thomas t

I'm not sure if you wrote that sentence or were quoting someone else but the sentence itself makes NO sense whatsoever. Good morning MorningGlory. my discussion partner came up with a hypothetical statement. I said, that that statement was idiotic. He asked me to explain, if I remember well. So I explained, why this hypothetical statement was idiotic, as I see it, and what you found as a result was the sentence you are criticising here. I hope, we will be discussing real statements in future. Thomas

Gerald, do you want to convey the image of me potentially being dishonest in what I say? Gerald, you cited me wrong. I said "even if...". This wasn't a claim about God's intentions, as I didn't show any agreement with the premise of the statemet. I just visited the first site you mentioned. I went over the front page a bit, but I didn't notice anything. I'm not going to study that in depth, just because you make generalizing claims about them. So please Gerald, be specific in your references the moment you accuse somebody of something in this thread. Tell us exactly the place where, in your opinion, these sites are doing the things you claim them to have done. Thank you. Gerald, I'm not in need of anything.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what creationist organizations do. But again, that's exactly what creationist organizations do. Hello Gerald, please be specific and provide quotes and links (sources), if you can, so that we all can see who said actually what. If you make an accusation, please back it up. I didn't make any claims about God's intentions. Thomas

Sculelos, you didn' answer any of the responses given to you, for instance this one was very nice, I think: I mean, this is a discussion board. Are you just there to shoot your stuff? Thomas

You are right. However verse 30 is rather unspecific in what is meant as to be given. In my opinion, other Bible verses have to be taken into account: There are those who move boundary stones; they pasture flocks they have stolen. They drive away the orphan’s donkey and take the widow’s ox in pledge. They thrust the needy from the path and force all the poor of the land into hiding. Like wild donkeys in the desert, the poor go about their labor of foraging food; the wasteland provides food for their children. Job 24:2-5 or read this one, feel free to further study it in its context: They were banished from human society Job 30:5a I think, forced expulsions are meant here. If expulsions were meant by Jesus as well in the Luke passage above, that one wouldn't jive well with the ones I presented here. I think this is the context in which Jesus' words according to Luke are to be understood among others. Thomas

It would help if you were more specific. Ok, let me explain... Why should he get on the geologists' nerves? I don't see any reason for that. It's a bit like a manufacturer at work interrupted by someone from the outside (well this is at least how your hypothetic story looked like) telling the manufacturer how to proceed? That's annoying and intrusive, I think. Secondly, making an assertion about God's intentions is certainly hot water, in my opinion. If one isn't explicitly asked, why give his two cents about it? I don't see any reason for it. God's motivation is His matter, in my opinion. What could of course have happened is that he is wrong and will be asked later why he has misled the group of geologists. And last but not least, I think that even if God wanted have things look that way, he perhaps wanted science to look alike. Thomas

I'm sorry, but I do not know what you mean by "shoe issue"? I see no reference to shoes here. Please clarify. Dear Nebula, maybe I wasn't clear. The passage in Luke mentions a coat and a shirt, so I inferred that a shoe which is also a peace of clothing might be meant as well. I thought this conclusion went in the same direction as your little skit you've told us. In contrast, housing isn't meant in this particular verse, in my opinion. Have a good day Thomas

What do you think? Why, thank you for asking... I think both are guidelines for how we should live our lives. I do not believe that Jesus would expect us to hand over the keys to our car or our house just become someone asked for them. There is no biblical examples of such a thing happening, we do not see it in the church after Jesus returned to heaven. Hi Davis, but a house isn't meant in Luke, in my opinion, Davis. Why are you asking, Davis? Why not go seek advice from a good pastor? That would be a good step, wouldn't it? BTW I think that Luke also applies to a shoe issue, Nebula. Thomas

