After finally receiving some free time from spring break, I took the time to go over Jason's last blog and write a response. First I must apologize for the wait, Jason already knows I am busy with school, but recently I just got a new job. Anyway, Jason's last response can be found here in which he included many videos in regards to different points he was trying to make. I will try to respond to the major points below, his responses will be included in bold and my responses will follow. one more thing, I will be starting a new series of blogs of big things I want to address, from food, the war, energy, and more. So stay posted.
What first caught my attention was what Jason left out of the conversation and did not address. I do not and cannot expect him to reply to everything, but the things of mass importance seems to go unnoticed. When he told me to provide more detailed answers, I did just that but he has nothing to say back. Did I make my point? I do not know. When I refuted his claims, such as “kinds” does not add up to what we observe, the virgin birth does not say “virgin”, or the earth does not “hang” upon nothing, he completely ignores them (also he seems to hint I did not address anything, by later saying look at the “proof” he already provide –the same proof I just debunked). He included links to his work, which I did look at and respond. Its funny, whenever I include a link, he seems to skip it without mentioning anything about it as if he did not even look. It seems to be very likely he did not look, but he later proclaims the proof does not exist. He did not respond to creationist propaganda pieces or when they got caught inserting their propaganda into textbooks and such, or the fact that the scientific community labels them as fringe and pseudoscience and no scientific branch or group supports them. When I named a transitional, even under the harshest of criteria, he and his friend still did not accept it outright without a second thought. When I provided an hour long video just focusing on transitionals and going into detail why they are transitionals, his response was an argument from an anonymous populum (he says some scientists don’t accept it, but he does not explain who or more importantly why) and did not point out a single bit why he thought the evolutionary scientists in the presentation were wrong. I do not think Jason even understands why these fossils are considered transitional.
Whenever I pointed out creationists lying and distorting the facts in court, and include the rulings of such court, he has nothing to say, and yet he calls me absurd. When I provided a history of early christian fathers fighting over obvious discrepancies in the Bible, he has nothing to say except it is reasonable to accept the book anyway. I told him I would be glad to move on to the topic of God and such, but it is difficult to move forward when everything still remains behind and unsettled.
Never do I just state "God did it" although I would be completely justified in doing so. When you look at a building you don't need any proof to say someone built it, the building itself is absolute proof. It is perfectly rational to look at a building and conclude that someone built it. In the same way, when I look at Creation I don't need any further proof to know that someone created all of it, i.e. God. Creation itself is 100%, scientific, absolute proof that there is a Creator. To deny that is to believe that something came from nothing, which is a scientific impossibility.
No you would not be justified, because you still need to actually provide collected data to support yourself and you have not done so yet. I will explain why.
Still using Ray Comfort material? Verbatim too. I thought by now Jason, you would have figured I have heard plenty of this banana guy already. I have read his material (5 books) and made articles reviewing them pointing out when and where he is wrong. I am surprised after all these years he still uses this old stuff and has not bothered to revise it after being proven wrong (actually, he never uses the banana anymore, claiming it was just a hoax. Instead of admitting he was wrong, he denies he made a mistake. Go figure). Let me explain why this building must have a builder argument is fallacious and laughable. I would like to first point out by using Ray’s logic, does lightning have a maker? Is it Thor? This is called the argument from designed. The appearance of design is subjective. What features denote design? Complexity? Order? Beauty? Suitability to a purpose? Any of these can be lacking in objects we know to be designed (i.e., manufactured by humans). We recognize designed objects by comparison with previously known designed objects and by contrasting them with naturally occurring objects.
Where the rock is concerned, the opposite is true. We have no evidence to support the idea that the rock was designed and overwhelming evidence that it is the result of natural processes. We humans perceive nature to be designed based on our experience of human artifacts. By contrast, we have no experience with nonhuman design or experience with a supernatural agent.
However, there exists the argument of poor design, which seeks to display the imperfections of the natural world as a powerful atheistic argument against the existence of God.
* "When you look at a painting, how do you know there was a painter? The painting exists, get it?" ... "And creation proves there's a creator."
This is an example of begging the question, as the point which he's attempting to prove is contained in his premise. Anything created must have a creator, but he hasn't demonstrated that what he means by "creation" (the universe, everything, humans, etc.) is actually a creation. The appearance of design, purpose or complexity alone is not sufficient to posit an intelligent creator.
When Ray asks questions like, "When you see a building, how do you know there was a builder?", his answer is "The building is absolute proof of the builder." This avoids the important question about how we recognize design. He's relying on common sense and a lack of critical thinking, to support the idea that this is a natural, obvious and reliable assumption.
