Book of Acts: Pure Fantasy

[DeistPaladin]

Interesting isn't it that you seek after a sign but say "don't bother" when I ask God to give you one. Perhaps this may shed some light on why you haven't yet seen anything that would convince you.

Oh no, I didn't say "don't bother". God said, "you're wasting your time." It was God speaking not me.

Since you believe that God can speak to people, you have to give my claim of divine revelation full consideration or else your beliefs are based on special pleading.

I'll ask you this. Are you interested in knowing the truth, regardless of what it is?

Absolutely. I think it would be cool to live in a universe with a personal loving god who provides us with an afterlife. Who wouldn't want that to be true? I know would love for this to be true. Too bad there's no evidence for it and plenty to the contrary.

I don't believe or lack belief because it's what I wish were so. I go where the evidence leads regardless of my personal desires.

So which one of us do you think has the "hard heart"?

Your God isn't omniscient, so what would He know?

??? Do you think lack of omniscience precludes knowing anything? I don't get your point.

Oddly, you seem to believe that we could be omniscient (acquire infinite knowledge) but the God whom you believe in is not. Why could we potentially be omniscient but your God cannot be?

***FACEPALM***

OK, I'm going to go slow here. Sometimes when exploring possibilities in a discussion, one person will offer a hypothetical scenario to illustrate a point. It's not important that this scenario be realistically attainable. To focus on how such a scenario would be achieved is to miss the point.

For example, if I were to say something like "even if we had all the money in the world, we wouldn't have enough resources to..." it means I'm discussing the limitations of the resources in the world and what is possible. To interrupt me with an objection like "How would we possibly ever manage to acquire all the money in the world?" is to miss the point.

I don't suggest that we could ever acquire infinite knowledge. I was outlining a hypothetical in order to make a point.

Clear?

Regardless, it is still special creation and intelligent design, whether life was designed to appear on the scene immediately or gradually evolve over time.

***BUZZ***

Sorry, wrong answer.

Intelligent Design, as defined by its very proponents, is that life has always existed in its current form as zapped into existence by a divine agent. It specifically precludes evolution.

Evolution, on the other hand, does not preclude a deity either creating life or tweaking the process as said life developed. All it says is that live changes over time as selected for its environment.

The Universe was clearly programmed to create life, and that is design. So yes, I would say your ideas about the Universe contradict pretty much everything modern science believes about the way the Universe works.

***BUZZ***

Sorry, wrong answer again for reasons already articulated above.

Here's a great video that should disabuse you of your notion that evolution = atheism.



and scroll to 3:55

Why do you believe evolution has occured, specifically?

Where do you want me to begin? Do you dispute that life changes over time? We know about and can observe changes in micobiology. Even Creationists, confronted with this evidence, are forced to grudgingly admit that "microevolution" happens. Do you dispute that micro changes can be macro over a much longer period? What would you imagine would stop such a process from happening? If you can walk 5 blocks you can walk 5 miles. It just takes longer.

I'm also keen to know just how you believe a faulty model could become so ingrained into the field of biology to the point where the whole field of study makes no sense except in light of it? Evolution has been the accepted model in science for 100 years now. What conspiracy would you assert exists that has subverted the whole process of peer review not just in America but all over the world, and has kept a lid on the truth all this time? What powerful forces are at work? What is their motivation?

What exactly do you believe about this God?

Mysterious First Cause of the Universe as we currently know it. Full stop.

Why do you believe in millions of years, specifically?

A thing called "science".

You don't believe it because according to scripture you are resisting the Holy Spirit. When you hear the word preached you harden your heart towards it. It is not a catch 22, you are simply resisting what God is trying to tell you, and that is why you don't believe it.

I'm not sure how to have a rational discussion with someone who claims to know me better than I know myself. How might I convince you that your beliefs about what motivates me are not true?

[Cyberman]

On the "millions of years" point, if this kind of timescale is problematic, think "millions of generations" instead. So-called lower lifeforms, such as bacteria and insects, can of course reproduce far more rapidly than we can, which is why they are most often studied by evolutionary biologists; the timescale is much more practical than that of humans and similar 'higher' animals with generations on the order of many years.

To put it into perspective: if we take a reasonable ballpark average of twenty years between human generations, simple maths tells us that we are merely around one hundred generations removed from the alleged time of Christ. One hundred babysteps over two millennia. With this in mind, it shouldn't be too difficult to appreciate why scientists speak of millions of years, nor should such a concept seem unreasonable.

