Intelligent Design

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
341

[quote]forlife wrote:
Since immorality is subjectively defined, you don’t have much evidence for that claim outside of your fairy tales.

You are being disingenuous by claiming that you haven’t specified any fables in the bible. When asked about specific biblical stories, you refuse to confirm whether or not you believe they are fables.

Your silence speaks volumes.

Oh, and for the record:

I love fundamentalist Christians, I only hate the fairy tales they try to promote as facts.[/quote]

My point is that this thread is about intelligent design. If you want to start an intolerant, Christian bashing thread, go for it.

I’ve already explained that the new testament has no impact on fundamental creationism, yet you continue to make attacks that are entirely off subject. Yes, I stop responding to many of those attacks, because an insult is not an argument, and they don’t pertain to the topic. Especially when it pertains to you attempting to destroy anyone’s faith.

You too haven’t answered any of the personal questions I proposed in retort, does that speak volumes?

However, if you demand to get personal, I think that in your heart you know you have been choosing to accept and condone immoral actions and that there may be some truth to eventual consequences for those actions. Further, that you are so insecure in your facade of “beliefs” that you take any attempt to tear down lights that might expose them for what they are. I don’t think you abandoned Christianity because of reasoning or logic, but because you didn’t like the face it showed you in the mirror. You are afraid it’s true, not convinced it’s false.

But that’s just my take on things.

342

Don’t be so sensitive, I don’t think Christianity is any more or less special than other religions. My criticism about fairy tales parading as facts applies to them as well.

How is a question about whether or not you view biblical stories as facts an “insult” or an “attack”? It is a simply yes or no question but you continue to dodge it, and I think we both know why.

I’ve already said that I am willing to honestly answer your questions, if you will show me the respect of answering mine. How about it?

You’re more than welcome to your opinion of my motivation for believing what I do.

343

[quote]forlife wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
NO I NEVER SAID ANYTHING WAS A FABLE.

Then answer my questions. For example, do you believe that:

  1. Moses parted the Red Sea?

  2. Noah built an ark and put every species of animal on it, to preserve them from a world-wide flood?

  3. God sent a bear to devour a few children for making fun of Elisha’s bald head?

  4. God caused the sun to stand still so Joshua could vanquish his enemies?

  5. Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine, and multiplied a few loaves of bread to feed five thousand people?[/quote]

Well you know my answer,

and you do realize I have no problem with you as a person, even though I interject and argue, sometimes I get angry and lash out and for that I apologize.

I may not agree with your lifestyle choices, but they are your choices not mine, you are still a soul with an eternity in my eyes and so haineously corrupt you are devoid of my respect.

To answer if it were humanly comprehendable to understand the existance of GOD and even more find a way to prove or disporve it I would have to accept it.

But to stay on topic this is my view:

I believe in an intellegent designer, namely the GOD in which I place my faith. I also believe in the concepts of natural selection and do actually understand the genetic underpinnings of this concept, unlike some people who throw gross anomilies at me and think they are making some kind of point.

I take the bible as a literal and historical book in it’s entirety. That is my belief and I force it on no one.

But I also would expect the same in return. When it isn’t then yes I will push it back at them.

344

Since you accept the bible as literal and infallible, how do you explain all of the inconsistencies and contradictions?

For example, I noted one among many contradictions here:

[b]Acts 9:7
And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.

Acts 22:9
And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of Him that spoke to me.[/b]

Moreover, why would you want to worship a deity so cruel as to kill children for making fun of a man’s bald head?

345

. . . In the original Greek, however, there is no real contradiction between these two statements. Greek makes a distinction between hearing a sound as a noise (in which case the verb “to hear” takes the genitive case) and hearing a voice as a thought-conveying message (in which case it takes the accusative). Therefore, as we put the two statements together, we find that Paul’s companions heard the Voice as a sound (somewhat like the crowd who heard the sound of the Father talking to the Son in John 12:28, but perceived it only as thunder); but they did not (like Paul) hear the message that it articulated.

Paul alone heard it inteligibly (Acts 9:4 says Paul ekousen phonen–accusative case); though he, of course, perceived it also as a startling sound at first (Acts 22:7: “I fell to the ground and heard a voice [ekousa phones] saying to me,” NASB). But in neither account is it stated that his companions ever heard that Voice in the accusative case.
– Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, by Gleason L. Archer, p. 382.

