Citizenship

To all, it has come to my attention that this thread has deviated from the original intention of the Outer Court, which is not to discuss science, but to give outsiders a change to learn about our faith. In respect to that I have decided to discontinue all discussions here. Thanks everyone for an interesting exchange. I wish you all the best. /Citizenship.

Hi Viole, yes Swedish is a beautiful language, not my native tongue, but the language that I most often use since I have lived in Sweden most of my life. The reason that there are immune systems and viruses is little too prone to speculation for my taste so I don't want to delve too deply into things that I for one have on way of knowing. But I will say this. The function of a virus might only need to be distorted, rather than designed, in order for it to turn from benevolent to malevolent. This, in fact, it the way the most powerful and deceptive software viruses work - they exploit weaknesses in existing code. And yes, as a developer I prefer as simple a solution as possible. But just because an explanation is simple doesn't mean that it is correct, especially in a world where nothing seems to be simple. what is the simple evolutionary explanation as to how a catapillar forms a cocoon, melts into goo, and then emerges as a buterfly? Simple whiteboard sketches of hierarchies are one thing, but reality with all its variations are another. Now I posed the question as to how intelligent behaviour could have developed in organisms such as cells and viruses, and rather than answer the question, you turn it around with things that you consider inconsistent from a theological point of view. But what is your answer to the question? What then is the "simple" explanation that you consider outweighs that of a designer? Or am I suppose to be so knocked over by the fact that there are hierarchies in the animal kingdom that I shouldn't concern myself with such details?

Well, first of all, happy new year! This is an interesting point, althought I am not sure we analyzed the logical consequences of it. Let's suppose, for sake of argument, that the natural design recursion stops at our world. That is, design of living beings and viruses on earth are due to supernatural intervention and not aliens. The question is: who designed such a complex and intelligent virus? I can only see the following alternatives: 1) it is the same designer of human beings, e.g. God. But that would mean that God had active hand in making this world (with things like smallpox) a fallen world. I think we can agree that this is theologically untenable, if we are the sole responsibles of our misery. 2) it is another designer in competition with God. I doubt this is is acceptable. It would mean that there are two creative forces with more or less the same power and we and viruses are the results of an arm race between these two designers. For starters, it is not clear why God does not simply remove the virus from creation instead of complicating our design with countermeasures (antibodies). As a sofware designer, what would you do? Create countermeasures for a bug in your programs, or remove the bug? On top of that, that would be indistinguishable from dualism (two equally powerful gods, one good and the other evil, in the style of Zoroastrianism). To make things even worse, good and evil would be design dependent. God is good for us, but His competion is good for the virus; i.e. goodness would be anthropocentric. 3) Nobody designed the virus. But that would mean that complex and "intelligent" entities can arise undesigned. Which of the three cases (assuming I did not forget other cases) is more plausible? Ciao - viole Hej Viole, och god fortsättning på det nya året till dig också! Weell... should I pick door number 1, or door number 2 (door number 3 is of course out of the question ) Actually I think door number 1 is closest, although the conclusion that God had an active hand in the fall assumes that God originally designed viruses to behave the way they do now, which is incorrect. The biblical acount teaches that everything in creation deteriorated when sin came into the world, and agents such as viruses that would have had functions that were exclusively beneficial from the beginning were distorted from that time onward.

Creationists are usually criticized for making such comparisons and here you are doing the same thing. Life is vastly different than rocks and cars, and evidence of design and order does not need to be ubiquitous in order for it to be considered designed. Hierarchies might not be needed, but they are convenient for us in that they make it easier for us to understand and learn about the various forms of life around us. It also makes sense from a design perspective that organisms sharing the same environment and so on would have a similar genetic make-up. If the twin nested hierarchy was a prediction made by evolutionists then you wouldn't have any trouble at all showing me an older document where this tree was originally mapped out. Now you can easily sit and look at a modern document that has been edited down through the years and get all impressed with how everything "just seems to fit" and tell me that you think that it is evidence of descent with modification, but the fact remains that there is not a shred of scientific evidence that any modifications have the power of doing what evolutionists so badly want them to do. The fossil record is full of huge gaps and the theory of punctuated equilibrium testifies to that. You will most likely find a whole lot of ideas floating around, so have I, but just trowing out a couple of them like this proves nothing. And just because someone does an experiment to show how layers separate by density, does not mean that they are explaining the entire flood by their experiment. Why on earth would I want to view it as a transitional fossil? I don't even know why you mentioned it in the first place. It is a fossil of a lobe-finned fish. As usual, there is nothing in the fossil record showing a smooth transition from or to any other fish, tetrapod or anything else. Describing gravity or its effects does not mean that we know what it is, and I'm not trying to get you to interpret gravity as supernatural, I just want you to tell me how you determine what is supernatural and what isn't.

