Book of Acts: Pure Fantasy

[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?

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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.