I’m actually going to make two posts in a row rather than one super long one, since I’m now responding to two people.
First, because his reply to me came first, is good brother. After I post this, I will then start my reply to brightmorningstar, so it might take a while.
Here is why I have not moved any goal posts. I talked about the disorganization thing because you were attempting to indicate that the use of those energies to CREATE life, all I was saying with my original post (and apparently I need to clarify myself in the future) that those things are not organizers, they are sustainers. Birds (flighted ones) use the wind to to what they were already designed to do. Just like flowers use the sun for photosynthesis since they have been designed for that. And even though birds use the wind, I have seen birds struggle in the face of a strong wind, and flowers can die by the same source that gives them life. Fish use water because they are designed for life in the water but that same water can wash them ashore and kill them. Do you see what I am trying to say?
Clarification in the future would be better, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
All those energies can be used in the processes to create life in some manner. While they can sustain, they much sustain by organization. There HAD to be air and wind for the birds to use before they used it. There had to be a chemical reaction that involved using sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water BEFORE it could be used by a plant. Fish can use ocean currents to conserve energy, but the currents have to be there before they can be used. And the lightning does/can organize organic chemicals. Also, with the exception of photosynthesis, this is not the type of organization that the SLoT talks about.
Are you married? Did your wife tell you everything about herself on your first date? Even the second date? I would bet that even at the wedding there was stuff you didn't know about her. My point is, Do I have to tell everything I know about everything I know anything about everytime I talk about anything I talk about? I really don't like you saying I have dishonest tactics just because I bring up different points at different times in our conversation. I guess I am sorry you feel that way.
First off, I’m sorry as well. I’ve seen this tactic used before, I’ve had discussions/arguments with people who’ve done it before, and its nasty. Now, you say you are just clarifying your arguments. I’m not saying you aren’t. But, after having read the source on ‘moving the goalposts’ that I linked before, can you see how, from my point of view, your posts certainly seemed to be following all those steps? This is why clarification would be better at the beginning. While it is true all the knowledge we have isn’t laid out each post, knowing exactly what knowledge I need to lay out before I start, instead of laying some out, having it corrected, laying some more out, etc.
I do appreciate the non wiki source. Thank you sir.
You are welcome. I’m sorry if the manner I presented it as being a non wiki source seemed snippy.
But transportation did not stem from the existence of roads, roads came about from the needs of transportation.
Yes. However, roads can be a natural byproduct of the transportation. Even animals make paths where are the plants and such are trotted down from many groups of animals going over the same spot. Nowadays, even in ancient times, roads were paved and fancied up, but many were just dirt where people had walked all the plant life down and it became easier to walk.
Also, tires did not just pop into being (going back a step). If you think about it, before tires, there were wheels. And many types of wheels: bicycle wheels, stone wheels, metal wheels, wooden wheels, spoked wheels, solid wheels, cartwheels... wait, that last one is acrobatics. And before metal wheels there would have been wooden and stone wheels. And before wheels, I believe it is common knowledge that logs were put on the ground and things rolled over them. Actually, getting a tire from a log isn’t as bad a parallel as some to breeding, which is evolution with artificial selection instead of natural selection. Though, since chopped down logs don’t reproduce on their own, it isn’t perfect.
I guess I didn't think we had gotten that far yet.
Gotcha. It just seemed to me that if it even applied would be one of the first things to be tackled, is all.
The point is, if we don't know how life started, why couldn't have been just like the Bible says? Why couldn't we just take God at His word? Why do we have to assume that He was incorrect when He described the events that He supposedly did?
...
Again, couldn't we just take the Bible at it's word? I mean, hey, we are trusting it for our eternal salvation, why not trust it on it's history?
Now, for this part, I don’t remember if you answered my question about Aesop’s Fables being wrong. But let’s start a non-exhaustive list of reasons.
1. The world that God caused to be made (I assume you believe direct miracle, I believe natural process, but that God made the natural process, so we both believe it is still God) does not show evidence of what the first chapters of Genesis state. Even Christian geologists before Darwin even traveled to the Galapagos determined that the geological evidence doesn’t indicate a global Flood. Current biology, fossils, etc, doesn’t show what is claimed in the Bible to be correct.
2. Filling in a ‘we don’t know’ with ‘God did it’ answers no questions, gives no insight. God did it doesn’t tell us how genomes change. God did it doesn’t help us see what genes are similar to our in different animals to help drug testing in lab animals. God did it doesn’t help us predict where to find oil. God did it is a non-answer.
3. If ‘we don’t know’ CAN be filled in with “God did it”, why can’t any other religion put in THEIR God? What’s to stop the Muslims from insisting that it happened according to the Koran? What’s to stop the Hindus from insisting it according to the Vedas, or the Hare Krishna followers insist it comes form the Bhagavad Gita? Once evidence is abandoned, how do we decide which faith’s text is correct?
4. Taking the Bible at which word? Did all humans come after animals a la Genesis 1? Or did it go Adam->animals->Eve as in Genesis 2? How many of each animal did Noah take on to the Ark? 2 of all, or 2 of all unclean and 7 of all clean? When were undersea plants made? God made all the plants of the field, all the birds/winged creatures of the air, all the fish/swimming creatures of the sea, all the beasts of the field, and men, so when did He make undersea plants? The narratives are incomplete, contradictory, and heavily reminiscent of other Ancient Near East mythologies.