Now go create a different thread.

346

Perfect example of what I’m talking about.

Anything, and I mean anything, can be twisted to fit some form of logic if you try hard enough. It’s called rationalization, and religion is full of it.

I saw it over and over again with Mormonism. People were so convoluted in explaining the different versions of the First Vision, the blatant mistranslation of the scroll Joseph Smith insisted was written by Abraham’s hand, etc.

They start with the assumption that their belief MUST be true, and therefore there MUST be a rational explanation for it. Confirmatory bias is insidious, but people do it all the time to assure themselves that their fairy tales are real. They never admit that maybe the belief itself is actually wrong.

My 10 year-old daughter did this just a few days ago. One of her friends told her that she noticed the handwriting on the presents was the same, whether they came from Santa or from Mom and Dad. Since my daughter is convinced Santa is real, she came up with a convoluted reason to reconcile this apparent contradiction.

Religious people are fundamentally no different from my daughter, they just believe in different fairy tales.

347

[quote]forlife wrote:
Perfect example of what I’m talking about.

Anything, and I mean anything, can be twisted to fit some form of logic if you try hard enough. It’s called rationalization, and religion is full of it.

I saw it over and over again with Mormonism. People were so convoluted in explaining the different versions of the First Vision, the blatant mistranslation of the scroll Joseph Smith insisted was written by Abraham’s hand, etc.

They start with the assumption that their belief MUST be true, and therefore there MUST be a rational explanation for it. Confirmatory bias is insidious, but people do it all the time to assure themselves that their fairy tales are real. They never admit that maybe the belief itself is actually wrong.

My 10 year-old daughter did this just a few days ago. One of her friends told her that she noticed the handwriting on the presents was the same, whether they came from Santa or from Mom and Dad. Since my daughter is convinced Santa is real, she came up with a convoluted reason to reconcile this apparent contradiction.

Religious people are fundamentally no different from my daughter, they just believe in different fairy tales.[/quote]

It is a fact the different tenses of the word mean different things. In Greek, there is no contradiction, plain and simple. Once again you are the one twisting what is actually there to try and prove your prefabricate assumption that the book is false, because you don’t agree with it’s morals.

348

[quote]entheogens wrote:
Science uses quantitative methods to discover certain rules governing the universe, make predictions based upon those rules and produce technologies. As such, it occurs to me that if we accept the notion that God could not be described using quantitative measures that the best science can say is that science cannot prove the existence of God.

On the one hand you find proponents of scientism sometimes taking it one step further and declaring that “there is no God”. On the other hand, you find may evangelicals trying to get Intelligent Design to be taught in classrooms, in addition to the theory of evolution. In my opinion Intelligent Design is not science and has no place in courses on biology. It deserves to be in courses on theology.

Nonetheless, using Wedge strategy, some evangelicals have clamored for an equal status of Intelligent Design, as science:

One very interesting evangelical, Reverend Michael Dowd, has stated that there is no conflict between evolution and spiritual perspectives:
http://thankgodforevolution.com/the-author

[/quote]

I’ve just re-read this first post. It kind of jumped out that you’re ignoring the point. ‘Science’ can’t prove anything, it can merely use empirical evidence to lend varying degrees of support to hypotheses which might lead to a logically consistent theory.

However the most basic principle is that other things being equal you choose the simplist model, so called ‘okhams razor’(spelling). Based upon the evidence we can say that they is none for or against a universe creating god. Therefore until some evidence arrives to support the more complex hypothesis of an all powerful being we just have to go with the simpler hypothesis that we don’t yet know what is going…

349

You’re missing the larger point.

But since you brought it up, it is easy to cut and paste a boilerplate answer without taking the time to understand why it is both convoluted and logically incoherent.

You said that in the first passage, the genitive case was used, meaning that the men physically heard the voice of Jesus. You said the accusative case was used in the second passage, meaning that the men may have heard the physical sound, but did not actually understand what Jesus was saying.

That would be fine, except that it is contradicted by many other examples of the genitive vs. accusative case in the new testament.

For example, Acts 3:23 refers to “every soul which will not hear the prophet.”

Genitive or Accusative?

By your definition, Paul was condemning those that refuse to consider the meaning of a prophet’s words, not those that never physically hear a prophet’s voice. However, the case used here is genetive, not accusative.

