Bonky

41 minutes ago, Saint JOHN said:

Theory
'???ri/
noun
noun: theory; plural noun: theories

    a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.
    "Darwin's theory of evolution"
    synonyms:    hypothesis, thesis, conjecture, supposition, speculation, postulation, postulate, proposition, premise, surmise, assumption, presumption, presupposition, notion, guess, hunch, feeling, suspicion;............

Ok and the way scientists use this term is:

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world.
 

41 minutes ago, Saint JOHN said:

eventually this biological machine will stop for each person...you will have to pay the piper eventually ! whether you belive or not....

Resistance is Futile...

There is a chance we are play things to a creator that doesn't care about any circumstance other than what did we believe about a particular Jew who lived a couple thousand years ago....but I'm comfortable that if there's a God it is reasonable.  If I'm wrong?  I did the best that I could with what I was given [regarding religion], let the cards fall where they may.

2 hours ago, Saint JOHN said:

The one word nearly everyone misses in these type of debates is  "THEORY" of evolution ....look it up in your own dictionary...you see words like IDEA with NO bases in FACT !!!

I hope you realize that the particular definition you're looking at is NOT the one that scientists are using.  A scientific theory is regarded as being well established explanation of some aspect of the natural world.  In fact if I'm not mistaken the only reason why it's a "theory" and not a law is because it can't be expressed mathematically.  

2 hours ago, Saint JOHN said:

most REAL scientist accept this ..to a point.. they see a design in everything, begging the question..DESIGNER...

Ironically you are begging the question.  I won't disagree with life being complex, but whether it is designed is a different issue [and needs to be established not just proclaimed].   Look at the "design" of humans and other animals and we can pick out flaws.  Child birth for example caused a lot of deaths prior to modern medicine.    If you want to infer design that's up to you but why didn't the designer aim for excellence?

12 minutes ago, Seanc said:

I can understand where your coming from about other gods and the views held by the individuals who follow them. My stance is something you probably understand already since your on this forum but the gods they follow are not gods at all only idols made up by man so they will always cater to human deffecencies and world views since they were created by men. This is why I am a christian and follow the only true God of the universe whose plans and views are above my own so far that I could never have come up with them out of my imagination. They also do not align with what I would choose for myself mainly because I am a sinful being.

I'm going to have to refuse to get into slavery in the O.T. I'm assuming this wouldn't be your first time discussing it and I've also had that discussion. I don't believe I could add anything that you haven't already heard in it's defense.

Okay that's fair enough.  Thanks!

3 minutes ago, Seanc said:

Nature doesn't justify homosexuality either since we live in an imperfect world where nature is affected by it just as we are. I also have a gay brother so we have this in common. Please don't think I hate all homosexuals or something, but you have to see where I'm coming from. Our bodies were not designed for it no matter if you believe in creation or not and no further life can come from it. That's as far as I will go as we are changing subjects.

You don't sound like someone hateful at all.  I was more responding to some of the venomous views that some people get when they read the Bible. 

5 minutes ago, Seanc said:

This is not a Muslim forum nor do we believe in the Muslim god Allah from the koran. We are talking about Jehovah the God of the Bible who is a God of love, mercy, kindness and yes justice. You can't have one without the other just as a parent couldn't truly love their child if they allowed to do a certain thing which would harm themselves or others.

The things you might feel are subjectively wrong in the O.T are from your limited knowledge of the circumstances and certainly God almighty. 

Sounds like the conversation is about to hit its end where we will have to agree to disagree since I doubt I could convince you any further

I know this isn't a Muslim forum, I just wanted to give an example of a weakness that I think is inherit in the "God gives us morality" worldview.   That view assumes the only God that matters is the one favored by the individual.  That may be comforting and easy to digest to them but it don't see how it helps us with the bigger picture [the world at large]. 

Since you mentioned the old testament, do you agree or disagree that slavery [owning someone as property]  is immoral and why?

13 minutes ago, Seanc said:

Not trying to answer for Shiloh but will address your reply. Objective morality is self evident just as homosexuality is evedintly wrong for obvious reasons as it goes against nature and halts further life.