Who said anything about conspriracy? I thought I had been fairly clear in stating that I don't believe in a conspiracy, and that a conspiracy isn't even necessary, so what's the story? There is no need to have a conspiracy in a world where people are being indoctrinated from childbirth that certain things are true, despite the fact that no one knows these things. So do you acknowledge my position regarding this, or are you going to continue to ignore it and try to portray me as some kind of conspiriacy geek? This discussion has very little to do with your opinions about how the scientific community supposedly reacts. Are you a spokesman for that community? Have you gone around measuring their level of "amazement"? You see how weak this theory is? You don't have any facts to show that evolution has the ability to do what evolutionists assert it does, so you have to resort to the "reaction" of the scientific community. Has the reaction of the scientific community has always been correct? Of course not! So by your own admission we can see that you are basing your belief in evolution on a faulty standard. How many articles do you expect to get published given the level of opposition? You have already made the point that the consensus of the scientific community is strongly opposed to creationism, and yet you are trying to argue that there should be more papers published! Well, to be fair, evolutionists are known for hoaxes in science. Here are a few: *** removed video ... videos are to be posted in teh video section only. *** Piltdown man: Found in a gravel pit in Sussex England in 1912, this fossil was considered by some sources to be the second most important fossil proving the evolution of man—until it was found to be a complete forgery 41 years later. The skull was found to be of modern age. The fragments had been chemically stained to give the appearance of age, and the teeth had been filed down! Nebraska man: A single tooth, discovered in Nebraska in 1922 grew an entire evolutionary link between man and monkey, until another identical tooth was found which was protruding from the jawbone of a wild pig. Java man: Initially discovered by Dutchman Eugene Dubois in 1891, all that was found of this claimed originator of humans was a skullcap, three teeth and a femur. The femur was found 50 feet away from the original skullcap a full year later. For almost 30 years Dubois downplayed the Wadjak skulls (two undoubtedly human skulls found very close to his "missing link"). (source: Hank Hanegraaff, The Face That Demonstrates The Farce Of Evolution, [Word Publishing, Nashville, 1998], pp.50-52) Orce man: Found in the southern Spanish town of Orce in 1982, and hailed as the oldest fossilized human remains ever found in Europe. One year later officials admitted the skull fragment was not human but probably came from a 4 month old donkey. Scientists had said the skull belonged to a 17 year old man who lived 900,000 to 1.6 million years ago, and even had very detail drawings done to represent what he would have looked like. (source: "Skull fragment may not be human", Knoxville News-Sentinel, 1983) Neanderthal: Still synonymous with brutishness, the first Neanderthal remains were found in France in 1908. Considered to be ignorant, ape-like, stooped and knuckle-dragging, much of the evidence now suggests that Neanderthal was just as human as us, and his stooped appearance was because of arthritis and rickets. Neanderthals are now recognized as skilled hunters, believers in an after-life, and even skilled surgeons, as seen in one skeleton whose withered right arm had been amputated above the elbow. (source: "Upgrading Neanderthal Man", Time Magazine, May 17, 1971, Vol. 97, No. 20) The theory of embryonic recapitulation asserts that the human fetus goes through various stages of its evolutionary history as it develops. Ernst Haeckel proposed this theory in the late 1860’s, promoting Darwin’s theory of evolution in Germany. He made detailed drawings of the embryonic development of eight different embryos in three stages of development, to bolster his claim. His work was hailed as a great development in the understanding of human evolution. A few years later his drawings were shown to have been fabricated, and the data manufactured. He blamed the artist for the discrepancies, without admitting that he was the artist. The peppered moth experiment is still taught as proving evolution. Apart from the mind numbingly obvious fact that there were both light and dark variants of the moth biston betularia before the changes in tree bark colour discussed in the work, and that therefore it was merely a cyclical variation in slightly different varieties of the same species, it is now established that he researcher Kettlewell faked his results. Of course she does! She is an evolutionist! And although you claimed earlier on that "if the evidence doesn't fit with creationism, it is invalid according to creation scientists", we can clearly see that this is exactly what evolutionists do. Are you making things up? Please show me one shred of evidence that supports that idea. Mary Schweitzer wasn't a lone wolf, she was working under Jack Horner, one of the America's best-known paleontologists. Don't you think he would know if he had a creationist working for him? If it was a creationist hoax it would have been cleared up almost immediately. Both this, and Schweitzers opinions about YEC are distractions from the point at hand which concerned the eagerness of scientists to have their precious theories challenged. Jack Horner was offered $23,000 to have the bones carbon dated, which he refused to do. But since you brought it up, lets talk about dating. Where did you read about the amino racemization dating of these bones? TalkOrigins? What TalkOrigins won't tell you is that amino racemization dating is unreliable: http://www.detecting...aciddating.html "Because of these problems AAR dating of bone and teeth (teeth in different locations in the same mouth have been shown to have very different AAR ages) is considered to be an extremely unreliable practice even by mainstream scientists. " What they also won't tell you is that C14 is being found in places it should not be found: http://kgov.com/dating-a-dinosaur "Yet 14C is everywhere it shouldn't be. Unless from a secondary source, like contamination or neutron capture (described below), anything millions of years old should have NO Carbon-14. However, scientists are consistently finding C-14, as reported in 2011 in the journal PLoS One for an allegedly 80-million year old mosasaur, and as reported elsewhere in natural gas, limestone, fossil wood, coal, oil, graphite, marble, the ten dinosaurs (described above), and even in supposedly billion-year-old diamonds. A secondary assumption by old-earth scientists proposes that the C-14 in diamonds (coal, etc.) must have come from N-14 (or C-13, etc.) and neutron capture. Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss (emphasis on the theoretical) told RSF that 14C in allegedly million-year-old specimens is an "anomaly." However, an anomaly is something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected. Because modern carbon exists in significant quantities, far above the reliability threshold of the AMS labs doing the tests, these results can no longer be called anomalies! It is now expected that organic specimens supposedly millions of years old will yield maximum C-14 ages of only thousands of years!" (Nature, vol.352, August 1, 1991, p.381) Nothing that disagrees with the ToE is going to be considered "fully understood". The rate at which DNA breaks down was determined in the lab, under controlled conditions, not in the soil or anywhere else where the rate would be even faster. That is totally incorrect. Fossilization occurs rapidly, the entire process of mineralization must occur before the organism can decay. In other words, the time for fossilization must be shorter than the decay time. Most biologic materials decay quickly. Decay can start within a few hours or less, and rarely takes more than a few weeks. Even bones suffer complete dissolution in a few years.

