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herev said:
Doh!herev said:
That you could believe anything so divorced and reversed from of the truth is truly staggering. Until you wrote this, I wouldn't have believed it possible for anyone to be so wrong! I took a class on art history in college, which dealt a lot with the Renaissance, and they said the very opposite. In fact, every source I have ever heard (including Carl Sagan) described the Renaissance as the rise of more secular freedom of thought out of the "dark ages" of religious domination. The Renaissance was an awakening out of a period of artistic restriction and intellectual stagnation where the church controlled, censored and limited all learning, and even forbade literacy amongst the laity. This thousand-year reign of oppressive theocracy began in 415 CE with the horrific murder of a prominant scientist by a mob of Christians acting on the orders of a Bishop. In the years to follow, the transition was complete as religious vandals burned down the library of Alexandria, hailed as the greatest collection of knowledge humanity had ever seen. For his part in all this, the Bishop was made a saint by other Christians of his day, who praised him for murdering the scholar who lead the scientific world at that time.
That may happen on another topic, or with another opponant perhaps. But not with you, and not on this point. How could I feel "refuted"? You didn't present any reason or evidence of any kind to support your argument. I on the other hand have vindicated my own position with the following citations:
This is a crucial point in my philosophy, so I want to make sure you understand it. "Sacred truth" refers to a concept which must be believed as absolute truth which must not be questioned. But we can never know "absolute truth" because we don't know anything well enough, and there's always something else to learn about everything we think we do know. And the most important thing to remember is that any and every belief could be wrong and should be suspected of being wrong at least to some degree. Otherwise, if you never question your beliefs, adhering to faith instead, you'll still be wrong, but you'll never be able to discover that, or be able to correct your errors and thus improve your understanding.
You are always so deeply mistaken. Supernatural assumptions are the confusing mass of correlations that do not exist. Material explanations on the other hand, can be tested. More than that, they can understood and implimented in practical application. So there's good reason behind material science and no benefit whatever in using magic as an excuse for anything.
No they weren't. They are both sciences, and they were both conceived by creationists. But they both line up nicely with Darwinian evolution, are both now integral to evolutionary theory, and profoundly support the model of common ancestry, where neither lends any support whatever to the Genesis myth. Neither taxonomy nor genetics can in any way support the Biblical account, (in fact both of them oppose it rather adamantly) and therefore neiter could be considered any part of creation science.
Duh. The same can be said of Copernican Heliocentricity. What's your point?
I'm not ignoring anything. You are. You didn't "expond" (whatever that means). All you did was present some legalistic interpretation that four out of the 62 remaining books of the Bible were probably written by people who believed what they were saying. But that doesn't account for the dozens of other books, or for the still highly-questionable content in these four. I've heard of a whole town full of people who all say they saw the sun dancing back and forth when their Madonna appeared in the sky. And of course millions of people believe they've spoken with ghosts, or flown out of their bodies and into the astral plane. I even have a good friend who worships Bast, the Egyptian cat-headed goddess, because he insists that he's actually met her in person as a supernatural, but still tangible manifestation in the flesh. All these people really believe this stuff. But does that make their testimonies true? Of course not. So there must be something else, aside from the testimony alone, to back these up.
Can't you provide a specific example for anything?
So I guess you believe in Lord Krsna too, right? Because since you believe the supernatural is possible, and you accept personal testimony even over physical evidence, then you've no reason or ability to doubt Krsna, right?
The short answer? Because humans are definitely apes, and not animated mud golems.JAL said:
But we already know for certain that evolution happens. We have no idea whether gods and magic exist or not, and really there's no evidentiary reason to believe that they do. But we've actually seen new species evolve out of parent populations (in real time) so we know that at least this much is true. We can also tell for sure that we're related to everything else in varying degrees of ancestry; morphologically, physiologically, genetically, etc.
No. Mark believes in macroevolution. Its kind of a useless term because all it refers to is evolution at the species level and above, and yes, speciation has indeed been proved. However Mark also accepts evolution (in some cases) at the Genus and family levels, and sometimes even higher, depending on which groups you're talking about. He would probably accept common ancestors for just about everything else, but what he does not accept is what is most easily proved, that he is an ape and distantly-related to other non-human apes. He also opposes the common ancestor of birds and dinosaurs even though his own cited sources insist on one, and those two groups are also impossible to tell apart, again, according to Mark's own sources.