Except that we see homosexual interactions in "nature", so how is it unnatural?  I also don't see how this is "wrong" as in immoral.   For the record I'm not gay but I have good friends and a brother who are gay.  So I speak from a place of experience about whether gay people really introduce harm to society and I see no evidence that they do.

13 minutes ago, Seanc said:

As for the Muslim comment most who believe in objective morality believe in a moral lawgiver who has to be the definition of perfect and just otherwise there would be no standard for good or evil. So although many evil things have and will be done in the name of god it doesnt at all mean it was his will.

Right and the Muslims believe the perfect definition of justice and morality lies in the nature of their God and his beliefs.  Now obviously some Muslims don't have the same views and they're not violent to non believers but many are.  The core principle is that whatever the God wants is what really matters.  That's where the slippery slope comes into play. 

The same defenses that Christians give for some of the shocking acts in the Old Testament can be given by Muslims today.  Who are you to challenge God?  He can do what he wants with us he created the Universe etc etc.

21 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

Societies evolve, perhaps.  Objective  Morality doesn't.

I've read your take on objective morality and I still don't know that I fully understand it.  You mention that objective morality is "self evident" but gays being an abomination isn't "self evident" to me.  If all you mean is, "Being kind will always be good", then I don't see an immediate objection to that.  I don't recognize the concept of "sin" so our take on morality is obviously going to be quite different.

The inherit weakness of your view [in my opinion] is that it gives a nod to muslim terrorists.  If a God dictates what is right and wrong, then blowing people up could very well be a very good thing to do.

On 5/1/2017 at 11:19 PM, rjs310 said:

I think the question is problematic.  You see athiests can always point to scripture and claim a higher morality than God has because God ordered the killing of babies in the OT.  To judge morality is based upon judging on morality that we think is moral.  God judges by righteousness.  God demands obedience and holiness.  Not morality.  Now  we can say that some of God's commands have some moral components to them, but others have nothing to do with morality but have to do with righteous obedience.  The word morality is not a scriptural word nor a scriptural concept.  Sinfulness is a scriptural concept, righteousness is a scriptural concept, repentance is a scriptural concept, but morality is not, because man often defines morality according to his thoughts and not God's thoughts.  Some claim it is not moral that man should suffer the fires of hell based upon some finite actions on Earth.  And certainly an argument could be made for that if we spoke strictly on a moral level.  But we don't.  We speak on a much different level and that being a level based upon the depravity and sinfulness of man and the rejection of Christ's sacrifice on the cross for our sin. So I personally do not participate in a morality conversation and a comparison of moralities, but always try and steer the conversation to righteousness, holiness, sin, repentance and Christ's death and resurrection.

 

 

I think I actually agree with this, makes sense.  Excellent post!

On 2/1/2017 at 4:15 PM, Seanc said:

If thats all I took into account then I would agree but morality is more than preferences. Morality is the distinction between right and wrong. You could protect your life, your pleasure and your health and still commit terrible acts to others. 

I think what your trying to get at is that since the human race can agree on those 3 aarea,  morality is only needed for human preservation and therefore it originated within us for that reason. Please correct me if I'm wrong just a guess

Sorry I never saw this response [until now].  The context of the statement "Life is preferable to death. Pleasure is preferable to pain. Health is generally preferable to sickness"  is referencing humanity as a whole, not just me or you.  So no you wouldn't be able to engage in pleasurable activities and commit terrible acts because you would probably be interfering with someone else's health or liberty etc. 

My view is that I believe morality can [and has] evolved/progressed w/o supernatural interference.  I think we can look at many different measurables to see that a society that values freedom, education, health, sharing of resources etc etc is superior to a society that doesn't.   While religion was our first attempt at many things including morality, I feel that it has it's priorities and values misplaced.

Giorgio Tsoukalos approves of this thread.

28 minutes ago, ARGOSY said:

I read this and felt it deserved a reply, but not sure how to approach it. Please be patient as I attempt to describe my personal view on science/religion. When one feels God speaking it is a strange feeling you may not have experienced yet. Someone may be at a church service and every word the preacher speaks seems directly pointed at their entire life, and God seems to be personally calling them closer.  Experiences like this can be eternally life changing, a revelation of God where you know with everything in you that the spiritual call is stronger than the limitations of the brain. And it makes sense that our brain is infinitely limited compared to God if God does exist.   Once that communication line is opened, one can never go back to relying on the limitations of this brain because one is communicating with a being so much greater , our own mental limitations become meaningless.