The fact that we can process information is one thing. We have a brain consisting of billions of cells with which we can process that information. But there are organisms that don’t have a brain and yet do things that require intelligence. A cell for example has the ability to process huge amounts of information and carry out detailed instructions according to the information that it reads. There is a virus that has the ability to imitate behavior in order to deceive antibodies. None of these things could possibly work without an incredible amount of logic being in place. So approaching this from a scientific point of view we can only come to the conclusion that it has been designed. Programs do not program themselves. If they did I would be out of business, since I work as a software developer. That would only be a “big problem” if it could be established that the designer had a beginning. In that case we would not need to involve aliens. I made the claim that creationists are doing what anyone would do. What historical background did you give that demonstrates that to be false? And what creationist do you think hasn’t already done that? Do you think popularity isn’t hard to achieve? Given the snowballing effect the “popularity amongst scientist” argument has, the difficulty involved in going against the stream, the head-start that evolutionists already have in indoctrinating people’s minds from childhood, what the media apparatus feeds the public, and so on, I don’t find it all surprising that there are theistic evolutionists. Well, here’s your chance to convert me. Show me what I don’t understand. I have challenged evolutionists to do so for years and years, but so far all have failed. Obviously you are taking the opportunity to answer this question by sneaking in a few ad hominems. I have plainly pointed out that there is no need for a conspiracy. And do I seem angry or upset? If I was that kind of person then I would have given up years ago. You are repeatedly claiming that creationists don’t turn to the scientific community with these kinds of things, but I have already shown you that this is not true: http://www.discovery.org/a/2640

