Why are some Christians anti Evolution?

[BNR32FAN]

OK, good. So what God does and commands is good not because He defines what is good by His actions and commands, but because He is constrained to follow an independent moral standard from which He cannot deviate; i.e. God is not and does not define a moral standard, He is effectively its messenger.

Then it follows that we don't need God for a moral standard, that God's nature (and free will?) is constrained by an external standard that He cannot change, and so, God is not omnipotent (as Thomas Aquinas supposedly said, "Not even God can change the 10 commandments").

Your an atheist aren’t you? I can tell by how you do strategically omitted the portion where I said

Whatever He does is good because of who He is and His character,

Whe He is and His character dictates what He does and defines morality.

 

[TLK Valentine]

Whe He is and His character dictates what He does and defines morality.

So who decided who He is and what His character must dictate?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

God's word is His autobiography, our Standard for faith and practice, and your History Book.

That may be what He wants you to think, but you can't be sure - He's beyond understanding...

 

[BNR32FAN]

I'll tell you what I told Kylie:

Hey brother just wanted your opinion, have I made it abundantly clear in this thread that I believe in a 6 day creation? Because I keep getting this question that I feel like I’ve already answered several times so I just wanted to get your opinion.

 

[stevil]

I take it you think this because you give Christianity equal airtime with other religions?

Christianity is no more special to me than any of the other religions, even including religions that noone holds onto any more.

 

[SelfSim]

That may be what He wants you to think, but you can't be sure - He's beyond understanding...

No problem! .. Just make it up then, eh? (I mean, one doesn't have to understand one's own beliefs after all ..)

 

[SelfSim]

I take it you think this because you give Christianity equal airtime with other religions?

FWIW, I'd personally much rather control my own thinking than let someone else do that for me.

 

[TLK Valentine]

I take it you think this because you give Christianity equal airtime with other religions?

Who decides how much airtime each religion gets?

 

[ottawak]

I wasn’t talking about God creating it in that post. That was referring to rocks being formed naturally without any intervention from God. Rocks naturally take millions of years to form but God can create them exactly the same way in no time which would give them the appearance of being millions of years old.

That is illogical nonsense. You say "rocks naturally take millions of years to form" but according to you there never were millions of years for this "natural" formation to take place. You might be abe to say something like, "rocks look as if they took millions of years to form, but didn't." Which means that they must have been faked to appear as if they formed by some process which never actually took place.

So your position seems to be that,
1. The Earth (and the universe around it) was created 6000 or so years ago.
2. It was created to appear--to the most discerning scrutiny we can bring to bear on it--much, much older.

And the question before us, which you never seem to get around to answering is, why?

 

[sjastro]

A popular counter-argument these days is that God is 'beyond' or 'outside' logic, or even that God is illogical (we already knew that!), which, of course, is literally no argument at all; it's the limit of 'God works in mysterious ways'... The problem here is that if God is beyond logic (and therefore, reason), or, as is often said, beyond understanding (which probably amounts to the same thing), it makes no sense to say anything about it, let alone attribute logical properties to it or anthropomorphise it... which pretty much defeats the whole point of it.

Science is about how things work not why they work nor the purpose behind it.
By incorporating God into science leads to logical fallacies as illustrated, as well as the fallacious arguments thrown up by creationists.
The problem goes both ways however as the existence of God is not falsifiable in science and atheists who think science can be used as proof God doesn't exist are committing logical fallacies as well.

Stephen Weinberg and Abdus Salam won the Nobel Prize for their work in Electroweak theory but where polar opposites when it came to religion.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

The Holy Quran enjoins us to reflect on the verities of Allah's created laws of nature; however, that our generation has been privileged to glimpse a part of His design is a bounty and a grace for which I render thanks with a humble heart.

During his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Physics, Salam quoted verses from the Quran.

"Thou seest not, in the creation of the All-merciful any imperfection, Return thy gaze, seest thou any fissure? Then Return thy gaze, again and again. Thy gaze, Comes back to thee dazzled, aweary." (67:3–4) This, in effect, is the faith of all physicists; the deeper we seek, the more is our wonder excited, the more is the dazzlement for our gaze."

Their personal beliefs did not impact one iota on the science.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Your an atheist aren’t you? I can tell by how you do strategically omitted the portion where I said

Whatever He does is good because of who He is and His character,

You can check whether I'm an atheist by looking at my religious status (under my avatar on every post). It's lacking belief in a god or gods that makes me an atheist, not what I quote or don't quote from your posts.

I didn't quote that part because it denies the first horn of the dilemma ('it is good because God does or commands it') and matches the second horn of the dilemma ('God does and commands what is good' [because it is good]), and your follow-up explicitly denies the first horn: "He is not good because anything He should choose to do is considered to be good. That would imply that He could do anything and it would be defined as being good just because He did it."

Whe He is and His character dictates what He does and defines morality.

You can't have it both ways - either God defines morality, i.e. it is good because God does or commands it, which you explicitly rejected above, or He doesn't define morality and only does or commands what is good by some independent moral standard; i.e. He is an exemplar or model reflecting that standard. The claim that His character or nature compels Him to do so is only relevant in that it supports the limitations I described earlier.

