What if you seek and don't find?

[bhsmte]

How many years does a person have to seek God before he/she can give up? What if a person prays, reads, converses, all that, but receives no answer?

Well, according to some Christians; if you don't find, it means you are not looking hard enough and or, you don't have your mind right.

In essence, you have to believe before you go looking.

 

[Athée]

Hey Once,
Just a note before I reply, as you have no doubt assumed from the incredible number of typos in my posts I usually post from my phone (as an aside, thank you for never once responding to those typos instead of the ideas they were trying to convey, a rare thing on internet discussion forums . Today, however, I am actually on a computer and so I have the luxury of opening multiple windows and seeing the previous posts as I respond. This new experience has led me to appreciate just how poor my prior experience has been! That said, in the future I will mostly be on my phone and not readily able to see previous comments. With that in mind if we could both try to respond in full to questions asked so that it is evident from our responses what question is being tackled that would be great.

Thanks!

I would say both apply.

Interesting...I certainly see how the god hypothesis is a sufficient explanation for abiogenesis but I don't understand why it is a necessary one. How have you ruled out all other possible explanations?

No, you are misinterpreting what I say. I say that there is always a way that someone can choose to interpret the evidence in the way they choose to

I think maybe we are saying the same thing with a different emphasis. You are saying that there is indeed evidence but non believers interpret it ways that suggest no god exists. The point I was making is that, on your worldview, if the evidence was so overwhelmingly compelling, it would negate free will decisions like the one you say atheists are making not to interpret in favour of god. This being the case, even on your worldview we would have to say that the evidence is ambiguous at best because if it were entirely unambiguous (say a pillar of smoke by day and pillar of fire at night) then there would be no choice.

Regardless that bit about how strong the evidence was a bit of a side point. The central question from that original post was...How does saying "God did it" add anything useful to an explanation. If my kids ask me about how children get made and I answer them "by magic" have I really explained anything? So when I say that God does not add anything to our explanations this is what I mean. What do you think?

I didn't say anything about proof, science is not about proof. I asked what evidence provided knowledge that would inform them to conclude no intelligent mind was necessary for the universe's existence or for life on earth?

So looking back I can see that we are again off topic The question at hand is the appearance of design. Experts in the relevant fields (thus avoiding the fallacy of appeal to authority), overwhelmingly opine that nature is not designed by an intelligent mind. I think the existence of the universe and life on earth are both great questions, but not the one we were addressing.

I didn't say that. No it doesn't.

Maybe I misunderstood...what you said was:

"Heaven has free will and no evil but that comes only after being covered by Jesus and taking on the spiritual man only after acceptance of the spiritual world of Jesus.".

Could you explain what you meant here, it seems to me that you are saying that this place of free will and no sin "come after" Jesus and his work on the cross, but obviously you disagree, so...

No I do not disagree.

So we agree that according to the Genesis story (which from our conversation I think you see as a historical account - that is, not as a myth) Adam and Eve did not have the sin natures that would later plague humanity.

I disagree. They were told not to disobey God, the consequences of doing so and how they would be disobeying.

Yes, I agree that they were but how is this relevant? Imagine I say to my 5 year old. "It is simply not permissible to employ a disjunctive syllogism in the form:
1 - p or not p
2 - not p
Therfore C = Not p

as it results in an invalid argument.

Now my 5 year old will possibly understand that I don't want her to form arguments in the form p or not p (big maybe here) but she will have no understanding of why she is not to do so, nor will she understand the consequence of doing so. In a similar way if Adam and Eve have no knowledge of good and evil prior to the fruit , how can you say that they wilfully chose sin? How would they know it is wrong to disobey god, how would they know they want to avoid consequences like death (and as we find out "death" in that context didn't mean the same kind of death they might have seen form dying animas but instead a spiritual death somehow).

Test? What test?

I take it you are objecting to the semantics of saying that God was testing Adam and Eve. You agree I would guess that god does test people (Abraham, Job and many others) , but you would say this was not an instance of such. Fair enough, maybe test is the wrong word because the idea of a test implies that it is at least theoretically possible to pass. In the garden God set up the conditions that he knew ahead of time would result in sin, so in that sense you are correct, it was not a test. God not only set them up to fail, he made certain of it.

They were passing through, they were not taking over their lands in the passages we were discussing.

I absolutely agree that in the passages you quoted the Jews were just passing through. Fair enough, but it doesn't address the point we were discussing. I asked specifically about a case where they were not just passing through (and I assume you admit that this was occasionally the case). So I will copy my question:

"So if China sent a message to the US and said, hey heads up we are going to kill you, but if you don't resist and let us take you over then we won't. What would you expect your country to do?
Would you consider the Chinese barbaric for following through on that statement, if the US resisted them, or does it become OK to kill everyone because China warned them first?"

Do you think if God exists as claimed we are on equal footing with Him?

Not if he exists as described no. Not sure how this is relevant though?

Well considering that you have no interaction with God and know His kindness, love and mercy I don't doubt this.

So to be clear, some of the evidence at hand on your worldview is that
1: God sets people on paths to failure (Adam and Eve)
2: God orders (Amalachites) and commits ( The flood) genocides which include men, women, children, infants and unborn foetuses.
3: God condones slavery wherein it is acceptable to beat the slave almost to death because they are your property

vs

1: Your personal experience of God

From this you conclude that the being responsible for those horrendous acts, must in fact be the good guy? I am pretty sure this is a straw man so feel free to flesh him out a bit.

How is this different?

So the Euthyphro dilemma asks is god good because he says he is, or because he is in alignment with an external standard of good?

Your response, essentially, was that this is a false dilemma and you wanted to split the horns by saying that goodness is based in God's nature.

This is why I specifically asked: Is god's nature good because he says it is or is God's nature good because it is in alignment with an external standard of goodness. You will see that this reframes the argument in a way that still asks about the nature of goodness but makes the response that it is simply part of god's nature irrelevant. To say at this point that God's nature is good because goodness is based in his nature is a tautology that reduces to God = God. In any case I will look forward to your response to the question as I put it to you

Where is murder (unlawful, unwarranted, death caused by another) accepted? Where is stealing from others accepted? Where is lying an acceptable action within any community?

I am not going to provide an answer right away here, although I am very tempted to just dive in. First though I want to ask you, if I can demonstrate to you that in some community contexts murder or stealing, or lying is accepted, will you revise your stance on the objective nature of morality ?

Morality is not always about harm.

You say that morality is not always about harm, fair enough, could you provide me with an example to substantiate this point, on win which an action is considered immoral but does not cause harm to anyone.

Again, you seem to be equating humans and God. Do you think if God exists and created the universe and everything in it that He is equal to us?

I did answer this above, no we would not be equal.

This time for instance not only did they ask but God did not allow them to take the land from them. They were honoring God and doing no harm to others.

So it seems to me that you miss the main thrust of the argument here. We were discussing morality and you were saying that it is based in god's nature, objective and unchanging, written on human hearts etc. I asked, since god does not see slavery as wrong...do you agree with him?

And you are very certain despite not having a firm foundation for that certainty. I balance the Bible and God's revelation to me personally.

Ah i see that in that straw man up above I will have to add in your belief that the Bible is true to the equation

Perhaps you can tell me what sense evil exists in your view?

Well I don't think evil exists at all. Evil is a religious term that implies there is an objective concept of the good and of the evil. I don't believe that any gods exist, nor do I believe that there exists an objective standard of good or evil (platonism), somewhere out there. In my mind actions within a given situation can be good or harmful in degrees.

You have judged God and found Him guilty, without a hearing or any evidence that the acts you judge were not done for a good and righteous reason. So on the day that you are before Him I am sure that you will be able to state your case but if God has a good reason and you find that you agree it was a good reason but it has stopped you from being saved then you have no one to blame but yourself...do you disagree?

Actually I do disagree. I think God (if he exists as you describe him) is responsible for the path taken by every molecule in motion and knows what it would take to convince me, has a responsibility in this instance. I am only doing the best with what information and intellectual ability He has given me.

If harm is the standard of morality, how does that relate to Justice?

Wow that is a huge question, how is harm/morality related to Justice... maybe you could help me out by explaining what you mean by "Justice"

I am saying that using my direct knowledge of God and His love and concern for me personally and understanding that a righteous and Good God could and would have a reason that is for the greater good of mankind, I have reason to believe the way I do. It may not be convincing to you but I feel my position is one based on personal experience and an understanding that things that might seem on the surface immoral, but may be actually moral in reality for the greatest good. What you call wishful thinking, I call coming to a logical reasoning based on all factors that I can form a conclusion from.

I am sure this is the case, you would know! But as we have discussed before , this same kind of statement can and is made by people with other God beliefs and if your certainty is based in your experience and your convictions, then you really have no way of arguing that your religion is better/more true than any other. At best you could say that your is equally as true as any other.

You might feel there is no way to demonstrate God exists, however, you have no evidence that He doesn't. Now you have no burden to provide evidence that He doesn't but one must reasonably ask if one doesn't believe He does exist they should have reason to believe He doesn't.

You are asserting that I have no evidence that God does not exist, fair enough but I wonder what you would accept as evidence that God, as you conceive him, does not exist? I will answer I promise, it would just be helpful to know ho two frame my argument in a way that you would find compelling

He doesn't make it happen, it happens and God knew it would happen but that doesn't mean because He knew that He orchestrated the actions of those that did it.

This is a fair distinction I think, between knowing and causing. I know that the sun will come up tomorrow (problem of induction aside!) but my assertion that it will come up 500 days from now does not have a causal relationship to that event. Where I think this breaks down is that I am not an all knowing all powerful God. You believe that God exists outside of time and that he therefore knows everything ahead of time. You also seem to believe (and correct me if I am wrong - as always) that God chose to create the universe. Now, before he did this he would have known everything that would occur in that universe, including the killings we are discussing. He chose to create that universe and so I would say that he is in fact the cause of all the events in the universe.

He isn't ordering it done. It never says that he ordered it. Knowing that it will happen doesn't mean He orchestrates the actions taken.

Samaria is going to have these things done because they must bear their guilt in front of god. So god is the judge and his people the executioners.

 

[Davian]

Its nice that you agree it hasn't been falsified.

And that you agree that it is of no scientific significance.

I wasn't trying to compare anything, I was discussing known facts in our own.

"Facts" that you cannot verify without access to other universes.

I wasn't alluding to anything.

Other than probabilities that you cannot substantiate.

Read my post.

I did. Quite vague.

I didn't say easy.

Did you or did you not say "easy to show how it can arise by chemical processes over and over again"?

I am talking about no life in the billions of years since the first life emerged coming from non-living matter.

Conditions changed. Tell me why you would expect the same thing to happen under different conditions.

That is for God to do.

Cop out. Step up and meet the same standards that you demand from others.

You haven't shown that we are not in conscious control of what we believe. If we can truly change our mind, we are in control.

You are equating control...without reason. That is not the same thing. We can not believe anything without reason. That means our reasoning allows us to actually chose what we do believe.

Obviously our beliefs can change, but again you evade my point. I am talking about changing our beliefs by conscious choice.

You demonstrated that you could not do it, with the green apple example. How can you expect me to do the same for gods?

 

[bhsmte]

And that you agree that it is of no scientific significance.

"Facts" that you cannot verify without access to other universes.

Other than probabilities that you cannot substantiate.

I did. Quite vague.

Did you or did you not say "easy to show how it can arise by chemical processes over and over again"?

Conditions changed. Tell me why you would expect the same thing to happen under different conditions.

Cop out. Step up and meet the same standards that you demand from others.

Obviously our beliefs can change, but again you evade my point. I am talking about changing our beliefs by conscious choice.

You demonstrated that you could not do it, with the green apple example. How can you expect me to do the same for gods?

Well, that just makes, far too much sense.

 

[Oncedeceived]

And that you agree that it is of no scientific significance.

Can science falsify that only those things that can be falsified are significant?

[/Quote]"Facts" that you cannot verify without access to other universes.[/Quote]Are you unaware of facts that are known about our universe? Do we have to know if other universes exist to know facts about ours, such as when we look at the night sky we are looking back into time; or that there is a massive diamond in our galaxy, or even that a year on Venus is shorter than its day? We can know a great deal about our own universe without even considering the possibility of other universes.

Other than probabilities that you cannot substantiate.

I don't need probability calculations to determine that life coming from non-living matter has not been shown to happen ever, that if it happened it doesn't happen now nor has it in the last 3.4 billion years.

I did. Quite vague.

I thought it was quite clear.

Did you or did you not say "easy to show how it can arise by chemical processes over and over again"?

I did, I said if it were easy to show that life could arise by chemical processes over and over again. The fact that life has not EVER been shown to arise by chemical processes supports my position more than if we could see life arising from chemical processes over and over again.

Conditions changed. Tell me why you would expect the same thing to happen under different conditions.

This is rather begging the question don't you think? You don't know what type of conditions were present nor what conditions make it possible if possible at all.

Cop out. Step up and meet the same standards that you demand from others.

I am not demanding anything of anyone. I said if I could see life arising from chemical processes over and over again it would make a difference to me.

Obviously our beliefs can change, but again you evade my point. I am talking about changing our beliefs by conscious choice.

Aren't all beliefs made from conscious choice?

You

demonstrated that you could not do it, with the green apple example. How can you expect me to do the same for gods?

I think we are talking past each other here. I can't believe anything without some reason for doing so. It is true for everyone.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Yes, exactly. But we don't see that. We see organisms segregated both stratigraphically and geographically, not jumbled together around the globe.

So how do you explain the finds of shellfish and other animals in rocks high in the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau that are geographically out of place?

Yeah, if my participation in this forum is God calling to me, then the sasquatches are calling to me too. I need something much less subtle.

I wonder if God has an aversion to showing Himself to someone that demands a certain action be taken from Him to even consider His existence?

I decline on the grounds that the unreliability of a pretty major prophesy (Jesus said he would be back in the lifetime of eyewitnesses) substantially undercuts the impact of an extremely open-ended prophesy. That said, I would appreciate it if you could quote the prophetic passages directly.

In any case you have not addressed the main point of the excerpt to which you are replying. Paul was still industriously persecuting Christians despite there being a number of supposedly fulfilled prophesies. I am similarly unconvinced by supposedly fulfilled prophesies and God knows this. I can pretend to find them convincing, but I can't force myself to. So again, why should I be condemned to Hell because God doesn't feel like giving me the obvious sign he knows I need?

The prophecy that you cite was indeed fulfilled three times in the lives of the disciples. The first was with the transfiguration:

Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. But Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.

Now as they came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.”

Matthew 17:1-9


And again when the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost:

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Acts 2:1-4

And then again when John in Revelation is shown what will happen before and during Christ's return in the end days.

Most importantly, Jesus Himself states that even He Himself doesn't know the time of His coming only the Father knows.


“Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘Look, He is there!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. But take heed; see, I have told you all things beforehand.

“But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars of heaven will fall, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then He will send His angels, and gather together His elect from the four winds, from the farthest part of earth to the farthest part of heaven.

“Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender, and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that it is near—at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is. It is like a man going to a far country, who left his house and gave authority to his servants, and to each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch. Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning—lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!”

Mark 13:21-37

So you do agree that in certain instances God himself hardened men's hearts. If you choose to view this as a punishment for past transgressions that is your prerogative, however it does not alter the fact that in these instances God has removed all possibility of changing one's mind. In other words in these instances he has robbed them of their free will. God wants us to choose to be with him or not, yet in these instances choosing God was not an option. Now from your posts here I would imagine that you would argue that God knows that they're never going to choose him so it doesn't matter if he robs them of any choice in the matter. But this is still an admission that in certain instances God is willing to suspend free will to achieve his ends.