Well if we look at the Biblical account we see that it doesn’t describe the creation of life in an unorganized and unstructured manner. God created life organized in groups according to their environments and traits and reproducing after their kinds, which is exactly what we see today. Of course, he could have created one huge group and just called it “life”, or even created each animal individually with totally unique traits and using separate mechanisms to reproduce those traits in their offspring. However, the perspective we see in Genesis, and one that I think is reasonable, is that of a designer with a sense of organization. And the reason I think it makes sense is because it benefits mankind to live in an orderly environment, if it turns out that mankind is important to the creator. Evolutionists, as I pointed out, did not predict nested hierarchies, but have observed their existence, adjusted the theory accordingly and then, just as you do, proclaim evolution to be a “powerful explanation”. The only power involved is the power of suggestion. The fact that you are so ill-informed about the creationists position testifies to the fact that you have spent most of your time saturating your mind with only one side of this debate. Having a predisposition towards something can cause you to quickly filter out and reject what you don't want to hear and eagerly swallow what you do. The same goes for creationists. However, being in the minority, and given the large number of scientists that support evolution, anyone would be prompted to carefully study what their opponents were saying before putting themselves in a position where they are going to be called "backward-striving flat earthers" (to pick out one of the nicer ones). Proponents of evolution are less likely to take such care, because they can just relax in the comfort of knowing that “most scientists support evolution”. I suggest however that if you are going to debate this then follow this advice: Know your enemy, not just what your enemy's enemy says about your enemy. Having said that, I don’t think you will find many creationists explain the fossil record as being simply “jumbled up in the flood”, and saying that the fossils should appear as a “hodgepodge of random organisms thrown in together” gives me the impression that you compare the global flood with a big vat of water and just mix and swirl and let everything sink to the bottom. Explanations are rarely as simple as we would like them to be. The general pattern that we see in the fossil record reflects the different environments we find on earth: organisms that live on the ocean floor are followed by those that dwell higher up in the oceans, then come those that dwell in areas between land and sea, and then those that live on land. That means that if, for example, the Cambrian was an environment at the bottom of the pre-flood oceans then you are not likely to find any rabbits there. Also, not all animals would fossilize, but only those trapped in the rapid flow of sediments spreading over the earth, which makes it an issue to be taken into consideration. And then you would have to put the abundance of organisms in the equation, because, given the rarity of fossils, an animal such as the trilobite might come “before” a rarer organism that is found higher up. I’m glad you brought up the Tiktaalik, not to be cheeky and arrogant, but because I think it shows how scientists do not objectively study data when presenting evidence. When the Tiktaalik was first discovered it was proudly touted as being a missing link, and since the place where they found it was where they expected it to be, it looked like they finally had come up with a genuine prediction. I remember watching Ken Miller talk about it and being really impressed with what he said, because it was really convincing, and Ken is very convincing in the “matter-of-fact” way he presents his arguments. Unfortunately for him it was debunked: http://www.examiner....-still-shocking The definition of biological evolution is "any genetic change in a population that is inherited over several generations". How did you arrive at the conclusion that we are using it differently? The fact that there are ideas about what gravity is does not mean that we know what it is, and if we did know what it is then there would not be considered a theory. You also have thrown the words “mysterious” and “supernatural”, but failed to show that they apply to the one and not to the other. Ideas are not enough to make that distinction. That doesn’t make sense. Admittedly the “entity” would have to have “means, power, and intelligence” that greatly exceeds those that we are familiar with, but the sheer magnitude of these qualities are not enough to associate them with anything supernatural. And if there wasn’t a designer, then what do you think had the means, power and intelligence to create the universe? Oh, that’s right… nothing… You have misunderstood me. I’m not saying that I agree with everything Ruse says about the ToE, but that there is a part of it that is scientific (observable, repeatable and testable) and a part that is religious. If you disagree then please tell me how to you interpret him when he says “evolution is a religion”?

Viole, first you claim that you don't believe in interpretation by "conspiracy" (as though that was the creationists belief), and then you go on to show how interpretation is biased towards what it "admits". Who needs a conspiracy???