I'm not sure what you're asking for. What I described is a hypothetical. I guess you could read through THIS. I think this particular question (Is "God did it" testable and scientific) has been answered here several times in the last week or so. Oh this was something hypothetical... However, in my opinion, you painted the chistian group really idiotic. Please refer to real statements the next times, would that be ok for you? Christians aren't idiots. Yes, indeed you answered this particular question several times during the last week. My point in this thread is that "man did it" is testable in contrast, in this I didn't agree with JDavis. My second point is that under the paradigm described above, the opposite of "God did it", namely "God did it not", isn't testable either. So anybody who laments a bit over God's actions not being testable could lament the non-testablility of the complete absence of God, as well, in my opinion. It's just a matter of choice, I think. When Lewontin concludes "we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door", he could have said the same exact argumentation again, but concluding this time with the result: "we cannot allow the complete absence of God in the door". His words to me are interchangeable. Have a good day Thomas

Hello Gerald, could you please provide a link for the source, so that everyone may see who was it that told the geologists so? I agree with you in that God's intentions are not testable and therefore the answer wasn't scientific, I think. I hope I've answered your question with this. Thank you for your input.. Thomas

Hello everybody, the following assertions... 1) "God did it" 2) "man did it" 3) God did it not" ... are they testible and falsifiable? I would answer as follows: 1) No, you can't rule out that God intervened in on way or another. 2) Yes, you can make up a setting in which any sort of human intervention can be ruled out. 3) To give an answer to this, I'd like to have a look on the circumstances that, in my opinion, would imply a "no". JDavis recently brought up what Harvard's Richard Lewontin had to say about the relationship between God and science:¹ In an a priori commitment, he takes God out of any possible interpretation of scientific facts. Following this approach, as I see it, it won't be possible to figure a scientifically relevant scenario which would make (3) falsifiable. Taking God of the equations is, in my opinion, nothing more than a matter of convention following the outlined approach which might be representative for the work of the whole scientific community. My last question would be: Is God relevant for science? Yes, I would answer. For God himself is the author of science and creator of all things. Thomas ¹ the entire quote can be found here.

Mark, to ask for literature as a source, is in no way demeaning, IMO. Thomas

Hello Joe, I agree with you in that we shouldn't worry. And I also agree with you that science will never be able to prove anything God said in his Bible to be wrong. Have a very good day Thomas Disclaimer: if anyone wants to expand on the second sentence of this post, please open up another thread, because this is off topic here.... ok? Thank you.

Hi hello kitty lover, In my opinion, it's best to stay away from him. He said he would "lose all respect" if you did something natural. What does that mean? Is that a threat? We don't know.... Thomas

Dear friends, what kind of discussion do we want to have here? I don't want to attack anybody personally (Mark, I hope you won't feel offended). I just quote others to show what they wrote in order to ask whether this is the style we want to have on this forum. I personally would like to have a debate in which people back up what they say either by logic or by scripture or by scientific sources or by a combination of these three. In my opinion, we'll find the following phenomena in the quoted replies. 1) pressure 2) prejudice This answer was written as the discussion partner was wanting to opt out. This is setting somebody under pressure, I think. Furthermore, the author categorizes a priori any answer as false. Go to a library, museum, and/or university and look! I already know what most of the answers that evolutionists would give to these questions. Here are the answers: Here again, the author is telling us he already knows before asking his quesions. 3) sources unrevealed The author was asked to be specific which books he cited. In a scientific debate I understand quoting sources as vital. If anybody doesn't want to name his sources, nobody could go read and verify. I think, hiding sources is unfair and further diminishes the quality of the discussion. Have a good day Thomas

Candice, let me add my current consirderation of the verse, I presented above in my first answer. We read the same thing in Romans 5:12 ... but this time, in my interpretation, Paul says that through sin death came into the entire world not only to man. Some could argue that Paul in Romans spoke on the spiritual level only, just as Genesis did in 2:17. But I dislike this interpretation a bit, because resurrection, on the other side, is to be understood in a corporal level, too, I think. In my opinion, neither the passage in 1.Corinthians (see above) nor Romans rule out that death has entered the world or say parts of it before. Maybe God simply pushed him back when he made the garden, because he wanted things to be as beautiful as they ever could. However, we don't read about it. But when man fell, death entered the world - perhaps again. However, (this time) as an enemy, as Joe pointed out. Thomas