This raises an obvious question to me: if you are willing to subvert free will do punish the creations you love, why not subvert free will now and then to save the creations you love? Is punishing the unfaithful more important than saving souls?

By using Pharaoh's will the Jewish people as well as the surrounding people realized that the God of Moses was the true God. It affected all their lives and gave proof to many that He was who He said He was. Many of those people might have never know that God existed. That being said, yes God did know that Pharaoh would never choose Him and thus did not forfeit his own free will as it was His will to not choose Him. It was a matter of timing rather than forfeiting the will. If God would not have hardened Pharaoh's heart when He did the plagues would have been the reason which actually would have taken away his free will because God brought them upon Pharaoh. So by stopping the plagues when Pharaoh showed repentance allowed Pharaoh to use his own will which went back to challenging God once again.

To my knowledge there are no examples of entire nations that are genetically or culturally unable to be anything but evil or destroy other populations when they interbreed. I would suggest that this makes your suppositions less likely to be true.

You don't live in those times which leaves you without the necessary information to make any informed assessment of the possibility.

But you are currently arguing that God was being merciful by killing those babies because they were destined to be evil. So why wait until there is an entire nation to mercy kill? Why not mercy kill the handful of people whom you as God know are going to produce an entire nation of evil people who will have to be killed later anyway, except now they'll kill a bunch of your chosen people in a genocidal battle? If God is willing to kill a nation's worth of babies without allowing them to make free will choices and experience the consequences of those choices, why not do the same to a few people much sooner?

Why create life at all? Why not just spend an eternity without any beings at all? Why create people at all? I have to assume that God had a purpose and reason to do the things He did and if I knowing God's goodness and love in my own life and the testament of millions of others who share that experience in theirs; I can imagine and hypothesize reasons that a good and loving God might have for doing things that seem on the surface immoral. Without any real knowledge or information to make a valid argument against God's moral actions you make a claim that it is immoral. You can't know unlike God what actions He takes and for what reasons and without that knowledge you don't have the ability to know if it was moral or not.

Is he so concerned with punishment that it was important to him to first let that nation grow and be wicked (as he always knew they would be) so that they could be righteously punished (i.e. exterminated) later on?

So you think that someone's evil should be terminated before they are born? Or do you think think that God shouldn't have allowed anyone to live since He knew that all could not be God? The issue is that we are not God, we can never be God and can never stand before God as less than God due to our being a creation rather than God. So it is only through God by Him coming to earth and dying on the cross to cover mankind in His perfection to pay for our imperfections or our unGodness. Does that make sense? So our unholiness, our sinfulness, our imperfection come by being created rather than being God. The only way that a holy, sin free and perfect Being can share the lives of His creation is to provide a way for us to pay for our injustices or sins is through Him Himself.

Why condemn an entire nation of souls to Hell when acting sooner would prevent this at the cost of sending the souls of a few non-evil people to Heaven? I just don't how it is consistent for him to do this in one instance and not another, especially when one of the choices results in a few deaths and the other results in the death of a nation. If he's willing to kill an entire nation and include the babies as a mercy, why not avoid the whole calamity? We know that God is willing to step in at the cost of free will choices, so why not do it to save so many of his beloved creations?

You misunderstand. God used the Flood to wipe out evil nations. I'm asking why he didn't eliminate the handful of individuals who founded these nations instead of such large scale slaughter. Isn't that more merciful?

So free will is so important to God that he'll kill most the planet's population to let it play out instead of stepping in early and killing a comparatively minuscule number of people, but he'll also step in and subvert free will when he wants to punish someone or achieve some goal?

I think I've provided my view on this all above.

Okay. So we agree that from a biblical perspective large scale infant killing is under certain circumstances the moral course of action.

God has the knowledge and is the moral standard to determine what is most moral and what for the greatest good an action will provide. It is God's right to do and in my view probably has an unknown moral reason but mankind doesn't share this right. There are only a few instances where the right is given to mankind in certain circumstances.

I'm not sure what you mean here, so perhaps you could rephrase it. It seems that your answer is that killing babies before they have the chance to choose good or evil does not violate their free will. Correct? I don't understand your reason though. What do you mean when you say that babies' wills are "completely their own"? I thought the whole point was that everyone's' will is completely their own.

And if free will is the chance to choose right or wrong, how is preventing a person from making that choice by killing them when they are a baby not a violation of that principle?

Or do you mean that babies are already capable of making free will choices and have in some way chosen evil so it does not violate their free will to reap their souls?

Babies are not old enough to chose. They don't have the ability to make that determination. That is why they go to heaven rather than hell, even if they would later go to hell due to their choices.

If you asked me how I would breath if there were no oxygen I could answer very easily: briefly and ineffectively. I would not answer: Impossible to contemplate! Just because something does not comport with what we know doesn't make it impossible to engage with, at least not for me. What I'm trying to do is get to the bottom of your morality here.

In any case your stance raises some questions when we consider your belief in the Trinity. If God and Jesus are the same being, then surely it is consistent with Jesus' character to order the slaughter of children. If God's character is immutable and in the past his character did not prevent him from ordering babies killed, how can you say that ordering baby killings is inconsistent with God's/Jesus' character now?

God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit have the same character, it is the time we live in that makes the difference and not their Character. After Jesus lived, died and rose again the whole nature of the world was changed. Jesus was the culmination of God's plan for salvation for all mankind.

And let me alter the hypothetical slightly. Same question, but in this version you are living in the time period when the events of the Old Testament take place, so currently God is occasionally ordering babies killed. Would you do it? You still have your personal relationship with God and he is still your source for morality, so would you kill those babies? Would you consider this immoral? Or would you believe it was moral but not be able to follow through with it?

I don't know.

And here's another situation. Jesus said that we should forsake our families and even hate them. If Jesus told you that if you wanted to truly be with him you were never to see your children again, would you do it? Do you really love Jesus more than your children (as you should, according to him)? Would you regard abandoning your family the moral thing to do?

This goes to the situation where some of family do not believe in Christ. An example is when a Muslim becomes a Christian. Does this Muslim turn away from his/her religion which will serve to sever their relationship with their families. It would mean that if your family turns away from you because of Christ will you still follow Him. Being a Christian and having family members that are atheist is in fact the same thing. We will be separated from our loved ones for an eternity if they choose to deny Christ's gift of salvation. It has nothing to do with morality but all about where one spends eternity.

Nope. If you go back through the posts you'll see that my argument is that babies are not born evil. You disagreed (I think) and suggested that babies have the same mind as they do when they are adults. I countered that this was demonstrably not the case.

No, I was referring to your position which you clarified.

I've done my best to understand your position. Perhaps you'd be kind enough to re-articulate your position? Do you think Genesis is saying that angiosperms were created first (day 3) and humans last (day 5)? As I said before, it seems like you have two options:

1. Genesis is an accurate account of the order in which things were created and this order should be seen in the fossil record to support your claim that Genesis is evidence of divine revelation.

2. Genesis is just an overview of things that were created over huge amounts of time and is not meant to give any particular order. If this is the case you cannot claim that Genesis fits the fossil record because it isn't giving us any information about what order we should expect.

Which is it? If there's another option, please articulate it clearly for my benefit.

I believe the evidence we do have shows a remarkable likeness to the Genesis Narrative. I believe that although we don't have a great amount of evidence to support trees coming from earlier life that would have evolved into them being present before the Cambrian Era it is reasonable to hypothesize that they could have existed and were later completely wiped out prior to the Cambrian Era. Knowing that oxygen was present far earlier than the Great Oxidation Event and finding fossils that are still a controversy whether or not they are plant or animal gives some support to this scenario.

You have suggested that Genesis is just an overview of what arose during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. So why, as I have asked a couple times already, did the authors break it up into distinct days with a morning and evening? If they didn't intend to communicate that things created on day 3 were created prior to things on day 5, why write it in such a way as to communicate exactly that?

They are sequenced and are prior life forms.

Furthermore, if Genesis is really just a general overview of creation that is not meant to present accurate chronological relationships, how can you claim that it accurately describes the order in the fossil record?

Other than the trees, what are you referring to?

I still don't understand your point about the different kingdoms. Are you arguing that because both modern biologists and Genesis consider them distinct groups that this counts as a point towards Genesis being the result of divine revelation? If so I think this is a very weak argument. It doesn't even take education to detect that plants and animals are pretty distinct form each other, let a lone divine revelation.

You said this when arguing that the bible was accurate because it recorded accurate science that the authors could not have known unless by true divine revelation:

"I doubt that Bronze Age tribesmen would have any idea that life began in the seas and followed a certain sequence into existence but that is what they recorded in the Bible."

From this comment it seems to me that you are arguing that life began in the seas, that Genesis records this and that this is evidence of its veracity. It also seems like you are saying that Genesis is describing the sequence in which various groups of life arose. You tell me however that you misspoke. Would you please clarify what you were really trying to say?

You seriously have lost me. First of all, Bronze Age tribesmen would not have had an inkling that life arose in any sort of chronological order. The fact that plant life is separated from animal life was my only point. I was referring to the Cambrian Explosion and the passage of Life swarmed in the sea.

In any case, I asked you of you thought that Genesis was a chronologically accurate account of the order in which life was created. You said it was. But the chronology laid out in genesis doesn't the fossil record as I have demonstrated.

YOu've only shown that trees didn't exist in the fossil record.

How would life arising and vanishing multiple times support your argument that Genesis fits with the fossil record?

In any case, you've missed the point here I think. For Genesis to be correct, angiosperms would have to be the first organisms to appear. We agree that this is not what the record shows, but you posit that future discoveries will vindicate your belief. However, this means that a globally-dispersed, extremely common group of organisms with vast fossil record is mysteriously absent from the record for 400 million years. But here's what you've missed I think: The paucity of rocks from the very start of earth's history is irrelevant in this instance because that 400 million year gap is not composed of barren rock, it is full of fossils! Why do we have 400 million years worth of fossils but not one single representative from an extremely common, widespread group? And remember, it's not just angiosperms. This same thing happened with a variety of major groups.

The samples we do have very early are rare and hardly give us any idea about anything but the samples themselves. The earliest earth is not represented or full of fossils. We simply do not have but rare and few examples of that period.

I don't see how that passage supports any of what you've claimed here. Perhaps you could expand your answer. When it says "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind", how does that not refer to land animals in general? To what does "creeping thing and beast" refer if not to land animals in general? Where do you get the idea that there is a large amount of time elapsing prior to cattle?

Why not?

Genesis is less wrong than the earth being supported by infinite turtles, but this doesn't lend it even a tiny bit of veracity. Claiming that Jupiter is the smallest planet in our solar system is super incorrect, but it doesn't make claiming that Earth is the smallest planet any more correct.

The fact that Genesis has anything at all close to the way our universe and life appeared and as close as it does should be seen as pretty remarkable when looking back thousands of years before it was even known that life is shown to have swarmed in the sea and then go on and later give rise to cattle and men. Why would they not just suppose that life was always just as it was?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Hey Once,
Just a note before I reply, as you have no doubt assumed from the incredible number of typos in my posts I usually post from my phone (as an aside, thank you for never once responding to those typos instead of the ideas they were trying to convey, a rare thing on internet discussion forums . Today, however, I am actually on a computer and so I have the luxury of opening multiple windows and seeing the previous posts as I respond. This new experience has led me to appreciate just how poor my prior experience has been! That said, in the future I will mostly be on my phone and not readily able to see previous comments. With that in mind if we could both try to respond in full to questions asked so that it is evident from our responses what question is being tackled that would be great.

Thanks!



Interesting...I certainly see how the god hypothesis is a sufficient explanation for abiogenesis but I don't understand why it is a necessary one. How have you ruled out all other possible explanations?



I think maybe we are saying the same thing with a different emphasis. You are saying that there is indeed evidence but non believers interpret it ways that suggest no god exists. The point I was making is that, on your worldview, if the evidence was so overwhelmingly compelling, it would negate free will decisions like the one you say atheists are making not to interpret in favour of god. This being the case, even on your worldview we would have to say that the evidence is ambiguous at best because if it were entirely unambiguous (say a pillar of smoke by day and pillar of fire at night) then there would be no choice.

Regardless that bit about how strong the evidence was a bit of a side point. The central question from that original post was...How does saying "God did it" add anything useful to an explanation. If my kids ask me about how children get made and I answer them "by magic" have I really explained anything? So when I say that God does not add anything to our explanations this is what I mean. What do you think?



So looking back I can see that we are again off topic The question at hand is the appearance of design. Experts in the relevant fields (thus avoiding the fallacy of appeal to authority), overwhelmingly opine that nature is not designed by an intelligent mind. I think the existence of the universe and life on earth are both great questions, but not the one we were addressing.


Maybe I misunderstood...what you said was:

"Heaven has free will and no evil but that comes only after being covered by Jesus and taking on the spiritual man only after acceptance of the spiritual world of Jesus.".

Could you explain what you meant here, it seems to me that you are saying that this place of free will and no sin "come after" Jesus and his work on the cross, but obviously you disagree, so...



So we agree that according to the Genesis story (which from our conversation I think you see as a historical account - that is, not as a myth) Adam and Eve did not have the sin natures that would later plague humanity.



Yes, I agree that they were but how is this relevant? Imagine I say to my 5 year old. "It is simply not permissible to employ a disjunctive syllogism in the form:
1 - p or not p
2 - not p
Therfore C = Not p

as it results in an invalid argument.

Now my 5 year old will possibly understand that I don't want her to form arguments in the form p or not p (big maybe here) but she will have no understanding of why she is not to do so, nor will she understand the consequence of doing so. In a similar way if Adam and Eve have no knowledge of good and evil prior to the fruit , how can you say that they wilfully chose sin? How would they know it is wrong to disobey god, how would they know they want to avoid consequences like death (and as we find out "death" in that context didn't mean the same kind of death they might have seen form dying animas but instead a spiritual death somehow).



I take it you are objecting to the semantics of saying that God was testing Adam and Eve. You agree I would guess that god does test people (Abraham, Job and many others) , but you would say this was not an instance of such. Fair enough, maybe test is the wrong word because the idea of a test implies that it is at least theoretically possible to pass. In the garden God set up the conditions that he knew ahead of time would result in sin, so in that sense you are correct, it was not a test. God not only set them up to fail, he made certain of it.



I absolutely agree that in the passages you quoted the Jews were just passing through. Fair enough, but it doesn't address the point we were discussing. I asked specifically about a case where they were not just passing through (and I assume you admit that this was occasionally the case). So I will copy my question:

"So if China sent a message to the US and said, hey heads up we are going to kill you, but if you don't resist and let us take you over then we won't. What would you expect your country to do?
Would you consider the Chinese barbaric for following through on that statement, if the US resisted them, or does it become OK to kill everyone because China warned them first?"




Not if he exists as described no. Not sure how this is relevant though?




So to be clear, some of the evidence at hand on your worldview is that
1: God sets people on paths to failure (Adam and Eve)
2: God orders (Amalachites) and commits ( The flood) genocides which include men, women, children, infants and unborn foetuses.
3: God condones slavery wherein it is acceptable to beat the slave almost to death because they are your property

vs

1: Your personal experience of God

From this you conclude that the being responsible for those horrendous acts, must in fact be the good guy? I am pretty sure this is a straw man so feel free to flesh him out a bit.



So the Euthyphro dilemma asks is god good because he says he is, or because he is in alignment with an external standard of good?

Your response, essentially, was that this is a false dilemma and you wanted to split the horns by saying that goodness is based in God's nature.