Yes, if you adhere to a global flood, you're doomed to lose any protracted debate where that may come up. But then the first few chapters of Genesis are no more supported or defensible than that either. So the question I would have to ask of you is, why do you believe any of it at all? And if you think I'm going to roast in everlasting Hell just for not believing it, then what reason could you give me to see your point of view?
JAL said:
Well since I don't know anything about genetics, the phrase "cluster of genetic material" sounded good to me. If that phrase doesn't make sense, the main point was that God conceivably hand-fashioned all species from the same template.gluadys said:
Aron-Ra said:
What omission? You did deny mutations, and you did it multiple times. You've changed your story now, but in our debate you said all mutations were deleterious and harmful. You denied mutations again, twice, when you tried to write off all of my examples of beneficial mutations in humans as "anecdotal" and "anamolies", and you did it again when you conveniently forgot all of them except the "funny footed ones". That's very obviously dishonest and bad form, Mark. As others have already several times pointed out to you, the overwhelming majority of mutations are completely neutral, and I myself have given you the benefit of the doubt in that the majority of the remainder were probably deleterious. However geneticists and other biologists the world over insist that mutations are a significant factor of biological evolution no matter how much you wish they weren't. I have provided evidence to support that claim where you were unable to provide anything to preserve you assertions because they are false. There has never been anything you've ever come up with that I didn't already have an answer for, and I didn't "abandon" our debate. Since you had already conceded both the primary and secondary objectives, there simply wasn't any other purpose in continuing with it, especially since you were doing your very best to continue breaking all the rules hoping to make it to the end without holding up your end of the bargain, just so you could pretend you won. Which by the way was a deliberately dishonest ploy you already tried once when you tried to pretend that you somehow won the thing, and then said that I lost only because the truth was not on my side. This is why we need moderators. If you don't like personal comments being made about you, then you'd better start showing some honest integrity. Because I won't be so polite about that sort of behaviour next time.
That may be. But at the same time these geneticists still insist that they are there, and that they are the variations in the gene pool.
If there is no genetic change, then there is no variation. Ask H2Whoa or any other geneticist, and they'll tell you the same.
The genetic code never needs to be re-written at any point. At most, there is only the accumulation of minor alterations to it, and the demonstrated mechanism for that has already been explained. However, to date, no sort of mechanism of any kind has ever been presented to show how anything could ever have just poofed out of nothing in an instant, so no evolutionist ever proposed that the vertebrates ever appeared as any "altogether" new creature. I have already countered this error in the previous post. Perhaps you should read that again instead of just ignoring it as you do everything else?
Just like it was wrong for you to exclude all the other options I already listed for you which you ignored. There are at least a dozen popular options to explain our origins, not just two. Polytheist, Taoist, Shaman, panspermia, cosmic conciousness, Hindu, theistic evolution, Zen, etc. -are all equal alternatives to Biblical creationism. But none of them can compete with evolution. Among the whole lot of them, there is only one with either evidentiary support or scientific validity. If you could ever present either for creationism, then you would have some justification for teaching it in school. You would also earn a Nobel prize for it since no one has ever been able to show any sort of evidence in favor in Biblical creationism or which consistently matches or explains the details of any other concept apart from evolution and the common ancestry model.
No you didn't. But I insist you try to defend that allegation by finding where you supposedly did that and pasting it here.
I agree that science shouldn't be anti-religious, only that it be non-religious. Historically, religion has been the bane of science, an impediment to science, and the opposite of science. Even before Socrates, true science has always been atheist, so the rest of your diatribe is just nonsense.
Yes it is! I haven't read the book myself, but I know a couple people who have, and Dr. Senapathy is saying exactly that: that random inanimate chemicals can just unintentionally amass themselves into all kinds of seemingly-related species accidently, without any of the evolutionary processes you already said you akready know are true, and without need or involvement of any god.
He didn't say it was wrong. He said evolutionary mechanisms weren't necessary because all the organic material for any number of complete species could just accidentally fall together, so that man walked out of the primordial ooze fully formed.
Except of course that (at best) only the core of Senapathy's observation could be true, and even that is questionable. But if he is accurate, then he has accounted for abiogenesis. But he hasn't presented anything to counter all the overwhelming evidence in favor of common ancestry, and what he proposes as an alternative, let's face it, is nothing less than silly.
I think Senapathy is an atheist. But he may be a closet Hindu. Generally, when Indians convert from Hinduism to Christianity, they tend to Americanize their sur name, and he hasn't done that. This might explain why he's been so tight-lipped about religion, (since he is milking Christian creationists for book sales). Either way, it has been more lucrative for him to present himself as an atheist, and he may actually be one. He used to post to Talk.Origins while I was still posting there, and like you, he just hated evolution and wanted to come up with anything he could to counter it. He's acting on prejudice, and it has severely clouded his judgement the same as it has clouded yours.