[Minimalist]

I also believe the information in DNA points to a designer

And who "designed" your "designer?"

[Bgood]

To believe in some vague "higher power" is one thing, but to say that Jesus is the son of this higher power and that the Bible is the word of God is absolutely ridiculous!! Christianity is a MAN MADE RELIGION, and one of the very worst ones at that! At least Buddha was a human being, an extraordinary one, but that's one main aspect that gives it more credibility. Yes, it may have some seemingly "out there" ideas of rebirth and all that, but all in all, it has too be the most down to earth and rationalistic religion of them all, at least in my humble opinion. Christainity makes no sense. Everything is a sin, it's history speaks for itself, and it's priests like to fondle little boys!!!! The churches in America pay NO taxes and they spew out the same tired, old rhetoric that has become so redundant and trite that people are just gonna laugh at you for being a dull Jesus Freak.

[brotherlylove]

Oh no, I didn't say "don't bother". God said, "you're wasting your time." It was God speaking not me.

Since you believe that God can speak to people, you have to give my claim of divine revelation full consideration or else your beliefs are based on special pleading.

Are you saying that you're now a theist?

Absolutely. I think it would be cool to live in a universe with a personal loving god who provides us with an afterlife. Who wouldn't want that to be true? I know would love for this to be true. Too bad there's no evidence for it and plenty to the contrary.

I don't believe or lack belief because it's what I wish were so. I go where the evidence leads regardless of my personal desires.

So which one of us do you think has the "hard heart"?

That's a very good thing, if you are not biased towards any particular truth, and open to whatever it is. If the personal God was Jesus, would you follow Him? What's your experience with Christianity?

OK, I'm going to go slow here. Sometimes when exploring possibilities in a discussion, one person will offer a hypothetical scenario to illustrate a point. It's not important that this scenario be realistically attainable. To focus on how such a scenario would be achieved is to miss the point.

For example, if I were to say something like "even if we had all the money in the world, we wouldn't have enough resources to..." it means I'm discussing the limitations of the resources in the world and what is possible. To interrupt me with an objection like "How would we possibly ever manage to acquire all the money in the world?" is to miss the point.

I don't suggest that we could ever acquire infinite knowledge. I was outlining a hypothetical in order to make a point.

The point is that the point you've made fails if it is impossible. The origin of this particular thread is that you were trying to dodge the fact that you believe in the supernatural, when I pointed out that you believe in the supernatural creation of the Universe. You said:

"It depends on what you mean by supernatural. I think if we had infinite knowledge, we'd know the nature, properties and limitations of God. Would God still be supernatural, then?"

Something is defined as supernatural from the perspective of our understanding. So, if God is always outside of our understanding because we can never be omniscient, then yes, He would remain supernatural. So if you believe in God you believe in the supernatural. This is a word that makes scientists want gouge their eyes out.

***BUZZ***

Sorry, wrong answer.

Intelligent Design, as defined by its very proponents, is that life has always existed in its current form as zapped into existence by a divine agent. It specifically precludes evolution.

Evolution, on the other hand, does not preclude a deity either creating life or tweaking the process as said life developed. All it says is that live changes over time as selected for its environment.

Actually, you're wrong. It does not preclude evolution, it only precludes an unattended process of evolution. It is perfectly fine to call evolution with a designer tweaking the process intelligent design.

Obviously, you believe the whole process was at some point intelligently designed, so regardless of how the words are defined by Creationists, that is your essential belief. So again, your beliefs about the way the Universe works (supernatural creation by a higher being, life at bottom stemming from a design) definitively contradicts how modern science understands the Universe to work.

***BUZZ***

Sorry, wrong answer again for reasons already articulated above.

Here's a great video that should disabuse you of your notion that evolution = atheism.

See above. I don't believe evolution = atheism, but it certainly creates many atheists, and apparently some deists too.

Where do you want me to begin? Do you dispute that life changes over time? We know about and can observe changes in micobiology. Even Creationists, confronted with this evidence, are forced to grudgingly admit that "microevolution" happens. Do you dispute that micro changes can be macro over a much longer period? What would you imagine would stop such a process from happening? If you can walk 5 blocks you can walk 5 miles. It just takes longer.

I agree that microevolution is scientific fact, but to go from variation within kinds to postulate descent from a common ancestor is a quantum leap of difference. Darwin did make a tremendous discovery that species adapt to their environment, but he extrapolated it to common ancestry without any hard evidence. It was something that frustrated him:

innumerable transitional forms must have existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? ..why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?