This is why I specifically asked: Is god's nature good because he says it is or is God's nature good because it is in alignment with an external standard of goodness. You will see that this reframes the argument in a way that still asks about the nature of goodness but makes the response that it is simply part of god's nature irrelevant. To say at this point that God's nature is good because goodness is based in his nature is a tautology that reduces to God = God. In any case I will look forward to your response to the question as I put it to you



I am not going to provide an answer right away here, although I am very tempted to just dive in. First though I want to ask you, if I can demonstrate to you that in some community contexts murder or stealing, or lying is accepted, will you revise your stance on the objective nature of morality ?




You say that morality is not always about harm, fair enough, could you provide me with an example to substantiate this point, on win which an action is considered immoral but does not cause harm to anyone.



I did answer this above, no we would not be equal.



So it seems to me that you miss the main thrust of the argument here. We were discussing morality and you were saying that it is based in god's nature, objective and unchanging, written on human hearts etc. I asked, since god does not see slavery as wrong...do you agree with him?



Ah i see that in that straw man up above I will have to add in your belief that the Bible is true to the equation



Well I don't think evil exists at all. Evil is a religious term that implies there is an objective concept of the good and of the evil. I don't believe that any gods exist, nor do I believe that there exists an objective standard of good or evil (platonism), somewhere out there. In my mind actions within a given situation can be good or harmful in degrees.



Actually I do disagree. I think God (if he exists as you describe him) is responsible for the path taken by every molecule in motion and knows what it would take to convince me, has a responsibility in this instance. I am only doing the best with what information and intellectual ability He has given me.



Wow that is a huge question, how is harm/morality related to Justice... maybe you could help me out by explaining what you mean by "Justice"





I am sure this is the case, you would know! But as we have discussed before , this same kind of statement can and is made by people with other God beliefs and if your certainty is based in your experience and your convictions, then you really have no way of arguing that your religion is better/more true than any other. At best you could say that your is equally as true as any other.



You are asserting that I have no evidence that God does not exist, fair enough but I wonder what you would accept as evidence that God, as you conceive him, does not exist? I will answer I promise, it would just be helpful to know ho two frame my argument in a way that you would find compelling



This is a fair distinction I think, between knowing and causing. I know that the sun will come up tomorrow (problem of induction aside!) but my assertion that it will come up 500 days from now does not have a causal relationship to that event. Where I think this breaks down is that I am not an all knowing all powerful God. You believe that God exists outside of time and that he therefore knows everything ahead of time. You also seem to believe (and correct me if I am wrong - as always) that God chose to create the universe. Now, before he did this he would have known everything that would occur in that universe, including the killings we are discussing. He chose to create that universe and so I would say that he is in fact the cause of all the events in the universe.

Samaria is going to have these things done because they must bear their guilt in front of god. So god is the judge and his people the executioners.

This is long and I don't think I will have the time today. I'll get to it as soon as I have a block of time where I can.

 

[Athée]

This is long and I don't think I will have the time today. I'll get to it as soon as I have a block of time where I can.

I know, that is what happens when I get in front of a keyboard sorry about the length, I will be looking forward to your post!

 

[Oncedeceived]

I know, that is what happens when I get in front of a keyboard sorry about the length, I will be looking forward to your post!

Wild man.

 

[Atheos canadensis]

So how do you explain the finds of shellfish and other animals in rocks high in the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau that are geographically out of place?

This can be explained very easily indeed by the pretty well-understood process of mountain building. Basically, bivalves and whatnot are entombed on the sea floor as they die and then later on the collision of tectonic plates results in these lithified marine deposits being uplifted into mountains. In fact the Himalayas are still being uplifted as we speak as the Indian plate continues to collide with the Eurasian plate.

I wonder if God has an aversion to showing Himself to someone that demands a certain action be taken from Him to even consider His existence?

I have considered his existence and am thusfar unconvinced. I'm not demanding that God give me a Paul-like miracle, I simply know myself well enough to know that it will take something big to make me believe. God knows I need this. You're saying he is willing to lose my soul to Hell because he is offended that I can't force myself to be convinced by more subtle signs?

The prophecy that you cite was indeed fulfilled three times in the lives of the disciples. The first was with the transfiguration:

Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. But Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.

Now as they came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.”

Matthew 17:1-9


And again when the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost:

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Acts 2:1-4

And then again when John in Revelation is shown what will happen before and during Christ's return in the end days.

Most importantly, Jesus Himself states that even He Himself doesn't know the time of His coming only the Father knows.


“Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘Look, He is there!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. But take heed; see, I have told you all things beforehand.

“But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars of heaven will fall, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then He will send His angels, and gather together His elect from the four winds, from the farthest part of earth to the farthest part of heaven.

“Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender, and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that it is near—at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is. It is like a man going to a far country, who left his house and gave authority to his servants, and to each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch. Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning—lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!”

Mark 13:21-37

I don't understand how any of those passages fulfil the prophesy that Jesus would Return within the lifetime of his followers. First, all those scenes occur prior to his death on the cross, so I don't see how they could be fulfilling the prophecy of his return. NABSB (Not A Biblical Scholar But...) Jesus seems to be referring pretty clearly to his second coming here:

“Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." Matthew 16:28

Isn't the coming of the Kingdom the apocalypse? Some really crazy things happen, Jesus comes back and the damned are damned and the saved saved? Clearly that hasn't happened at any point since the crucifixion.

By using Pharaoh's will the Jewish people as well as the surrounding people realized that the God of Moses was the true God. It affected all their lives and gave proof to many that He was who He said He was. Many of those people might have never know that God existed. That being said, yes God did know that Pharaoh would never choose Him and thus did not forfeit his own free will as it was His will to not choose Him. It was a matter of timing rather than forfeiting the will. If God would not have hardened Pharaoh's heart when He did the plagues would have been the reason which actually would have taken away his free will because God brought them upon Pharaoh. So by stopping the plagues when Pharaoh showed repentance allowed Pharaoh to use his own will which went back to challenging God once again.

God's reasons for hardening Pharaoh's heart (maximum glory, maybe conversions) are not relevant in terms of the specific question I'm asking. You have agreed that God hardened Pharaoh's heart (as a punishment). Thus in that moment God was willing to subvert free will to achieve his goals (punishment, maximum glory, maybe conversions).

A couple questions:

1.Do you think, when God hardened Pharaoh's heart, Pharaoh could have in that exact moment decided to let the Jews go after all?

2. If God is willing to compromise free will to achieve his goals, why is he not willing to do so to save souls that cannot otherwise be saved?

3. I think Athée has already asked something like this, but suppose your child was dying and there was a medicine that could restore them to perfect health but for some reason they absolutely refused to let you give it to them. Would you let them die? Or would you hold them down and administer the medication no matter how much they objected?

Your argument also suggests that God was overriding free will whenever he used signs and wonders to display his glory to his people. If Pharaoh being convinced by the plagues would violate his free will, wouldn't pillars of fire and smoke, not to mention all that wild stuff in Ezekiel, constitute a similar violation? Wouldn't the whole appearing before, blinding and miraculously healing Paul be a violation of his free will?

You don't live in those times which leaves you without the necessary information to make any informed assessment of the possibility.

Incorrect. I don't have absolute knowledge of the past, but I that doesn't preclude me from making an inference about the past informed by available data. I wasn't around in OT times, but I feel confident in saying that there were no talking horses. Why? Because there are no examples of talking horses on record. Similarly, there are no examples of entire nations that are genetically or culturally unable to be anything but evil or destroy other populations when they interbreed. Such a population may have existed, but that is based on exactly zero evidence and runs counter to all the data about human populations that says otherwise and upon which my inference is based.

Why create life at all? Why not just spend an eternity without any beings at all? Why create people at all? I have to assume that God had a purpose and reason to do the things He did and if I knowing God's goodness and love in my own life and the testament of millions of others who share that experience in theirs; I can imagine and hypothesize reasons that a good and loving God might have for doing things that seem on the surface immoral. Without any real knowledge or information to make a valid argument against God's moral actions you make a claim that it is immoral. You can't know unlike God what actions He takes and for what reasons and without that knowledge you don't have the ability to know if it was moral or not.

But can you really hypothesize logical reasons for such actions? God is having those babies killed because they would have grown up to be evil and damned. It is a mercy, you say. Can you humour me by supplying a logical argument for why it is more merciful to kill an entire nation and all its babies than to kill the few babies that would found that nation? In both cases those innocent babies are getting their soul whisked up to Heaven, so why kill thousands instead of a few?

So you think that someone's evil should be terminated before they are born? Or do you think think that God shouldn't have allowed anyone to live since He knew that all could not be God? The issue is that we are not God, we can never be God and can never stand before God as less than God due to our being a creation rather than God. So it is only through God by Him coming to earth and dying on the cross to cover mankind in His perfection to pay for our imperfections or our unGodness. Does that make sense? So our unholiness, our sinfulness, our imperfection come by being created rather than being God. The only way that a holy, sin free and perfect Being can share the lives of His creation is to provide a way for us to pay for our injustices or sins is through Him Himself.

I have made no statement to the effect that God should never have allowed us to live because we couldn't be God. Let us think no more of this. I'm asking why, if you already know what is going to happen, would you wait until you have to kill thousands instead killing a few early on? If God wants to save as many souls as he can, wouldn't it be better not to have thousands born into nations that he knows will force them to be evil?

Also, you seem to be against the idea of killing evil people before they are born, but regard killing evil people just after they are born as a mercy. This seems somewhat inconsistent. What distinction do you make between these two situations?

I think I've provided my view on this all above.

Perhaps, but you didn't really address this question:

Given that we know from examples that God is willing to step in and subvert free will when he wants to punish someone or achieve some goal, why would he rather kill the planet's entire population than step in and compromise free will to save a planet of souls?

God has the knowledge and is the moral standard to determine what is most moral and what for the greatest good an action will provide. It is God's right to do and in my view probably has an unknown moral reason but mankind doesn't share this right. There are only a few instances where the right is given to mankind in certain circumstances.

Is that a yes? From a biblical perspective, killing babies can be moral? Expand your answer if you like, but I would appreciate the inclusion of a simple "yes" or "no" to clarify your position for me.

Babies are not old enough to chose. They don't have the ability to make that determination. That is why they go to heaven rather than hell, even if they would later go to hell due to their choices.

You haven't really answered the question I was asking though. You said killing babies before they are old enough to choose does not violate their free will. I would like to know why. The question again:

If free will is the chance to choose right or wrong, how is preventing a person from making that choice by killing them when they are a baby not a violation of that principle?

God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit have the same character, it is the time we live in that makes the difference and not their Character. After Jesus lived, died and rose again the whole nature of the world was changed. Jesus was the culmination of God's plan for salvation for all mankind.

Based on this I would say that ordering the killing of babies is inconsistent with Jesus' MO, but not inconsistent with his nature because that nature immutable. Do you agree?

I don't know.

There were actually a couple questions in there. I assume your answer refers to the first one, but I'll repost them more explicitly for your convenience:
1. Would you kill the babies?
2. Would you consider killing the babies moral or immoral?

This goes to the situation where some of family do not believe in Christ. An example is when a Muslim becomes a Christian. Does this Muslim turn away from his/her religion which will serve to sever their relationship with their families. It would mean that if your family turns away from you because of Christ will you still follow Him. Being a Christian and having family members that are atheist is in fact the same thing. We will be separated from our loved ones for an eternity if they choose to deny Christ's gift of salvation. It has nothing to do with morality but all about where one spends eternity.

I don't think this changes the question. Clearly Jesus is comfortable with commanding you to leave your family if is a choice between him and them. His message is unambiguous:

“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me." Matthew 10:37

So my question remains unanswered. Do you really love Jesus more than your children? Would you regard abandoning your family the moral thing to do?

I believe the evidence we do have shows a remarkable likeness to the Genesis Narrative. I believe that although we don't have a great amount of evidence to support trees coming from earlier life that would have evolved into them being present before the Cambrian Era it is reasonable to hypothesize that they could have existed and were later completely wiped out prior to the Cambrian Era. Knowing that oxygen was present far earlier than the Great Oxidation Event and finding fossils that are still a controversy whether or not they are plant or animal gives some support to this scenario.

I feel compelled to make a correction here. It isn't a case of you not having "a great amount of evidence" to support your Cambrian angiosperm idea, rather it is a case of you having no evidence whatsoever. You can hypothesize their existence, but that doesn't mean your hypothesis carries the same weight as 400 million years of a rich fossil record that contains not one single angiosperm anywhere in the world.

Earlier oxygenation of the atmosphere indicates that life may have originated earlier than suspected. Please explain how this supports the idea that angiosperms were the first life. A similar explanation in relation to the Ediacaran biota would be appreciated.

And I'm still not completely clear on your position. Could you please answer this question to rectify that?: Do you think Genesis is saying that angiosperms were created first (day 3) and humans last (day 5)?

They are sequenced and are prior life forms.

I'm sorry but I don't understand what this means or what it has to do with this question:

If biblical authors didn't intend to communicate that things created on day 3 were created prior to things on day 5, why write it in such a way as to communicate exactly that?

Could you please respond to this question directly?

Other than the trees, what are you referring to?

This also falls short of addressing the question asked. I assume you're asking about discrepancies other than the angiosperms. These discrepancies are outlined below but are irrelevant to the question I asked:

If Genesis is really just a general overview of creation that is not meant to present accurate chronological relationships, how can you claim that it accurately describes the order in the fossil record?

Could you please give me an answer to this one?

You seriously have lost me. First of all, Bronze Age tribesmen would not have had an inkling that life arose in any sort of chronological order. The fact that plant life is separated from animal life was my only point. I was referring to the Cambrian Explosion and the passage of Life swarmed in the sea.

Let me try again. I don't think the separation of plant and animal life was your point with the below quote because you make no mention of plants:

"I doubt that Bronze Age tribesmen would have any idea that life began in the seas and followed a certain sequence into existence but that is what they recorded in the Bible."

You made this statement when attempting to provide an example of modern science revealed in the Bible long before the authors could have known it. It seems like you are stating that life started in the seas. It also seems like you are saying Genesis tells us the sequence in which life arose. If that is not what you meant, please explain what you meant when you talk about the "idea that life began in the seas and followed a certain sequence".

YOu've only shown that trees didn't exist in the fossil record.
The samples we do have very early are rare and hardly give us any idea about anything but the samples themselves. The earliest earth is not represented or full of fossils. We simply do not have but rare and few examples of that period.

Not quite. I've shown that angiosperms are incredibly abundant in the fossil record, but not until the Mesozoic era. And I think you've missed the point again. I'm not talking about the absence of angiosperms in Precambrian rock. I agree that this time period has very few fossils. I'm talking about the 400 million between the Cambrian and the advent of angiosperms. The rock record from that 400Ma is absolutely packed with fossils, but not a single angiosperm anywhere in the world until the Mesozoic.

So why is an incredibly abundant, widespread group of organisms completely absent from otherwise fossil-rich rock for 400Ma? Angiosperms may have been present in the Cambrian, but we have zero evidence for them.

Do you suppose we had horses in the Cambrian? There is no fossil record of them prior to the Paleogene, but by your reasoning it is reasonable to hypothesize they were there.

Why not?

I think my questions might have been unclear here because your response doesn't seem to address them at all, so let me try again.

''Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind.''

To me this is saying that all land animals were created on this day. So...


1. What is your reasoning for supposing that this passage does not refer to "the first terrestrial animals but a very general list"?

2. What is your reasoning for saying that this passage indicates a "large amount of time" prior to the cattle being created?

