Serious bible question

[patra_is_here]

I am just asking if a plausible reason has been found as to why "smart" dinos, did not evolve like we did and could they have evolved...

same for non human mammals.

ok, still having some issues with what you're asking, but I'll handle it as I think you mean for me to answer.

at some point in biological evolution, there where other animals likely similar to intelligence to our ancestors, and for whatever reason, our ancestors became the successful lineage. that's all there is to it, regarding non-human mammals. we are the result of the successful ancestors, simply because the unsuccessful aren't here at all.

 

as far as smart dinos are concerned, i havent really dealt with that subject, but I can tell you that intelligence is directly related to brain structure, and I havent seen any evidence to suggest that any of the dinos had the capability of a similarly structured brain. being cold blooded mechanically limits the type of brain you can maintain in your body.

[87quest_stv]

and that's OK. I was more just bringing the story up as an illustration. In my opinion, even if God walked among us today and did some of the things you've described above, there would still be doubters. It just seems that that is human nature

 

This is absolutely true and reletive to the original question. According to the scriptures when moses led his people out of eqypt up to this point they had already witnessed crazy things like hail and brinmstone, frogs plagues, locust plagues, plague of livestock dying, water turned to blood, etc. . God was with them in the form a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night, Even after seeing this people still didn't have faith in the Lord. After they were being led out of egypt pharoh and his army pursed them to the red sea, the people were scared and wanted to go back and hope pharoh would forgive them as to not face the pharohs wrath. So God gave Moses the power to part the red sea using his staff. All the israelites passed through the red sea without harm. However when Pharohs army pursued through the same path moses let his arms down and the red sea crashed down killing all of pharoh's army. Now whether you beleive in the bible or not. The hard evidence of a distaster in the red seas is there. There are chariots, horse and human remains at the bottom of the red sea at a point where it is thought that Moses and his people crossed.. This is documented proof. http://www.snopes.com/religion/redsea.asp . Even after witnessing all these miraculous things the people still didn't have faith that the Lord their God was there to protect them.

 

Once they made it to mount Sinai Moses tracked up the mountain for 40 days. In that 40 days about half the people started to make golden calves and worship them instead of remaining vigil in light of eveything that had happened. They were fornicating with eveyone including, of the same sex. When Moses was in the mountain he was getting the 10 commandments. which are

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

2. You shall not make yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them, For I, the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third or fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

3.You shall not misuse the name of the Lord you God, the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. Onit you shall not do any work. neither you , nor your son or daughter, Nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the visitor within your gates, For in six days the Lord your God made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and the all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day, Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. ( hebrew words for the days of the weeks mean numbers. here's a link for more infor on that http://www.yashanet.com/library/hebrew-days-and-months.html

5. Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you

6. You shall not murder

7. You shall not commit adultery

8. You shall not steal

9. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor

10. You shall not covet your neighbors house, his wife, nor his manservant or maidservant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

 

After coming down the mountain Moses saw that the people had built a golden calf and were worshiping it singing to it and thanking it for bringing them out of egypt. Just like that, within 40 days half the people wanted to worship something else than what had actually helped them. This angered God and he was going to destroy all of them at that point. But Moses pleaded for their lives and gained the Lords grace for them. But when moses came down the mountain he himself called out to those that would stand with him and the Lord to come to him. the rest were killed for their disobidience.

 

I'm explaining all this to bring me to the point that really, according the the scriptures, answeres the original question in this thread. God did so much for these people. and all they did throughout the entire time he was to lead them to promised land was turn their backs on God. Spit in his face , figuritvely speaking, and God at one point said to Moses " I will not go with you because you are stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way" ove the history of the Jewish people from the beginning they were God's chosen people. And from the beginning the Jewish people rejected God, rejected his son. rejected is grace, and love, and mercy. So over history because they broke their covenant with God, the Jewish people have suffered the wrath of God. The total destruction of Israel in 72AD and the persecution of Jewish people all the way up to the re emergence of Israel as a nation in 1948 ( also a very undisputed fact of the prophecy written thousands of yrs ago.)

 

But the Jewish people are still to this day God's chosen people. God still loves them and us all gentiles, all he wants is obediance, do the right thing. walk a straight path and worship him with thanks for the blessings and grace we have.

Satan's job is to put doubt in your mind and lead you to death spiritually. The question isn't would you rather have eternal life and become bored with it? but do you want eternal damnation? I choose life personally.

 

MATTHEW 10:28

 

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One(God) who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” 4

 

 

 

 

Edited March 28, 2012 by 87quest_stv

[patra_is_here]

 

So really, and im snagging this from Chip, if Science is truly an ever changing thing with findings always tentative (which it is), then those who only believe (atheist) in science as there foundation to whats real or not, then they are putting just as much faith in science as we do God. If I had to look at the two where God has not lied (by bible standards) or broken any promises and has been correct on all things vs something (science) that has been proven wrong over and over again - I would pick God. This is ultimately a decision for anyone - but I suppose there are people who don't believe in either??

 

"I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse" ~ Philip Yancey

you are illustrating a common misconception. atheist don't believe in science. there's nothing to believe in. science is a tool and a system that does not require us to believe. we don't need to believe that matter is made from atoms and electrons and what have you, because belief doesnt effect that physical reality behaves as though it was made from atoms and electrons and such. regardless of your belief, matter behaves as science has observed it behaving. mathematically, and systematically, things in science behave in the way in which science has predicted they will. the system 'holds'. there is no need to believe in science. it's simply 'accurate until it's not'.

 

science isn't about what's real. it's about how you define and categorize and study what we quantify as being real. if there was a way to scientifically study god, then we would. It's very difficult to explain this important details to people who aren't actively involved in the sciences. I've been on this path for almost 2 decades. I am entrenched in the scientific understanding of tangible reality, and conjectured reality like mathematics.

