[quote]pushharder wrote:
I feel no obligation to present a detailed response to your Gen 2:7 question when you won’t ante up in any manner other than a cognitive dissonant one.
[/quote]
That feeling you’ve got is the absence of ability, not the absence of obligation. But we all know that already.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
By what process do bacteria become resistant to antibiotics? Anyone know how the process works?[/quote]
No? Okay. Antibiotics kill off the vast majority of bacteria leaving alive only those that have(through random mutations) that have genetic resistance. This small group of survivors then replicate themselves as a new antibiotic resistant strain. This process is essentially…“natural selection”.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
By what process do bacteria become resistant to antibiotics? Anyone know how the process works?[/quote]
Indeed. Prepare for an onslaught of the word micro. But that doesn’t fly like they think it does. From pages and pages ago, with minor alterations:
[quote]
We know these things: that life is built of DNA; that DNA is conferred by parent organisms upon their children; that, in the exchange, DNA can mutate with apparent randomness; that these mutations, over time and if by happenstance inflationary to the individual organism’s chances of long-term survival, come to obtain as general characteristics within the population. All this has been observed, and it represents an enormous amount of groundwork finished and done for the evolutionist – the analogy, for Push, would entail his showing that, yes, there are living things which have the particular form they have because they were fashioned from dust by god. We know that this is something that happens in the universe, whether it happened to man or not.[/quote]
Can you imagine, good god can you imagine how confident, how insufferably certain he would be if he’d accomplished even a fraction of what the evolutionist has accomplished in observing and documenting the fact of natural selection’s reality? If he could say, as the evolutionist can, that I have this theory that man’s origin is in dust into which god breathed life…and I can show you that part of this process is legitimate, it’s something that happens.
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
You evolutionist diehard cultists need to read the following. Especially those of you who think you’ve “won the debate” by “painting creationists into a corner” with your silly Genesis 2:7 challenges and arrogant accusations that I and other creationists “dodge” your oh so skillfully designed arguments which really come from the TalkOrigins website and the vain recesses of your predetermined, assumptive mindset.
From the Life After Death thread:
[quote]pabergin wrote:
…So I came across this posting. I liked it. Any thoughts about it?
Max Planck, Nobel Prize winner in physics and the founder of quantum theory, on science and religion:
"No matter where and how far we look, nowhere do we find a contradiction between religion and natural science. On the contrary, we find a complete concordance in the very points of decisive importance. Religion and natural science do not exclude each other, as many contemporaries of ours would believe or fear. They mutually supplement and condition each other. …
As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter."
Roger Penrose, a famous British mathematician and friend of Stephen Hawking (they co-authored the book, The Nature of Space and Time), calculated the odds of the Big Bang producing by chance a universe so low in entropy (disorder) that the emergence and development of life was even a possibility to be 1 in 10^10^123. How big is that number? To write it out without using exponential notation would require writing so many zeros after the “1” that even if you wrote a zero for each proton, neutron and electron in the observable universe, and a zero for all the other elementary particles in it as well, you would still fall far short of writing down the figure needed.
Modern science has revealed to us that life consists of digital-information-based nanotechnology the functional complexity of which is light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch. Philosopher of Science Karl Popper on the the digital information in DNA:
"What makes the origin of life and of the genetic code a disturbing riddle is this: the genetic code is without any biological function unless it is translated; that is, unless it leads to the synthesis of the proteins whose structure is laid down by the code. But … the machinery by which the cell (at least the non-primitive cell, which is the only one we know) translates the code consists of at least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in the DNA. Thus the code cannot be translated except by using certain products of its translation. This constitutes a baffling circle; a really vicious circle, it seems, for any attempt to form a model or theory of the genesis of the genetic code. Thus we may be faced with the possibility that the origin of life (like the origin of physics) becomes an impenetrable barrier to science, and a residue to all attempts to reduce biology to chemistry and physics.
There is a “disturbing riddle” only when an a priori assumption is made that intelligence cannot have been a causal factor in the emergence of the information in DNA. Without such an assumption it becomes obvious that a mind knew how to construct the machinery by which the cell translates the code outside the DNA molecule, and how to code the instructions for the construction that same machinery within the DNA. Intelligence is a known reality and it is therefore entirely legitimate for science to consider it among the possible causal factors in a given phenomenon coming about.