I was an avid follower of the teachings of the Bible for many years of my life and never had any grand experience.  I felt the warm fuzzy sensation of worshiping [singing in unison] with others, I've felt the warm embrace of like minded individuals welcoming me with open arms.  Life changing experience that I can't fully comprehend...no.  

31 minutes ago, ARGOSY said:

BUT then you find that God is less interested in proving himself, and more interested in faith and love. Even so I love science and truth and accept the truth wherever it comes from. But because I have such confidence that God is truth, I don't have the slightest doubt in an evolution/creation debate that there will be any science that comes close to challenging creationism. And this is always born out, especially Almost every bit of true evidence supports creation

I guess for many the idea of faith, a token of trust in lieu of hard solid evidence, is considered something to be valued and encouraged.  The problem is we see many times when this way of approaching life can lead to disastrous outcomes.  It doesn't seem to me, to be something that we should be encouraging as we know that we [humans] can manufacture emotions and feelings about things; desiring hard evidence is not or should not be something that is viewed as a weakness or a fault.  

4 hours ago, ARGOSY said:

Everything confirms the bible and favors creation over evolution. For example Wikipedia says this about the Cambr

So are you an old earth creationist then?

1 hour ago, Enoch2021 said:

Factually Incorrect...

We sure 'Know' how it didn't; Therefore... we KNOW how it did.  It's called a Disjunctive Syllogism:

There are ONLY Two Possible World-Views (*Ontological Primitives*) that can be held to account for how we (Universe/Us) are here;

Unguided -- Nature (Matter)    or     Guided --- Intelligent Agency (God)

In the context of our discussion when I mentioned "creator God" I was referring to the theistic God that created the Universe and interacts with mankind.  If you think about it, our Universe *could* be created but created accidentally or unintentionally.  Or the Universe could have been created by a being that doesn't care or concern itself with our plight. 

Also the quote you left from George Wald may be inaccurate.  I don't have access to that journal [not paying to get it], but I've encountered two different sites that claim the quote is not to be found.  They stated instead that the journal actually says...

Quote

George Wald, Scientific American, September 1958 wrote:The great idea emerges originally in the consciousness of the race as a vague intuition; and this is the form it keeps, rude and imposing, in myth, tradition and poetry. This is its core, its enduring aspect. In this form science finds it, clothes it with fact, analyses its content, develops its detail, rejects it, and finds it ever again. In achieving the scientific view, we do not ever wholly lose the intuitive, the mythological. Both have meaning for us, and neither is complete without the other. The Book of Genesis contains still our poem of the Creation; and when God questions Job out of the whirlwind, He questions us.

Let me cite an example. Throughout our history we have entertained two kinds of views of the origin of life: one that life was created supernaturally, the other that it arose "spontaneously" from nonliving material. In the 17th to 19th centuries those opinions provided the ground of a great and bitter controversy. There came a curious point, toward the end of the 18th century, when each side of the controversy was represented by a Roman Catholic priest. The principle opponent of the theory of the spontaneous generation was then the Abbe Lazzaro Spallanzani, an Italian priest; and its principal champion was John Turberville Needham, an English Jesuit.

Since the only alternative to some form of spontaneous generation is a belief in supernatural creation, and since the latter view seems firmly implanted in the Judeo-Christian theology, I wondered for a time how a priest could support the theory of spontaneous generation. Needham tells one plainly. The opening paragraphs of the Book of Genesis can in fact be reconciled with either view. In its first account of Creation, it says not quite that God made living things, but He commanded the earth and waters to produce them. The language used is: "let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life.... Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind." In the second version of creation the language is different and suggests a direct creative act: "And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air...." In both accounts man himself--and woman--are made by God's direct intervention. The myth itself therefore offers justification for either view. Needham took the position that the earth and waters, having once been ordered to bring forth life, remained ever after free to do so; and this is what we mean by spontaneous generation.