 

so, again, we don't have belief in science, as there's nothing that requires belief. things are as they are, and that's all there is too it. it's so simple and clear. whether or not electrons actually exist is irrelevant, what is relevant is that we detect an EM field and EV during lab experiments. so we detect a phenomenon and with that phenomenon we devise a consistent explanation and mathematical model that holds throughout the entire system. i know this is a sort of round-about explanation, but i hope it helps.

Edited March 28, 2012 by patra_is_here

[patra_is_here]

This is documented proof. http://www.snopes.co...gion/redsea.asp .

 

do you realize that the link says "UNDETERMINED" and as such, you can't use that as a proof in any regards.

 

The total destruction of Israel in 72AD and the persecution of Jewish people all the way up to the re emergence of Israel as a nation in 1948 ( also a very undisputed fact of the prophecy written thousands of yrs ago.)

dude, you realize that the bible was used as the premise for establishing israel, and therefore it's a circular proof, and completely invalid to prove any point you're trying to make. essentially the establishment of israel was a self-fulfilling prophesy. Edited March 28, 2012 by patra_is_here

[87quest_stv]

dude, you realize that the bible was used as the premise for establishing israel, and therefore it's a circular proof, and completely invalid to prove any point you're trying to make. essentially the establishment of israel was a self-fulfilling prophesy.

 

Israel was established in BC and destroyed in 72AD. This is irrefutible fact in all walks of history. then 1876 yrs later israel is a nation again Just like the bible, which was written a long long time ago said it would be. I only posted this information for people who have wool over their eyes can see the neat things that do happen according to the scriptures. My main purpose to describe the details of the old testament to give some sort of basis for the orginal post which has gone from, implying if there was a God and satan, why does God do alot of killing. and satan it seems does not. to is God real

Edited March 28, 2012 by 87quest_stv

[87quest_stv]

This is thread isn't about wheather you beleive or you don't it's about the original question of

Something I saw today made me curious. People say god is love and satan is bad. But,.... in the bible how many people did satan kill? How many people did god kill? I can't think of a single story involving satan killing someone. But I can think of stories where god laid waste to entire cities and civilizations. Seems kinda ironic to me. Can anyone think of a story involving satan killing someone?

 

The reason I posted are reasons according to scripture to help answer that question.

Just to add the people that ended up dying at the hand of God or God's warriors, really died due to the influence satan had on the people rebelling against God. Because that's satan's soul purpose. influence people through the sins of their hearts and desires of the flesh to make decisions which will lead to death. However that death might come. Death will come to the beleiver as well. It comes down to who's prepared for death and who isn't

Edited March 28, 2012 by 87quest_stv

[87quest_stv]

do you realize that the link says "UNDETERMINED" and as such, you can't use that as a proof in any regards.

 

Yea you're right. pictures of chariots remains, and documented human and horse remains in an area of the red sea that was ideal for the Israelites to cross, and even has a pillar made of granite at the mouth of that site with ancient text which was placed there in BC has absolute no basis for being true and admitted because 1 link has the word "undetermined" because we all aren't capable of making our own determination of facts without being told by some other authority

Edited March 28, 2012 by 87quest_stv

[chiplee]

 

As time progresses, 1 of 2 things will happen: Either science, will exclusively and with authority prove God's non-existance, as Chip pointed out in an earlier post, or 'a' god (I use this term loosely - could be of any faith) will reveal himself in some fashion and exert his god-ness.

 

I wouldn't have pointed that out because it's not true. There's no way to "prove God's non-existence". There's no way to prove the non-existence of anything. There's no way to prove any negative claim. As it turns out, beings that actually don't exist look remarkably similar to beings that "exist outside the physical realm."

 

A mere oversight. So dinos did not evolve because they are reptiles?What is the theory/hypothesis on that?

 

I think I already explained that your understanding of evolution is incorrect. Evolution predicts diversity. That's it. It DOES NOT predict advancement. Evolutionary biologists do not expect all animals to eventually start talking and building cars and airplanes. I've explained repeatedly that the book "Full House" by Stephen Jay Gould explains this in glorious detail. If you are sincerely interested, please get a copy and read it.

 

Chip-You are not an authority on what you speak about but you seem to be an expert which means as good as you are you can be wrong like any of us. Science is always changing right? on the John Carter planet thing-why not?

 

Of course I can be wrong. I explained why not. Intelligent life may be an absolute fluke in the universe.

 

 

So really, and im snagging this from Chip, if Science is truly an ever changing thing with findings always tentative (which it is), then those who only believe (atheist) in science as there foundation to whats real or not, then they are putting just as much faith in science as we do God.

 

Only by failing to understand the nature of knowledge could a person make a comment like this. So please, I beg you, read what I'm about to paste into this thread in painstaking detail, and then read it again. It will explain exactly why the person "placing his faith" in science is not putting "just as much" faith in science as you do God. It's something I've posted many times before.

 

A proof is (first and foremost) a logically deduced argument, not an empirical one. That is, to be a "proof" arguments must demonstrate that their proposition is true in all cases to which they apply, without a single exception. An unproven proposition believed or strongly suspected to be true is known as a conjecture, and outside of mathematics and logic, everything is a conjecture.

 

Stephen Jay Gould wrote this: "The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world." He recognized (and it is an axiom of science) that there can be no such proofs in the empirical world. This is not because nothing is true, but because there is no mechanism for establishing any proposition as true "without a single exception." To empirically establish such a quality, we would have to actually observe every single instance of the event in question. It would be wonderful if we were able to do such a thing. Sadly... we cannot.

