Are these data showing that creationism is hurting Christianity?

[ServantJohn]

I guess the point that needs to be made is that supernatural explanations can be made to explain any type of evidence, though. And if that's the case, are supernatural explanations really useful? Are they testable? Are they honest?
For example, a scientist might posit that the sky is blue because of differential light absorption (a testable assumption), whereas someone else might posit that the sky is blue because God miraculously made it it that way (an untestable assumption). One assumption can be disqualified on the basis of evidence, whereas the other cannot. One person has left themselves open to correction; the other has not. Which is the more honest approach?


Effectively, you are when you do not allow the evidence from distant starlight to influence your position about the age of the universe. You simply explain away the evidence by saying that it is only an illusion, which is effectively ignoring it.

Dude, Bro, G Dog, whatever other name you can come up... Seriously... Did you not read my entire post? You just restated what I said in my post was the logical conclusion to my line of thinking. I acknowledged that before anyone said it to me. Give me some credit please, sheesh...

Why do you keep cherry picking one little statement here or there instead of replying to my entire post?

 

[Mallon]

Dude, Bro, G Dog, whatever other name you can come up... Seriously... Did you not read my entire post? You just restated what I said in my post was the logical conclusion to my line of thinking. I acknowledged that before anyone said it to me. Give me some credit please, sheesh...

Why do you keep cherry picking one little statement here or there instead of replying to my entire post?

What overarching point of yours do you think I've ignored? Or in what way do you think I've misinterpreted you?

 

[ServantJohn]

What overarching point of yours do you think I've ignored? Or in what way do you think I've misinterpreted you?

Thanks for your help but to be honest, I have better things to do than to get into it with you. For anyone else reading this, if you want to have a serious discussion and are mature enough to do it with some common decency, then feel free to engage me.

 

[Mallon]

Thanks for your help but to be honest, I have better things to do than to get into it with you. For anyone else reading this, if you want to have a serious discussion and are mature enough to do it with some common decency, then feel free to engage me.

I don't know why you don't think you're being addressed in a mature or serious or honest way. You're being awfully touchy for someone who says they're open to having their ideas criticized. If I've belittled you in any way, I apologize, though I don't see where I have.

 

[gluadys]

There is no need to be rude when discussing these issues.

I don't know why you referred to my post as rude. It was certainly not my intention to offend. My intention was to state facts and precepts, not to get into personal comments.

Of course, it is always difficult to assess what motivations lie behind the words in a post whether one is writing or reading. I certainly don't know your motives and had no intention of commenting on them.

You have fallen into the same type of fallacy I once fell into. I used to think that every evolutionist only clung to that view because they did not want to accept God's lordship over their life. I have since come to accept that people can have completely honest motives and think very logically and come to different conclusions on this issue.

Could you explain the fallacy you discerned? I don't know where I fell into any fallacy unless you point it out.

I agree many creationists do fall into the fallacy of thinking that people accept evolution to avoid God. Equally, many evolutionists fall into the fallacy of thinking creationists just need to learn the facts and they will be convinced by the evidence.

The key issues are much more theological than evidential. Sure, the evidence is important. One cannot just wish it away. But the issue is "what do I do with evidence that challenges what I believe about God, creation and scripture?" And more evidence doesn't answer that question.

One avenue of dealing with the evidence is to say it came about supernaturally instead of naturally. That's always a possibility, of course. But only a possibility. It doesn't mean God acted in this way.

How can we know what God did without God himself telling us?

When God raised Jesus from the dead, he provided a witness at the tomb to speak to the women. Jesus himself appeared to chosen witnesses so that they could proclaim the resurrection. Acts 10:41

But there is no such testimony of miracles when it comes to natural history. So one has to be careful about speculative positions.

The one revelation we do have from God concerning natural history is the natural world itself. We know this is the work of God. We don't know if the miracles people speculate about were actual events or not. So we are on firmer ground listening to the actual evidence in nature than to the miracles our thoughts suggest to us.