This great controversy ended in the mid-19th century with the experiments of Louis Pasteur, which seemed to dispose finally of the possibility of spontaneous generation. For almost a century afterward biologists proudly taught their students this history and the firm conclusion that spontaneous generation had been scientifically refuted and could not possibly occur. Does this mean that they accepted the alternative view, a supernatural creation of life? Not at all. They had no theory of the origin of life, and if pressed were likely to explain that questions involving such unique events as origins and endings have no place in science.

A few years ago, however, this question re-emerged in a new form. Conceding that spontaneous generation doe not occur on earth under present circumstances, it asks how, under circumstances that prevailed earlier upon this planet, spontaneous generation did occur and was the source of the earliest living organisms. Within the past 10 years this has gone from a remote and patchwork argument spun by a few venturesome persons--A. I. Oparin in Russia, J. B. S. Haldane in England--to a favored position, proclaimed with enthusiasm by many biologists.

Have I cited here a good instance of my thesis? I had said that in these great questions one finds two opposed views, each of which is periodically espoused by science. In my example I seem to have presented a supernatural and a naturalistic view, which were indeed opposed to each other, but only one of which was ever defended scientifically. In this case it would seem that science has vacillated, not between two theories, but between one theory and no theory.

That, however, is not the end of the matter. Our present concept of the origin of life leads to the position that, in a universe composed as ours is, life inevitably arises wherever conditions permit. We look upon life as part of the order of nature. It does not emerge immediately with the establishment of that order; long ages must pass before it appears. Yet given enough time, it is an inevitable consequence of that order. When speaking for myself, I do not tend to make sentences containing the word God; but what do those persons mean who make such sentences? They mean a great many different things; indeed I would be happy to know what they mean much better than I have yet been able to discover. I have asked as opportunity offered, and intend to go on asking. What I have learned is that many educated persons now tend to equate their concept of God with their concept of the order of nature. This is not a new idea; I think it is firmly grounded in the philosophy of Spinoza. When we as scientists say then that life originated inevitably as part of the order of our universe, we are using different words but do not necessary mean a different thing from what some others mean who say that God created life. It is not only in science that great ideas come to encompass their own negation. That is true in religion also; and man's concept of God changes as he changes.

Again I don't have access to the journal, so I can't confirm.

1 hour ago, BobRyan said:

As an answer to this? 

The Christian religion claims to have been told the truth from the start - by the Creator of all nature, Creator of all laws of nature, has told us what "is truth". Science has no such assurance. It has to "discover over time" that spontaneous generation of fleas from dust - was total hogwash in science. Just like the helio-centric universe with all the universe revolving around our sun was total hogwash. Science had to discover over time that Othaniel Marsh's bogus horse series (still on display at the Smithsonian) showing smooth transition from Hyrax to horse - was total hogwash. It was creating links "via imagination" that did not exist in real life. The Bible had the right answer all along.

===========================

Is it your claim that the Bible does not claim that the fleas, the hyrax, the horse came from God - but rather evolved so that we can have such horse-from-hyrax stories as a possible option according to the Bible?? really??

No, I was stating that in your examples where early scientific claims were off base, it wasn't the Bible that came to the rescue it was more science or data.  This is the self correcting nature of science.  We don't get all the answers ahead of time, we have to work towards a better understanding of the subject matter. 

1 hour ago, BobRyan said:

Is that because it is "very Apparent" to you that dust, dirt, rocks and gas will indeed turn into a horse given enough time, chance, luck, 'mount improbable'? "Stories easy enough to tell but they are not science"??

I don't see how this addresses my statement that I see no evidence for the supernatural.

1 hour ago, BobRyan said:

Daniel 7 predicts 1260 years of the dark ages (as does Revelation 11,12,13) that happened exactly as predicted.

Can you provide a good resource for me to check out this prediction?   I'd be looking for something that clearly states what the original prediction was actually predicting and clearly what came to pass to fullfill that.

22 hours ago, Hawkins said:

That's the reason why science is reliable. Not because how it is applied to non-repeatable historical events such as the Big Bang. Not because how it is applied to non-predictable end-to-end processes such the evolution claims. It is because of how it is applied to repeatable behavior and to make the end-to-end repetition predictable. It is the infallible predictability which confirms its truth.