 

Therefore, in an empirical world where proof is forever foreclosed to us, we must depend on other tools for establishing confidence in any conjecture. And we are fortunate to have such tools: evidence and reason. These tool allow us to reach conclusions with great confidence. But that confidence must always remain tentative and provisional due to the fact that we cannot observe every instance of anything.

 

Example: "The sun rises in the east."

 

We have great confidence in the statement as a provisional truth. We have observed innumerable such events, and the sun has never disappointed us... so far. Each one of these observations is additional evidence that the sun rises in the east, and reason allows us to inductively gain great confidence that tomorrow it will do the same thing.

 

But... the sun does not actually rise in the east at all. In fact, the sun's own motion has nothing to do with our experience of the sunrise. It is the earth's rotation towards the east that creates the illusion of sunrise. We now have better evidence and better reasoning that allows us to understand that the conjecture "the sun rises in the east" (considered "proved" by many for most of human history) is not actually true at all. And no matter how many times you wake me up, turn me to the east and point out that "the sun is rising in the east," you are still offering no proof. You are merely providing an additional piece of evidence for a conjecture that ultimately is not true at all.

 

History is filled with similar examples of things that were considered true (and mistakenly considered "proven") that ultimately turned out to be false.

 

Wait... it doesn't stop there.

 

Our current conjecture that the earth rotates towards the east is much better supported by both evidence and reason than the older conjecture that the sun rises in the east. We have great confidence that science is progressively and incrementally approaching truth... certainly in this example the step was a great one in that direction. But does that make our current understanding any more a "proof" than the older one?

 

The earth rotates towards the east... today. It was not always so. It will not always be so. Let's just use the old colloquial "the sun rises in the east" for ease of understanding, but only as an idiom for the rest of this discussion.

 

We expect the sun to "rise in the east" tomorrow, just as it always has. But there will be a day where that is not true. It is almost certainly absurd to imagine the transition will happen in a single night... and the probability of that is vanishingly small. But it is not zero.

 

We can have great confidence that many of our conjectures are true. That confidence is necessarily so great that we lead our lives operationally understanding that they are. It would be futile to live our lives otherwise. And there is no need for anyone to embrace the absurdity that we do not know a lot of things that actually are true, just because we cannot prove them. It would be the pinnacle of ridiculousness to say it requires just as much "faith" to believe the sun will rise tomorrow as it does to believe that God created the sun.

 

But that does not change the fundamental reality that everything we believe, no matter how well supported by evidence and reason, is still conjecture and never fully proved.

 

That is a long discussion I know, but do you see how it applies to the assertion that "[athiests] are putting just as much faith in science as [believers] do God?" Atheists are putting "faith" in things that are tremendously well supported by evidence and reason. They simple realize it would be absurd to refuse to have the sliver of faith required to accept the functional truths we arrive at through scientific processes and ranking our various conjectures. Believers are putting faith in things that are completely unsupported by evidence and reason. They don't have a "sliver" of faith. Their stance is based ENTIRELY on faith. If the only tools we really have are evidence and reason, the only way we can distinguish what is probably true from what is probably false (or at least probably never going to be able to be considered "probably true") is by the quantity and quality of those two tools. And all competing ideas can be discriminated between only by their evidence and reason.

 

When someone says (for example) "science cannot prove the existence or non-existence of god," the only reasonable responses are first, "Duh," and second "so what?" The arguments offered on either side never depended on proof in the first place. They depended on evidence and reason. And if the evidence and reason favors one conjecture over the other, the bumbling assertion that "you can't prove it" is exposed as a marked departure from the intellectual field of strife. It is like a child begging his parents to believe in his imaginary friend because he believes it.

 

On this technicality, science cannot definitively prove anything is 100% true with no chance of ever being false in the past or the future, so there are no pure "truths". But it can do a fabulous job of discriminating between good ideas (those with reason and evidence in their favor) and bad ideas (those without). And in this way, science can demonstrate that certain beliefs do not deserve the allegiance of any thinking person.

Edited March 28, 2012 by chiplee

[john82wa]

Okay - you make a great point with evidence and reason. I can go along with that, but I do have one question. What happends when the evidence is wrong? Its fair to say when you look at, lets say a CRT TV and the display is purple for example. It would be fair to say that the color is purple and you can put that as evident & is completely logical and within reason. But the real truth is the display is actually a combination of Blue and Red color being combined in the CRT. Your point is excellent, but what appears to be 'evidence' is not always the case.... Im just wondering if that makes sense? If it does, then there still is a certain belief factor in even 'evidence and reason' correct?

 

- EDIT -

So I read it again and I do follow what you mean. But you are putting on the notion that believers do not have an ounce of reason for there beliefs. There are several things that have been shown to be factual in the bible, so its not 100% faith based. A good portion sure, but not all. I wish I could explain why my beliefs are the way they are but that would truly be impossible. It's something I just know to be true I suppose - my own life and those around me is enough evidence and reason for myself to come up to this conclusion. The most dissapointing thing, is not everyone see's these life events as the way I do. It's something I wish/pray passionately for others who havn't, to get to that point. I was most certainly a non-believer and something just triggered in me that brings a whole new meaning to life. I can't answer all your questions or anyone elses, but I 'feel' that God is with out a doubt, very very real and certainly present in my life.

Edited March 28, 2012 by john82wa

[Metric-man]

Okay - you make a great point with evidence and reason. I can go along with that, but I do have one question. What happends when the evidence is wrong? Its fair to say when you look at, lets say a CRT TV and the display is purple for example. It would be fair to say that the color is purple and you can put that as evident & is completely logical and within reason. But the real truth is the display is actually a combination of Blue and Red color being combined in the CRT. Your point is excellent, but what appears to be 'evidence' is not always the case.... Im just wondering if that makes sense? If it does, then there still is a certain belief factor in even 'evidence and reason' correct?