I think you're missing the point here, which is that much of what Dr. Senapathy would like to challenge are already known to be true, have already been directly observed, and are clinically understood as measurable fact.
Now you're quoting Jonathan Wells, another crackpot with an indefensible position. And you said you got your information from evolutionists, and specifically not from creationists!
Fine. But the only use for Senapathy's model is to try and deny evolution, which he is not doing effectively, as Kortoff, myself, or anyone else familiar with his claim can point out. You could refute him too if you had realized what he was saying before you cited him.
But Senapathy is even arguing against ring species, Mark. Don't you understand that? Wolves, maned wolves, foxes, and wild dogs are all unrelated in his perspective. He actually thinks they all crawled out of the ocean fully-formed as a natural consequence of abiogenesis, which he contends happens much easier than any evolutionist ever dreamed, and that it happened not once, but hundreds of millions of separate times, and that it kept happening until fairly recently. He says the primordial ooze was consumed only shortly after it spawned mankind. Don't you even read the sources you cite, Mark?
Well, I don't remember it ever being "reinvented", but then all the information that has ever come to light so far has only contributed to the common ancestry model. What information, (and be specific please) has ever come to light to challenge it?
I admit I have no idea how one could still falsify the concept of an old Earth at this point because we have already falsified the notion of a young Earth. So it really doesn't matter. When Lord Kelvin argued for a "young Earth", he said that the Earth could not be the hundreds of millions of years old that some geologists were claiming at that time, and he based this idea on his 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. However, he didn't know about radiation, and that the Earth replenishes its own heat through radioactivitity in the core. Upon discovery of this, Kelvin pushed his estimates back by an order of magnitude. But even before then, Kelvin insisted that our planet could be no less than 20 million years old. The idea that the Earth must be significantly younger even than that, being even less than 100,000 years is ridiculous at best and has been falsified by numerous means over the last 300 years or so.
Are you sure? Doesn't the word, "connections" imply a biological relationship, Mark? The discovery of "unexpected connections" have been common in taxonomy in the last few years. It was "unexpected connections" that lead to the other apes being reclassified as humans. Another "unexpected connection" revealed that aardvarks (a basal ungulate) had been classified in the order Tubulidentata erroneously. A continuous wave of unexpected connections revealed through genetics demanded a new clade, called Afrotheria, in which aardvarks would be reclassified along with elephants, hyraxes, and manatees, which were already known to be closely-related. Since you like PubMed, maybe you can access the article they wrote about it. Hey, didn't you say that PubMed did the real work of true science? I guess when you said that new discoveries were challenging the common ancestry model, and when you said PubMed didn't support common ancestry either, you were wrong again both times. Because the unexpected connections indicate that different "kinds" of animals are more intricately interconnected than we previously thought.
Let's test that claim, shall we? Show me any microbe from a few million years ago, and we'll compare it to the ones we have now, alright?
Well somebody is wrong, aren't they? Because there are six kingdoms, in three domains. It is these domains that are thought might possibly not be related. Myself, I think they probably are, but it wouldn't make a big difference to me if they weren't. Either way, we're still apes, and Genesis is still wrong for a great many other reasons each, so none of this portion of the discussion really matters.
As I described previously, there are at least a dozen popular concepts of our origin, some of which include a god, although none of them have the slightest scientific or evidentiary support like the common ancestor model continues to consistently acquire even from Pennisi! Senapathy is one minor detractor, whom as I said is emotionally-motivated, leading to an unsound proposal. Even including him, nothing but nothing ever seriously challenged the common ancestor model, so your allegation that is wholly inaccurate. Now would you please list the other examples you thought are "systematically taking the tree of life apart"?
If I were proved wrong as often as you are, I wouldn't think it was fun. But to each his own. Each of your arguments are like the guy trying to break out of prison with a gun carved out of soap. And your whole shoddy belief system is a house of cards protected only by a glass box.