 

[ottawak]

Science is about how things work not why they work nor the purpose behind it.
By incorporating God into science leads to logical fallacies as illustrated, as well as the fallacious arguments thrown up by creationists.
The problem goes both ways however as the existence of God is not falsifiable in science and atheists who think science can be used as proof God doesn't exist are committing logical fallacies as well.

Stephen Weinberg and Abdus Salam won the Nobel Prize for their work in Electroweak theory but where polar opposites when it came to religion.




During his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Physics, Salam quoted verses from the Quran.

Their personal beliefs did not impact one iota on the science.

That is why the discussions in this forum are never really about the existence of God as such, but always about the Bible and how it is to be read. The accusations made by creationists that science is "atheistic" are just a smoke screen.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

That is why the discussions in this forum are never really about the existence of God as such, but always about the Bible and how it is to be read. The accusations made by creationists that science is "atheistic" are just a smoke screen.

Well, we do occasionally show how claims of scientific proof of God are mistaken, and rebut logical and philosophical arguments for the existence of God... Of course, that only shows that the proofs and arguments are mistaken.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

That is illogical nonsense. You say "rocks naturally take millions of years to form" but according to you there never were millions of years for this "natural" formation to take place. You might be abe to say something like, "rocks look as if they took millions of years to form, but didn't." Which means that they must have been faked to appear as if they formed by some process which never actually took place.

So your position seems to be that,
1. The Earth (and the universe around it) was created 6000 or so years ago.
2. It was created to appear--to the most discerning scrutiny we can bring to bear on it--much, much older.

And the question before us, which you never seem to get around to answering is, why?

Quite; I'm also curious as to how He creates rocks that look millions of years old and include millions of fossils, but those fossils were apparently put there by the Flood...

 

[BNR32FAN]

That is illogical nonsense. You say "rocks naturally take millions of years to form" but according to you there never were millions of years for this "natural" formation to take place. You might be abe to say something like, "rocks look as if they took millions of years to form, but didn't." Which means that they must have been faked to appear as if they formed by some process which never actually took place.

So your position seems to be that,
1. The Earth (and the universe around it) was created 6000 or so years ago.
2. It was created to appear--to the most discerning scrutiny we can bring to bear on it--much, much older.

And the question before us, which you never seem to get around to answering is, why?

If God wants to make rocks that ARE millions of years old, not appear to be millions of years old but are actually millions of years old He an do it in the blink of an eye. Whether you believe that or not is irrelevant and not of any consequence to me.

As for why He might do this, my guess would be for the same reason that Jesus spoke in parables. “he who has ears to hear, let him hear”

“And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?” Jesus answered them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; You will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; For the heart of this people has become dull, With their ears they scarcely hear, And they have closed their eyes, Otherwise they would see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, And understand with their heart and return, And I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭13:10-17‬ ‭NASB1995‬‬

 

[sjastro]

That is why the discussions in this forum are never really about the existence of God as such, but always about the Bible and how it is to be read. The accusations made by creationists that science is "atheistic" are just a smoke screen.

There are some pretty extreme views here such as Christians who believe in the science cannot be true Christians (I have been referred to as a Satanist) to treating atheists with such disdain they are not worth communicating with in a thread.

 

[BNR32FAN]

You can check whether I'm an atheist by looking at my religious status (under my avatar on every post). It's lacking belief in a god or gods that makes me an atheist, not what I quote or don't quote from your posts.

I didn't quote that part because it denies the first horn of the dilemma ('it is good because God does or commands it') and matches the second horn of the dilemma ('God does and commands what is good' [because it is good]), and your follow-up explicitly denies the first horn: "He is not good because anything He should choose to do is considered to be good. That would imply that He could do anything and it would be defined as being good just because He did it."


You can't have it both ways - either God defines morality, i.e. it is good because God does or commands it, which you explicitly rejected above, or He doesn't define morality and only does or commands what is good by some independent moral standard; i.e. He is an exemplar or model reflecting that standard. The claim that His character or nature compels Him to do so is only relevant in that it supports the limitations I described earlier.

It’s a trick question that I’ve heard before. If I said that it’s good because God does it then you could proceed to say that God can do evil and it would be good because He did it. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this line of questioning. I never rejected that God defines what is good, you claim it can’t be both ways which I disagree. God does define what is good and His Holy character doesn’t allow Him to do evil. The point of this conversation is not to determine why or how God is good, I know you could care less about such matters, the point is to troll a Christian forum trying to trap Christians into saying something that is contradictory so you can give yourself a big pat on the back in front of your fellow atheist piers. Sorry it didn’t work.

 

[AV1611VET]

Hey brother just wanted your opinion, have I made it abundantly clear in this thread that I believe in a 6 day creation? Because I keep getting this question that I feel like I’ve already answered several times so I just wanted to get your opinion.

Absolutely you have!

But they're trying hard to make it look like you don't where you stand on it, and it's backfiring on them.

I knew from your very first post where you were coming from.

God bless!

 

[AV1611VET]

FWIW, I'd personally much rather control my own thinking than let someone else do that for me.

Proverbs 21:2 Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the LORD pondereth the hearts.

 

[AV1611VET]

And the question before us, which you never seem to get around to answering is, why?

Some things require age in order to function in harmony with other things that aren't as old (or older).

You can't make everything the same age and expect them to work together.

Question: If God created a loaf of raisin bread tomorrow, would that confuse you, since raisins are processed grapes?