 

I don't know if that is a good example you are forgetting people that are color blind.

In that case it would be different for them and it would be true.

 

I want to ask a hypothetical question about chiplee's

Stephen Jay Gould quote from his book

 

On this technicality, science cannot definitively prove anything is 100% true with no chance of ever being false in the past or the future, so there are no pure "truths". But it can do a fabulous job of discriminating between good ideas (those with reason and evidence in their favor) and bad ideas (those without). And in this way, science can demonstrate that certain beliefs do not deserve the allegiance of any thinking person.

I want to disagree with his last point, because all it summarizes is that man is capable of doubts?

Edited March 28, 2012 by Metric-man

[lmwii]

Okay - you make a great point with evidence and reason. I can go along with that, but I do have one question. What happends when the evidence is wrong? Its fair to say when you look at, lets say a CRT TV and the display is purple for example. It would be fair to say that the color is purple and you can put that as evident & is completely logical and within reason. But the real truth is the display is actually a combination of Blue and Red color being combined in the CRT. Your point is excellent, but what appears to be 'evidence' is not always the case.... Im just wondering if that makes sense? If it does, then there still is a certain belief factor in even 'evidence and reason' correct?

 

as we gain new tools for probing the workings of the world, our understanding of it changes. from 10 feet away, that crt looks purple. as we advance (literally and figuratively) we can begin to see that the picture is made of red and blue elements. our understanding changes. if we go inside the crt, we can deduce the nature of how the picture is created. science is all about changing its position if new evidence dictates that it be changed. faith in a scientific theory or conjecture only goes so far as the latest and best evidence.

 

god is unsupported by any evidence. the bible is no more evidence of god than 'the three little pigs' is evidence of house building pigs and wolves that can blow them down. there are pigs in this world. and houses. and wolves. and houses that have been blown down. but that doesn't make the story true.

 

believers, there is no way that anyone can turn you away from your belief if your will is to keep believing. there is no fact that can sway you if you truly believe god is real - what is my word or chip's or anyone's word compared to god's, right? by the same token, your responses in this thread cannot be of a nature to try to 'win' the argument, because you cannot. your position is not one that can be won in a debate of facts or reason or logic. all any of us science folks would wish is that you would look at the facts objectively, without filtering them through the lens of belief. to open your eyes and see the facts without having to twist them or cherry-pick them to fit your preconceived position. if you are honest enough with yourself to do that, maybe some daylight can find its way in where all our scrabbling at your facade is fruitless.

[lionbull]

ok, still having some issues with what you're asking, but I'll handle it as I think you mean for me to answer.

at some point in biological evolution, there where other animals likely similar to intelligence to our ancestors, and for whatever reason, our ancestors became the successful lineage. that's all there is to it, regarding non-human mammals. we are the result of the successful ancestors, simply because the unsuccessful aren't here at all.

 

as far as smart dinos are concerned, i havent really dealt with that subject, but I can tell you that intelligence is directly related to brain structure, and I havent seen any evidence to suggest that any of the dinos had the capability of a similarly structured brain. being cold blooded mechanically limits the type of brain you can maintain in your body.

 

Patra i kinda know the story but it's the "for whatever reason" I have a problem with. Basically we don't know how we came about

is that it? Like imwii, do you think we should "open our eyes to the facts?

 

where is the fact in evolution?

Mind you i am not denying the fact in what we accomplished in terms of medical advancement, space exploration etc

 

imwii-i did not know we were trying to convince each other of anything. I already know i can't convince anyone here and you stated this in your own words as well. This should be an open conversation yes? no harm no foul.

[Metric-man]

It is dificult to explain to either side that by their choice or deduction, neither can be 100% correct in evidence as it is presented from one side to the other and it seems to be at a impasse.

 

To me this is not unusual since both sides have agreed on one thing, that man has the ability to doubt.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubt

 

From the perspective of harsh reality and cold hard facts of a scientific forensics report,

to the romanticized stories of hardships and overcoming adversity through worship and faith.

All a person needs to ponder is which perspective group is more cohesive or resolute and which has the ability to nurture life as a whole. If one begat the other then it is from this union that should be chosen.

[chiplee]

Like imwii, do you think we should "open our eyes to the facts?

 

I'm pretty sure he said "all he would wish for" is that believers would eventually open their eyes to the facts. That's very different from saying "you should open your eyes". If you slow down a little bit and actually read and try to absorb what our "side" is saying I think you'll find nothing abrasive or condescending in it.

 

where is the fact in evolution?

 

Evolution factually explains the diversity of life. It is firmly established scientific theory that is as close to being beyond reproach as any scientific theory can be. You assume it can't be fact because you assume it means something it doesn't. You assume that if evolution is true, then god didn't create man. Evolution isn't trying to explain the creation of man. It's trying to explain how living things change over time. And it does that very well, and it is a fact.

 

Mind you i am not denying the fact in what we accomplished in terms of medical advancement, space exploration etc imwii-i did not know we were trying to convince each other of anything. I already know i can't convince anyone here and you stated this in your own words as well. This should be an open conversation yes? no harm no foul.

 

What does being an open conversation have to do with whether or not people are trying to convince one another of something? The two are not mutually exclusive.