 

[Hairy Tic]

how can we put our faith in what they tell us over what people have believed to be true for thousands of years and if this earth is as old as they say it is and if there were other great civilizations out there in the past which many scientists believe there to have been, why did it take us until the last couple hundred years to figure this all out?

## Because places in Assyria like Calah, Dur-Sharrukin, & later on Nineveh, were not rediscovered until the 1840s. Nineveh was not excavated until 1903. And that is just in the north of Iraq. As for the Sumerians in the south, they were completely unheard-of.

All the sites were covered with soil. There were hardly any texts until the 19th century, and those that were known could not be read. Unfortunately, after the loss of these cultures, the main sources for the region were derived either from the OT, or from Greek & Latin authors - so for 2,000 years or so, all knowledge of those places was second-hand, & usually more remote than that. The knowledge of how to read hieroglyphics was lost until the 1820s, so Egypt was not much better known. The Greek & Latin authors were not able to read the texts of any of these cultures.

There is no doubt whatever that these civilisations existed - there is their literature to prove it, their languages, their grammar, their monuments. Archaeology didn't become properly scientific until about 1900 - so when Etruscan sites were re-discovered in the 18th century, the "excavation" was an unsystematic free-for-all.

 

[mark kennedy]

There is no need to be rude when discussing these issues. Are you God or do you claim to have a gift of discernment of some sorts? You have just made a lot of conclusions about my motives which are either hypocritically speculative or originating from a spiritual gift. Why is it so difficult for people to discuss things without becoming condescending and rude?

Not a chance, there are posters who do nothing but make biting remarks. What you were saying about the starlight is nothing new, it's a cosmological argument that works with or without God as the cause. The reason it is called the big bang is because it was small and, in effect, exploded. Light could have simply traced the trajectory of the expansion, not an unreasonable explanation.

But you are not dealing with a mentality that benefits from accepting a reasonable explanation. What they will do is simply work in unison to make you look foolish. It's called an ad hominem fallacy and if you notice the attack turns into a chorus.

Hang in there, most of what you are experiencing right now is to discourage you from pursuing that line of argument. When they do that, simply reinforce the original argument and while there will always be biting remarks, the boldness of them will cease.

You will know when you have them, when they have nothing left but ad hominem attacks left they have conceded your point. The best thing to do is to go back to your point and and identify by quote what they are arguing as fallacious. This is one of the easiest things to do in these debates because they always do it.

Grace and peace,
Mark

 

[Assyrian]

Not a chance, there are posters who do nothing but make biting remarks. What you were saying about the starlight is nothing new, it's a cosmological argument that works with or without God as the cause. The reason it is called the big bang is because it was small and, in effect, exploded. Light could have simply traced the trajectory of the expansion, not an unreasonable explanation.

But you are not dealing with a mentality that benefits from accepting a reasonable explanation. What they will do is simply work in unison to make you look foolish. It's called an ad hominem fallacy and if you notice the attack turns into a chorus.

Hang in there, most of what you are experiencing right now is to discourage you from pursuing that line of argument. When they do that, simply reinforce the original argument and while there will always be biting remarks, the boldness of them will cease.

You will know when you have them, when they have nothing left but ad hominem attacks left they have conceded your point. The best thing to do is to go back to your point and and identify by quote what they are arguing as fallacious. This is one of the easiest things to do in these debates because they always do it.

Grace and peace,
Mark

So all your ad hom attacks are really just your own gracious way of conceding the point?

 

[mark kennedy]

So all your ad hom attacks are really just your own gracious way of conceding the point?

That's just it, his point was buried when the focus went straight to him rather then the small but interesting point. Look at the page Assyrian, no one is making a point, you especially. The conversation has went where you guys always take it, straight to the person rather then the point and you bury it.

No matter where it starts that's were it's going, every single time.