Absolutely. That's why all those former clergymen arrive at the same conclusion I did once they see their former religion in the harsh light of reason. For example, I've already mentioned Dr. Glen Morton, a former YEC geologist who very nearly turned atheist when he realized that the Earth really was many millions of years and that there was never any global flood. But there was also Dan Barker. "Called to the ministry" at 15 years old, Barker worked for the next 19 years as a missionary, spiritual songwriter for a top Christian recording artist, associate pastor, traveling evangelist, and ordained minister for the Standard Community Church in California. He eventually achieved a BA in religion from the University of Wisconsin. Then in 1983, he experienced an epiphany similar to my own. Dispute all his years of intensive study far surpassing yours, this is his (and my) current opinion of Christian theism and faith:
Even if that were true, even if Jesus really came back from the dead and all that, and even if the gospels are a reliable record of that, (which they still aren't) and assuming they weren't altered after the "fact", how would their authorship of their time with Jesus in any way vindicate the stories in Genesis which were written several centuries earlier, but still untold thousands of years after the events they're meant to depict? And why do so many Christian scholars maintain that the New Testament does not vindicate the Old?
I didn't say it was.
I'm not. I'm just agreeing with a vast number of other Christian and Jewish scholars throughout even pre-Darwinian history who say that the stories in Genesis are not literal history regardless of whether the new testament is "gospel" or not.
Yet there are a growing number of former clergy who have rejected the Bible even after decades of study. How is that, if what you say is true? And more to the point; how does that account for my genetics professor, Dobzhansky, Bakker, Bushido, Lucaspa, H2Whoa, Gluadys, and all the other millions of Christian theistic evolutionists in the world and in history, including those who first discovered evolution and deep time?
That's the whole and sole strength of faith, isn't it? Keep your eyes, ears and mind closed and never ever admit any error. If you obsess on anything hard enough, you can make it manifest. And if you insist on not letting anything change your mind, (the very definition of religious faith) then nothing ever will. But still, that leaves you reduced to denial and assertion without the ability to actually deal with any of the evidence that continues to mount against you.
OK. What are they? You see, you're supposed to present evidence to back your claims. I do, why don't you?
The zombie comment refers to Mathew 27:52-53, an event which no one remembers except Mathew even though there were plenty of scribes and historians of various levels which should have reported an occurrence like that, and certainly would have if it had really happened. The other comment refers to the three hours of inexplicable darkness mentioned in Matthew 27:45, Mark 15:33, and Luke 23:44. Some years ago, I took the liberty of looking up every solar eclipse visible in Judea in the entirety of the 1st century, and found none from any point such as could be related to the time estimated for Jesus' execution. Not only that, but Pliny the elder was in Egypt at that time, and also recorded no hours of daytime darkness for that time zone. No one else in the world did either, even though there were plenty of scribes and scholars amongst the Pharisees and Roman political officers. No one else day turn to night, or the dead rise out of their graves, because it didn't really happen. These were just embellishments added to entice believers later on.
Actually, there are lots and lots of them that far exceed the Bible's reliability on anything. Pliny the younger, (a noted historian like his father) wrote a spectacular eyewitness account of the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii. And I've read a number of other historic accounts from here or there, most of which seem better written than the Bible, and most of which can be corroborated by unrelated documents or physical evidence. The Bible is in fact useless as an historic document, as I have already pointed out with my reference to Rabbi Wolper and the Sanai temple. That was yet another reference you snipped and ignored when you realized you couldn't counter it.
Well then, enlighten me, please. Because I am unaware of anything that could count as proof except in the language of a lawyer, ignorant of science, and not actually trying a case.
Can't the creator of "the word" communicate his point any more effectively than that? And why this system of judgement where the only attribute worthy of salvation is gullability? Good works are like filthy rags to God, and no one, not even Ghandi, could ever save themselves from Jesus' personal torture chamber unless they believe something totally preposterous for literally no reason at all, and maintain that delusion against all reason. This is not the way of any superior being, much less a supreme one. These are the claims of someone trying to use fear to gain power for himself. These are the lies of the priests, and nothing more.Well no, I wasn't. I was talking about how badly the Bible was written. But since you bring it up, Hell isn't a reality. Its one of the most absurd contradictions in all of Christianity, and that's saying a lot! Not only that, but it too was borrowed from the myths of the Hebrew's pagan ancestry. Hell began as the domain of Erikshigal, and was later modified into the current concept, not in the Bible, but in the Zend Avesta of 600 BCE. This was the origin of the Hebrew's concept of Satan, Shai-tan, "the opposer", and cast him into the Kingdom of the Lie. You see, before Zoroaster, there was no mention of posthumous judgement of the deeds done in life. Not in Hebrew tradition anyway. They got that idea from a pre-Biblical Persian religion.