[patra_is_here]

Israel was established in BC and destroyed in 72AD. This is irrefutible fact in all walks of history. then 1876 yrs later israel is a nation again Just like the bible, which was written a long long time ago said it would be. I only posted this information for people who have wool over their eyes can see the neat things that do happen according to the scriptures. My main purpose to describe the details of the old testament to give some sort of basis for the orginal post which has gone from, implying if there was a God and satan, why does God do alot of killing. and satan it seems does not. to is God real

again, you're missing the point. israel being established 1876 years later occurred BECAUSE PEOPLE READ IT IN THE BIBLE. they used the bible as the premise for establishing israel. so it's not evidence of prophesy, it's evidence of people trying to make prophesy come true. the cause and effect of the situation is completely different than what you are implying.

[patra_is_here]

Patra i kinda know the story but it's the "for whatever reason" I have a problem with. Basically we don't know how we came about

is that it? Like imwii, do you think we should "open our eyes to the facts? why do you have a problem with that? whatever the reason was (better teeth, smarter brains, didn't get killed by a flood etc etc), it was still a reason. simply because we don't know every single step in the history of the earth (14,000,000,000 years is a long time) , doesn't somehow invalidate everything we do know.

where is the fact in evolution? i think you might be using the word 'fact' incorrectly. the facts of biological evolution are all the data elements within the fossil record, within our own DNA, and within anything else that contains data applicable to the theory. those are the facts of evolution.

[IntercooledFlatty]

Satan iz bad .... m'kay

[patra_is_here]

 

Yea you're right. pictures of chariots remains, and documented human and horse remains in an area of the red sea that was ideal for the Israelites to cross, and even has a pillar made of granite at the mouth of that site with ancient text which was placed there in BC has absolute no basis for being true and admitted because 1 link has the word "undetermined" because we all aren't capable of making our own determination of facts without being told by some other authority

NO IT MEANS THAT IT'S NOT A VALID PROOF. chariots and remains could be in the red sea for any number of reason other than the divine parting the red sea. that's why the proof is not valid. they could have been on a boat that sunk. they could have been washed out from the river. it could have been a drought, and they crosses at the sand bar, and got stuck. there are things that make more sense than an invisible entity in the sky helped the jews escape by moving two sides of a sea apart from each other. you haven't even considered how ridiculous that is. IF GOD DID IT, WHY EVEN BOTHER PUSHING THE SEAS APART???? god could have just as easily transported the jews to the otherside, and then just simply kill the pharoh. even that makes more sense than parting the seas unnecessarily.

 

at best, the stories in the bible are an ancient description of things people didn't understand at the time, mythology, and rules to live by. at best.

at worst it's taken literally by people who aren't smart enough to think critically about the events, and who accept a single explanation (the bible's) as being absolute truth.

 

then theres a bunch of middle ground where most people are.

[Shelby]

if we left say for a million years and then came back , what do you think would be left to show we'd been here in the first place

one would be hard press'd to prove man had ever been in the first place

new york city would be a pile of dirt in much less then a 1000 yrs let alone a million years

[Chad]

Okay - you make a great point with evidence and reason. I can go along with that, but I do have one question. What happends when the evidence is wrong? Its fair to say when you look at, lets say a CRT TV and the display is purple for example. It would be fair to say that the color is purple and you can put that as evident & is completely logical and within reason. But the real truth is the display is actually a combination of Blue and Red color being combined in the CRT. Your point is excellent, but what appears to be 'evidence' is not always the case.... Im just wondering if that makes sense? If it does, then there still is a certain belief factor in even 'evidence and reason' correct?

 

-

 

 

 

How do you make purple paint? you mix red and blue. The pait isn't purple pigments made from red an blue parent pigments having purple baby pigments, it's red and blue still, just mixed together. Violet on the other hand is a different color. Most colors in real life you see every day (excluding the pure colors found in the rainbow) are the result of mixing 2 or more different colors. Science knows this, it's not trickery or misunderstanding. Colors work like musical tones, mix a few together and the result is a new sound, when infact the origional tones never changed and are still present. At any time you can extract the origional tones - unaltered. Same is true of radio waves (my specalty), the signal in transit looks/sounds/acts nothing like what you enjoy when it's demodulated at the receiving end.

 

Take your phone for example, the DTMF tones you hear for the 12 keys is made up on 7 origional tones that are mixed together, each of the 7 tones represents the 3 colums from left to right, and 4 colums from top to bottom. The DTMF decoder de-tunes them to determine which button is pressed. It sounds like 12 unique tones, but it's really made up of only 2 different tones at any one time, wtih only 7 origional tones to work with. your perception that they are all individual tones all this time is your own mis-perception, that is to blame, not science. Those that study the sience of DTMF tones know otherwise. Ignorane in some does not equal universal ignorance. Some of us get it. there is no challenge of evidence in this example, only challenge to ignorance of the evidense. Same could be said for all science.

[87quest_stv]

it's evidence of people trying to make prophesy come true. the cause and effect of the situation is completely different than what you are implying.

 

You're right, absolutely. The reemergence of Israel as a nation happened because Israelites planned from the moment they're country was no more to be re-established 1876 yrs later, There was no divine plan for it. A nation the size of rhode island defeated Egypt, Iran, and other surrounding countries 100 times bigger than them in 1948 to reestablish themselves as a nation. And to be a dominantly safe country in that region with military superiority with no divine plan or intervention.

 

 

Well we'll simply agree to disagree. Nothing you say will sway My thought or belief in God or his word.

John chapter 20 verse 29

Then Jesus told him (Thomas) "Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed"

[john82wa]

Chad I was just using it as an example of what we may find as evident but obviously we know the inner workings of a CRT because we created it and we have learned to create different colors from primary colors. But take that example and apply that to other known things that we assume are evident - there is certainly possibilities that lie beyind what we assume as fact but more times then not - there is something working and powering that fact.

 

I have been compelled to do some surface level research and found this interesting article. I read this article in its entirety and is a long read, but like anything, its an argument against evolution.