Geologoy assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory.

Charles Darwin
Origin of the Species

It was supposed at the time that it was the relative poverty of the fossil record that was the problem, but today we have billions of fossils and there are actually fewer examples of evolutionary transition than there was in Darwins time. Most of the ones that are still touted today have been soundly debunked. Take horse evolution, for example. All of the examples in this series are merely micro-adaptations, and we have found fossils of the modern horse below the most ancient examples. Clearly, something is rotten in Denmark.

Even worse is that all of the major predictions of evolutionary theory (simple to complex, gradualism, allied continuim) are falsified by the fossil record itself. We find in the cambrian layer that all the major body plans were there from the beginning, including the phylum Chordata (backboned, highest order), and all its major divisions! We have actually lost diversity since that time, not gained it. The species themselves pass in and out of the record in stasis, with no true ancestors and no changes. So, the evidence completely blows the predictions out of the water and cannot be explained.

That's where this theory of punctuated equillibrium came from. It attempts to explain the evidence from the Cambrian layer by saying that evolution happened so quickly that it didn't leave behind any evidence, and that's why we don't see the transitions in the fossil record. Look at what the creator of theory said:

In fact, most published commentary on punctuated equilibria has been favorable. We are especially pleased that several paleontologists now state with pride and biological confidence a conclusion that had been previously been simply embarrassing; 'all these years of work and I haven't found any evolution.'

Gould & Eldredge
Paleobiology v.3 p.136

Can you not see the emperor has no clothes?

There is simply no hard evidence for common descent, but there is plenty of hard evidence against the theory. Lately, evolutionists have been trying to justify it by using evidence from genetics, which proves a common designer as much as common descent. More so, actually, because the shared characteristics are in a mosaic pattern and not a branching one.

I'm also keen to know just how you believe a faulty model could become so ingrained into the field of biology to the point where the whole field of study makes no sense except in light of it? Evolution has been the accepted model in science for 100 years now. What conspiracy would you assert exists that has subverted the whole process of peer review not just in America but all over the world, and has kept a lid on the truth all this time? What powerful forces are at work? What is their motivation?

I like this quotation by Max Planck:

A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Maxwell Planck

The conspiracy is human nature. Many scientists are atheists, especially the elites who control the peer reviews and the funding, and atheists rather like the idea that they can explain away special creation with evolution. It gives them great comfort to have that alternative and it isn't something they are going to give up very easily. They even admit it:

I do not want to believe in God, therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible: spontaneous generation arising to evolution

George Wald - Harvard Professor
Nobel Laureate

the worlds brightest minds building on years of research and millions in lab equipment and computers can not make non living matter produce living matter

evolution became a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to bend their observations to fit in with it.

H S Lipso
Physics professor

we take the side of evolutionary science because we have a prior commitment to materialism. it is not that the methods..of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation..on the contrary..we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.

richard lewontin

harvard professor of zoology and biology

Mysterious First Cause of the Universe as we currently know it. Full stop.

What leads you to believe it is a mind?

A thing called "science".

Right, but specifically, what scientific evidence has you convinced?

I'm not sure how to have a rational discussion with someone who claims to know me better than I know myself. How might I convince you that your beliefs about what motivates me are not true?

At this point, I am only claiming to debunk your catch-22, which was the purpose of my comment. I do believe what scripture says about this matter, however. That you are not open to hearing the testimony of the Holy Spirit about Jesus Christ. Am I wrong?

---

I also believe the information in DNA points to a designer

And who "designed" your "designer?"

No one designed the designer. God is an eternal being. Think about it this way..

The Universe had a beginning, therefore it was caused by something. You have three choices

1 something from nothing
2 infinite regress of causes
3 an eternal first cause

The first two are logically incoherent. Not only this, but we know that time space energy and matter had a finite beginning, which means the cause of the Universe transcends all of those things. I think all of that, not withstanding the eternal first cause being the only coherent option, is evidence that points very powerfully to a transcendent Creator.

[Phil]

Almost everyone in the world believes in God..do you believe they're all delusional and that you are the one who is right?

When was it decided that an objective truth is decided by majority opinion? You really got to step up your game because in the few posts of yours that I have read since you joined, your starting to look like an average christoholic moron.