I don't disagree.  I don't think ANYBODY has a clear answer to the nature [understanding] of our Cosmos and/or the biological life within it.  All I'm saying is that this doesn't give us the right to declare that the answer must be some creator God because it couldn't be anything else.  We don't know enough to say that.   I am no biologist or physicist, but when I read about evolution, it makes more sense to me than do the counter claims of special creation.  

On 4/17/2017 at 9:16 AM, BobRyan said:

The Christian religion claims to have been told the truth from the start - by the Creator of all nature, Creator of all laws of nature, has told us what "is truth". Science has no such assurance. It has to "discover over time" that spontaneous generation of fleas from dust - was total hogwash in science. Just like the helio-centric universe with all the universe revolving around our sun was total hogwash. Science had to discover over time that Othaniel Marsh's bogus horse series (still on display at the Smithsonian) showing smooth transition from Hyrax to horse - was total hogwash. It was creating links "via imagination" that did not exist in real life. The Bible had the right answer all along.

I notice in your examples it was more science that corrected itself, not the Bible correcting science.   Science has no assurance that we can answer all questions or explore all possibilities, I'm very ok with that. 

22 hours ago, Hawkins said:

On the other hand, we have a whole library of Red Sea Scrolls for us to tell that the contents of the OT Bible we read today, remains theologically the same as humans read 2000 years ago.

This tells us nothing about whether the contents are true or if so to what degree.  What assurance do I have that there aren't any exaggerations, tall tales, legends etc that were written down?

22 hours ago, Hawkins said:

Similarly, we have 2 independent sources of NT Bibles, namely the NIV and KJV, which are theologically (not necessarily contextually) identical for us to tell that in terms of our salvation through the New Covenant (a whole theology) what we read today remains the same as humans read some 2000 years ago.

See my point above. 

22 hours ago, Hawkins said:

To put it another way, if God exists and He has a crucial message (i.e., human salvation theology) to convey. It is thus witnessed that the same message of salvation we are conveying today remains the same message conveyed by humans some 2000 years ago. This verifiable witnessing can only be achieved through a religion we call Christianity (and Judaism) . This is so because we don't have a large amount of humans keeping the history books seriously. However we have a large amount of humans keeping the religious Bible seriously. That's how the contents of the Bible conserved with its theological content intact throughout humanity, or otherwise this is simply impossible through the imperfect hands of humans. Humans are never good keepers of original documents!

And I don't see a correlation with what the Bible proclaims and what I perceive in reality.  I don't see an inkling of evidence that the supernatural exists.   I don't even see Christians really closely obeying/listening to the words of Christ.  In America we can't wait to bomb our enemies, christians divorce pretty regularly etc.  I'm not seeing great words of wisdom that are handed down to us that we couldn't figure out ourselves. 

I am very open however to new information or new insights that I don't currently have. 

1 hour ago, Enoch2021 said:

1.  Christianity isn't a 'religion'.

It has all the markings of what a religion is.  It has sacred texts [that can't be questioned], practices/rituals, holy places, a messiah etc.  

19 minutes ago, BobRyan said:

True that we can "observe" claims proven true or false about building houses -- but the door is wide open to wild guesswork when it comes to things that science can neither reproduce nor observe (such as the creation of life... the creation of a planet, or solar system). Lots of wild stories for example about the interior of Jupiter changed significantly after the Shoemaker Levi impacts. Science goes from wild-story to increasingly less wild as more actual facts surface 

Therein lies my comfort with science more so than religion.  Science can often [not always] get closer to what isn't true leaving us a better picture of what might be true.  Religion has no interest in uncertainty, it declares what is true and any questioning coming from outside that worldview is often met with ad hominem comments.   I'm not necessarily referring to anyone here, I mean in my experience in general.

16 hours ago, BobRyan said:

Real science is all about showing proof in support of its thesis/claims/sweeping-statements.

If I say "only God can build a house" then it would not take much "science effort" to document the fact that people can build houses.