The fact that Genesis has anything at all close to the way our universe and life appeared and as close as it does should be seen as pretty remarkable when looking back thousands of years before it was even known that life is shown to have swarmed in the sea and then go on and later give rise to cattle and men. Why would they not just suppose that life was always just as it was?

But it isn't close. That's the point. It's quite wrong. I've given you these examples before, but here they are again for your convenience:

1. Genesis says land plants and angiosperms appear first - this is nowhere near correct according to the fossil record wherein the first life is aquatic.
2.Genesis says that aquatic creatures were all created, along with birds, prior to land creatures - this is completely wrong. Land animals appear well before "sea monsters" like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. And whales certainly don't appear until well after those organisms. Life was thriving in the sea for hundreds of millions of years before birds came on the scene, and birds certainly didn't predate land animals in the fossil record.
3. Genesis says that land animals and humans were created on the same day, but of course land animals appear hundreds of millions of years before humans. Birds appear between the advent of land animals and humans, but according to genesis were created before either.

It just doesn't work.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Hey Once,
Just a note before I reply, as you have no doubt assumed from the incredible number of typos in my posts I usually post from my phone (as an aside, thank you for never once responding to those typos instead of the ideas they were trying to convey, a rare thing on internet discussion forums . Today, however, I am actually on a computer and so I have the luxury of opening multiple windows and seeing the previous posts as I respond. This new experience has led me to appreciate just how poor my prior experience has been! That said, in the future I will mostly be on my phone and not readily able to see previous comments. With that in mind if we could both try to respond in full to questions asked so that it is evident from our responses what question is being tackled that would be great.

Thanks!

Wow. I salute you, I would not even try to do this on my phone. I don't even like to text that much let alone respond to long posts. I will try to do better in answering this so that it won't be so hard on you. You are welcome too, I make typos and I am not even on a phone.

Interesting...I certainly see how the god hypothesis is a sufficient explanation for abiogenesis but I don't understand why it is a necessary one. How have you ruled out all other possible explanations?

Do you have other explanations that you feel are better than the "God hypothesis"?

I think maybe we are saying the same thing with a different emphasis. You are saying that there is indeed evidence but non believers interpret it ways that suggest no god exists. The point I was making is that, on your worldview, if the evidence was so overwhelmingly compelling, it would negate free will decisions like the one you say atheists are making not to interpret in favour of god. This being the case, even on your worldview we would have to say that the evidence is ambiguous at best because if it were entirely unambiguous (say a pillar of smoke by day and pillar of fire at night) then there would be no choice.

Regardless that bit about how strong the evidence was a bit of a side point. The central question from that original post was...How does saying "God did it" add anything useful to an explanation. If my kids ask me about how children get made and I answer them "by magic" have I really explained anything? So when I say that God does not add anything to our explanations this is what I mean. What do you think?

I think what I need to clarify is that the evidence for God in the universe is very evident, unbelievers just put that evidence towards a different explanation or interpretation. It is almost unanimous among astrophysicists, physicists and astrobiologists that the universe appears to be designed or fine tuned for life.

So looking back I can see that we are again off topic The question at hand is the appearance of design. Experts in the relevant fields (thus avoiding the fallacy of appeal to authority), overwhelmingly opine that nature is not designed by an intelligent mind. I think the existence of the universe and life on earth are both great questions, but not the one we were addressing.

I think what I need to clarify is that the evidence for God in the universe is very evident, unbelievers just put that evidence towards a different explanation or interpretation. It is almost unanimous among astrophysicists, physicists and astrobiologists that the universe appears to be designed for life. Now the unbeliever claims that this evidence of design is just an illusion or is due to other universes or some other natural reason. The evidence is evident to all, it is just the interpretation of that evidence that gives a choice on what we will believe.

God adds everything to our explanations, He created them. He created a universe that was able to be comprehended by intelligent beings. Our intelligence, our reason give us the ability to view the universe and understand how fine tuned and orderly the universe is and we can learn about it all for those reasons.

Maybe I misunderstood...what you said was:

"Heaven has free will and no evil but that comes only after being covered by Jesus and taking on the spiritual man only after acceptance of the spiritual world of Jesus.".

Could you explain what you meant here, it seems to me that you are saying that this place of free will and no sin "come after" Jesus and his work on the cross, but obviously you disagree, so...

I'm confused. I do believe that heaven is not something that humans could partake of without the redemption of Christ. So????

So we agree that according to the Genesis story (which from our conversation I think you see as a historical account - that is, not as a myth) Adam and Eve did not have the sin natures that would later plague humanity.
Yes, I agree that they were but how is this relevant? Imagine I say to my 5 year old. "It is simply not permissible to employ a disjunctive syllogism in the form:
1 - p or not p
2 - not p
Therfore C = Not p

as it results in an invalid argument.

Now my 5 year old will possibly understand that I don't want her to form arguments in the form p or not p (big maybe here) but she will have no understanding of why she is not to do so, nor will she understand the consequence of doing so. In a similar way if Adam and Eve have no knowledge of good and evil prior to the fruit , how can you say that they wilfully chose sin? How would they know it is wrong to disobey god, how would they know they want to avoid consequences like death (and as we find out "death" in that context didn't mean the same kind of death they might have seen form dying animas but instead a spiritual death somehow).

Are you trying to tell me that if you told your five year old not to eat a cookie before dinner and if they did they would have no special activity for the night that they would be unable to understand? Eve understood death in some way because Satan used the argument that she would not die. He used the truth and twisted it, he knew that they would not die to the body but they would then deserve death of the soul if they did as He requested.

I take it you are objecting to the semantics of saying that God was testing Adam and Eve. You agree I would guess that god does test people (Abraham, Job and many others) , but you would say this was not an instance of such. Fair enough, maybe test is the wrong word because the idea of a test implies that it is at least theoretically possible to pass. In the garden God set up the conditions that he knew ahead of time would result in sin, so in that sense you are correct, it was not a test. God not only set them up to fail, he made certain of it.

How did God make certain of it?

I absolutely agree that in the passages you quoted the Jews were just passing through. Fair enough, but it doesn't address the point we were discussing. I asked specifically about a case where they were not just passing through (and I assume you admit that this was occasionally the case). So I will copy my question:

"So if China sent a message to the US and said, hey heads up we are going to kill you, but if you don't resist and let us take you over then we won't. What would you expect your country to do?
Would you consider the Chinese barbaric for following through on that statement, if the US resisted them, or does it become OK to kill everyone because China warned them first?"

Do you have an example of what you are thinking here? What people are you referring to here?

Not if he exists as described no. Not sure how this is relevant though?

You seem to want to equate people with God. I think that is relevant.

So to be clear, some of the evidence at hand on your worldview is that
1: God sets people on paths to failure (Adam and Eve)
2: God orders (Amalachites) and commits ( The flood) genocides which include men, women, children, infants and unborn foetuses.
3: God condones slavery wherein it is acceptable to beat the slave almost to death because they are your property

vs

1: Your personal experience of Go

1. God knowing it would happen doesn't mean He orchestrated it.
2. Do you think that there is ever a reason where it might be moral to kill men, women and children and the unborn?
3. Where does it say God condones slavery? He instructs how they should be treated and I don't think He says it is acceptable to beat the slave almost to death either.

So the Euthyphro dilemma asks is god good because he says he is, or because he is in alignment with an external standard of good?

Your response, essentially, was that this is a false dilemma and you wanted to split the horns by saying that goodness is based in God's nature.

This is why I specifically asked: Is god's nature good because he says it is or is God's nature good because it is in alignment with an external standard of goodness. You will see that this reframes the argument in a way that still asks about the nature of goodness but makes the response that it is simply part of god's nature irrelevant. To say at this point that God's nature is good because goodness is based in his nature is a tautology that reduces to God = God. In any case I will look forward to your response to the question as I put it to you

It would be a tautology if God and goodness were identical or the same thing as goodness but goodness is a characteristic of God and so God is not the same thing as goodness or goodness is the same thing as God.

I am not going to provide an answer right away here, although I am very tempted to just dive in. First though I want to ask you, if I can demonstrate to you that in some community contexts murder or stealing, or lying is accepted, will you revise your stance on the objective nature of morality ?

Careful here. Are you thinking that if a culture thinks it is alright to kill say homosexuals then that shows that the community doesn't think murder is immoral; but it is the interpretation of murder that changes rather than the immorality of murder. They may think it is not murder to kill homosexuals but they would prosecute those who kill another man of the same culture. They would say murder is immoral in this case.

You say that morality is not always about harm, fair enough, could you provide me with an example to substantiate this point, on win which an action is considered immoral but does not cause harm to anyone.

I need to ask something here before I answer. Do you think that morality is something we know we ought to do or should do in a set circumstance and immoral is what we ought not do or should not do in a set circumstance?

I did answer this above, no we would not be equal.

Then why do you keep giving examples using humans as the arbitrator of morality?

So it seems to me that you miss the main thrust of the argument here. We were discussing morality and you were saying that it is based in god's nature, objective and unchanging, written on human hearts etc. I asked, since god does not see slavery as wrong...do you agree with him?

I don't think that God sees slavery as right.

Ah i see that in that straw man up above I will have to add in your belief that the Bible is true to the equation

Ok.

Well I don't think evil exists at all. Evil is a religious term that implies there is an objective concept of the good and of the evil. I don't believe that any gods exist, nor do I believe that there exists an objective standard of good or evil (platonism), somewhere out there. In my mind actions within a given situation can be good or harmful in degrees.

If there is no objective concept of evil or good other than in a religious sense, why would morality be in the same sense?

Actually I do disagree. I think God (if he exists as you describe him) is responsible for the path taken by every molecule in motion and knows what it would take to convince me, has a responsibility in this instance. I am only doing the best with what information and intellectual ability He has given me.

IF God did do this action that would convince you, how would you interpret the fine tuning of the universe for instance?

Wow that is a huge question, how is harm/morality related to Justice... maybe you could help me out by explaining what you mean by "Justice"

Why do you have an issue with justice? You feel that beating a slave almost to death should have a stronger penalty than what was given in the Bible right? Why? Would you not think that not only have a slave but beating the slave almost to death demands justice for this slave? If not Why?

I am sure this is the case, you would know! But as we have discussed before , this same kind of statement can and is made by people with other God beliefs and if your certainty is based in your experience and your convictions, then you really have no way of arguing that your religion is better/more true than any other. At best you could say that your is equally as true as any other.

So you believe that what ever claims are made by another are as good or true as another's? So if I say that there is a candy wrapper on the surface of the new planet found that resembles earth's climate and someone else says there isn't. Are both claims true or equal just because we claim them to be?

You are asserting that I have no evidence that God does not exist, fair enough but I wonder what you would accept as evidence that God, as you conceive him, does not exist? I will answer I promise, it would just be helpful to know ho two frame my argument in a way that you would find compelling

This statement is based on your opinion that my knowledge of God is false. You are coming from a view that is assuming I am wrong and how best to show me I'm wrong. I am in a position where you claim you could be if only God would do what you think would convince you of His existence. So?

This is a fair distinction I think, between knowing and causing. I know that the sun will come up tomorrow (problem of induction aside!) but my assertion that it will come up 500 days from now does not have a causal relationship to that event. Where I think this breaks down is that I am not an all knowing all powerful God. You believe that God exists outside of time and that he therefore knows everything ahead of time. You also seem to believe (and correct me if I am wrong - as always) that God chose to create the universe. Now, before he did this he would have known everything that would occur in that universe, including the killings we are discussing. He chose to create that universe and so I would say that he is in fact the cause of all the events in the universe.

Correct. This goes to the God nature that I was speaking about and you didn't think was relevant. WE can't BE GOD. (not yelling just emphasizing) The only way to have a created being be able to live with a purely moral and Just God would be in a universe where God can come to earth with the creatures He made and pay for their injustices. Only God is purely moral and Just. God couldn't create us to be God but He could create us and provide a way to make up for our lack. I hope this helps you understand the reason for Christ's death. No one, no one is pure and good, moral and just as a created being. Only God is. But He wanted to create beings that could commune with Him for an eternity and that is the purpose of it all.

Samaria is going to have these things done because they must bear their guilt in front of god. So god is the judge and his people the executioners.

NOt sure what you are saying here.

This post was a mess. I started to respond and my computer went crazy and went out of the forum. I didn't realize that the first of my responses were still on one tab and I started on another so in the end I had to copy and paste all of the first post onto the second one. A MESS!

 

[Davian]

Can science falsify that only those things that can be falsified are significant?

That is not what I said. I was only speaking to the unfalsifiable as not being scientifically significant.

Are you unaware of facts that are known about our universe? Do we have to know if other universes exist to know facts about ours, such as when we look at the night sky we are looking back into time; or that there is a massive diamond in our galaxy, or even that a year on Venus is shorter than its day? We can know a great deal about our own universe without even considering the possibility of other universes.

I don't need probability calculations

You do need data from other universes if you are going to substantiate claims of probabilities in this universe.

to determine that life coming from non-living matter has not been shown to happen ever,

If it had never happened at least once, we would not be here to discuss it. .

that if it happened it doesn't happen now nor has it in the last 3.4 billion years.

And it shouldn't, if conditions have changed.

I thought it was quite clear.

Not really, hence my question. Why would life need to be other than as we observe it, abundance-wise, based on a naturalistic explanation of biology?

I did, I said if it were easy to show that life could arise by chemical processes over and over again. The fact that life has not EVER been shown to arise by chemical processes supports my position more than if we could see life arising from chemical processes over and over again.

No, that would be a false dichotomy. A fallacy.

This is rather begging the question don't you think? You don't know what type of conditions were present nor what conditions make it possible if possible at all.

I am not demanding anything of anyone. I said if I could see life arising from chemical processes over and over again it would make a difference to me.

Why would it? You could either say that we still don't know the original conditions, or that your "god" did it. You can move the goalposts around as you see fit, when your position is unfalsifiable.

Aren't all beliefs made from conscious choice?

It would not seem so. You cannot consciously decide to believe I have shown you an apple.

I think we are talking past each other here.

It seem you are talking past yourself, in the same post.

I can't believe anything without some reason for doing so. It is true for everyone.

And I agree, belief is not a conscious choice, I cannot believe something without a reason to do so.

Now, can you reach an agreement with yourself? Is belief a conscious choice? Can you choose to believe that I have shown you that apple?

Or do you need a reason to change your beliefs, as they are not under conscious control?

Which is it?

 

[Oncedeceived]

That is not what I said. I was only speaking to the unfalsifiable as not being scientifically significant.

So why should I care? Are only scientifically significant things true?

You do need data from other universes if you are going to substantiate claims of probabilities in this universe.

Why? We have sufficient data about non-living matter not giving rise to living matter...billions of years of data. What do other universes have to say about that?

If it had never happened at least once, we would not be here to discuss it. .[/Quote]That is begging the question.

And it shouldn't, if conditions have changed.

Begging the question once again.

Not really, hence my question. Why would life need to be other than as we observe it, abundance-wise, based on a naturalistic explanation of biology?

It wouldn't, however, if it were that would not be as supportive to my position.

No, that would be a false dichotomy. A fallacy.

How so?

Why would it? You could either say that we still don't know the original conditions, or that your "god" did it. You can move the goalposts around as you see fit, when your position is unfalsifiable.

So you are questioning my statement? I was asked an honest question and I answered what would affect my position. You can believe me or not it doesn't matter to me either way.

It would not seem so. You cannot consciously decide to believe I have shown you an apple.

WE have reason behind that which I already said was how all of us determine what we believe.