In truth, we recognize that the building is designed because we have an abundance of evidence that supports that conclusion and no evidence to support the idea that buildings are naturally occurring. We possess, or can attain by research, empirical evidence about the history of a given building; who designed it, who built it, what methods they used, etc. We can also learn about the general history of buildings and other structures, throughout recorded history. All of this evidence, and more, in conjunction with a lack of evidence supporting the idea that buildings occur naturally, lead us to the reliably supported conclusion that a given building had a builder. We're not always consciously aware of this process, as we've come to trust our intuition without constantly analyzing why this trust is deserved.
Considering a human, for example. We know that humans are the result of a natural process (sexual reproduction). Science has proven to be the most reliable method for explaining reality and its reliability supports the position that, until evidence to the contrary is presented, natural explanations exist for all phenomena. Ray, and others, aver that the natural world must have a supernatural, intelligent creator...a position wholly unsupported by evidence.
Additionally, when humans create things, they use pre-existing material. To compare the creation of the universe by a god to the creation of objects by humans is to imply that this god used pre-existing matter to do it. This, of course, still leads one to ask, "where did this matter come from?"
Stating that the universe is a “creation” does not prove it so, it is just a label. You have to first prove that matter can be created, but the law of thermodynamics states that matter cannot be created.
Putting that aside, you claim that you are being 100% scientific (or at least you are claiming Comfort is). Wrong, scientific is about repeating, testing, and predicting. Ray forgets that we can verify that a building had a builder. We can call city plans, the engineer, the architect, etc. Just saying it looks designed and must have a designer is a fallacy. We see design in snowflakes and crystals. Does a snowflake or crystal have a creator? No, we know they come about through natural process. We see nature produce bridges and structures that resemble human faces. But the real question is how the “creator” did anything. Neither you or Ray can ever scientifically prove (that is test and repeat) God created anything. I doubt you could tell me how God created anything and support your claim with verifiable data. If you want to be 100% scientific, then you should be able to produce data and test it.
You said that to deny a building had a builder, the only other alternative is to believe it came from nothing. This is a false dichotomy, but the ironic part of this Jason, this is exactly what Ray Comfort and all creationists argue for and try to defend: God created everything ex nihilio. The method or mechanism of creation which these mystical beings use is nothing more than a golem spell where clay statues are animated with an enchantment. It’s an incantation in which complex modern plants and animals are "spoken" into being. That’s right, magic words which cause fully-developed adult animals to be conjured out of thin air. Or a god simply wishes them to exist; so they do. That’s it! There really is nothing more to it than that; pure freakin’ magic –by definition. Remember that the next time you hear anything from a creation “scientist”. You say Jason it’s a scientific impossibility, therefore you have just made my case.
You say you are justified in saying “God did it” to explain how everything came into being. You claim to be using logic and reason in your arguments, so let’s examine if God really can create everything. You have not given me a clear definition of what God is and its properties, and I have heard many, but I will stick to the most common definitions of God. And the most common thing attributed to God is the creator of all things, and when they say all things they mean ALL things.
P1) God is defined as the arbiter of all things, including time;
P2) A decision requires transition from indifferences to will (requires time)
P3) Since time cannot exist prior to its existence, God cannot choose to create time;
P4) If God cannot choose to create time, he is not arbiter of all things;
P5) Therefore, a personal entity cannot be the ultimate arbiter of all things;
P6) Therefore, God as defined is internally inconsistent
C) Therefore, there is no God.
So if your particular God is not the creator of all things, you should define him as such for future chats so we both will have common ground. If he is the creator of all things, then can he create time?
Some say God is omniscient and omnipotent. Can God change his mind? Does God have free will?
Some say God is perfect. Really? As far as I can gather, nothing is perfect.
P1) A perfect being is not subject to change.
P2) A perfect being knows everything.
P3) A being that knows everything always knows what time it is.
P4) A being that always knows what time it is, is subject to change.
P5) A perfect being is subject to change.
P6) A perfect being is not perfect being; Finally therefore;
C) There is no perfect being.
Plus, if he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? A perfect being would not need a bunch of carbon kissing his ass.
Furthermore, throughout our dialogue, I have given you many reasons, examples and evidence that points to a supernatural cause for the universe and life as we know it. I have given you examples from fulfilled prophecy, archaeology, Biblical consistency, scientific foreknowledge and biology but you have denied it all. You ask for evidence and I have given you evidence. There is much more evidence, but I don't think any evidence would convince you. This is why I started with presuppositions and tried to show you that it's not about evidence, it's about how you interpret the evidence based on your presuppositions.