Yeah.. sparks are flying everywhere. You'd better ... ... if you don't want to get scorched.

I am only saying what scripture says. If anyone believes that Jesus is the Son of God and has come in the flesh then there is no way that satan has led you to believe that. This is something I have demonstrated using scripture, not my own interpretation or opinion. Does that mean that any and everything that a denomination or church teaches is of the Holy Spirit? No, of course not. Please keep things in perspective. I have already addressed this. The context of 1 Corrinthians is Paul's instructions to a church that wasn't going beyond the basic elements of faith and needed to grow in knowledge. At that time they did not have the resources that we do today - not only in the form of microphones, but also in the form of resources to edifying themselves. I have attended churches where interpretation of tongues has been practiced and yet put very little focus on instruction. I have attended other churches where praying in tongues without interpretation is always practiced, followed by instruction or a sermon directed at edifying the mind. I also find it surprising that the same people object to me saying that we have to take things in context and compare the time we live in with what was written during Paul's day, are the same people who are saying that tongues are not for today! Now if you think that everything that Paul wrote to the Corrinthians apply today exactly as they were written then, then please tell me how your church obeys 1 Cor 11:5.

Who said I'm not using God's Word? Neither the first two words nor the rest of the sentence make sense as far as I can see because one again I don't see what they have to do with what I posted. If that is all you know about tongues with complete certainty then I think you need to study the Word of God a little more I still don't understand what this has to do with what I posted. And you still haven't answered whether or not the women in your church wear veils.

That's nice to know, but I fail to see what that have to do with what I wrote. That's also nice to know, but I don't remember trying to defend the use of emotions and feelings, so again, what does that have to do with what I wrote? If that is all you know about tongues then I think you need to study the Word of God a little more. Again with the emotions and feelings... You show me where satan uses emotions and feelings to deceive people and I will show you where he uses scripture to deceive. He does so by getting them to add things to scripture that are not there, such as the idea that tongues would be replaced by cannonization. This is not scriptural. I was never mentioned in scripture. So why do people try so hard to pretend that they have scripture as their one guiding light in life, all the while they feel they need to add extra-biblical conclusions to scripture?

Which is exactly what I do: "This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God" and "No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also." So where have I written anything that disagrees with the above? What on earth are you talking about? Are you writing in tongues? Or in latin? Please take the time to make your points understandable and show how they relate to the post you are referring to. Look, I don't "discount scripture" by any technology so don't twist my words. Every Christian has an obligation to correctly divide the word, which involves taking things in context. Listen, do the women in your congregation wear veils? Why? Why not?

Of course we are! I would venture to say that hardly anyone here knows that more than I do. My own mother was a member of a Christian church. She sat at home one day and look across the room at my father and saw the face of Christ superimposed over my father's face. Later that night she heard an audible voice that said to her "That was the Christ, you know" Following that voice led both her and my father down a spiralling path into occultism, New Age and away from the belief that Christ was the Son of God. The Word of God teaches us exactly how to test the spirits. So what in my post gives you the impression that I have failed to do so? It is my experience that deceptive spirits do not lead people to worship Jesus as the Son of God. What do they do, according to your experience in the matter? None of that has any relevance to what I have written, so I still don't see your point. This obviously has nothing to do with obeying God's word and more to do with defending your theology. If you don't know how to test the spirits then how on earth do you test the spirits in your own church?

I have no idea what you are trying to say here, other than that we are susceptable to carnality and sin? Is that your point? I don't think that while being led by the Holy Spirit that it is possible to give ourselves over to carnality and sin. If you think it is possible then that is yours to believe. Steven, the NT is not a updated version of the OT where everything written in the epistles are to be considered laws. If it was then you had better make sure that all the women in your church wear veils and so on. Paul's letter to the Corinthians was addressed to that Church and what he wrote to them were his recommendations as to how they were to tackle the problems that existed at that time. The Corrinthian church came under the administration of Paul and his assessment of them was that they were carnal and in serious need of developing their understanding - which does not come from praying in tongues. The judgement of whether a modern church is carnal or not is up to the person administering that church, not Paul, nor you, or anyone else. Let me ask you someting. When your church gets together, do they practice speaking in tongues, and when they do is there always an interpretation?