about is "A change in the distribution of alleles in a population from one generation to another."

Now that contains the technical term "alleles" and I expect you would need a definition of that. So here goes.

You are probably familiar with the concept that the visible characteristics of a species are based on genes. Variations in those characteristics are based on variations of those genes. (One can think of a gene as being a recipe for a characteristic. Just as one can vary a recipe, such that Aunt Suzy's recipe for pumpkin pie will be different from Aunt Mary's, so gene "recipes" for say eye colour can also vary.) Genes are located at specific points on a chromosome, and if a population shows variation in a characteristic, that means the gene pool (total number of genes in a population) contains two or more "recipes" that can go into that spot. The particular version of the characterisitic any one individual has will depend on which gene "recipe" s/he inherited.

Alleles are what I have been calling "recipes". They are different versions of the gene that sits at one spot on one chromosome.

Now to go back to our definition. Evolution is a change in the frequency of alleles in a population from one generation to another.

The first thing this means is that of two or more alleles, one will likely be more common than the others. In humans, for example, brown eye colour is much more common than blue eye colour. This is not only because blue is recessive. It is also because there are fewer blue alleles in the total population than there are brown alleles. There are large populations of East Asians, South Asians and Africans where eye colour is never blue, because there are no blue alleles in the population at all, or so very few that they never meet up to produce blue eyes.

Now if something were to happen that increased the proportion of blue eye alleles in the population by 1%, that would be evolution.

That is evolution within the species of course, but no evolution occurs except as a result of this process of changing the distribution of alleles in a population.

I like the dictionary.com definition better. It's simple and straight forward, just like I am.

No matter how you'd like to define it, evolution comes down to species changing into other species and that is the crux of it for me.

But your facts are wrong. Arctic hares have not lost the ability to be brown. They change from white to brown every summer and from brown to white every winter.

You are also overlooking the fact that mutations can change the current species norm by opening up new (or retrieved) possibilities.

I knew the minute I would try to present something even remotely scientific I would be proven wrong. Thanks for setting me straight. However, I think you understand the point I was trying to make.

 

[vossler]

First you would have to tell me what you would recognize as something "of substance". I take it you are looking for something which you don't see. It may be that you are looking for a straw man but don't know that.

You're right, I am looking for something I don't see, a transitional form.

No one here is trying to do that.

That's not how I see it.

Now scientists, especially biologists, are very confident that evolution is true. This is so not only of those scientists who are not theists, but also of those who are. And most scientists who are theists are Christians. So we have a lot of scientists who are Christians who are very confident that evolution is true.

However, most scientists are not theists.

The reasons why many do not find the evidence compelling come down to three:
a) they do not really understand the theory of evolution. What they think is evolution is a strawman caricature developed by creationist organizations. The result of this deceit is that people come looking for evidence that would actually falsify evolution, not support it, and when they don't find it, they conclude evolution is not true.
b) they do not understand modern scientific method i.e. they don't understand how scientists get from their observations to their conclusions. One consequence of this is that they often mistake conclusion for assumptions. Another is that they tend to look for proof of a theory when scientific method is based on falsification not verification.
c) they are so fully committed to an interpretation of scripture which contradicts evolution that they must, psychologically, deny evolution in order not to disturb their belief. To them, this particular interpretation of scripture is not a human interpretation of the text; it is identical to God's Word. So they see disagreement with this interpretation, not as disagreement with a human person, but as disagreement with God.

The first two hurdles yield to education about evolution and science. The third is the fundamental problem. For, if evolution is true, they have committed themselves to an interpretation of scripture which is false. But having identified that intepretation as the very Word of God, it is extremely difficult to let go of it, because it feels like losing/betraying God.

Unless one is psychologically prepared to accept the possibility that one's long time understanding of God's Word is incorrect, it is not possible to examine evolution with an open mind to determine whether or not it is actually true.

I would submit that the reason most of us can't overcome the first two hurdles is because it would require a faith in something which can never be definitively proven. The very idea of stating we can emphatically prove that something occurred billions of years ago is, to me, obsurd when we have only been around just a few thousand years. Just looking at that ratio should give anyone pause when making such claims. Luckily, the Bible tells us everything we need to know and evolution, thankfully, isn't one of them.

As for point c. You were somewhat accurate. Let me modify your definition with one that applies to me:

'they are so fully committed to scripture and anything which contradicts it they must deny. Evolution contradicts and disturbs their belief. To them, this particular interpretation of scripture is a human interpretation of the text; it is not identical to God's Word. So they see disagreement with this interpretation, not as disagreement with a human person, but as disagreement with God.'

BTW - Is there a reason you've never responded to post #420?

 

[Spiritualyalive]

The folks arguing we can lose our salvation? They will be doing the same thing twenty years from now.

Grace and peace, GeneZ

Yep, and heres why, either they have never been saved or they have been and refuse to believe the word of the one that has saved them. Very sad.

 

[Spiritualyalive]

Carbon 14 dating is useful and reliable.


I don't see what believing in evolution or an old earth has to do with being politically correct. I'm conservative and I still believe in an old earth.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/carbon_dating.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2005/0225von_Zieten.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4314.asp

Carbon 14 and the Age of the Earth

Why carbon-14 is pure junk science~

 

[Scholar in training]

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/carbon_dating.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2005/0225von_Zieten.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4314.asp

Carbon 14 and the Age of the Earth

Why carbon-14 is pure junk science~

Response to the unfounded accusation of carbon 14 dating being unreliable.

