RE: What beliefs would we consider reasonable for a self proclaimed Christian to hold?
March 23, 2018 at 2:01 pm
(March 23, 2018 at 2:10 am)vulcanlogician Wrote:(March 23, 2018 at 1:11 am)He lives Wrote: I agree with your points and your argument. However by agreeing I would like to point out that everyone should also be skeptical about abiogenesis as there is no solid evidence to it's extraordinary claims that life began from some hypothetical primordial soup that was thought to exist on the pre life earth. This sounds too much like the fictional story of Frankenstein. At least in the story of Frankenstein body parts were used to bring him to life. You may say that life on earth is evidence of abiogenesis. However life on earth can also be used as evidence of intelligent design. In fact I am very much a skeptic of abiogenesis. The chances of the biogenesis Hypothesis ever happening are 1 in 10 to the 40,000th power. It would be more likely to find a brand new F-16 on the dark side of the moon. I therefore would like to know why anyone would trust in the abiogenesis hypothesis?I don't see it as being of any more value to anyone than ID since neither one have been proven.
No theory of abiogenesis has been proven. That's true. Each one in particular must be examined for its strengths and weaknesses if its plausibility is to be accurately gauged. I haven't seen anyone push a particular theory of abiogenesis yet, but this thread is officially a behemoth, and I haven't read every post.
Speaking for myself, I don't think we're anywhere close to certainty regarding any one theory of abiogenesis- BUT! I am more inclined to assume a naturalistic origin of life over a supernatural one. Occam's razor is a handy tool. It doesn't prove anything one way or another, but its good for cutting away highly implausible scenarios even when one cannot definitively prove any one option.
A brand new F-16 found on the dark side of the moon is quite implausible. But it's more likely that we will discover an F-16 on the moon than a unicorn in my backyard. However unlikely, at least there is a way we could imagine an F-16 getting to the moon. F-16s exist. Rockets that can reach the moon exist. Unicorns (as far as we know) do not.
As to the immortal soul thing, sure, I guess you've presented Biblical justification for believing in it... not that I really care. Maybe it indicates that I should stick to speaking on other matters (like things that actually exist in the real world) and leave the believers to debate Biblical claims.
Anyway, I'm not saying any of this to refute your claims about NDEs... I'm more so telling you why your claims aren't going to go very far here. And it's not because we're unreasonable. Quite the contrary.
(Bible Dictionary | U Unicorn:Entry)
Unicorn. A wild ox, the Bos primigenius, now extinct, but once common in Syria. The KJV rendering is unfortunate, as the animal intended is two-horned.
I find it interesting that there are many things that can seem implausible until we understand the science behind it. While it is true that we can't see spirits it is also true that air is not opaque. If air were opaque we would all be in the dark. However we are in the dark about many things. One of those things is the two-split experiment:
https://physicsworld.com/a/do-atoms-goin...-observed/