Good day Candice, some Christians think there was no death before the fall. I wouldn't sign this, although I won't propose the reverse, either. In my opinion, Gensis is not clear about this. I'm just browsing my bibleserver to see what other scripture says. We have.. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 1. Cor 15:21 However, the formulation "death came", in my opinion, doesn't rule out that death existed before, it only came at that moment. Maybe, it is meant here that death came to man at this occasion. There are many Christians who interpret death as mentioned in Gen. 2:17 as spiritual death. This is certainly true, I think, but could this interpretation also apply to the verse mentioned above? Maybe. I'm not so sure about it. Thomas

Hi, let me ask this question after two brothers have already presented thier views favoring a Young Earth Creation in the other thread. They said that God had sped up the aging process due to the fall. Gerald argued that, in my words, if this were to be true, nature would tell fairy tales about the ages of things and living creatures. I agree with Gerald, as I don't see any biblical support for the hypothesis that God sped up the process instead of just limiting the age of humans after the fall, as the Bible says. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.” Gen 6:3 Young earth creationists, to my knowledge, usually argue that the six days mentioned in the first three chapters of Genesis are to be taken literally. A day, however, can be mesured differently according to where you are, as several brothers and sisters argued in the thread George has started recently (). The Bible supports the latter view on daytime, I think, as for God a day can mean a thousand years (Psalm 90:4). The other argument YECs use to support their views, to my knowledge, is to simply count back years in Jesus' genealogy. Some argue that all fossile record presenting anything different needed to be understood as fairy tale. While I thoroughly agree that Adam was the first human in the biblical sense, let my explain why I think that the fossile record doesn't necessarily contradict scripture. Let's have a look on what actually a human in "our kind" could mean in the biblical sense: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” Gen 1:26 I regard the phrase which begins with "so that..." as being an explanation of what "in our image" means. God spoke on the psycological level, I think. In my views, we are similar to God in that we are able to lead. When science finds fossils of homo sapiens, this might be true, even if they didn't find the fossils of humans in the biblical sense. This is because a homo sapiens hasn't necessarily possessed the ability to lead, I think. The Bible might have placed him into the category of the animals God has made before. This is at least my interpretation of it. Let me add one more idea. Following this interpretation the understanding of this one... I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. Gen. 4:14b ... as to determine who the "whoever" is, would be a lot easier, in my opinion: the other types of homo sapiens running around at that age. Have a good time, Thomas

I agree.

Could we use just one definition of macroevolution? I'd like to suggest the one given in the German wikipedia-article about macroevolution. It defines macroevolution as evolution above the level of species and at the level of higher taxa. Higher taxa are: Genus, Family, Order, Class, Phylum, Kingdom, Domain, Life. Thomas

God created plants at two different points of creation mentioned in the first three chapters of Genesis. The verses are Genesis 1:11,12 and Genesis 2:9. The first passage, in my interpretation, indeed indicates some sort of evolution. The second one is, as I read it, open for such an interpretation, as well. However, it could also be meant that God maybe picked up seeds there were already due to the first creation and simply planted them. This, in my opinion, could also be meant by The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground (first part of Gen 2:9) Thomas

Good day Gerald, now let's take up this point, today. Later generations of a species are all dependant on the one generation before, as is described by the theory of evolution. The way they look and the shape they have is, according to the theory of evolution, subject to what happened to the generation before. Whereas in plate tectonics, in contrast, the movement doesn't comes from the shape of the one mountain range it has had before, neither does it stem from any neighbouring mountain range. (it rather stems from the layer deeper inside the earth, which is called "mantle" according to wikipedia) So, even if God created a mountain range via direct implementation, this mountain range, in my opinion, would still be subject to a movement which stems from somewhere else. Hence, in my opinion, there wouldn't be any need of change for the theory of plate tectonics. Have a good day, Thomas