And I agree, belief is not a conscious choice, I cannot believe something without a reason to do so.

But you are one that believes that confirmation bias is a strong factor in what we believe and so what we believe is what we want or choose to believe right?

Now, can you reach an agreement with yourself? Is belief a conscious choice? Can you choose to believe that I have shown you that apple?

Or do you need a reason to change your beliefs, as they are not under conscious control?

Which is it?

See above.

 

[Athée]

Do you have other explanations that you feel are better than the "God hypothesis"?

I think so I think, favorable conditions + chance + time are a" better" explanation for how life began than saying a magical being is responsible.

That said, the question I actually asked you to respond to was how have you ruled out all other possible explanations to conclude that your explanation is necessary and not simply sufficient. How have you done this?

I think what I need to clarify is that the evidence for God in the universe is very evident, unbelievers just put that evidence towards a different explanation or interpretation. It is almost unanimous among astrophysicists, physicists and astrobiologists that the universe appears to be designed or fine tuned for life.

I think you might be overstating your case here. If you had said most of those scientists agree that life, as we know it, is only possible within a narrow range of specific values, then I would agree. However, you add in the word design which implies a designer and I would be very surprised to find that most of the professional as in the fields you just listed would agree with you about the cause of those specific values. Feel free to show me my mistake however, if it were the case that most physicists, astrophysicists and astrobiologists agree that there is design and a designer I will happily stand corrected

God adds everything to our explanations, He created them. He created a universe that was able to be comprehended by intelligent beings. Our intelligence, our reason give us the ability to view the universe and understand how fine tuned and orderly the universe is and we can learn about it all for those reasons.

I think where we are missing each other is that I am talking about "how" explanations and you are talking about "why". When we ask how did something happen, saying God did it, adds nothing to the explanation. Of you want to propose that God answers the why, and so adds a layer of explanatory power you are welcome to make that case.

Once more though the actual issue being discussed was the appearance of design in nature. Should I take it you agree with me that professionals in relevant fields make a distinction between appearance of design in nature and an actual designer? That is do you agree that most of the actual biologists are not in fact Christian theists? What does this say about your position on the appearance of design?

I'm confused. I do believe that heaven is not something that humans could partake of without the redemption of Christ. So????

You used the word "after" in reference to what you consider a historical event and so I asked you if you were making a temporal claim, specifically are you saying that heaven didn't exist until after Jesus did his work on the cross (which is what your initial post implied). The issue at hand is the fact that heaven is a place where we have free will and never choose to sin, which shows that God has created a place where free will does not lead to sin. This means he could have created us with him in heaven to begin with, making his decision to not do so problematic. Why not just make us in heaven, why actualize a world where God has to kill infants... It just doesn't make sense.

Are you trying to tell me that if you told your five year old not to eat a cookie before dinner and if they did they would have no special activity for the night that they would be unable to understand? Eve understood death in some way because Satan used the argument that she would not die. He used the truth and twisted it, he knew that they would not die to the body but they would then deserve death of the soul if they did as He requested.

That is not at all what I am saying so perhaps my question was unclear. Here it is again:
Premise 1: Prior to eating the fruit, Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil.
Premise 2: They made the choice to disobey God before eating the fruit.

Therefore: They could not have known when making that choice that it was wrong/evil/sinful to disobey God

Agreed?

How did God make certain of it

We come back to this on a regular basis don't we You believe that setting up all the conditions and choosing a universe where God knows certain things are going to happen do not in any way imply responsibility for those things. I disagree. For example let's say that I know my kids like sugar (and boy do they ever!) I know that if I give them cake they will eat it. I tell them that it is wrong to eat cake and then put cake on a platter in the kitchen and leave the house for the day. I suggest that the outcome will be that came gets eaten. Do I have no responsibility in this scenario?

Do you have an example of what you are thinking here? What people are you referring to here?

Let's say the amalachites

You seem to want to equate people with God. I think that is relevant.

Could you explain how it is relevant?

1. God knowing it would happen doesn't mean He orchestrated it.
2. Do you think that there is ever a reason where it might be moral to kill men, women and children and the unborn?
3. Where does it say God condones slavery? He instructs how they should be treated and I don't think He says it is acceptable to beat the slave almost to death either.

1. This is what I was saying above. I do think God is responsible be a use he didn't just sit around knowing what would happen if he created the universe... He acted to create it and actions carry responsibility.

2. You responded with a question and so I take it you agree with the factual claim that on your world view God did in fact order and cause genocide. I understand you think he might have reasons for it but that is not what is at issue.

3. We have been over this... In exodus it describes how to make and keep slaves. By including instructions for slavery in his list of how to live in perfect richeousness God condones slavery. By stating that no punishment is to be given to an owner who beats his slave (no matter how badly) as long as the slave doesn't die within 2 days, God condones the beating to near death of enslaved humans. He also gives the justification so we don't have enough to wonder what his morally great reason is... It is because they are just property. Ta-da!

I notice though that again you didn't address the question I asked. I am going to charitably assume that your comments were a rejection of the way I set up the question and so you were, in effect, answering that you do not see the evidence in those terms Fair enough, now that I have addressed the objections how do you answer the actual question?

It would be a tautology if God and goodness were identical or the same thing as goodness but goodness is a characteristic of God and so God is not the same thing as goodness or goodness is the same thing as God.

I willing to accept that it is not a tautology for the sake of moving the discussion forward. So now what is your answer to the question I actually asked.
Is God's nature good because God says it is or is his nature good because it conforms to an external standard of goodness?

Careful here. Are you thinking that if a culture thinks it is alright to kill say homosexuals then that shows that the community doesn't think murder is immoral; but it is the interpretation of murder that changes rather than the immorality of murder. They may think it is not murder to kill homosexuals but they would prosecute those who kill another man of the same culture. They would say murder is immoral in this case.

I would not argue about murder because you are correct simply by definition. Murder is an unlawful killing and so necessarily any murder is not condoned by the culture in which it occurs.
The same argument can be made for stealing if you define it as the unlawful taking of what belongs to another. By definition it is not accepted.
However if you are talking about an objective, universal morality, and you are, then it is a bit different. If I can show that there are cases where the moral thing to do is to take something that bongs to another or, to use the other category you invoked, that there is a case where it is moral to lie to someone, then your objective and universal morality is not the case.
Agreed?

I need to ask something here before I answer. Do you think that morality is something we know we ought to do or should do in a set circumstance and immoral is what we ought not do or should not do in a set circumstance?

I don't see what the "oughtness" of an action has to do with your assertion that morality is not about harm but I will play along Given the variables of a specific situation I would argue that in many cases there is an objectively correct moral action and that, to the extent to which we ascribe normativiry to the principle of harm, we ought to take that action.
Your turn!

Then why do you keep giving examples using humans as the arbitrator of morality?

I wondered if this was what you were driving at. You claim that the objective and universal morality of God is written on the hearts of all humans in all times and cultures. You believe that you as a person with devine revelation from God and the inner work of the holy spirit, know what those moral precepts are.

I don't think that God sees slavery as right.

I have demonstrated above that this is not the case, so I will ask again.
Given that God condoned slavery by including it in his instructions for how to live a sinless life, do you agree with God that slavery (with the conditions he sets on it) is moral?

If there is no objective concept of evil or good other than in a religious sense, why would morality be in the same sense?

I am not sure what you mean here, sorry Are you asking: if there is no good and evil, how can there be morality?

IF God did do this action that would convince you, how would you interpret the fine tuning of the universe for instance?

So a couple of times you have mentioned the teleological argument for God. I assume that it is one you find compelling? If so I would be happy to engage with it. That said there are a few different versions so why don't you present the version you find the strongest (preferably in a syllogism so it is easier to respond), and I will respond.

Why do you have an issue with justice? You feel that beating a slave almost to death should have a stronger penalty than what was given in the Bible right? Why? Would you not think that not only have a slave but beating the slave almost to death demands justice for this slave? If not Why?

I would want a form of Justice to be served. The reason I asked what you meant by Justice was because you had capitalized it and I was wondering if there was any implication to that.

So you believe that what ever claims are made by another are as good or true as another's? So if I say that there is a candy wrapper on the surface of the new planet found that resembles earth's climate and someone else says there isn't. Are both claims true or equal just because we claim them to be?

Of course not. Claims that are asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. In the case I was referring to both people are claiming divine revelation and personal experience so in that sense they are equivalent. If one side had actual evidence that would be different but...

This statement is based on your opinion that my knowledge of God is false. You are coming from a view that is assuming I am wrong and how best to show me I'm wrong. I am in a position where you claim you could be if only God would do what you think would convince you of His existence. So?

Actually my question is based on the assumption that you care about what is true, that you want to believe true things and not believe false things. So I will ask again. What evidence could, in theory, be presented to you that would cause you to doubt your current beliefs?

Correct. This goes to the God nature that I was speaking about and you didn't think was relevant. WE can't BE GOD. (not yelling just emphasizing) The only way to have a created being be able to live with a purely moral and Just God would be in a universe where God can come to earth with the creatures He made and pay for their injustices. Only God is purely moral and Just. God couldn't create us to be God but He could create us and provide a way to make up for our lack. I hope this helps you understand the reason for Christ's death. No one, no one is pure and good, moral and just as a created being. Only God is. But He wanted to create beings that could commune with Him for an eternity and that is the purpose of it all.

I do understand the theology you are presenting. That said... You assert that the only way God could arrange for humans to be with him is to create them, let them sin and then make a way back for them. On what do you base this assertion? Why is there no other possible solution... Make sure you rule out all logically possible solutions in your response
You also said God couldn't create us to be God but I never said he should. I said he could have created us already in relationship with him, that's pretty different.
Once again though you didn't address the issue at hand. Specifically I was saying again that if God is the one who made the universe and everything in it according to his plan and with perfect foreknowledge, then he is to some degree responsible for what goes on in the universe.

NOt sure what you are saying here.

I am saying that God knowingly instantiated a universe where he would judge Samaria and punish them by having thier pregnant women cut open... He is responsible. Please explain how this is not the case.

 

[Davian]

So why should I care?

You pointed out that your unfalsifiable position has not been falsified, and I agreed. I also agreed that such a position is of no scientific significance. You may or may not care.

Are only scientifically significant things true?

That is not what I am saying.

Why? We have sufficient data about non-living matter not giving rise to living matter...billions of years of data. What do other universes have to say about that?

You would need access to them to calculate the probabilities that you alluded to.

If it had never happened at least once, we would not be here to discuss it. .

That is begging the question.

Not at all. I can say that, as life emerging via naturalistic processes is the only option on the [scientific] table at this point.

Begging the question once again.

Not at all. The processes involved would have necessitated a oxygen-free environment, which of course is not longer the case.

It wouldn't, however, if it were that would not be as supportive to my position.

How so?

The false dichotomy is your claim that if a particular scientific hypothesis has not been validated, that it in some manner provides support to "goddidit". It doesn't. It is a false dichotomy.

So you are questioning my statement? I was asked an honest question and I answered what would affect my position. You can believe me or not it doesn't matter to me either way.

I am questioning your statement. Rather than being so evasive, why do you tell me how it would? Why would a demonstration of abiogenesis make a difference to you?

WE have reason behind that which I already said was how all of us determine what we believe.

But you are one that believes that confirmation bias is a strong factor in what we believe and so what we believe is what we want or choose to believe right?

See above.

This is not about my position, but yours. Try directly answering the questions.

Now, can you reach an agreement with yourself? Is belief a conscious choice? Can you choose to believe that I have shown you that apple?

Or do you need a reason to change your beliefs, as they are not under conscious control?

Which is it?

 

[Oncedeceived]

I think so I think, favorable conditions + chance + time are a" better" explanation for how life began than saying a magical being is responsible.

Ok, you would rather believe that a magical scenario happened rather than a "magical Being"? I understand that someone that doesn't believe that there really is an Intelligent Being would find it difficult to imagine one being necessary for life to exist or the universe for that matter. I get it. Now while that might be reasonable to you, I find it very unconvincing. It sounds pretty easy...just the right amount of light, water, certain proteins, and who knows what else + Chance + time. What is so lacking in this scenario is the chance element. There are so many issues that must be addressed by this first life that it is just not plausible to think it was due to chance even if we had all the billions of years coming after life started on earth.

That said, the question I actually asked you to respond to was how have you ruled out all other possible explanations to conclude that your explanation is necessary and not simply sufficient. How have you done this?

I have. The only one that even remotely comes close to explaining life without God (and only for life on earth)is an intelligence outside of our own solar system such as a superior alien existence.

I think you might be overstating your case here. If you had said most of those scientists agree that life, as we know it, is only possible within a narrow range of specific values, then I would agree. However, you add in the word design which implies a designer and I would be very surprised to find that most of the professional as in the fields you just listed would agree with you about the cause of those specific values. Feel free to show me my mistake however, if it were the case that most physicists, astrophysicists and astrobiologists agree that there is design and a designer I will happily stand corrected

I don't know if you are aware that you changed what I said or not, I am going with you were not aware; but I didn't ever claim that they agree about a designer. Now there are many that do agree with a Designer but the majority do not.

I think where we are missing each other is that I am talking about "how" explanations and you are talking about "why". When we ask how did something happen, saying God did it, adds nothing to the explanation. Of you want to propose that God answers the why, and so adds a layer of explanatory power you are welcome to make that case.

Well my point was more with God making it possible to even have a chance to explain anything but I'll grant from your point of view that God doesn't add to the explanation. I still stand by the fact that it due to God's order and giving us the ability to comprehend the universe that brings about the answers or knowledge we acquire.

Once more though the actual issue being discussed was the appearance of design in nature. Should I take it you agree with me that professionals in relevant fields make a distinction between appearance of design in nature and an actual designer? That is do you agree that most of the actual biologists are not in fact Christian theists? What does this say about your position on the appearance of design?

I would say that is correct. I do know that there are many (just not in percentages) that are in fact who are not Christians that do believe in some Supreme intelligence being responsible for the design. What this says in accordance with scientists and my position, it is well known that in colleges today God is not welcome nor do most scientist believe in God. So it is not surprising they view God the way they do.

You used the word "after" in reference to what you consider a historical event and so I asked you if you were making a temporal claim, specifically are you saying that heaven didn't exist until after Jesus did his work on the cross (which is what your initial post implied). The issue at hand is the fact that heaven is a place where we have free will and never choose to sin, which shows that God has created a place where free will does not lead to sin. This means he could have created us with him in heaven to begin with, making his decision to not do so problematic. Why not just make us in heaven, why actualize a world where God has to kill infants... It just doesn't make sense.

Heaven existed prior to Jesus. You are claiming that God has a place where free will does not lead to sin but you are not getting what I am saying here. WE are created beings having no possible way to be God like. God couldn't make us like Him. We are an image of Him but not the same and we can not not sin because we are just human. We do things that are not good and others deserve justice for our deeds. Even such small deeds as just lying to someone about something. The one and only being that is without this nature is God. God could not create little gods. That is like making a square circle. It is impossible, but He planned a way that He could create us in the best possible way to make up for that deficiency.

That is not at all what I am saying so perhaps my question was unclear. Here it is again:
Premise 1: Prior to eating the fruit, Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil.
Premise 2: They made the choice to disobey God before eating the fruit.

Therefore: They could not have known when making that choice that it was wrong/evil/sinful to disobey God

Agreed?

They knew it was wrong, because Eve states that she understood she should not eat the fruit. She was aware of being able to either obey or disobey.