In light of the above, it is entirely reasonable to assume that a transcendent, supernatural mind is the primary and ultimate reality. It is unreasonable to just assume that the Universe popped into existence out of nothingness, then we just “got lucky” in that it accidentally configured itself such that the ultra-sophisticated nanotechnology of life would become a possibility, then mindlessly arrived at massive quantities of digital instructions required to assemble that technology, then – again, mindlessly and accidentally – actually assembled that technology along with the environment it requires to function and to be sustained. Such is atheism’s creation myth. It is easier to believe computers could accidentally assemble themselves and then mindlessly write software that, through self-replication, could evolve into programs of ever increasing functionality and complexity.
Neo-Darwinism has no explanation for the origin of that first, single-celled reproducing life form, nor for the emergence of the information it required, nor for the source of the new information required for the addition of new tissue types, body plans and so on which macro-evolution requires.
The discoveries of modern science have brought us to a point where the debate among the intellectually honest ought to be about the nature and the intentions for humanity, if any, of the transcendent intellect that is the ultimate origin of all that exists, not about the assertion that such an intellect is not there at all, which is merely the fanatically held, unfounded by the facts, blind-faith-based belief of atheistic zealots. Was Christ the revelation to humanity of the nature, and of the intentions for humanity, of that transcendent intellect? That is an interesting question to minds capable of objectivity and neutrality.
It is time to move the discussion to where the light shed on reality by modern science compels us to place it.[/quote][/quote]
How does creationism account for the existence of at least 17 early human species? Homo sapiens is a very young species, being only 200,000 years old. I posed this question multiple times to no avail.
[/quote]
Nephilim? PreAdamites?
Actually, literalists don’t really have to “account” for anything. The most interesting lay theologians don’t question “the facts” so much but rather reason itself.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
By what process do bacteria become resistant to antibiotics? Anyone know how the process works?[/quote]
Indeed. Prepare for an onslaught of the word micro. But that doesn’t fly like they think it does. From pages and pages ago, with minor alterations:
[quote]
We know these things: that life is built of DNA; that DNA is conferred by parent organisms upon their children; that, in the exchange, DNA can mutate with apparent randomness; that these mutations, over time and if by happenstance inflationary to the individual organism’s chances of long-term survival, come to obtain as general characteristics within the population. All this has been observed, and it represents an enormous amount of groundwork finished and done for the evolutionist – the analogy, for Push, would entail his showing that, yes, there are living things which have the particular form they have because they were fashioned from dust by god. We know that this is something that happens in the universe, whether it happened to man or not.[/quote]
Can you imagine, good god can you imagine how confident, how insufferably certain he would be if he’d accomplished even a fraction of what the evolutionist has accomplished in observing and documenting the fact of natural selection’s reality? If he could say, as the evolutionist can, that I have this theory that man’s origin is in dust into which god breathed life…and I can show you that part of this process is legitimate, it’s something that happens.[/quote]
The problem they find themselves in is due to the church’s rejection of fideism. The Catholic Church has a long tradition of claiming that you can reason your way to the existence of God. This is of course what Thomas Aquinas set out to do. Judaism has a similar tradition with Maimonides assertion that science and faith are reconcilable.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
You evolutionist diehard cultists need to read the following. Especially those of you who think you’ve “won the debate” by “painting creationists into a corner” with your silly Genesis 2:7 challenges and arrogant accusations that I and other creationists “dodge” your oh so skillfully designed arguments which really come from the TalkOrigins website and the vain recesses of your predetermined, assumptive mindset.[/quote]
To my knowledge you will not find my challenge anywhere, because it comes from me. (But please continue to pretend that you don’t lift your fallacies from Answersingenesis and the ICR [I could not bring myself to write out the latter’s name for fear that I would thereby contribute to the silly fiction that it is a reputable scientific institution.])
You hold that an account of something is true – that, as Gen 2:7 pitiably claims, god formed man from dust and breathed into him the breath of life – so I challenged you to provide me with any direct and specific evidence in support of the conclusion that such a thing has or might have happened. Any direct and specifically evidential reason to hold the positive belief that of all its countless competitors, this is the account of creation toward which a reasonable observer is inclined to bend. Any scrap of evidence in specific and direct support of the hypothesis encapsulated by Gen 2:7 – a hypothesis claimed by you to be reasonable and for which therefore you MUST have at least some kind of specifically evidential structure.