 

[shernren]

That's just it, his point was buried when the focus went straight to him rather then the small but interesting point. Look at the page Assyrian, no one is making a point, you especially. The conversation has went where you guys always take it, straight to the person rather then the point and you bury it.

Wow, mark, you're right! These evolutionists are nasty, nasty people. Just look at this biting personal insult:

If I've belittled you in any way, I apologize, though I don't see where I have.

What about this awful ad hominem attack?

I don't know why you referred to my post as rude. It was certainly not my intention to offend. My intention was to state facts and precepts, not to get into personal comments.

Of course, it is always difficult to assess what motivations lie behind the words in a post whether one is writing or reading. I certainly don't know your motives and had no intention of commenting on them.

Gosh, that really put the emphasis on ServantJohn and his personal characteristics, didn't it?

I'll never talk to an evolutionist again. Goodness knows when they might try to apologize for their behavior, or maintain their neutrality about the personal position of a poster. Such uncivilized, uncouth behavior. Well, at least they don't get all sarcastic, you know?

=========

There is a subtle, but vital, difference between the following statements:

"Argument X is an ad hominem attack!"
and
"Person/group X always makes ad hominem attacks!"

The first is a valid, even vital, point to make during a discussion; the second is, ironically, itself an ad hominem attack. Consider the following three posts I might make about a dastardly poster here:

1. "Mallon is a scoundrel and a blighted pox on the surface of the earth!"
2. "What? He's a heliocentrist? Why, that shows how remarkably silly heliocentrism is!"
3. "Furthermore, the fact that epicycles work shows how silly Mallon is to be a heliocentrist!"

Post 1 seems to be an ad hominem attack but, in fact, is not. I'm not trying to make a point, I'm just trying to bash someone. Now, I may or may not be justified in calling Mallon a scoundrel, but either I feel that way about him or I don't - there's nothing fallacious about being mean.

Post 2 is in fact an ad hominem attack. But post 3, mean-spirited as its wording may be, is actually a valid logical argument (as a sketch): epicycles do indeed make geocentrism easier to believe, at least if Occam's razor is not applied. Now imagine a learned adversary giving the following reply to my posts:

"Why, shernren always resorts to ad hominem attacks and brutal insults! Of course geocentrism is a load of rubbish if that's what its advocates are like. You can tell when they've run out of evidence by the way they start focusing on the person."

That itself is an ad hominem attack, isn't it? Sure, it may be true that I am one of the most mean-spirited, foul-mouthed, immature and sarcastic posters here. But what bearing does that have on my arguments for or against geocentrism? If mallon's being a scoundrel should have no bearing on his arguments for heliocentrism, then why should my being a constant ad hominem attacker have any bearing on my arguments for geocentrism? After all, as long as the arguments themselves are not ad hominem (and I did make one such argument in post 3), then they do need to be responded to as valid arguments requiring counter-evidence, instead of as logical fallacies requiring unmasking as such.

=========

The great irony, mark, is that your post stands out par excellence as a post that does not make a point. You came into what was a discussion about the unfalsifiability of miraculous explanations screaming about how awful and nasty theistic evolutionists are.

Isn't that a prime example of completely ignoring the point of the thread? Aren't you precisely taking the discussion "straight to the person" and burying the point - the persons of theistic evolutionists?

This post itself is another wonderful example of the same behavior, though, so tu quoque and all that. (I am not sure that ServantJohn is actually interested in the virtues of falsifiability, so my lack of interest in expounding them is merely inherited.)

The next time you want to pull out your "TEs are nasty trolls" card, though, you might want to think carefully about how much you are actually contributing to the discussion. Oh sure, we are heartless materialists whose beliefs are based on the flimsiest of Athenian whims, and every time a creationist so much as dares to claim that we are wrong we flame him into oblivion and then pat each other on the back for enforcing rationality and ruthless godlessness. Thanks for pointing that out. I mean, you can even quote us post and paragraph where the very thing happens! (Yeah. I guess you could actually try to bring some evidence next time.)