We come back to this on a regular basis don't we You believe that setting up all the conditions and choosing a universe where God knows certain things are going to happen do not in any way imply responsibility for those things. I disagree. For example let's say that I know my kids like sugar (and boy do they ever!) I know that if I give them cake they will eat it. I tell them that it is wrong to eat cake and then put cake on a platter in the kitchen and leave the house for the day. I suggest that the outcome will be that came gets eaten. Do I have no responsibility in this scenario?

Did you make them eat it? Did you make them disobey you? Did they have a choice? Here again though you are equating our actions against God, against our existence rather than no existence. God could not create sin free creatures at all. Even if He wanted to because God isn't a created being. God is an eternal being. He could not create us and not create us. We are in His image but not equal to Him. Only God like beings can live with a holy God and the only way to make that happen is to cover for their inability to be God or God like by covering their inability by His own sacrifice and their choice to accept it. As created beings we can never be without sin because that is a God quality that we do not possess and we do wrong against God's goodness. I hope that makes sense.

Let's say the amalachites

The Amalekites attacked Israel as they were leaving Eqypt. At the time this group of people were nomadic. They were considered plunderers. So I am not sure why you chose them to be the people that were not asked permission to go through their land when they didn't have any.

Could you explain how it is relevant?

It is relevant: Considering that the Christian God created all life, it would seem that our views are not anywhere equal to His in terms of life and death or anything else for that matter.

1. This is what I was saying above. I do think God is responsible be a use he didn't just sit around knowing what would happen if he created the universe... He acted to create it and actions carry responsibility.

Ok responsibility does not mean that He makes us do what we do.

2. You responded with a question and so I take it you agree with the factual claim that on your world view God did in fact order and cause genocide. I understand you think he might have reasons for it but that is not what is at issue.

The question was relevant to the discussion. Is self-defense genocide? I don't believe it is. Why do you?

3. We have been over this... In exodus it describes how to make and keep slaves. By including instructions for slavery in his list of how to live in perfect richeousness God condones slavery. By stating that no punishment is to be given to an owner who beats his slave (no matter how badly) as long as the slave doesn't die within 2 days, God condones the beating to near death of enslaved humans. He also gives the justification so we don't have enough to wonder what his morally great reason is... It is because they are just property. Ta-da!

As we discussed, it was a culture that had several different situations where slavery was accepted. Considering that you don't feel there is any moral standard and that a community or culture determines what is moral, why do you claim God is immoral if He allowed and even gave commands concerning those slaves?

I notice though that again you didn't address the question I asked. I am going to charitably assume that your comments were a rejection of the way I set up the question and so you were, in effect, answering that you do not see the evidence in those terms Fair enough, now that I have addressed the objections how do you answer the actual question?

I don't think that God set up Adam and Eve for failure. I don't believe the act was genocide in connection with the Amalekites nor do I think it was with the flood as it was judgement against evil. I do believe that evil does exist and existed then. I don't agree that God condones slavery, I feel He allows slavery but specifies certain treatment and consequences for it.

I willing to accept that it is not a tautology for the sake of moving the discussion forward. So now what is your answer to the question I actually asked.
Is God's nature good because God says it is or is his nature good because it conforms to an external standard of goodness?

Neither.

I would not argue about murder because you are correct simply by definition. Murder is an unlawful killing and so necessarily any murder is not condoned by the culture in which it occurs.
The same argument can be made for stealing if you define it as the unlawful taking of what belongs to another. By definition it is not accepted.
However if you are talking about an objective, universal morality, and you are, then it is a bit different. If I can show that there are cases where the moral thing to do is to take something that bongs to another or, to use the other category you invoked, that there is a case where it is moral to lie to someone, then your objective and universal morality is not the case.
Agreed?

Absolutely not. There will always be exceptions to any rule.

I don't see what the "oughtness" of an action has to do with your assertion that morality is not about harm but I will play along Given the variables of a specific situation I would argue that in many cases there is an objectively correct moral action and that, to the extent to which we ascribe normativiry to the principle of harm, we ought to take that action.
Your turn!

Ok, in answering your question: Lets say that a friend has helped you move to a new house. He spent an entire weekend helping you. A few months later you get a call and your friend needs help to move out of his place into a new one. You wake up on Saturday morning and you don't want to help. You feel tired and you remember his huge freezer, and other large appliances will need to be moved and you just don't feel up to it. You know he has other help. Now do you feel a moral obligation of going to help or do you stay home and watch games instead? Now there is no harm being done to your friend but do you feel a moral obligation to him or not?

I wondered if this was what you were driving at. You claim that the objective and universal morality of God is written on the hearts of all humans in all times and cultures. You believe that you as a person with devine revelation from God and the inner work of the holy spirit, know what those moral precepts are.


I have demonstrated above that this is not the case, so I will ask again.
Given that God condoned slavery by including it in his instructions for how to live a sinless life, do you agree with God that slavery (with the conditions he sets on it) is moral?

You haven't demonstrated that He condones slavery. You have shown that He allows slavery with stipulations and consequences in their treatment. You have shown that when old, young and sick are collateral victims of war that they should be taken into service but what would happen if they were not? Their men are dead and there is no way to feed themselves or a place to live, so is it immoral to take them and have them as servants rather than let them starve?

I am not sure what you mean here, sorry Are you asking: if there is no good and evil, how can there be morality?

If there is no good or evil how can there be morality? If nothing is inherently good or evil how can there be?

So a couple of times you have mentioned the teleological argument for God. I assume that it is one you find compelling? If so I would be happy to engage with it. That said there are a few different versions so why don't you present the version you find the strongest (preferably in a syllogism so it is easier to respond), and I will respond.

We are fine using it to make points rather than taking the entire thread off topic.

I would want a form of Justice to be served. The reason I asked what you meant by Justice was because you had capitalized it and I was wondering if there was any implication to that.

I sometimes slip and do that. Sorry. I was just curious if it would change the way you look at things or if you would still feel the same.

Of course not. Claims that are asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. In the case I was referring to both people are claiming divine revelation and personal experience so in that sense they are equivalent. If one side had actual evidence that would be different but...

So again, no one has evidence that a candy wrapper exists on this new planet and both have a claim about the same thing so are they both true?

Actually my question is based on the assumption that you care about what is true, that you want to believe true things and not believe false things. So I will ask again. What evidence could, in theory, be presented to you that would cause you to doubt your current beliefs?

I do care about what is true, and I don't want to believe that which is false. I didn't become a Christian because I thought talking snakes and donkeys made so much sense. I didn't become a Christian because I thought God was this great Santa Claus in the sky. I didn't even become a Christian because that is what the majority of my culture was. You are discussing these things with someone who has researched long and hard on questions that were not even centered in Christianity. I am a person who has seriously looked at the worldview I hold and have been rewarded by God Himself. So go ahead and bring forward what evidence you think is compelling enough that you think I should reconsider all that evidence I feel I have for my position.

I do understand the theology you are presenting. That said... You assert that the only way God could arrange for humans to be with him is to create them, let them sin and then make a way back for them. On what do you base this assertion? Why is there no other possible solution... Make sure you rule out all logically possible solutions in your response
You also said God couldn't create us to be God but I never said he should. I said he could have created us already in relationship with him, that's pretty different.
Once again though you didn't address the issue at hand. Specifically I was saying again that if God is the one who made the universe and everything in it according to his plan and with perfect foreknowledge, then he is to some degree responsible for what goes on in the universe.

You don't understand though and that is the problem. You don't get the fact that God could not create Himself or others equally like Him. Only humans being God would be another possible solution which would be like making a square circle.

I am saying that God knowingly instantiated a universe where he would judge Samaria and punish them by having thier pregnant women cut open... He is responsible. Please exit how this is not the case.

He knew that if He allowed the Samarians to attack the Jews that they would do so but He didn't command them to do it, He didn't place that thought into their heads. He is only responsible for wanting to create a being that was intelligent, and had a choice in good and evil because one can not exist without the other in human terms. WE don't know what good is or evil until we experience it because we are physical beings in a physical world.

 

[Oncedeceived]

You pointed out that your unfalsifiable position has not been falsified, and I agreed. I also agreed that such a position is of no scientific significance. You may or may not care.

Ok.

That is not what I am saying.

So what are you saying.

You would need access to them to calculate the probabilities that you alluded to.

I didn't allude to anything and I don't need access to anything when discussing facts we know about our universe.

Not at all. I can say that, as life emerging via naturalistic processes is the only option on the [scientific] table at this point.

It is begging the question.

Not at all. The processes involved would have necessitated a oxygen-free environment, which of course is not longer the case.

How do you know the process necessitated an oxygen-free environment?

[QuoteThe false dichotomy is your claim that if a particular scientific hypothesis has not been validated, that it in some manner provides support to "goddidit". It doesn't. It is a false dichotomy.
I am questioning your statement. Rather than being so evasive, why do you tell me how it would? Why would a demonstration of abiogenesis make a difference to you?[/Quote]I've not claimed that if a particular scientific hypothesis has not been validated that it provides support for God.

It would change my position that life from non-life was possible.

This is not about my position, but yours. Try directly answering the questions.

What questions have I not answered?

Now, can you reach an agreement with yourself? Is belief a conscious choice? Can you choose to believe that I have shown you that apple?

I said that reason is involved in all conscious choice.

Or do you need a reason to change your beliefs, as they are not under conscious control?

Which is it?

Do you not believe that reason informs us about choices and that is done under conscious control? That is what I believe.

 

[Athée]

Ok, you would rather believe that a magical scenario happened rather than a "magical Being"?

Was the equivocation intentional to make a point? I am saying I don't believe in magic (coming from a guy who loves performing" magic" tricks!). I think what you meant to say was "you prefer to belive in a very improbable scenario rather than a magical being" and yes I do. In a way we are discussing a God of the gaps argument. It is conceivable that life arose by accident but we obviously have yet to discover the mechanism. You want to insert God into that gap. This has been done many times in the past to explain all manner of natural phenomenon and in each case it has turned out to not require God as a proximal cause. My personal frustration with this approach is (probably a mirror of your frustration with my belief that science will eventually answer the question) that I believe there is likely to be a limit to human understanding. We haven't hit it yet but if we ever do, then there will be a gap to throw God into. Moreover, even when scientific evidence uncovers the mechanism for something that had previously claimed as an act of God, the believer just says "ah you see that is how God did it". Obviously this is true from your world view but you can see the reason for the frustration right?

It sounds pretty easy...just the right amount of light, water, certain proteins, and who knows what else + Chance + time. What is so lacking in this scenario is the chance element.

Are you saying that it is like rolling a zillion side die and getting just the right roll? That even though it is possible it is just too improbable? I'm just not sure what you mean by that last sentence.

There are so many issues that must be addressed by this first life that it is just not plausible to think it was due to chance even if we had all the billions of years coming after life started on earth.

I'd be interested in hearing what issues you think need to be addressed that can't be solved by time plus chance.

I have. The only one that even remotely comes close to explaining life without God (and only for life on earth)is an intelligence outside of our own solar system such as a superior alien existence.

I am going to assume that when you say God you are meaning your Christian God as you understand him. If that is what you meant here are a couple other possibilities that are not aliens or your God.
1) an evil God, Ed (the Cartesian anti god) created life
2) your God is a created being, who was created by an even greater God and that greater God created life.
3) abiogenisis is a necessary or extremely likely product of any universe because the constants are not random but governed by a rule set we don't yet understand.
Looking forward to your explanation for how you definitively ruled these out

Well my point was more with God making it possible to even have a chance to explain anything

Did you mean this in a presuppositionalist way? Could you explain exactly what you mean here when you say God makes it possible that we have even a chance to explain anything? Thanks.

What this says in accordance with scientists and my position, it is well known that in colleges today God is not welcome nor do most scientist believe in God. So it is not surprising they view God the way they do.

Are you saying that the science actually confirms that God is responsible for the creation of life but that scientists are ignoring this truth because the climate of the institution they work in is anti-god? Or are you saying that they really know and believe that God is responsible and are either keeping this belied quiet for fear of persecution or because they are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness?

Heaven existed prior to Jesus. You are claiming that God has a place where free will does not lead to sin but you are not getting what I am saying here. WE are created beings having no possible way to be God like. God couldn't make us like Him.

OK so heaven existed before Jesus did his thing. Was there anyone in heaven aside from God before Jesus came and died?
You assert here (and many other places in this conversation) that God can not make us little gods meaning that we would never sin. This is an assertion and I would like you to justify it please In doing so please address the instance of God creating Adam and Eve and also all the angels who never chose sin.

They knew it was wrong, because Eve states that she understood she should not eat the fruit. She was aware of being able to either obey or disobey.

So it seems that you are objecting to premise 1, saying that she knew good and evil prior to eating the fruit. Please make this case.
Or
Perhaps you are saying I am equivocation between evil and wrong. If so please make this case.
Also eve said that God told them not to eat the fruit but this does not imply she understands rightness and wrongness, good and evil. She did know that she wasn't supposed to eat it but not that there was any wrongness, sinfulness, evil connected to the act of disobedience to God. She couldn't have known this because she hadn't eaten the fruit yet.

So do you now agree with my conclusion?

Did you make them eat it? Did you make them disobey you? Did they have a choice? Here again though you are equating our actions against God, against our existence rather than no existence.

Did I force them nope...but you haven't answerd the question. I asked am I responsible for what happened. Let's say I give my 2 year old a really sharp knife and leave the room. When he hurts himself or some else, am I responsible?

Also I am not sure what you meant by the second half of that, existence versus no existence. Are you repeating your assertion that we couldn't exist at all except as being with sin? If so I don't see how it is relevant to the situation. All I would have had to do was not leave cake out...

God could not create sin free creatures at all.

So here it is again.. Are some of the angels sin free, were Adam and Eve free of sin prior to the fruit incident, are infants free of sin?

God could not create sin free creatures at all. Even if He wanted to because God isn't a created being

I do2see the logical connection between God not being a created thing and an inability to create sin free creatures. Please explain.

Only God like beings can live with a holy God and the only way to make that happen is to cover for their inability to be God or God like by covering their inability by His own sacrifice and their choice to accept it.

Only godlike (sinless?) beings can live with God...this is an assertion, why is this necessarily the case?

The only way to allow for reconciliation is a sacrifice by God himself... This is an assertion please justify it. Be sure to include the fact that other theologies have ways of being made right with God, works based systems, decrees of forgiveness by the God, we also of course have the law in the old testament.

As created beings we can never be without sin because that is a God quality that we do not possess and we do wrong against God's goodness.

So the angels are gods?

The Amalekites attacked Israel as they were leaving Eqypt. At the time this group of people were nomadic. They were considered plunderers. So I am not sure why you chose them to be the people that were not asked permission to go through their land when they didn't have any.

Are you saying that at no point did God tell his people to go kill the Amalakites?

It is relevant: Considering that the Christian God created all life, it would seem that our views are not anywhere equal to His in terms of life and death or anything else for that matter.

Well I sort of agree here. My concept of being perfectly good does not include creating beings and then drowning them so obviously of God exists then he and I have different understandings of what good is. The interesting thing is that this is the same position you are in. If gods ways are really not our ways you really don't have much of a basis for claiming to know anything about him. If you are willing to accept that it could be consistent with his nature to kill infants and call himself good why would it be inconsistent for him to inspire a holy text full of errors to mislead people so that they could be deceived and get punished?

Ok responsibility does not mean that He makes us do what we do.

I agree he doesn't make us do it, but are you conceding that God does have a responsibility for what happens here on earth?

The question was relevant to the discussion. Is self-defense genocide? I don't believe it is. Why do you?