I challenged you to do this by imagining that you are to debate a renowned evolutionist. He makes his claims and then he provides all of the specific and direct evidence he can gather in its support. And then you take the stage, and you read Gen 2:7, and do the same: You provide all of the specific and direct evidence you can gather in its support.
And your answer is…“your silly Genesis 2:7 challenges.” Silly. [i]Silly[/i]. You were challenged to give us a single shred of evidence in direct and specific support of a position which you hold to be reasonable…and you called this silly?
That – that word – “silly” – is a conclusion. A victory. A decisive one.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
You evolutionist diehard cultists need to read the following. Especially those of you who think you’ve “won the debate” by “painting creationists into a corner” with your silly Genesis 2:7 challenges and arrogant accusations that I and other creationists “dodge” your oh so skillfully designed arguments which really come from the TalkOrigins website and the vain recesses of your predetermined, assumptive mindset.
From the Life After Death thread:
"No matter where and how far we look, nowhere do we find a contradiction between religion and natural science. On the contrary, we find a complete concordance in the very points of decisive importance. Religion and natural science do not exclude each other, as many contemporaries of ours would believe or fear. They mutually supplement and condition each other. …
As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter."
[/quote]
This is EXACTLY my belief. In fact I have stated this in so many words several times over the years. This is an idea I can get behind and fully support. “God” is the “force/energy/divine thought” that holds the universe together.
What I cannot get behind is that in the whole VAST universe with countless stars and statistically countless number of life forms, why ~2000 years ago he chose to impregnate a married woman spontaneously and then kill “his ‘son’” thirty some odd years later so the the rest of the inhabitants of that tiny, insignificant planet wouldn’t go to “hell”. Or why however many years before that, he wrote ten immature sentences on some rocks and started setting bushes on fire. Or commanding people to kill babies. Or making homosexuality common in the animal kingdom but “sinful” in the human world. It’s all BULLSHIT.
Examine each of those things:
Creating the Universe = amazing, beautiful, creative, all-powerful, vast beyond our comprehension, consistent provable laws, mathematical, etc…
Every story in the bible: petty, jealous, inconsistent, cruel, almost schizophrenic, insecure, infantile, and above all: PRIMITIVE (kinda like the people who WROTE it)
The same being did not “create” both of those things.
The being/intelligence that created/maintains the Universe is not an insecure, “hands on”, dictator who cares what happens on that little rock in a random solar system in the Milky Way Galaxy. No fucking way.
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
This is EXACTLY my belief. In fact I have stated this in so many words several times over the years. This is an idea I can get behind and fully support. “God” is the “force/energy/divine thought” that holds the universe together.
What I cannot get behind is that in the whole VAST universe with countless stars and statistically countless number of life forms, why ~2000 years ago he chose to impregnate a married woman spontaneously and then kill “his ‘son’” thirty some odd years later so the the rest of the inhabitants of that tiny, insignificant planet wouldn’t go to “hell”. Or why however many years before that, he wrote ten immature sentences on some rocks and started setting bushes on fire. Or commanding people to kill babies. Or making homosexuality common in the animal kingdom but “sinful” in the human world. It’s all BULLSHIT.
[/quote]
Translation: I could really get behind a God that believed exactly what I believe; a God, that is merely a reflection of myself.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
By what process do bacteria become resistant to antibiotics? Anyone know how the process works?[/quote]
When they do adapt do is there evidence they become something other than bacteria?
See, SM, if your knowledge of creationism is so limited that you believe creationists don’t accept adaptation and speciation (really, sub-speciation) than you have plenty of homework to do before you reappear making judgments about it.
Tip of the day: taxonomy is a very inexact science.[/quote]
It would kind of take like, tens of millions of years at a minimum for an organism to evolve into an entirely new lifeform. This makes it difficult to replicate in experiments. However the fossil record clearly shows a linear path from simple organisms to more complex ones. You know this. Your arguments against evolution don’t undermine this fundamental process. At best, they demonstrate that this process is not yet fully understood. This is something I agree with you on. But again, it doesn’t alter the fact that this process, albeit imperfectly understood, is not happening. And it certainly doesn’t support a literalist account of creation.