Of course. Jesus runs the place! You see, the Jews believe that Satan is in Hell, doing the work of the Lord, as God's prison warden. But the Christian perspective has Satan as a completely pointless character, not even welcome in Hell. Jesus is the one issuing the punishment in the pit of dispair, folks, -eternally and mercilessly crushing sinners in a bloody winepress dispite all allusions of his loving goodness. God is in Heaven, where everyone around him has to think nice thoughts, as if they were trapped in a house with little Anthony Freemont from the Twilight Zone. Jesus is below the Heavens, cruelly crushing the non-believers just for not-believing. And Satan is in Vegas, apparently, where he is said to be quite happy.
Only because that's the exact amount you have, Mark. I promise if you had any more than "no amount", I would listen.
But even if Hell were real to you, it still can't be a reality for me. You see, Mark, I am an unbeliever. And God (literally) doesn't give a damn whether you're good or bad in this world. In yet another contradiction, he himself is proud, vain, vengeful, jealous and wroth. That's five-out-of-seven deadly sins, even though he is supposedly without sin. And in his insecure vanity, all he cares about is your gullability. If you don't praise his fragile ego by believing something preposterous for utterly no reason at all, and even against common sense, then he considers that to be the ultimate sin. Yours is a very shallow god indeed.
Fortunately, the wages of sin is death. -Not death in the body. Everybody dies in the body, even those supposedly saved from death; even all those apostles whom Jesus promised would never taste of death before his return... Well, he's really running late because they've all tasted death about 1930 years ago. No, death in this case means the death-after-the-death, Death II. Because while other's may have an immortal soul that will have to play slave for God for all eternity, (because they live again, after death) us non-believers just die, flat-out, permanently, for real, just like we would anyway, even if there was no god. So Hell isn't a reality for me, and it really isn't one for you either, no matter how you want to assert that it is.
When either you or I die, we will both be reduced to a couple hundred pounds of rotting ape-meat and that's it. When the void closes in forever, you'll simply cease to exist, "operating system not found", "Game over", power OFF. I can't go to Hell, because I won't be to go anywhere. I would have to have the promised posthumous immortality for that to happen, and I ain't gonna get it. Neither are you in fact. But fortunately for you, when everything goes black, and the sounds in your head shuf off forever, you won't even have the opportunity to be disappointed.
Aron-Ra said:
While I would hate to contradict such a compliment as that, I don't know who Karl Barth is. Also, I thought I was very careful not to attack Christianity in this thread.JAL said:
No. I asked you why you believed the Bible, particularly the Old Testament.
And some hear him loud and clear, like Deanna Laney and Andrea Yates.
And regardless what gods or spirits they worship, many of them know they're not lying about thier religious experiences either. I wasn't lying about any of mine.
And the voice George Harrison started hearing back in the '60s, and until his dying day, convinced him that God was speaking, and that Krsna is God. I have also read an interesting testimonial from Thailand, where someone spoke of the overwhelming feeling of joy when she finally accepted Buddha into her heart. I have a close friend who had a similar experience with Bast, the Egyptian cat-headed goddess.
Yeah. When I prayed earnestly to God, I came away with a wholly new idea, the realization that God wasn't who or what anyone thought he was. The reason there were so many different religions wasn't because they were all wrong except one, it was because they were all wrong, period. Of course, all the ones based on the Pentateuch had to be wrong because the Pentateuch was wrong. I still believed God existed, though he became a spirit form I could hardly call a god. Gods are anthropomorphic beings with magic powers and expendable human bodies. Over the next couple decades, my "god" became more like a Shamanic Druid's version of the Tao. Of course my very Christian family kept telling me that I didn't pray the right way. But yes, I certainly did.
This analogy just doesn't work. There was no reason to die, except to sate some ancient tradition for sacrifice. There was no reason for faith, or damnation, or redemption itself. I'll spare you the lengthy lecture as to all the reasons why since this isn't the right forum for it.
I appreciate the compliment, and I appreciate the polite tone even more. But I hope you'll understand that I find little sentimental value in your promise that you'll talk to yourself, wishing that would I'll become like you. And I wouldn't think it any more special even if you had a whole bunch of people talking to themselves, all trying to wish me into the flock. I don't see this as at all helpful to me. Nor do I even feel it to be a gesture made with my benefit in mind. I'm sure you won't understand this, but I find "I'll pray for you" to be a bit insulting. Its a patronizing way of letting me know that you feel sorry for me for not being gullible, and that you'll cast a spell to "help" me lose my rationality. Just want you to know my perspective.