But how does making us the bad guys invalidate our arguments? How does pointing out our villainy help ServantJohn argue that, no, in fact, it is perfectly reasonable for us to apply an infinitely pliable supernatural explanation to physical phenomena? How does your persistent, unevidenced attack on our character help bring this discussion, or any, back to the point?

It doesn't.
So please don't.
And try to be nice?

 

[Assyrian]

That's just it, his point was buried when the focus went straight to him rather then the small but interesting point. Look at the page Assyrian, no one is making a point, you especially. The conversation has went where you guys always take it, straight to the person rather then the point and you bury it.

No matter where it starts that's were it's going, every single time.

Meh. Your claim no TE had a point to make is as baseless as your claim all we do is make biting remarks. But par for the course for someone who keeps making ad hom attacks on TEs himself. John is new here and is finding the intensity of discussion a steep learning curve. He thought Glaudys was being rude to him, Glaudys of all people, but then he doesn't know her. She assured him she wasn't and reminded him the difficulty of knowing other people's motivations over the internet. At this stage it could have continued on with fellow believers discussing an area they disagree in, or you could try to turn it into a discussion of how evil TEs are.

 

[mark kennedy]

Meh. Your claim no TE had a point to make is as baseless as your claim all we do is make biting remarks. But par for the course for someone who keeps making ad hom attacks on TEs himself. John is new here and is finding the intensity of discussion a steep learning curve. He thought Glaudys was being rude to him, Glaudys of all people, but then he doesn't know her. She assured him she wasn't and reminded him the difficulty of knowing other people's motivations over the internet. At this stage it could have continued on with fellow believers discussing an area they disagree in, or you could try to turn it into a discussion of how evil TEs are.

What I am seeing with TE is one long argument against special creation. John was responding to Mallon and as usual the TEs swarm him, I can see how a person might think that is a little rude. I don't characterize TE as evil, I characterize it as Darwinian. If you think there is something inheriatantly evil about that then I would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Have a nice day
Mark

 

[mark kennedy]

Wow, mark, you're right! These evolutionists are nasty, nasty people. Just look at this biting personal insult:

That's just it, his point was buried when the focus went straight to him rather then the small but interesting point. Look at the page Assyrian, no one is making a point, you especially. The conversation has went where you guys always take it, straight to the person rather then the point and you bury it.

What about this awful ad hominem attack?

I didn't go to the person for the strength of my argument, I just pointed out that John had an interesting point buried beneath a fallacious flurry of personal attacks. Pointing out that TE is propagated by fallacious rhetorical rants is a criticism that is well deserved.

Gosh, that really put the emphasis on ServantJohn and his personal characteristics, didn't it?

Argument went straight 'to the man' again, thanks for making my point for me.

I'll never talk to an evolutionist again. Goodness knows when they might try to apologize for their behavior, or maintain their neutrality about the personal position of a poster. Such uncivilized, uncouth behavior. Well, at least they don't get all sarcastic, you know?

Oh I'm sorry if I made you fell bad, that was never my intent. I was just trying to correct your errors in every post and condescend to your point of view. I'll try to be more gracious in my unrelenting attack on your honest estimation of the facts regarding TE as Christian theism and science.

There is a subtle, but vital, difference between the following statements:

"Argument X is an ad hominem attack!"
and
"Person/group X always makes ad hominem attacks!"

I'm not sure I see the difference but ok, let's see...

The first is a valid, even vital, point to make during a discussion; the second is, ironically, itself an ad hominem attack. Consider the following three posts I might make about a dastardly poster here:

1. "Mallon is a scoundrel and a blighted pox on the surface of the earth!"

Come now, don't you think your being a little bit hard on the guy since being fallacious does not make you a bad guy, certainly not a disease.

2. "What? He's a heliocentrist? Why, that shows how remarkably silly heliocentrism is!"