Are you saying that God is so powerless that his very life (self defense) is endangered by the beings he created? Are you saying that his only option was to kill them all. If so please justify this. And if you could also answer the question I asked you

As we discussed, it was a culture that had several different situations where slavery was accepted. Considering that you don't feel there is any moral standard and that a community or culture determines what is moral, why do you claim God is immoral if He allowed and even gave commands concerning those slaves?

Are you aware of how often you respond in this way. When pushed about the internal consistency of morality within your belief system you respond by demanding that I defend morality on mine. I understand that you think I will have a hard time justifying my position on my world view but please do me the courtesy of answering the question On my world view morality is based on the principles of harm and empathy, to the extent that those people knew that slavery was harmful and saw the slaves as other human beings like themselves they were morally wrong. This is even more the case for God who must know that it is harmful and that they are humans made in his image. Your turn!

Neither

So this is one of those unhelpful responses where I get to do a bunch of scrolling... I understand from your response that you don't agree with either option but if you feel it is a false dichotomy please provide another option.
And again: is God's nature good because he says it is or is it good because it aligns with an external standard of good?

Absolutely not. There will always be exceptions to any rule.

I agree, so it would seem that even on your world view morality is not objective and unchanging.

Ok, in answering your question: Lets say that a friend has helped you move to a new house. He spent an entire weekend helping you. A few months later you get a call and your friend needs help to move out of his place into a new one. You wake up on Saturday morning and you don't want to help.

Great example but this is still about harm. In this case the harm is to the relationship between the two friends. Happy to entertain any other examples you might want to try... Or we can just agree that morality is based on the principle of harm?

You haven't demonstrated that He condones slavery. You have shown that He allows slavery with stipulations and consequences in their treatment.

How is this different from condoning it? He says there are the things that you are not to do because they are sinful but owning other humans as property is not on that list. This means that as long as you own them the way he wants you too then it is fine. This is condoning.

You have shown that when old, young and sick are collateral victims of war that they should be taken into service but what would happen if they were not? Their men are dead and there is no way to feed themselves or a place to live, so is it immoral to take them and have them as servants rather than let them starve?

Notice that we just went from slavery where people are getting beaten to near death to young and old being cared for as servants. This is equivocation.

If there is no good or evil how can there be morality? If nothing is inherently good or evil how can there be

Remember that I didn't say there was no such thing as good, also I replace evil with harm. If you can give me an example where morality is not about harm then I will have to reconsider this. Until that happens please answer the question as asked.

We are fine using it to make points rather than taking the entire thread off topic.

In that case I am fine to say that it is entirely fallacious and I will reject on this basis any point that depends on it as a premise.

So again, no one has evidence that a candy wrapper exists on this new planet and both have a claim about the same thing so are they both true?

That is not what I said. I said they are both equally true. This will change as evidence is brought to bear but this does not address the central objection in my comment...

I do care about what is true, and I don't want to believe that which is false. I didn't become a Christian because I thought talking snakes and donkeys made so much sense. I didn't become a Christian because I thought God was this great Santa Claus in the sky. I didn't even become a Christian because that is what the majority of my culture was

Great news! But I have to push back on that final point. I am going to guess that you have not actually investigated all other religions with the same rigour and open mindedness that you have Christianity which is of course the major religion in your cultural context. How can you be certain that your cultural situation had nothing to do with your choice?

So go ahead and bring forward what evidence you think is compelling enough that you think I should reconsider all that evidence I feel I have for my position.

Can you see here that you didn't actually answer the question. I specifically asked you what evidence you think would move you to being less confident and you respond by telling me to provide you with evidence... If you can, please answer the question, I am truly interested in knowing what kinds of evidence you think could falsify your belief commitment.

You don't understand though and that is the problem. You don't get the fact that God could not create Himself or others equally like Him. Only humans being God would be another possible solution which would be like making a square circle.

Why is human beings being synonymous with God, the only possible solution. Please justify this assertion.

He knew that if He allowed the Samarians to attack the Jews that they would do so but He didn't command them to do it, He didn't place that thought into their heads. He is only responsible for wanting to create a being that was intelligent, and had a choice in good and evil because one can not exist without the other in human terms. WE don't know what good is or evil until we experience it because we are physical beings in a physical world.

Couple things here. First God does place thoughts into people's heads (Or hardens their hearts, or decieves them), you acknowledge above that he does have some responsibility and I find your final bit interesting in light of our discussion about Adam and Eve

Final thought: I am all for the Socratic method, however I am finding it difficult on a phone to continuously to go back to earlier posts to see what question it is that you have avoided answering I don't know if you are aware of just how often you respond to my questions with a question of your own. To be clear, I didn't mind being asked questions in response but it would be really helpful if you included with your question a clear response to the questions asked of you.

Hope you are enjoying Easter weekend

 

[Oncedeceived]

I have considered his existence and am thusfar unconvinced. I'm not demanding that God give me a Paul-like miracle, I simply know myself well enough to know that it will take something big to make me believe. God knows I need this. You're saying he is willing to lose my soul to Hell because he is offended that I can't force myself to be convinced by more subtle signs?

I was just throwing out a thought. I am not saying anything, just musing.

I don't understand how any of those passages fulfil the prophesy that Jesus would Return within the lifetime of his followers. First, all those scenes occur prior to his death on the cross, so I don't see how they could be fulfilling the prophecy of his return. NABSB (Not A Biblical Scholar But...) Jesus seems to be referring pretty clearly to his second coming here:

“Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." Matthew 16:28

Isn't the coming of the Kingdom the apocalypse? Some really crazy things happen, Jesus comes back and the damned are damned and the saved saved? Clearly that hasn't happened at any point since the crucifixion.

I am saying the passages are being misinterpreted. Clearly Jesus said He didn't know when He would return. The passage above I believe and many others that He was talking about the coming transfiguration etc. as I mentioned before.

God's reasons for hardening Pharaoh's heart (maximum glory, maybe conversions) are not relevant in terms of the specific question I'm asking. You have agreed that God hardened Pharaoh's heart (as a punishment). Thus in that moment God was willing to subvert free will to achieve his goals (punishment, maximum glory, maybe conversions).

At that moment God passed judgement upon his already hardened heart.

A couple questions:

1.Do you think, when God hardened Pharaoh's heart, Pharaoh could have in that exact moment decided to let the Jews go after all?

Most certainly. And went back on it just like he did in the end.

2. If God is willing to compromise free will to achieve his goals, why is he not willing to do so to save souls that cannot otherwise be saved?

This is begging the question. We know that Pharaoh time and time again hardened his own heart, what makes you think he would ever repent and change his will?

3. I think Athée has already asked something like this, but suppose your child was dying and there was a medicine that could restore them to perfect health but for some reason they absolutely refused to let you give it to them. Would you let them die? Or would you hold them down and administer the medication no matter how much they objected?

I think this is exactly the point, a child under the age of 18 has no rights under the law or by way of mental capacity to make that type of decision themselves; why would a person knowing full well that they would be restored to perfect health refuse it?

Your argument also suggests that God was overriding free will whenever he used signs and wonders to display his glory to his people. If Pharaoh being convinced by the plagues would violate his free will, wouldn't pillars of fire and smoke, not to mention all that wild stuff in Ezekiel, constitute a similar violation? Wouldn't the whole appearing before, blinding and miraculously healing Paul be a violation of his free will?

His people were already believers, how was this against their free will?

Incorrect. I don't have absolute knowledge of the past, but I that doesn't preclude me from making an inference about the past informed by available data. I wasn't around in OT times, but I feel confident in saying that there were no talking horses. Why? Because there are no examples of talking horses on record.

If God is as claimed, created the universe with all the laws of physics and perfect order do you believe He would be unable to talk through a horse if He chose to?

Similarly, there are no examples of entire nations that are genetically or culturally unable to be anything but evil or destroy other populations when they interbreed. Such a population may have existed, but that is based on exactly zero evidence and runs counter to all the data about human populations that says otherwise and upon which my inference is based.

If you will remember I am not making that claim, I am showing that even I who do not know the mind of God can come up with a scenario that might give reason for a certain action. Of course there is no evidence and I find it somewhat humorous that you think it is necessary to back up a hypothetical scenario with evidence. Don't you think it rather strange to ask for evidence in regard to a hypothetical scenario? The point was not that I claimed to know what moral reason God might have had for taking the action taken but that I could come up with moral reasons that might show there is the possibility of moral reasons.

But can you really hypothesize logical reasons for such actions?

So you can demand evidence for this hypothetical logical reason?

God is having those babies killed because they would have grown up to be evil and damned. It is a mercy, you say. Can you humour me by supplying a logical argument for why it is more merciful to kill an entire nation and all its babies than to kill the few babies that would found that nation? In both cases those innocent babies are getting their soul whisked up to Heaven, so why kill thousands instead of a few?

Would it really matter? Will you demand evidence for this argument? I would say that there is always a possible moral logical argument that might explain it very well but that I don't have the information to make that determination. It may seem very logical that killing just a few babies rather than a hundred or so but I don't have all the pertinent information to even make a determination and actually you don't either.

I have made no statement to the effect that God should never have allowed us to live because we couldn't be God. Let us think no more of this.

I didn't say you did. I was referring to the fact that you think He should have made us sinless or sin free and I am saying the only way to do that would be if we were Gods.

I'm asking why, if you already know what is going to happen, would you wait until you have to kill thousands instead killing a few early on? If God wants to save as many souls as he can, wouldn't it be better not to have thousands born into nations that he knows will force them to be evil?

So you problem then is that you think it would be better for these souls never to have existed at all rather than let them live and chose to do evil? What about those who chose to be good? If there is no choice then there is no free will. Evil or Good. So would you rather no human beings ever to exist?

Also, you seem to be against the idea of killing evil people before they are born, but regard killing evil people just after they are born as a mercy. This seems somewhat inconsistent. What distinction do you make between these two situations?

It is only inconsistent because it is wrong. I just think that not allowing any human beings to exist is not a good solution for the problem you seem to have with evil people being killed.



Perhaps, but you didn't really address this question:

Given that we know from examples that God is willing to step in and subvert free will when he wants to punish someone or achieve some goal, why would he rather kill the planet's entire population than step in and compromise free will to save a planet of souls?

Is that a yes? From a biblical perspective, killing babies can be moral? Expand your answer if you like, but I would appreciate the inclusion of a simple "yes" or "no" to clarify your position for me.

Yes. It doesn't even need to be from a biblical perspective although it can be. I believe that killing babies in the case of self defense is the moral things to do such as in the case of Hiroshima for instance. When there is an enemy that will kill everyone that I care about, I will try to kill them first, if you feel that is immoral then so be it.

You haven't really answered the question I was asking though. You said killing babies before they are old enough to choose does not violate their free will. I would like to know why. The question again:

If free will is the chance to choose right or wrong, how is preventing a person from making that choice by killing them when they are a baby not a violation of that principle?

I don't understand your problem with this, do you feel that a baby has no will of their own? Are you a father because if you don't know that a child has a will of their own, you must not be.

Based on this I would say that ordering the killing of babies is inconsistent with Jesus' MO, but not inconsistent with his nature because that nature immutable. Do you agree?

Sorry, I don't know what you are getting at.

There were actually a couple questions in there. I assume your answer refers to the first one, but I'll repost them more explicitly for your convenience:
1. Would you kill the babies?
2. Would you consider killing the babies moral or immoral?

To be clear...I would kill everyone that would wish to wipe out my and my people's existence. I would consider it moral. That would include babies if necessary. No one wishes to harm children including myself but if my life as well as every life of my nation was at risk I would do what was necessary to ensure that didn't happen. I would not let my children die just to save my enemies babies. I would hate it, I would mourn the necessity of the situation and their deaths but when you are attacked your very existence is of utmost importance.

Do you not think that survival is of utmost importance to the human species?

I don't think this changes the question. Clearly Jesus is comfortable with commanding you to leave your family if is a choice between him and them. His message is unambiguous:

“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me." Matthew 10:37

So my question remains unanswered. Do you really love Jesus more than your children? Would you regard abandoning your family the moral thing to do?

The lack is not in His message being unambiguous but in your interpretation of it.

I feel compelled to make a correction here. It isn't a case of you not having "a great amount of evidence" to support your Cambrian angiosperm idea, rather it is a case of you having no evidence whatsoever. You can hypothesize their existence, but that doesn't mean your hypothesis carries the same weight as 400 million years of a rich fossil record that contains not one single angiosperm anywhere in the world.

Earlier oxygenation of the atmosphere indicates that life may have originated earlier than suspected. Please explain how this supports the idea that angiosperms were the first life. A similar explanation in relation to the Ediacaran biota would be appreciated.

Like I said several times here, life could have began and wiped out several times over. Why do you think this is impossible since we don't have a fossil record of this earliest time period?

And I'm still not completely clear on your position. Could you please answer this question to rectify that?: Do you think Genesis is saying that angiosperms were created first (day 3) and humans last (day 5)?

Yes.

I'm sorry but I don't understand what this means or what it has to do with this question:

If biblical authors didn't intend to communicate that things created on day 3 were created prior to things on day 5, why write it in such a way as to communicate exactly that?

Could you please respond to this question directly?

They did. I did.

This also falls short of addressing the question asked. I assume you're asking about discrepancies other than the angiosperms. These discrepancies are outlined below but are irrelevant to the question I asked:

If Genesis is really just a general overview of creation that is not meant to present accurate chronological relationships, how can you claim that it accurately describes the order in the fossil record?

Could you please give me an answer to this one?

Let me try again. I don't think the separation of plant and animal life was your point with the below quote because you make no mention of plants:

"I doubt that Bronze Age tribesmen would have any idea that life began in the seas and followed a certain sequence into existence but that is what they recorded in the Bible."

You made this statement when attempting to provide an example of modern science revealed in the Bible long before the authors could have known it. It seems like you are stating that life started in the seas. It also seems like you are saying Genesis tells us the sequence in which life arose. If that is not what you meant, please explain what you meant when you talk about the "idea that life began in the seas and followed a certain sequence".

I've tried numerous times and to no avail. I ask you to go back and read my post where this is all laid out.

Not quite. I've shown that angiosperms are incredibly abundant in the fossil record, but not until the Mesozoic era. And I think you've missed the point again. I'm not talking about the absence of angiosperms in Precambrian rock. I agree that this time period has very few fossils. I'm talking about the 400 million between the Cambrian and the advent of angiosperms. The rock record from that 400Ma is absolutely packed with fossils, but not a single angiosperm anywhere in the world until the Mesozoic.

I am saying that if they existed they were wiped out completely and the record lost with them other than the atmospheric evidence that still exists that shows oxygen long before the Great Oxidation Event.

So why is an incredibly abundant, widespread group of organisms completely absent from otherwise fossil-rich rock for 400Ma? Angiosperms may have been present in the Cambrian, but we have zero evidence for them.

Do you suppose we had horses in the Cambrian? There is no fossil record of them prior to the Paleogene, but by your reasoning it is reasonable to hypothesize they were there.

There would be no record of them if they were completely wiped out as well as the earth's earliest surface record.

I think my questions might have been unclear here because your response doesn't seem to address them at all, so let me try again.

''Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind.''

To me this is saying that all land animals were created on this day. So...


1. What is your reasoning for supposing that this passage does not refer to "the first terrestrial animals but a very general list"?

2. What is your reasoning for saying that this passage indicates a "large amount of time" prior to the cattle being created?

Does not the fossil record show a great amount of time prior to cattle coming into existence?

But it isn't close. That's the point. It's quite wrong. I've given you these examples before, but here they are again for your convenience:

1. Genesis says land plants and angiosperms appear first - this is nowhere near correct according to the fossil record wherein the first life is aquatic.