5. Why is the Bible the only one that needs to be literal, that can’t teach a lesson? As far as I know, mythology is general inserted into a lot of high school english classes via Edith Hamilton’s book
Mythology, and Greek tales when we learn about comedies/tragedies/etc, so why is the Bible the only one that HAS to be literal, that CAN”T be told to teach its people. The Greeks had their myths, the Romans theirs, the Egyptians theirs, the Babylonians theirs (ridiculously similar to the Hebrew ones... or vice versa), the Chinese theirs, the Indians theirs, the Native Americans theirs... why do the Hebrew ones HAVE to be literal?
6. God tends to use parables, and visions, and such, WITHOUT always letting people know He is doing so. In the Gospels, Jesus had to take the Apostles aside from time to time to explain parables because people just didn’t get them, or didn’t even get He was using a parable in the first place!
I have listed some: hydrologic sorting, lack of transition fossils, and specialty design of the animal kingdom.
Hydrologic sorting is not evidence for creationism. I posted a non-wiki link on that a while back.
There is not a lack of transitional fossils. There is a lack of acceptance that they are transitional fossils. I’ll pose the same question to you as I did to gradyll: what would make a fossil transitional? What would have to be the case, the features to make you accept a fossil as transitional. Furthermore, this isn’t positive evidence of creationism. Even if it were hypothetically true, all it is is a lack of one type of evidence for evolution. Lack of evidence for evolution is NOT evidence FOR Biblical creationism.
Design is not positive evidence of Biblical creationism for several reasons. One, design has not been objectively shown and proven. Two, the appearance of design has been shown to come from natural, undirected, even nonliving processes. Three, design is a catch all that becomes unfalsifiable. Similar design? Okay, similar designer. Different design? Shouldn’t that mean different designers? Nope, we are told, it is our one designer being creative. So if similarities are design, and NON similarities are design, all there is is an assertion of design with no evidence. Fourth, special design shows God out to be a horrible sadist. You know that bacterial flagellum always paraded around by the ID advocates? That flagellum is what allows a large number of truly horrid bacteria to move and infect people. That flagellum is a HUGE cause of death and suffering. And saying God specially designed it to do just that is saying that God willfully and purposefully made it just to inflict pain and suffering. And it’s not the only example of such.
Yes, God is the author. He wrote a book. Perhaps you have heard of it, it's called the Bible. In the first book of the Bible God tells how He did it. If you acknowledge that God is the author, why don't you take Him at His word on the matter? It almost sounds as though you have designed your own god around the assumptions of man's supposed wisdom.
Except God isn’t the author. God never claims to be the author, or the dictator (not as in ruler, as in person who says things that are copied word for word by someone else), or anything BUT the inspirer (All scripture is God-breathed... not God dictated or God send-down-from-Heaven-as-a-written-manuscript). Furthermore, the Bible contains words of men because it has word for word accounts of conversations between men, and the words of men are NOT the words of God. In at least one of the epistles, Paul also states that certain things are just his opinion.
God also tells us how He did it in two different ways that can’t both be true, and neither conform to the world He made.
Yes, as that is what Bible teaches.
No, it isn’t, not directly.
That argument only comes from a non common sense reading of the Joshua passage that speaks of the Sun standing still in the sky. Obviously the writer was speaking from Earth's perspective, meant it to be understood from that same perspective, and from that perspective it appeared to stand still in the sky. It was not laying out the doctrines of heliocentrism.
It also comes from passages about the earth being fixed on pillars and never being moved, and talks about how the sun hastens back across the sky to start his circuit again. (such as Psalm 93 and Ecclesiastes 1) that clearly describe the earth as immovable and the sun as moving. The only reason people think it is silly now is because the matter has been settled for hundreds of years. The fact that the matter WASN”T settled at one time should show something.
Do you really think God would tell us one thing in His book but demonstrate another in His physical creation? Wouldn't that make God to be a liar? Either His book is correct and man's interpretation of the physical world is flawed or God was a liar. There are no other possiblities.
Yes there are. This is the false dichotomy. What if God did not give the account of the creation as a history lesson but as a moral lesson? Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan was not a treatise on the history of people falling in ditches and being saved by Samaritans, but a story about who is actually a person’s neighbor. Was Jesus a liar when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan? The Prodigal Son? The Servant and the Talents?
Did God not know what He did before or how long it took Him to do it? What about this passage:
It’s rather amusing that you cite the Exodus and Leviticus passages, because only ONE deals with any reference to creation as the day of rest.
Have you ever read Genesis 1? By reading Genesis 1, what do you think that Genesis 1 would have the reader to understand as to the length of time it took for the creation events described in Genesis 1?
Genesis 1 does not exist in a vacuum.
The only thing I would warn against is man's interpretation of discoveries. What "we" as a society have done is to say that God did not know what He was talking about or that He didn't mean what He said when He said what He said. Instead we have looked to ourselves and our own "wisdom" for answers. "We" have said that "we" have the correct answers, and have called God a liar.
This is incorrect.
“We” have not called God a liar. Creationists call God a liar, by saying either He lied in the Bible or in the earth.
Furthermore, it is not just ‘interpretation’. The evidence is inter-objective for all to see.
And even if it were interpretation, not all interpretations are valid. Creationism is not a valid interpretation because of how much it dismisses, throws out, and denies.
And at least for AIG, this argument is EXTREMELY hypocritical, given their statement of faith and how often I see this argument coming from them.
Finally, if it is ‘just interpretation’, how do we know anything? Flat earth is just a different ‘interpretation’ of the evidence. So it heliocentrism. So is germ theory, and alternative medicine. It’s all just ‘interpretation’, right?
No, the interpretation doesn’t hold up at all.
Metherion