Now you resort to a strawman since there is no one arguing heliocentrist ideology and equivocating creationism with the view of astronomers up until the advent of the telescope. You have a fallacious synthesis working here, I think this could be a virtuoso performance from the master. I think I'll make some popcorn.

3. "Furthermore, the fact that epicycles work shows how silly Mallon is to be a heliocentrist!"

Then you plunge the argument into the abyss of obscurity. Bravo! Bravo!

Post 1 seems to be an ad hominem attack but, in fact, is not. I'm not trying to make a point, I'm just trying to bash someone. Now, I may or may not be justified in calling Mallon a scoundrel, but either I feel that way about him or I don't - there's nothing fallacious about being mean.

Fish in a barrel, you can do better then that. No one called Mallon a scoundrel, as a matter of fact I think he may actually believes he has the more balanced view. At times I see him struggling with the whole origins theology thing and I appreciate the fact he actually makes the effort to understand what a person is saying before he blasts them. In this case he didn't, does he get a pass after he abandons the context of a quote and then resorts to a fallacious line of argumentation?

Rush to his defense buddy, you have far better developed fallacious, rhetorical, devices. That's your job, who does he think he is?

Post 2 is in fact an ad hominem attack. But post 3, mean-spirited as its wording may be, is actually a valid logical argument (as a sketch): epicycles do indeed make geocentrism easier to believe, at least if Occam's razor is not applied. Now imagine a learned adversary giving the following reply to my posts:

"Why, shernren always resorts to ad hominem attacks and brutal insults! Of course geocentrism is a load of rubbish if that's what its advocates are like. You can tell when they've run out of evidence by the way they start focusing on the person."

Then, high above the center ring shernren will attempt the precarious strawman argument in quotation marks that quotes no one. The problem is that no one is making a geocentristic argument. Three fallacious arguments and not one substantive point. Please tell me you are working with a net.

In italics no less, are you really trying to showcase these precarious, fallacy riddled rants? Oh wait, no one important will ever call you on it, just me.

Phew! That was close, I thought you were going to go splat right in the center ring of the Darwinian circus of the mind.

That itself is an ad hominem attack, isn't it? Sure, it may be true that I am one of the most mean-spirited, foul-mouthed, immature and sarcastic posters here. But what bearing does that have on my arguments for or against geocentrism? If mallon's being a scoundrel should have no bearing on his arguments for heliocentrism, then why should my being a constant ad hominem attacker have any bearing on my arguments for geocentrism? After all, as long as the arguments themselves are not ad hominem (and I did make one such argument in post 3), then they do need to be responded to as valid arguments requiring counter-evidence, instead of as logical fallacies requiring unmasking as such.

Now the fallacy has turned on you, in fact, you turned it on yourself. You just attacked yourself in highly inflammatory rhetoric, emphasized the equivocation fallacy and oh yea, someone grab a fire extinguisher the strawman is burning.

I hate it when you self destruct like this, can't you just make condescending corrections like the others?

The great irony, mark, is that your post stands out par excellence as a post that does not make a point. You came into what was a discussion about the unfalsifiability of miraculous explanations screaming about how awful and nasty theistic evolutionists are.

Oh my overzealous friend you are mistaken, it is the miraculous explanations that I most desire to defend. I will submit that Genesis is subject to the same rules of evidence that all historical narratives, that is any 'ancient writings whatever', are subject to.

The genuineness of these writings really admits of as little doubt, and is susceptible of as ready proof, as that of any ancient writings whatever. The rule of municipal law on this subject is familiar, and applies with equal force to all ancient writings, whether documentary or otherwise; and as it comes first in order, in the prosecution of these inquiries, it may, for the sake of mere convenience, be designated as our first rule.

Every document, apparently ancient, coming from the proper repository or custody, and bearing on its face no evident marks of forger, the law presumes to be genuine, and devolves on the opposing party the burden of proving it to be otherwise. (Testimony of the Evangelists by Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853))​

It's called Christian Apologetics and you are now challenged with the burden of proof in your indictment. Will you now make a substantive argument from the evidence or can I add slander to the indictment of your rhetorical rants?