 

Recently I had the privilege of addressing a gathering of state legislators and other influential political individuals. These gifted men and women are typically highly educated, most having been taught evolution and an evolutionary worldview extensively and exclusively. Now, they have the power to establish educational guidelines and societal norms. Sponsors of the banquet requested a talk both informative and evangelistic. What can one say in 45 minutes to a gathering of influential leaders that will make a difference? I don't pretend to know what would be best, but perhaps you would be interested in what I did say. My talk was entitled, "Three Things You May Not Know about the Theory of Evolution." I was speaking only from notes, but a summary of the talk, with a few alterations, appears below.

 

Introduction

I started with definitions for clarity. There is much misunderstanding of important words today, and some purposefully misuse words to confuse students and hide their true intentions.

Science has to do with careful observations in the present. Unlike true science, both evolution and creation are, at best, historical reconstructions of the unobserved past since no one can empirically observe either. In reality they are complete worldviews, ways to interpret all observations in the present, and a basis for all of life's decisions. In previous years, "science" was understood to mean "the search for truth," but many now limit that to a search for naturalistic explanations, even if that search leads to hopeless conclusions.

Evolution implies "descent from a common ancestor" with all of life related, consisting of modified forms of very different things, such as a person descending from a fish. Evolution does not mean merely "change," for all things change with time. For clarity we must restrict this term to meaningful change, especially the descent of new types of organisms from earlier, different ones.

Creation denotes abrupt appearance of basic categories of life without any basic type having descended from some other category, and with no extensive change once the category appears. Lack of change is known as stasis. Fish have always been fish, ever since they first appeared, and dogs have always been dogs. Fish and dogs and all else may have varied a little, but did not come from a common ancestor.

The term microevolution is sometimes used for small, horizontal changes that are readily observed (such as the various breeds of dog), while macroevolution implies large vertical changes (fish to dog) that have never been observed. These big changes constitute evolution as Darwin used the term and as the general public understands it.

 

Furthermore, evolution, as understood by all leading evolutionists, textbook writers, and theoreticians, utilizes only natural processes, like mutation and natural selection. To leading evolutionists, only unguided random forces have been involved with no supernatural input allowed.

Following are three important points about real evolution—significant changes--the origin of new categories of life from older different ones. Even if one is highly educated about evolution, he may not know these things, but this knowledge is essential if intelligent decisions are to be made.

 

I. Evolution didn't happen.

 

A. Random forces cannot account for life.

The design we see in living things is far too complex, too designed, too engineered to be the result of mere undirected, random forces. Even the simplest thing we could call "living" is vastly more complex than a super computer and super computers don't happen by chance. Every cell is composed of many constituent parts, each one marvelously designed and necessary for the whole. Without any one of its parts, the cell could not live. All of it is organized and energized by the magnificent DNA code, an encyclopedia of information which, even though modern scientists can't read it, it is read and obeyed by the cell. Surely some things need a Designer/Author.

 

B. Evolution (i.e., macroevolution) doesn't happen in the present.

If it ever happened in the past it seems to have stopped. Maybe environmental conditions don't change much, or selective pressures are too little, but everyone knows that real macroevolution is not and cannot be observed today.

Mutations, random changes in the DNA information code, are observed, but never do these "birth defects" add any innovative and beneficial genes to the DNA. Instead, mutations are either repaired by the marvelous mechanisms elsewhere in the DNA, or are neutral, harmful, or fatal to the organisms.

Likewise, natural selection occurs all around us, but this only chooses from among the variety that already exists, it can't create anything new. Evolutionists may talk of actual selection as if it had a mind of its own and does the work of evolution on purpose, but it is inanimate and unthinking, impotent to bring about more than micro-evolutionary changes.

 

C. Evolution didn't happen in the past.

When we look at the record of life in the past, we see no conclusive evidence that any basic category arose from some other category either. We see that some categories have gone extinct, like the dinosaurs, but the rest fit into the same categories that we see today. We see dogs in great variety, even some extinct varieties, but no half dog/half something else. Evolutionists have a few transitional forms that are commonly mentioned, but if evolution and descent from common ancestors really occurred we should see multiplied thousands of transitional forms. We do not see them.

The most famous living evolutionary spokesman, Dr. Stephen J. Gould, paleontologist at Harvard University, has made a career out of pointing out to his colleagues that the fossil record shows abrupt appearance and stasis. He is no friend of creation and yet as an honest scientist he must acknowledge this now well-known fact. He proposed the concept of "punctuated equilibrium" to account for the fossils in which life usually is in equilibrium, or stasis, and doesn't change at all. When a category of life encounters a sudden environmental shift, it changes rapidly into a different stable form, so rapidly in fact that it leaves no fossils. How convenient. Evolution goes too slow to see in the present, but it went so fast in the past it left no evidence. Gould is arguing from lack of evidence!

But lack of transitional forms is exactly what should be the case if creation is true. The fossil record supports abrupt creation of basic kinds much better than either slow or fast evolution.

 

D. Evolution can't happen at all.

The basic laws of science are firmly opposed to evolution, especially The Second Law of Thermodynamics which insists that all real processes yield less organization and information in their products than in the original. This basic law leads to de-volution, not evolution. The presence of abundant external energy has never, as far as science has observed, produced beneficial mutations or added information to the genome as evolutionists claim. Instead, an abundance of incoming energy will hasten the deterioration of living things, especially the DNA. It will not bring about their evolution. Evolution is against the Law!

 

Evolution doesn't happen, didn't happen and can't happen, and is fully unable to account for the design that we see.