If I claim that a turtle descends from the heavens and makes a hurricane each time one is found to occur - it would not take science long to show the steering winds and conditions that generated that storm. You are free to argue that they are not "showing proof to the contrary" of my claims about a turtle - but in those cases they are showing proof in support of a competing/opposing explanation for the same event. 

And in my experience when dealing with religious claims I can try to show you the hurricane is naturally occurring you could simply retort "It just looks that way, the turtle is invisible and he's causing the winds and conditions".  

Regarding your first statement about God building houses, we know a lot more about how houses are built than about the nature of the existence of a Universe and the nature/existence of organic life.  I don't object to those who believe God created life, I only object to those who say "The only explanation is that God created life".   

5 hours ago, BobRyan said:

The Bible claims only God can create life - so far science has no proof to the contrary - nothing in the lab can create a single celled life form like an amoeba (eukaryote) or even a bacteria (prokaryote) from  a rock, or dust, or gas (the basics of what we had to start with on planet Earth)

It's not the job of scientists to show "proof to the contrary", it's the job of apologists to show evidence in support.

5 hours ago, BobRyan said:

What is more... the claim that "a bacteria will turn into a rabbit over time" given a talented enough bacteria and a long and talented enough length of time filled with improbable just-so events .. has never been demonstrated in science.

It hasn't been demonstrated because it's not a claim to begin with.  

Not sure what you're saying Jeff.

On 3/31/2017 at 5:10 AM, shiloh357 said:

 No one goes to hell for eternity based on how they lived, nor does it have anything to do with religion.   They go  to Hell because they rejected the only plan of salvation God offers them to escape it.  Hell isn't where God sends anyone.  Hell is the consequence of choosing to reject Jesus.

I am familiar with this view but I feel that this view is either quite naive or purposely being unrealistic.  The implication here is that EVERYONE with a sound mind should obviously and easily see that the Bible is the truth and everything it says is accurate.  I can't reject that which I am not convinced exists.  This view you share pretends that everyone has access to the data and some of us heathens are just full of pride and refuse to accept what we know to be true.  I can assure you there are really people out there that don't deny Christ, but at the same time aren't convinced there's anything to "escape". 

1 hour ago, John Robinson said:

The thing is, Bonky, adults go there of their own accord; God doesn't "send" them, they're drawn there like a magnet because they won't do the one thing that will change their polarity. Babies, on the other hand--and the feeble-minded for that matter--don't know any better, and I believe God takes that into account.

Or as Mark Twain (an atheist, as I used to be) put it, "It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do."

I'm sure the Muslims feel the same way about you and I.  I think it's absurd that people should be tortured forever because they lived a human life and didn't believe in whatever religion.  From this thread I can see that some believers have a conscience about these matters, that's refreshing to see.

On 3/28/2017 at 11:01 AM, John Robinson said:

An infant burning forever in a blast furnace. Nice. That's not the God I serve.

I find this conversation odd.  I guess I've been away from this kind of thing for so long.  Many here are so appalled at the idea of a baby being tossed into a "blast furnace" but you're ok with an adult??  I think if you really let that sink in for a minute it doesn't make sense.

Whatever happened to God is just and who are we to question? 

On 3/26/2017 at 7:55 AM, ezekiel said:

Bonky very wise words. What type of data do you study. Data of this world can help one understand some of what is going on.

I don't study data, I help it move along it's designated path...I'm a network engineer. 

Just now, BacKaran said:

That's where we differ, I trust God who controls all things. I refuse to get sucked into lies of man.

When China starts cleaning up their air... Well, they need more help than the USA in regards to pollution...

Yes we definitely differ there.   Remember, the God who controls all things let 6 million Jews be tortured and slaughtered not that long ago.  So thinking he'll make sure the planet doesn't too warm which will cause droughts and flooding etc.  seems reasonable.

16 hours ago, BacKaran said:

Oh I dunno... Maybe it's cuz it's always been called "the weather" for hundreds of years and people understand it changes all the time....

Climate change is a farce and I never really can understand non believers who fall for it... Just my opinion.

I guess one approach is just to shrug our shoulders and call it "the weather".  I would prefer to be a good steward of our planet and study the data to make sure we aren't helping to introduce changes to "the weather" that could have major impact to our children and grandchildren.