Isn't that a prime example of completely ignoring the point of the thread? Aren't you precisely taking the discussion "straight to the person" and burying the point - the persons of theistic evolutionists?

On the contrary, I am trying to recover the substantive argument you are attempting to bury. Now refrain from your rhetorical rants and pick up the gantlet like a gentleman.

This post itself is another wonderful example of the same behavior, though, so tu quoque and all that. (I am not sure that ServantJohn is actually interested in the virtues of falsifiability, so my lack of interest in expounding them is merely inherited.)

You didn't want to talk to ServantJohn, you wanted to talk to me. Now you have my attention. Unfortunately after the flurry of ad hominem attacks he might have to proceed cautiously, I on the other hand see a priceless opportunity here.

The next time you want to pull out your "TEs are nasty trolls" card, though, you might want to think carefully about how much you are actually contributing to the discussion. Oh sure, we are heartless materialists whose beliefs are based on the flimsiest of Athenian whims, and every time a creationist so much as dares to claim that we are wrong we flame him into oblivion and then pat each other on the back for enforcing rationality and ruthless godlessness. Thanks for pointing that out. I mean, you can even quote us post and paragraph where the very thing happens! (Yeah. I guess you could actually try to bring some evidence next time.)

I meet you guys were I find you and since you have not had the chance to respond I'll just say this. What evidence do you bring that the historical narrative of Genesis narrative was either not found in the 'proper repository or custody, and bearing on its face no evident marks of forger'?

But how does making us the bad guys invalidate our arguments? How does pointing out our villainy help ServantJohn argue that, no, in fact, it is perfectly reasonable for us to apply an infinitely pliable supernatural explanation to physical phenomena? How does your persistent, unevidenced attack on our character help bring this discussion, or any, back to the point?

It doesn't.
So please don't.
And try to be nice?

I'll see your three fallacious rants and raise it one substantive challenge. You want to get into how miracles are evidenced and the testimony of prophets and apostles are defended against secular indictments then press on.

I'll be nice but I warn you, I am wise to your fallacious misdirections and relish the opportunity to defend the historicity of Scripture, especially the miracles. You won't just walk away from this one, I expect an answer.

Have a nice day
Mark

 

[shernren]

Wow. That is one of the most stunning failures of comprehension I have ever seen in a long while. You really made my day there, mark.

I think we've all established that you aren't listening. So I don't think there's much sense talking to you.

Have a nice day. No, really.

=========

ServantJohn, are you still around?

Sorry about that. The discussion tends to get a little heated around here.

I've got a fairly basic question for you if you want to start talking about miraculous explanations again. The question is this:

At what point does a phenomenon admit a naturalistic explanation?

Let's talk concrete examples, if you don't want to deal with the abstract. When you drop something from your hands, it falls down with constant acceleration. Do you think gravity is an adequate explanation for this? If so, what makes you think that it is unnecessary to admit a divine intervention or some supernatural cause?

 

[mark kennedy]

Wow. That is one of the most stunning failures of comprehension I have ever seen in a long while. You really made my day there, mark.

I think we've all established that you aren't listening. So I don't think there's much sense talking to you.

Have a nice day. No, really.

I wasn't kidding, you don't get to walk away from this one:

Oh my overzealous friend you are mistaken, it is the miraculous explanations that I most desire to defend. I will submit that Genesis is subject to the same rules of evidence that all historical narratives, that is any 'ancient writings whatever', are subject to.

The genuineness of these writings really admits of as little doubt, and is susceptible of as ready proof, as that of any ancient writings whatever. The rule of municipal law on this subject is familiar, and applies with equal force to all ancient writings, whether documentary or otherwise; and as it comes first in order, in the prosecution of these inquiries, it may, for the sake of mere convenience, be designated as our first rule.