[brotherlylove]

On the "millions of years" point, if this kind of timescale is problematic, think "millions of generations" instead. So-called lower lifeforms, such as bacteria and insects, can of course reproduce far more rapidly than we can, which is why they are most often studied by evolutionary biologists; the timescale is much more practical than that of humans and similar 'higher' animals with generations on the order of many years.

To put it into perspective: if we take a reasonable ballpark average of twenty years between human generations, simple maths tells us that we are merely around one hundred generations removed from the alleged time of Christ. One hundred babysteps over two millennia. With this in mind, it shouldn't be too difficult to appreciate why scientists speak of millions of years, nor should such a concept seem unreasonable.

It seems unreasonable when you consider the evidence..that if it is true and we have many more generations than the 200 or so to Adam and Eve, where are all the bodies? According to the evolutionary timeline, there have been over 100 billion people between now and 50k BC. Yet we're just finding a bunch of skull fragments. We also know that almost all the ancient people buried their dead..so where are the billions of graves? The evidence is more consistant with a few generations, not thousands or millions. You should also consider that written history ends around 5000 years back.

[Phil]

For instance, 1 + 1 has only one right answer.

Nope blowhard, since .999...can be shown as equaling 1 then 1 + 1 can equal 1.999........

Since I can't resist, here is something you can take to your idiot convention (church) on Sunday and become a hero to the idiots there.

1/3 can be written as .333...
3 x .333... = .999...

x = .999....
so 10x = 9.999......
9x = 9
so
x=1 and there you go.

No go prove your trinity to the ignorant Christians at your church and leave the real important stuff to us here that have brains.

---

What if you are wrong?

IF???????

[brotherlylove]

To believe in some vague "higher power" is one thing, but to say that Jesus is the son of this higher power and that the Bible is the word of God is absolutely ridiculous!! Christianity is a MAN MADE RELIGION, and one of the very worst ones at that! At least Buddha was a human being, an extraordinary one, but that's one main aspect that gives it more credibility. Yes, it may have some seemingly "out there" ideas of rebirth and all that, but all in all, it has too be the most down to earth and rationalistic religion of them all, at least in my humble opinion. Christainity makes no sense. Everything is a sin, it's history speaks for itself, and it's priests like to fondle little boys!!!! The churches in America pay NO taxes and they spew out the same tired, old rhetoric that has become so redundant and trite that people are just gonna laugh at you for being a dull Jesus Freak.

Christianity makes a lot of sense (you might want to check out Christian philosophy sometime), and perhaps this was your problem as a former Christian; you didn't understand it. Everything is not a sin, nor do the actions of men who were disobeying the commandments of God count as evidence against it. Truly, if people followed what Jesus taught us to do, the world would be a near utopia. You said "at least buddha was a man", but Jesus was also a man, albiet one who also had a divine nature. Do you not believe that Jesus existed?

---

Almost everyone in the world believes in God..do you believe they're all delusional and that you are the one who is right?

When was it decided that an objective truth is decided by majority opinion? You really got to step up your game because in the few posts of yours that I have read since you joined, your starting to look like an average christoholic moron.

Isn't that how it works in the secular worldview? Take morality, for instance. Do you believe there is an objective morality or is it subjective?

---

For instance, 1 + 1 has only one right answer.

Nope blowhard, since .999...can be shown as equaling 1 then 1 + 1 can equal 1.999........

Since I can't resist, here is something you can take to your idiot convention (church) on Sunday and become a hero to the idiots there.

1/3 can be written as .333...
3 x .333... = .999...

x = .999....
so 10x = 9.999......
9x = 9
so
x=1 and there you go.

No go prove your trinity to the ignorant Christians at your church and leave the real important stuff to us here that have brains.

---

Thanks, that is kind of neat. And though I can appreciate that .999 could potentialy = 1 it doesn't necessarily follow that 1 = .999..if it does then how do you turn 1 into .999?

[Phil]

Almost everyone in the world believes in God..do you believe they're all delusional and that you are the one who is right?

When was it decided that an objective truth is decided by majority opinion? You really got to step up your game because in the few posts of yours that I have read since you joined, your starting to look like an average christoholic moron.

Isn't that how it works in the secular worldview? Take morality, for instance. Do you believe there is an objective morality or is it subjective?

---

Answer the question or fuck off moron.

Thanks, that is kind of neat. And though I can appreciate that .999 could potentialy = 1 it doesn't necessarily follow that 1 = .999..if it does then how do you turn 1 into .999?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999...

Were you always an arrogant and dumb asshole?