 

[Spiritualyalive]

Response to the unfounded accusation of carbon 14 dating being unreliable.

Response to your reponse

http://www.answersingenesis.org/doc...rbon_dating.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/doc...5von_Zieten.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4314.asp

Carbon 14 and the Age of the Earth


If you don't want to accept truth then none of this links will help you any. It's very obvious you havent read or even listened to one of them as of yet.

 

[LewisWildermuth]

Response to your reponse

http://www.answersingenesis.org/doc...rbon_dating.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/doc...5von_Zieten.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4314.asp

Carbon 14 and the Age of the Earth


If you don't want to accept truth then none of this links will help you any. It's very obvious you havent read or even listened to one of them as of yet.

I did read those, I use to be a YEC until I found out how many times AiG and their ilk were lying to me.

Here is a site done by real scientists that are Christians explaining radiometric dating.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

 

[rmwilliamsll]

lets look at a one statement from these AiG essays listed.
from: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/carbon_dating.asp

Outside the range of recorded history, calibration of the 14C clock is not possible.4

footnote 4 is Tree ring dating (dendrochronology) has been used in an attempt to extend the calibration of carbon-14 dating earlier than historical records allow, but this depends on temporal placement of fragments of wood (from long dead trees) using carbon-14 dating, assuming straight-line extrapolation backwards. Then cross-matching of ring patterns is used to calibrate the carbon ‘clock’—a somewhat circular process which does not give an independent calibration of the carbon dating system.

completely missing the point of the calibration process which in fact adjusts for a changing cosmic ray caused C12/C14 over time. and explaining the calibration process completely wrong to boot. wow.

but the question in my mind is why pick recorded history? there is no correlations done with written documents to C14. C14 is routine back to roughly 40K years. we have good tree ring data pass 10K, just the rings alone falsify a young earth creation. period.

what i find most interesting is that they are not presenting a consistent alternative but are rather like a defense attorney who's only job is to strive for reasonable doubt by knocking a potential 5% hole in the prosecution's case. and like defense attorney's YEC's like AiG don't have to present a logical consistent case to coherently tie the facts together in a different structure.

this essay is just plain obfuscation when it isn't scientifically wrong.
and this is the only article of the 3 actually worth reading.
....

 

[Spiritualyalive]

I did read those, I use to be a YEC until I found out how many times AiG and their ilk were lying to me.

Here is a site done by real scientists that are Christians explaining radiometric dating.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

I doubt you have, it's pretty much unrefutable. Since you are not taking into acount the Flood and the world pre-flood vrs post-flood there is, this is where you error lays. There is no overcoming this error either. You premise is off so all that follows will be off as well.

Carbon 14 and the Age of the Earth

Try listening again.

 

[Spiritualyalive]

lets look at a one statement from these AiG essays listed.
from: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/carbon_dating.asp

Outside the range of recorded history, calibration of the 14C clock is not possible.4

footnote 4 is Tree ring dating (dendrochronology) has been used in an attempt to extend the calibration of carbon-14 dating earlier than historical records allow, but this depends on temporal placement of fragments of wood (from long dead trees) using carbon-14 dating, assuming straight-line extrapolation backwards. Then cross-matching of ring patterns is used to calibrate the carbon ‘clock’—a somewhat circular process which does not give an independent calibration of the carbon dating system.

completely missing the point of the calibration process which in fact adjusts for a changing cosmic ray caused C12/C14 over time. and explaining the calibration process completely wrong to boot. wow.

but the question in my mind is why pick recorded history? there is no correlations done with written documents to C14. C14 is routine back to roughly 40K years. we have good tree ring data pass 10K, just the rings alone falsify a young earth creation. period.

what i find most interesting is that they are not presenting a consistent alternative but are rather like a defense attorney who's only job is to strive for reasonable doubt by knocking a potential 5% hole in the prosecution's case. and like defense attorney's YEC's like AiG don't have to present a logical consistent case to coherently tie the facts together in a different structure.

this essay is just plain obfuscation when it isn't scientifically wrong.
....

Again you are assumming that carbon-14 remains constant in the atomoshpere and it isn't.

 

[Scholar in training]

I doubt you have, it's pretty much unrefutable. Since you are not taking into acount the Flood and the world pre-flood vrs post-flood there is, this is where you error lays. There is no overcoming this error either. You premise is off so all that follows will be off as well.

Carbon 14 and the Age of the Earth

Try listening again.

And since you are neglecting the fact that there wasn't a global flood...

Have you ever talked to grmorton, a user here? He studies geology and has demonstrated in several lengthy posts why a global flood does not match up with the geological record.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Again you are assumming that carbon-14 remains constant in the atomoshpere and it isn't.

that is NOT true.
see a decent scientific site like http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/dendro.html
and understand what the dendrochronology recalibration actually does. AiG is scientifically wrong on the issue in this essay.
period.

.....

 

[Spiritualyalive]

And since you are neglecting the fact that there wasn't a global flood...

Have you ever talked to grmorton, a user here? He studies geology and has demonstrated in several lengthy posts why a global flood does not match up with the geological record.

Wow now your calling God a Liar. I know who the liar is here and it isn't God.