Thanks for making this easier for me. There is no fossil record available this early, as the earth's earliest surface is lost to us. The next passage takes us to the waters swarming with life. Which fits with the fossil record.

2.Genesis says that aquatic creatures were all created, along with birds, prior to land creatures - this is completely wrong. Land animals appear well before "sea monsters" like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. And whales certainly don't appear until well after those organisms. Life was thriving in the sea for hundreds of millions of years before birds came on the scene, and birds certainly didn't predate land animals in the fossil record.

The Cambrian era was the time period which consisted of all phyla alive today and some that have gone extinct. The waters literally swarmed with life. This period which is called the Paleozoic period includes the Silurian era in which there were centipedes and millipedes, the Devonian with its sharks and amphibians. This also includes the next period which is the Mesozoic period which then includes dino's and of course within this period comes the first appearance of birds. This is a general overview of what was created during this period. So an overview of this is that the day includes first the Paleozoic and next the Mesozoic.

3. Genesis says that land animals and humans were created on the same day, but of course land animals appear hundreds of millions of years before humans. Birds appear between the advent of land animals and humans, but according to genesis were created before either.

The Cenozoic is the most current era, taking place from the last mass extinction of all land-based dinosaurs (approximately 65 million years ago) to the present day.

This era saw the rise of many mammals, such as whales, the great hunter cats, as well as Humans. But it also saw the rise of the birds, insects, and many new plants, including flowering plants.

Much of life as we know it today evolved during this era.

 

[Atheos canadensis]

So how do you explain the finds of shellfish and other animals in rocks high in the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau that are geographically out of place?

Sorry, I answered this but messed up the formatting so you missed it. Here was my response:

This can be explained very easily indeed by the pretty well-understood process of mountain building. Basically, bivalves and whatnot are entombed on the sea floor as they die and then later on the collision of tectonic plates results in these lithified marine deposits being uplifted into mountains. In fact the Himalayas are still being uplifted as we speak as the Indian plate continues to collide with the Eurasian plate.

I was just throwing out a thought. I am not saying anything, just musing.

This leaves me with the question of why I'm to burn in Hell when God could save my soul with a more obvious sign as he has done on various occasions. The only thing I can think of is that I'm simply not important enough to him that, despite his omnipotence, he's not willing to expend the effort. He doesn't need me as an apostle so I can go to Hell.

I am saying the passages are being misinterpreted. Clearly Jesus said He didn't know when He would return. The passage above I believe and many others that He was talking about the coming transfiguration etc. as I mentioned before.

So you don't think Jesus is telling his followers that he will be back for the final judgement?

At that moment God passed judgement upon his already hardened heart.

Just to be clear, when you say "passed judgment" you mean he "cements or stays the condition of the heart of pharaoh" i.e. hardens Pharaoh's heart as punishment.

Do you agree that God has hardened Pharaoh's heart at this moment in order to achieve His goals?

Most certainly. And went back on it just like he did in the end.

Very unexpected indeed. So unexpected that I assume it's actually just miscommunication. I am asking you this:

During the time period (however long it was, be it seconds or hours) when God hardened Pharaoh's heart, could Pharaoh have fought against that divinely induced heart hardening and softened his heart? In other words, could he have countered the will of God that his heart be hardened in that moment?

This is begging the question. We know that Pharaoh time and time again hardened his own heart, what makes you think he would ever repent and change his will?

I am getting ahead of myself a bit, it's true; you haven't actually conceded that God hardening Pharaoh's heart violated his free will. But you haven't explained why it doesn't. So I refer you to my question above. Could Pharaoh have controverted God's will and kept his heart from being hardened in that moment when God chose to harden it? If he couldn't have countered God's will in this way then his free will was at least momentarily subverted.

If this is the case then we come back to the other question: If God is willing to compromise free will to achieve his goals, why is he not willing to do so to save souls that cannot otherwise be saved? Pharaoh's willingness to repent is not relevant to the specific point I'm making.

I think this is exactly the point, a child under the age of 18 has no rights under the law or by way of mental capacity to make that type of decision themselves; why would a person knowing full well that they would be restored to perfect health refuse it?

You haven't actually answered the question though. Would you force your child to take the medicine? The legal rights of the child aren't really relevant here which can be illustrated if we change the scenario somewhat:

Imagine this event takes place in the not too distant future when your child is, say, 24. You have no legal power to force them to take medicine. It doesn't matter why they won't take the medicine. Would it matter to you if they were paranoid or just philosophically opposed? Would that affect your decision to save their life or not? So same question. Your child is dying and there is a medicine that could restore them to perfect health but for some reason they absolutely refuse to let you give it to them. Would you let them die? Or would you force the medication on them no matter how much they objected? Please explain your reasoning.

His people were already believers, how was this against their free will?

I don't think it did subvert their free will. That's the point. You suggested that it would have violated Pharaoh's free will if God had allowed him to be convinced by the plagues because "the plagues would have been the reason [for pharaoh's conversion] which actually would have taken away his free will because God brought them upon Pharaoh". My point is that if you think convincing people by showing them signs and wonders violates free will, then the unbeliever Paul's free will was violated when Jesus appeared before him, blinded him and miraculously healed him. I assume you don't think Paul's free will was violated, so it is not consistent to argue that Pharaoh's free will would have been violated if God had allowed the plagues to convince him to release the Jews.

If God is as claimed, created the universe with all the laws of physics and perfect order do you believe He would be unable to talk through a horse if He chose to?

If God has the omnipotence we are told he does then I'm sure he could manage a talking horse. That is completely irrelevant to the point I'm making. The point is that I am able to make inferences about what existed in the past based on data from the present. Let's make the example more extreme to illustrate the point more clearly: it is possible that, in the time of the OT, eggplants were sentient, but there is no evidence of this. I infer based on the lack of indications of sentience in all eggplants ever observed that the were not sentient at any time in the past. I think this inference carries much more weight than someone claiming that sentient eggplants might well have existed because we were't there so we can't say for sure.

If you will remember I am not making that claim, I am showing that even I who do not know the mind of God can come up with a scenario that might give reason for a certain action. Of course there is no evidence and I find it somewhat humorous that you think it is necessary to back up a hypothetical scenario with evidence. Don't you think it rather strange to ask for evidence in regard to a hypothetical scenario? The point was not that I claimed to know what moral reason God might have had for taking the action taken but that I could come up with moral reasons that might show there is the possibility of moral reasons.

You are attempting to demonstrate that there is potentially a reason why killing all the babies was necessary. So far I have, I think successfully, argued that your proposed reasons do not comport with reality. This leaves you with no more than the assertion that a logical explanation is possible.

Would it really matter? Will you demand evidence for this argument? I would say that there is always a possible moral logical argument that might explain it very well but that I don't have the information to make that determination. It may seem very logical that killing just a few babies rather than a hundred or so but I don't have all the pertinent information to even make a determination and actually you don't either.

I think I have enough pertinent information to conclude that mercy killing five babies is better than mercy killing five thousand babies. The results in both cases is innocent baby souls flying up to Heaven. However in the former case I have only killed five babies and saved a nation of souls from Hell. I suspect that you really can't come up with any explanation of why the former situation is not more merciful than the latter when we remember that God's desire is supposedly to live in Heaven with as many of his beloved creations as possible and that he is omnipotent. I won't ask you for evidence of this claim, but I will evaluate it to see if it really comports with what we know of God. So, why might killing a few thousand babies (and allowing several generations of souls go to Hell before you get to that point) be more merciful than killing just a few babies early on?

I didn't say you did. I was referring to the fact that you think He should have made us sinless or sin free and I am saying the only way to do that would be if we were Gods.

You have made this point previously but have not supported it beyond mere assertion. What prevents God from creating beings with a perfect nature that is no more compatible with sinning than his own? Do you have any scriptural support for this?

So you problem then is that you think it would be better for these souls never to have existed at all rather than let them live and chose to do evil? What about those who chose to be good? If there is no choice then there is no free will. Evil or Good. So would you rather no human beings ever to exist?

Would some choose to be good? It though you were saying that these nations had to be exterminated because they were incurably, invariably evil. I'm not saying these souls should never have existed. Couldn't these souls have been born into better, non-evil nations instead of the evil ones?

It is only inconsistent because it is wrong. I just think that not allowing any human beings to exist is not a good solution for the problem you seem to have with evil people being killed.

Nowhere have I argued that the solution is to have no humans exist and my problem is with babies being killed. Please quote the post where I make such an argument if I am mistaken on this.

Yes. It doesn't even need to be from a biblical perspective although it can be. I believe that killing babies in the case of self defense is the moral things to do such as in the case of Hiroshima for instance. When there is an enemy that will kill everyone that I care about, I will try to kill them first, if you feel that is immoral then so be it.

Interesting. Thank you for clarifying this facet of your morality.

I don't understand your problem with this, do you feel that a baby has no will of their own? Are you a father because if you don't know that a child has a will of their own, you must not be.

My problem is that you have not supported the assertion that killing babies before they choose good or evil doesn't violate their free will. I'm aware that babies do indeed make decisions, but you said in your last post that "babies are not old enough to chose. They don't have the ability to make that determination". In other words babies are not able to make a free will choice between good and evil, correct? Therefore it seems to me that killing them before they are able to make that choice violates their free will. So here is the question again. Please do me the courtesy of answering it:

If free will is the chance to choose right or wrong, how is preventing a person from making that choice by killing them when they are a baby not a violation of that principle?

Sorry, I don't know what you are getting at.

I mean that ordering you to kill babies is not something Jesus would do, according to you, but it is not inconsistent with his nature because god's nature is immutable and he has been known to give such orders.

To be clear...I would kill everyone that would wish to wipe out my and my people's existence. I would consider it moral. That would include babies if necessary. No one wishes to harm children including myself but if my life as well as every life of my nation was at risk I would do what was necessary to ensure that didn't happen. I would not let my children die just to save my enemies babies. I would hate it, I would mourn the necessity of the situation and their deaths but when you are attacked your very existence is of utmost importance.

Do you not think that survival is of utmost importance to the human species?

I think it is for the most part, yes. I still think it's strange to suppose that an omnipotent being could think of no other way to neutralize a threat than to have all the babies killed.

The lack is not in His message being unambiguous but in your interpretation of it.

Sorry, it seems unambiguous to me. Could you please explain what Jesus means if he does not mean that you should value your relationship with him more than your relationship with your children when he says "he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me." Matthew 10:37"?

Then we can get back to the question of whether you really love Jesus more than your child and whether you would really choose Jesus over your child if such a choice were necessary.

Like I said several times here, life could have began and wiped out several times over. Why do you think this is impossible since we don't have a fossil record of this earliest time period?

I don't think it's impossible, I think it's very unlikely and I think that inferences based on actual data carry more weight than inferences based on no data whatsoever.

Yes.

They did. I did.

Okay, good. So you've stated that you believe that angiosperms were created prior to humans. By extension you also believe that "every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it" was created after angiosperms and before land animals.

I've tried numerous times and to no avail. I ask you to go back and read my post where this is all laid out.

Okay, I think you've moved off from saying (or maybe you never said this and I misunderstood you) that the bible is just a general summary of what was created and does not provide any chronological relationships for those created groups. Now you are arguing that the bible is probably correct in saying that angiosperms arose prior to sea creatures. To be clear, when you said this:

"I doubt that Bronze Age tribesmen would have any idea that life began in the seas and followed a certain sequence into existence but that is what they recorded in the Bible."

...you were not stating that the bible correctly described life as starting in the sea? What did you mean by this statement?

I am saying that if they existed they were wiped out completely and the record lost with them other than the atmospheric evidence that still exists that shows oxygen long before the Great Oxidation Event.

There would be no record of them if they were completely wiped out as well as the earth's earliest surface record.

I need to be more clear I think. I am not talking about the Precambrian era where fossils are very rare and almost absent near the beginning of Earth's history. I am talking about the 400 million years between the Cambrian and the first appearance of angiosperms. Those 400 million years have a very rich fossil record, including a whole bunch of plants that aren't angiosperms. You are proposing that angiosperms, as one of the most widespread and abundant organisms on the planet, left no trace in the fossil record anywhere in the world for 400 million years while other plants and animals appear there. I want you to provide some reasoning for why that is more likely than the idea that angiosperms didn't arise before sea creatures. Remember, lots of fossils exist in those 400 million years including a whole lot of different plants, so you need to explain why they show up but angiosperms don't.

Or are you arguing that they were completely wiped, left a 400Ma gap and then evolved again?

Does not the fossil record show a great amount of time prior to cattle coming into existence?

You missed this question I think:

1. What is your reasoning for supposing that this passage does not refer to "the first terrestrial animals but a very general list"?

And you didn't answer this one really:

2. What is your reasoning for saying that this passage indicates a "large amount of time" prior to the cattle being created? I know the fossil record indicates lots of time prior to cattle. I'm asking what support you have that the bible is saying there was a large amount of time prior to cattle but after the advent of other land animals.

Thanks for making this easier for me. There is no fossil record available this early, as the earth's earliest surface is lost to us. The next passage takes us to the waters swarming with life. Which fits with the fossil record.

Not too easy, I think. Genesis seems pretty clear when it refers to "every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind." It seems reasonable to think that "every living thing" in the water includes mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs and whales. But of course the fossil record tells us that land animals predate them by hundreds of millions of years. Same for the birds. They appeared after land animals, not before them as Genesis suggests. So how would you explain these discrepancies? Do you again propose that in each case their fossil record disappeared for some reason in an otherwise rich fossil record? It is your prerogative to do so but it does not carry the same weight as a far more parsimonious assessment. Remember that parsimony means making as few unfounded assumptions as possible. My position is based on the fact that we have no examples of a fossil lineage being pushed back as far as you require. It is also based on the fact that the fossil record wherein these proposed gaps occur is otherwise well stocked. In both cases you are assuming the opposite, an assumption which is unfounded in data.

The Cambrian era was the time period which consisted of all phyla alive today and some that have gone extinct. The waters literally swarmed with life. This period which is called the Paleozoic period includes the Silurian era in which there were centipedes and millipedes, the Devonian with its sharks and amphibians. This also includes the next period which is the Mesozoic period which then includes dino's and of course within this period comes the first appearance of birds. This is a general overview of what was created during this period. So an overview of this is that the day includes first the Paleozoic and next the Mesozoic.

We have established that Genesis is indeed meant to be telling us the chronological order in which life arose. You agreed that it tells us that angiosperms arose prior to life in the sea. This also means that every sea creature and every bird should appear in the fossil record prior to land animals. This is unambiguously not what the fossil record shows. Please address these discrepancies specifically.

Perhaps it would make things clearer if we just number the order of creation in Genesis vs the order of appearance in the fossil record.

Genesis
1. Land plants and angiosperms
2. Every sea creature, every bird
3. land animals and humans

Fossil record
1. Aquatic organisms, but no derived tetrapods like mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs or whales.
2. Terrestrial organisms including plants, arthropods and early tetrapods
3. Angiosperms, birds
4. Humans, whales

These accounts simply don't allign.

The Cenozoic is the most current era, taking place from the last mass extinction of all land-based dinosaurs (approximately 65 million years ago) to the present day.

This era saw the rise of many mammals, such as whales, the great hunter cats, as well as Humans. But it also saw the rise of the birds, insects, and many new plants, including flowering plants.

Much of life as we know it today evolved during this era.

I don't see how this addresses the problem I raised. Genesis says that land animals and humans were created on the same day, after birds. The fossil record says land animals arose, then birds appeared, then humans. How do you resolve this discrepancy?