We've all heard the claim that "evolution is science and creation is religion." This oft-repeated mantra originated with the testimony of Dr. Michael Ruse at the 1980 Arkansas creation trial. The presiding judge, known for his prior bias toward evolution, entered it into his formal opinion, and this flag has been waved by evolutionists ever since. But Dr. Ruse, an expert on the nature of science and scientific theory has recently admitted that he was wrong--that "evolution is promulgated by its practitioners as . . . a religion, a full-fledged alternative to Christianity. . . . Evolution is a religion." Which brings us to point two.

 

II. Evolution is a complete worldview.

Evolution is the religion of naturalism, the antithesis of supernaturalism. It purports to answer all the "big" questions of life. "Who am I?" "Where did I come from?" "Where am I going?" "What's the meaning of all this?" Claiming that science equals naturalism excludes a Creator from science by definition. Even if that Creator exists and has been active, such a notion is unscientific. This religion of naturalism, that we are merely the result of blind random forces is logically compatible only with atheism. It has resulted in life without accountability to a Creator and has led to a licentious society full of great heartache, for evolution thinking underpins racism, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, promiscuity, divorce, suicide, Social Darwinism, etc. While science and technology have accomplished great things, often by evolution believers, the concept of evolution itself has lead to nothing useful.

 

III. The religion of evolution is the opposite of Christianity.

Evolution can be summed up by the phrase "survival of the fittest" and the extinction of the unfit. The death of the majority allows the few with beneficial mutations to continue. The strong thrive at the expense of the weak and helpless. The only things that matter are survival and reproduction. Evolution starts with small beginnings and over time, with volumes of bloodshed and disease, arrives at man. As Darwin concluded in the last paragraph of Origin of Species, death, carnivorous activity and extinction produced man.

 

Christianity poses a very different picture. It starts with a mighty Creator who created a "very good" (Genesis 1:31) universe, one in which was no pain, suffering, or death. He recreated His image in man, and graciously supplied his every need, including personal fellowship with Him. This perfection was rejected by man, and now all of man's domain suffers the "wages of sin" (Romans 6:23), deteriorating and dying under the effect and penalty of sin. All things had been placed under Adam's stewardship, and now all suffer under his penalty. Plants wither, animals die, people suffer and die. Even inanimate things deteriorate. The moon's orbit decays. The sun uses up its fuel. The entire creation suffers (Romans 8:22).

 

Today we see extinction and survival of the fittest, but these are not creative processes, they are reminders to us to return to our Creator for His gracious solution to our sin penalty, for He graciously sent His Son to die as our sacrifice. The most fit of all, died for the unfit. He gives us eternal life as a free gift of His grace.

Contrast these concepts with survival of the fittest and struggle for existence, and you will see them as opposites. While evolution offers nothing but struggle and ultimate elimination, Christianity offers everlasting life free from every struggle and death.

Both evolution and Christianity are complete worldviews. Of the two, creation is better supported by scientific observation, and it alone makes sense out of life and eternity.

 

-- Written by Henry Morris, PHD http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=554

Edited March 28, 2012 by john82wa

[chiplee]

Chad I was just using it as an example of what we ...

...The most famous living evolutionary spokesman, Dr. Stephen J. Gould, paleontologist at Harvard University, has made a career out of pointing out to his colleagues that the fossil record shows abrupt appearance and stasis. He is no friend of creation and yet as an honest scientist he must acknowledge this now well-known fact. He proposed the concept of "punctuated equilibrium" to account for the fossils in which life usually is in equilibrium, or stasis, and doesn't change at all. When a category of life encounters a sudden environmental shift, it changes rapidly into a different stable form, so rapidly in fact that it leaves no fossils. How convenient. Evolution goes too slow to see in the present, but it went so fast in the past it left no evidence. Gould is arguing from lack of evidence!

But lack of transitional forms is exactly what should be the case if creation is true. The fossil record supports abrupt creation of basic kinds much better than either slow or fast evolution.

 

D. Evolution can't happen at all.

The basic laws of science are firmly opposed to evolution, especially The Second Law of Thermodynamics which insists that all real processes yield less organization and information in their products than in the original. This basic law leads to de-volution, not evolution. The presence of abundant external energy has never, as far as science has observed, produced beneficial mutations or added information to the genome as evolutionists claim. Instead, an abundance of incoming energy will hasten the deterioration of living things, especially the DNA. It will not bring about their evolution. Evolution is against the Law!

 

Evolution doesn't happen, didn't happen and can't happen, and is fully unable to account for the design that we see.

We've all heard the claim that "evolution is science and creation is religion." This oft-repeated mantra originated with the testimony of Dr. Michael Ruse at the 1980 Arkansas creation trial. The presiding judge, known for his prior bias toward evolution, entered it into his formal opinion, and this flag has been waved by evolutionists ever since. But Dr. Ruse, an expert on the nature of science and scientific theory has recently admitted that he was wrong--that "evolution is promulgated by its practitioners as . . . a religion, a full-fledged alternative to Christianity. . . . Evolution is a religion." Which brings us to point two.

 

II. Evolution is a complete worldview.

Evolution is the religion of naturalism, the antithesis of supernaturalism. It purports to answer all the "big" questions of life. "Who am I?" "Where did I come from?" "Where am I going?" "What's the meaning of all this?" Claiming that science equals naturalism excludes a Creator from science by definition. Even if that Creator exists and has been active, such a notion is unscientific. This religion of naturalism, that we are merely the result of blind random forces is logically compatible only with atheism. It has resulted in life without accountability to a Creator and has led to a licentious society full of great heartache, for evolution thinking underpins racism, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, promiscuity, divorce, suicide, Social Darwinism, etc. While science and technology have accomplished great things, often by evolution believers, the concept of evolution itself has lead to nothing useful.