Every document, apparently ancient, coming from the proper repository or custody, and bearing on its face no evident marks of forger, the law presumes to be genuine, and devolves on the opposing party the burden of proving it to be otherwise. (Testimony of the Evangelists by Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853))​

It's called Christian Apologetics and you are now challenged with the burden of proof in your indictment. Will you now make a substantive argument from the evidence or can I add slander to the indictment of your rhetorical rants?

Nor do you get to ignore the indels in the Chimpanzee Genome paper:

On the basis of this analysis, we estimate that the human and chimpanzee genomes each contain 40–45 Mb of species-specific euchromatic sequence, and the indel differences between the genomes thus total ~90 Mb. This difference corresponds to ~3% of both genomes and dwarfs the 1.23% difference resulting from nucleotide substitutions; this confirms and extends several recent studies (Nature, 2005)​

Now you know what my problem is with the statement that we are 98% the same in our DNA as chimpanzees. You also know someone who is willing and able to defend the miraculous aspects of the historical narratives in Scripture.

Care to engage?

 

[Servant of Jesus]

I've got a fairly basic question for you if you want to start talking about miraculous explanations again. The question is this:

At what point does a phenomenon admit a naturalistic explanation?

Let's talk concrete examples, if you don't want to deal with the abstract. When you drop something from your hands, it falls down with constant acceleration. Do you think gravity is an adequate explanation for this? If so, what makes you think that it is unnecessary to admit a divine intervention or some supernatural cause?

Gravity is a given. But why should particles of matter be attracted to each other, and produce gravitational forces in the first place, simply because they are there?

Is this attraction evidence of a Creator, or just something that science has not yet been able to adequately explain?

.

 

[Assyrian]

What I am seeing with TE is one long argument against special creation.

This is probably progress then, because it allows TE to be one long argument for creation. However it would be more productive not to keep trying to shove TEs into a box with cute rhetorical labels.

John was responding to Mallon and as usual the TEs swarm him, I can see how a person might think that is a little rude.

It would be pretty overwhelming for a new poster alright, but there was no shortage of creationists on the thread who could have joined in too. And wouldn't it have been better when you decided to wade in, if you stuck to the issues being discussed rather than turn it into an attach on how terrible TEs are?

I don't characterize TE as evil, I characterize it as Darwinian. If you think there is something inheriatantly evil about that then I would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Have a nice day
Mark

I thought you characterised TE as 'one long argument against special creation'? Are you saying this is a good thing? What about saying we 'do nothing but make biting remarks'? Is that evil or good?

 

[Papias]

Gravity is a given. But why should particles of matter be attracted to each other, and produce gravitational forces in the first place, simply because they are there?

Is this attraction evidence of a Creator, or just something that science has not yet been able to adequately explain?

.

Unavoidable!

Intelligent falling.......

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

 

[shernren]

Gravity is a given.

How do you know that?

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. (1Thess 4:16-17, ESV)

Doesn't sound very gravitational to me.

But why should particles of matter be attracted to each other, and produce gravitational forces in the first place, simply because they are there?

Is this attraction evidence of a Creator, or just something that science has not yet been able to adequately explain?

Right. Excellent questions to ask. But first notice that you are presupposing that "particles of matter are attracted to each other", or that "Gravity is a given". What you are doing is to notice that there are regularities in nature, and then asking whether these regularities themselves need an explanation.

So consider the following possible statements:

A. "Gravity makes apples fall to the ground. Um, yeah."
B. "God uses gravity to make apples fall to the ground."
C. "God makes apples fall to the ground."

I've got two questions:

1. Would there be any possible experiment you could perform to distinguish statement A from statement B?

2. Is statement B more accurate than statement C? Why, or why not?

As you answer these questions, you will probably be helping yourself to answer your own questions as well.

 

[mark kennedy]

How do you know that?

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. (1Thess 4:16-17, ESV)

Doesn't sound very gravitational to me.

You think mocking the blessed hope of the resurrection and reunion of the church with Christ returning in power and glory is funny? Seriously?