As with most convolutions, when you drill down to details the inherent contradictions become apparent.

The problem is that most rationalizing religionists lack the motivation to honestly and thoroughly analyze such details, because they are pre-convinced that their belief is true.

350

[quote]forlife wrote:
You’re missing the larger point.

But since you brought it up, it is easy to cut and paste a boilerplate answer without taking the time to understand why it is both convoluted and logically incoherent.

You said that in the first passage, the genitive case was used, meaning that the men physically heard the voice of Jesus. You said the accusative case was used in the second passage, meaning that the men may have heard the physical sound, but did not actually understand what Jesus was saying.

That would be fine, except that it is contradicted by many other examples of the genitive vs. accusative case in the new testament.

For example, Acts 3:23 refers to “every soul which will not hear the prophet.”

Genitive or Accusative?

By your definition, Paul was condemning those that refuse to consider the meaning of a prophet’s words, not those that never physically hear a prophet’s voice. However, the case used here is genetive, not accusative.

As with most convolutions, when you drill down to details the inherent contradictions become apparent.

The problem is that most rationalizing religionists lack the motivation to honestly and thoroughly analyze such details, because they are pre-convinced that their belief is true.[/quote]

By my definition of what? when did I define Paul as condemning people who refuse to consider the meaning of paul’s words?

351

By your definition of the accusative case. Obviously Paul wasn’t condemning people who never physically hear a prophet’s voice, yet the scripture uses the genitive case.

Your convoluted explanation for the discrepancies in the accounts for Paul’s conversion doesn’t hold up when you look at other uses of the genitive vs. accusative case in the new testament.

352

[quote]forlife wrote:
By your definition of the accusative case. Obviously Paul wasn’t condemning people who never physically hear a prophet’s voice, yet the scripture uses the genitive case.

Your convoluted explanation for the discrepancies in the accounts for Paul’s conversion doesn’t hold up when you look at other uses of the genitive vs. accusative case in the new testament.[/quote]

No, I was talking about how you know what Paul meant regardless of what the book actually says.

353

What we do know is that noone, besides Paul, recognized an intelligible voice. Arguing over the emphasis of two different passages is trivial.

354

I also like how forelife insults me for copying and pasting a Google search response to a copy and paste Google search attack.

355

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Do you believe that by sheer random chance and the act of nothing or no one, some huge balls of gas poofed into existence out of nothing, collided, created the universe, created the fundamental laws of existence and matter, formed the earth, and spontaneously generated life and eventually consciousness?[/quote]

It may have happened that way, but I doubt it was random. I find it hard to comprehend that we exist randomly, but then again, I doubt I can comprehend the extent of the universe.

I also find it hilarious that people can be “open-minded” right until someone says “well, couldn’t the Bible be wrong?”

Did it ever occur to you that major religions have a vested interest in keeping the masses under their control? We’re just not smart enough to comprehend existence. Wait until the human race is a bit smarter before going there.

Just as an aside, I don’t see anything wrong with the underlying morals of what Jesus preached and the majority of the New Testament, it’s just when people take things LITERALLY that the old BS meter goes off.

356

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
forlife wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
NO I NEVER SAID ANYTHING WAS A FABLE.

Then answer my questions. For example, do you believe that:

  1. Moses parted the Red Sea?

  2. Noah built an ark and put every species of animal on it, to preserve them from a world-wide flood?

  3. God sent a bear to devour a few children for making fun of Elisha’s bald head?

  4. God caused the sun to stand still so Joshua could vanquish his enemies?

  5. Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine, and multiplied a few loaves of bread to feed five thousand people?

Do you believe that by sheer random chance and the act of nothing or no one, some huge balls of gas poofed into existence out of nothing, collided, created the universe, created the fundamental laws of existence and matter, formed the earth, and spontaneously generated life and eventually consciousness?[/quote]

The way you framed that question is very telling. Framing the question in that manner makes it seem virtually impossible that we were not designed by an intelligent creator.

You seem to be misinterpreting the nature of “random chance” and observation. Imagine if you observed someone rolling a dice 100 times and they rolled a six every single time. The probability of this happening is extremely low, so you would most likely assume that it was not due to random chance, but was more likely caused by a trick die.