 

III. The religion of evolution is the opposite of Christianity.

Evolution can be summed up by the phrase "survival of the fittest" and the extinction of the unfit. The death of the majority allows the few with beneficial mutations to continue. The strong thrive at the expense of the weak and helpless. The only things that matter are survival and reproduction. Evolution starts with small beginnings and over time, with volumes of bloodshed and disease, arrives at man. As Darwin concluded in the last paragraph of Origin of Species, death, carnivorous activity and extinction produced man.

 

Christianity poses a very different picture. It starts with a mighty Creator who created a "very good" (Genesis 1:31) universe, one in which was no pain, suffering, or death. He recreated His image in man, and graciously supplied his every need, including personal fellowship with Him. This perfection was rejected by man, and now all of man's domain suffers the "wages of sin" (Romans 6:23), deteriorating and dying under the effect and penalty of sin. All things had been placed under Adam's stewardship, and now all suffer under his penalty. Plants wither, animals die, people suffer and die. Even inanimate things deteriorate. The moon's orbit decays. The sun uses up its fuel. The entire creation suffers (Romans 8:22).

 

Today we see extinction and survival of the fittest, but these are not creative processes, they are reminders to us to return to our Creator for His gracious solution to our sin penalty, for He graciously sent His Son to die as our sacrifice. The most fit of all, died for the unfit. He gives us eternal life as a free gift of His grace.

]

Both evolution and Christianity are complete worldviews. Of the two, creation is better supported by scientific observation, and it alone makes sense out of life and eternity.

 

-- Written by Henry Morris, PHD http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=554

 

I warned you I wouldn't read fiction. Henry Morris didnt have a shred of intellectual integrity, and he did not understand evolution.

Edited March 28, 2012 by chiplee

[chiplee]

More on the late Henry Morris. I don't have time to rip this to shreds myself, so fortunately it's already been done.

 

Henry Morris: the Ultimate Creationist

"WE’VE BEEN slumming again at the creationist website of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). They have a genuinely astonishing article today: The Vanishing Case for Evolution, by Henry Morris, Ph.D.

 

Who is Henry Morris? This Wikipedia article informs us:

 

Henry Madison Morris, Ph.D. (October 6, 1918 – February 25, 2006) was an American young earth creationist and Christian apologist. He was one of the founders of the Creation Research Society and the Institute for Creation Research.

 

[...]

 

From 1946 through 1951, he worked at the University of Minnesota, where he was awarded a master’s degree in hydraulics (1948) and a Ph.D. in hydraulic engineering (1950).

 

The Wikipedia article on hydraulic engineering says: “Hydraulic engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering concerned with the flow and conveyance of fluids, principally water. This area of engineering is intimately related to the design of bridges, dams, channels, canals, levees, elevators, and to both sanitary and environmental engineering.” [Emphasis supplied.]

 

Now you know that in addition to creationism, Henry Morris was an expert in sewers and toilets. Morris’ intellectual journey from hydraulic engineering to creation science seems entirely natural, as his two specialties are closely related.

 

The ICR article gushingly begins with this laudatory introduction:

 

Dr. Henry M. Morris, father of the modern creation science movement, devoted his life to upholding the accuracy and authority of God’s Word. Combining scientific knowledge with a thorough understanding of Scripture, he clearly and succinctly combated the errors of evolution. In the article below, Dr. Morris highlights evolution’s false claims, using the words of evolutionists themselves. His words are as true today as when they were first written.

 

We agree. “His words are as true today as when they were first written.” But we don’t say that as a compliment.

 

The words of this now-deceased and still revered creationist have been re-posted at the ICR website. Here are some excerpts from this nostalgic piece, at the end of which we are told: “Adapted from Dr. Morris’ article ‘The Vanishing Case for Evolution’ in the June 1986 edition of Acts & Facts.” The bold font was added by us:

 

Evolutionary belief is a remarkable and largely unexplained phenomenon. It is a belief held by most intellectuals all over the world, despite the fact that there is no real scientific evidence for it at all. Evolutionists allege that evolution is a proved scientific fact, based on a multitude of scientific proofs, but they are unable to document even one of these supposed proofs!

 

No scientific evidence at all! Who knew? Let’s read on:

 

This curious situation is illustrated below in quotations from several leading evolutionary scientists.

 

What follows are several classic specimens of quote-mining, a term coined in large part to describe Morris’ technique of “quoting out of context … in an attempt to skew or contort the meaning and purpose of the original author.” Indeed, Morris published an entire book of such material: That Their Words May Be Used Against Them (Amazon listing).

 

In response to this dishonest technique, numerous scholarly refutations have been painstakingly researched, placing the mined quotes in their proper context. See, for example: The Quote Mine Project. The misleading quotes, however, continue to appear on creationist websites.

 

We won’t trouble you by repeating the mined quotes in the Morris article. They’ve been endlessly copied and recopied all over the internet. Take your Curmudgeon’s word for it — his article is the most extraordinary load of raw sewage ever concentrated in one location.

 

Morris has plucked “quotes” from various sources, allegedly asserting that: no one has ever seen evolution happen; mutations are always either neutral or harmful; evolutionists can’t determine the mechanism that causes evolution; there are no transitional fossils; there is no chronological sequence for fossils; the second law of thermodynamics makes evolution impossible; etc. It’s all there. And it’s all been debunked for generations.

 

This massive blockage in the pipeline of human knowledge, which has caused an overflow of pre-scientific excreta throughout the internet, is the accomplishment of an hydraulic engineer who turned his talents to sabotaging society’s system of purging false information. The resulting intellectual dung heap is an appropriate memorial to the life and work of Henry Morris."

 

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon.

 

 

[john82wa]

Henry Morris also did not understand evolution.

 

Seems equally compelling to the arguments presented in this thread.