Hello Diatheosis, in my opinion, there is a problem with scientific testing for prayer effects as this kind of test would set Jesus under pressure. If he refused to answer the prayer, people will come and say anything and everything about the effects of prayres. This is where the pressure comes from, in my opinion. So, I wonder, who would ever take part in this kind of experiment? Why should we set Jesus under pressure just for having scientific data? I mean, why stressing our relationship with our Lord? On top, we actually don't need this kind of testing because, luckily, the word of God is all we need. Have a good day, Thomas P.S.: BTW, I've had this discussion with poster Viole in the one of our debates we had in the faith vs. science forum. She argued that there wasn't any positive effect of prayers that could be shown in the tests conduted so far.

Good day and thanks for your reply, Gerald. Let me please save this point of discussion, on which I disagree, for tomorrow, since I like to take things slowly today. I didn't see you mention plants before, so that's new to me. But Genesis also says God created plants as well, even specifying fruit trees. yes, God created plants as well and he even specified different fruit trees, as mentioned in Genesis, chapter 2. (I take the Bible as evidence.) However, I think that God created plants under a different paradigm than man. He actually did create plants, but he called them into existance .... The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Gen 2:9 .... whereas he created man directly: Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Gen 2:7 Have a good day, Thomas

No. There's no scientific reason to alter the fundamental aspects of evolutionary theory. There is all sorts of work being done and arguments being made about relatively minor aspects of it (selection vs. drift, epigenetic factors, specific relationships between taxa). No. All science is neutral when it comes to God, including evolutionary biology. There's no difference between (using your example) plate tectonics describing the formation of mountain ranges and evolutionary theory explaining the formation of fingers. Neither mentions God one way or the other, and that is true for all of science. It is neutral. I've not seen any published paper on evolutionary biology that mentions God. As far as the role of a supernatural creator, the problem is such a thing is completely untestable. You cannot test for, or conduct tests on, God. That still doesn't get the point I'm raising. We both agree that a design that requires tinkering and manipulation is inferior to one that runs on its own. So why would a God who is perfect create an inferior design? This time I don't give numbers to your different comments, I answer it one by one. * Look, my point was not to alter the fundamental aspects of your theory when it comes to natural selection, genetic drift, or common descendancy. My point was only about how evolutionionary scientists bring their fundamental points across. * my point was not that science should mention God directly. My point was rather that, in contrast to the theory of eveolution, the theory of plate tectonics is somehow open to a direct intervention from God on the microlevel, I think. This is because such an intervention would leave/ leaves the truth value of that theory unchanged, in my opinion. The theory of evolution, in contrast, would be in need of some adjustment if science would ever find out that God intervened just on one single occasion on the microlevel. To put it again, my critique was solely that the theory of evolution in its current shape is not open for any intervention of God, be it on the microlevel only. As you said, some modification would be needed the moment it turns out to scientists that God did intervene. And this is, as mentioned before, in sharp contrast to other theories, I think. Other theories would stay unchanged, in case God intervened on the microlevel. Do you see my point? It's not to talk openly about God. * my point was not to lament about science not containing the explicit notion of God, neither did I want to see scientific testing for God. My point was ... see above. * Last, you wrote that I agreed with you that a process requiring further work was inferior to a process able to run of its own. I only did agree with you on that in regard to the producion of plants, I should have made this clearer, perhaps. When it comes to the creation of man, the process of creation was under a different paradigm, as the Bible shows us, so I don't agree with you on that it would have been better to have a process just running of its own. The aim for the creation of man was to create something of divine kind, "of our likes", as it says in the Bible. However, that was the first time, when the Bible mentions a creation with such an aim. That's why I think that a new aim may justify a new manner of creation. How would a mere earthly process - even if initiated by God, himself - have produced something "of our likes", as the Bible tells, when there haven't been anything similar around on earth, before? I have no answer to this, of course. Thomas