The Planck & co. excerpts do speak to me and my being an agnostic (leaning, even, toward theism) rather than an atheist. It was exposure to those and similar arguments in my teens that led me to agnosticism in the first place. But they have little to say about mud men and talking animals. If Dr. S is in observation today: No, my friend, I am not mocking Anna Karenina. I am mocking the people who think we should all be searching for Anna’s grave.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
It would kind of take like, tens of millions of years at a minimum for an organism to evolve into an entirely new lifeform. This makes it difficult to replicate in experiments. However the fossil record clearly shows a linear path from simple organisms to more complex ones. You know this. Your arguments against evolution don’t undermine this fundamental process. At best, they demonstrate that this process is not yet fully understood. This is something I agree with you on. But again, it doesn’t alter the fact that this process, albeit imperfectly understood, is not happening. And it certainly doesn’t support a literalist account of creation.[/quote]
This, here, is it.
But you will get flat denials: “No no no;” and “oh boy you really stepped in it;” and “you’re a cultist.” And many other toothless assaults. Not that any of this will hurt your credibility, or do your thesis damage: It won’t. But it still isn’t pleasant to be wetly and impotently gummed.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The Planck & co. excerpts do speak to me and my being an agnostic (leaning, even, toward theism) rather than an atheist. It was exposure to those and similar arguments in my teens that led me to agnosticism in the first place. But they have little to say about mud men and talking animals. If Dr. S is in observation today: No, my friend, I am not mocking Anna Karenina. I am mocking the people who think we should all be searching for Anna’s grave.[/quote]
You’re too Apollonian to lean towards theism. There is a fundamental tension between transcendentalism and rationality. Push tries to harmonise the two with absurd results. I compartmentalise the two.
I agree with Pierre Bayle and with Unamuno that when cold reason contemplates the world it finds not only an absence of God, but good reasons for supposing that there is no God at all. From this perspective, from what Unamuno called the ‘tragic sense of life’, from this despair, faith comes to the rescue, not only as something nonrational but in a sense irrational. For Unamuno the great symbol of a person of faith was his Spanish hero Don Quixote. Faith is indeed quixotic. It is absurd. Let us admit it. Let us concede to everything!
To a rational mind the world looks like a world without God. It looks like a world with no hope for another life. To think otherwise, to believe in spite of appearances, is surely a kind of madness. The atheist sees clearly that windmills are in fact only windmills, that Dulcinea is just a poor country bumpkin with a homely face and an unpleasant smell. The atheist is a Sarah, justifiably laughing in her old age at Abraham’s belief that God will give them a son.
What can be said in reply? How can a fideist admit that faith is a kind of madness, a dream fed by passionate desire, and yet maintain that one is not mad to make the leap?
Martin Gardner
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
This is EXACTLY my belief. In fact I have stated this in so many words several times over the years. This is an idea I can get behind and fully support. “God” is the “force/energy/divine thought” that holds the universe together.
What I cannot get behind is that in the whole VAST universe with countless stars and statistically countless number of life forms, why ~2000 years ago he chose to impregnate a married woman spontaneously and then kill “his ‘son’” thirty some odd years later so the the rest of the inhabitants of that tiny, insignificant planet wouldn’t go to “hell”. Or why however many years before that, he wrote ten immature sentences on some rocks and started setting bushes on fire. Or commanding people to kill babies. Or making homosexuality common in the animal kingdom but “sinful” in the human world. It’s all BULLSHIT.
[/quote]
Translation: I could really get behind a God that believed exactly what I believe; a God, that is merely a reflection of myself.
[/quote]
How is that a reflection of myself? I never claimed to hold the universe together with a thought. I’m saying that I can “believe” in a supreme being/divine intelligence that created the laws of the Universe over the incoherent ramblings of a bunch of primitive goat herders that’s been translated half a dozen times by powerful entities bent on population control.
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
How is that a reflection of myself?
[/quote]
You deciding what is sinful and what is not; what is morally acceptable and what is not?
[quote]
I never claimed to hold the universe together with a thought. I’m saying that I can “believe” in a supreme being/divine intelligence that created the laws of the Universe over the incoherent ramblings of a bunch of primitive goat herders that’s been translated half a dozen times by powerful entities bent on population control.[/quote]
Care to outline a theology that you would find palatable?