What if you then found out that the dice had actually been rolled many trillions of times, but for some reason you were only able to observe the sequence of 100 sixes. Due to random chance it was actually inevitable that such a sequence would eventually occur, although it would not seem this way to the observer.

This is what we are faced with when we consider the existence of the laws of the universe, the formation of the Earth, our own consciousness etc. We have no way of knowing how many universes may have existed with different combinations of fundamental laws that did not result in the formation of life. The only universe that we get to observe is the one that resulted in our ability to observe it.

It is not completely logical to simply work back from the point of our own existence and say “The universe is just too perfect to arise without a designer”.

357

[quote]Makavali wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
Do you believe that by sheer random chance and the act of nothing or no one, some huge balls of gas poofed into existence out of nothing, collided, created the universe, created the fundamental laws of existence and matter, formed the earth, and spontaneously generated life and eventually consciousness?

It may have happened that way, but I doubt it was random. I find it hard to comprehend that we exist randomly, but then again, I doubt I can comprehend the extent of the universe.

I also find it hilarious that people can be “open-minded” right until someone says “well, couldn’t the Bible be wrong?”

Did it ever occur to you that major religions have a vested interest in keeping the masses under their control? We’re just not smart enough to comprehend existence. Wait until the human race is a bit smarter before going there.

Just as an aside, I don’t see anything wrong with the underlying morals of what Jesus preached and the majority of the New Testament, it’s just when people take things LITERALLY that the old BS meter goes off.[/quote]

“Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
-Ghandi

358

[quote]Regular Gonzalez wrote:
“Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
-Ghandi[/quote]

Pretty much. I like Christ, he seems like a swell guy.

I just don’t like the way “Christians” spread the “word”.

359

[quote]Makavali wrote:
Regular Gonzalez wrote:
“Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
-Ghandi

Pretty much. I like Christ, he seems like a swell guy.

I just don’t like the way “Christians” spread the “word”.[/quote]

Jesus said he comes with a sword as a divider.

360

[quote]Regular Gonzalez wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
forlife wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
NO I NEVER SAID ANYTHING WAS A FABLE.

Then answer my questions. For example, do you believe that:

  1. Moses parted the Red Sea?

  2. Noah built an ark and put every species of animal on it, to preserve them from a world-wide flood?

  3. God sent a bear to devour a few children for making fun of Elisha’s bald head?

  4. God caused the sun to stand still so Joshua could vanquish his enemies?

  5. Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine, and multiplied a few loaves of bread to feed five thousand people?

Do you believe that by sheer random chance and the act of nothing or no one, some huge balls of gas poofed into existence out of nothing, collided, created the universe, created the fundamental laws of existence and matter, formed the earth, and spontaneously generated life and eventually consciousness?

The way you framed that question is very telling. Framing the question in that manner makes it seem virtually impossible that we were not designed by an intelligent creator.

You seem to be misinterpreting the nature of “random chance” and observation. Imagine if you observed someone rolling a dice 100 times and they rolled a six every single time. The probability of this happening is extremely low, so you would most likely assume that it was not due to random chance, but was more likely caused by a trick die.

What if you then found out that the dice had actually been rolled many trillions of times, but for some reason you were only able to observe the sequence of 100 sixes. Due to random chance it was actually inevitable that such a sequence would eventually occur, although it would not seem this way to the observer.

This is what we are faced with when we consider the existence of the laws of the universe, the formation of the Earth, our own consciousness etc. We have no way of knowing how many universes may have existed with different combinations of fundamental laws that did not result in the formation of life. The only universe that we get to observe is the one that resulted in our ability to observe it.

It is not completely logical to simply work back from the point of our own existence and say “The universe is just too perfect to arise without a designer”.

[/quote]

I framed it that way on purpose, mimicking forelife’s questions, I meant no offense.

You honestly believe that if you sit around observing nothingness long enough and give it no input eventually something will happen. Because the dice rolling you are talking about is nothingness.

I think the very fact you framed it as someone giving an input to a situation that results in events occurring is very telling. I feel that observable science suggests God’s input in the creation of the universe. There is no observable system that when at steady state, and void of all action suddenly changes into action without some input. Something had to be introduced to the system by something outside of it to. That doesn’t mean that it had to be the Christian God, or the Buddhist one,or even that it’s still around, but there has to be something outside our universe that gave action to this one.