You claim to have given me proof, but as I already shown in my last blog I went over everything thoroughly and explain why they are not proof and thus I remained unconvinced; and I see you make no attempt to counter anything I brought up. All you did is say is “I presented my case, there you go.” I challenge any lawyer to do that to convince a jury, especially after someone already shown why their “evidence” does not stand up to scrutiny. “The Earth hangs upon nothing” – “oh yeah, then what is all that beneath it? That’s not nothing” – “hey I provided you with reasons, examples, and evidence. I have nothing else to say.” The jury laughs.
Supernatural cause for the universe and life? Nowhere in your last blog did you provide anything for such a claim. Do you know what caused the supernatural? I doubt it. If you say nothing, then why not save a step and say the universe did not require a cause? I think Occam’s Razor would side with the latter. We already know the universe is fully capable of being produced without breaking a single natural law. As for life, scientists already have a fine grasp of how life could have formed naturally.
I explained why the prophecies fail and they all fall into any of five categories that gives them the illusion of being prophecies. Can you even recall what the five categories are? Many of the prophecies are vague as hell, some are inevitable (earthquakes, c’mon those are not going anywhere), or were made AFTER the event happened. Here are prophecies from multiple religions, which you claimed at the Promenade did not exist (well apparently they do), but like your prophecies they all fail.
Zoroastrian Prophecies Fulfilled
Buddhist Prophecies Fulfilled
Hindu Prophecies Fulfilled
Native American Prophecies Fulfilled
Latter Day Saint (Mormon) Prophecies Fulfilled
Many more prophecies exist from multiple religions, you can even find prophecies in the classic novel Moby Dick. I have a hunch you will dismiss the above prophecies without investigating them rationally simply to only favor Christian prophecies, but the prophecies you provided are just as credible as the rest. And since we're on the topic of prophecies...
Unfulfilled Prophecies in the Bible
Propheices: Imaginary and Unfulfilled
Need I say more?
I showed that archeology is no friend of the Bible, provided books and links to biblical inconsistency, and went through bit by bit by bit by bit why the “scientific foreknowledge” in the Bible is junk. Blood is the source of life, c’mon. It did not require an anatomy or biology education to disprove that one. I also pointed out to you that Muslims use the same exact arguments in showing the Quran accurately predicts the shape of the earth, speed of light, and much more. Why do you dismiss these as proof of Islam?
So you did not read my responses carefully, ignored them, or choose not to read them. Read them again, because simply repeating your case to me will not magically make my arguments vanish. And if you are choosing not to read them, then you may understand why people leave Christianity.
[In response to my claim that creationist lie about transitional fossils do not exist, I called them willful liars. Jason response with...]They are not lying. If there was a real transitional form that proved evolution it would be all over every newspaper around the world and everyone would know about it. There is no transitional form that even secular scientists agree is proof of evolution. It doesn't exist. Kent Hovind has had a long standing $250,000 award for anyone who can give him proof of evolution and to date, that money has never been claimed, because that proof doesn't exist.
Here is a number of the important papers published on the fish-amphibian transition. i will try to actull post this as a picture so you can see it for yourself, but blogger is being difficult.
The point is: Newspapers DO acknowledge new discoveries all the time, subscribe to media like ScienceDaily. The problem with modern mass media, I think the last time I saw the stats, only 5% of media attention is given to the scientific fields (the rest is given to politics and government, foreign news, social news, Charlie Sheen, etc.). Scientists themselves are bad communicators, because they mainly talk to each other and not the public. They talk to each other to go over their work and collect more data.
Now you are now the one making general claims with no support that secular scientists claim there are no transitional fossils. Can you name some, or more importantly WHY they hold such views? As for convicted fraud and pseudoscience charlatan, MISTER Kent Hovind’s reward, it is nothing compared to James Randi’s offer I mentioned before. Why has no one claimed Kent’s challenged? Simple: the challenge is set up so that it is impossible to meet it whether evolution is true or not. First, Hovind conflates many areas of science, including cosmology and abiogenesis, under his misuse of the word evolution. Second, he wants proof that the universe came from nothing, which is not known to be true (and which is not relevant to evolution). If he is demanding proof of the universe coming from nothing, then he is admitting creationism has no proof (thanks Kent). Third and most important, Hovind requires proof that "evolution . . . is the only possible way the observed phenomena could have come into existence." IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PROVE A UNIVERSAL NEGATIVE. In fact, scientists already seriously consider alternatives for abiogenesis (like panspermia). The judges are all picked by Hovind, so they are probably biased, and Hovind has refused to let unbiased judges judge a challenge (Kolosick n.d.). Hovind's hand-picked judges may well be unqualified, too, since Hovind does not have the background to judge qualifications. There is even evidence that the judges do not exist: An advertisement in Pensacola headed "Attn: Hovind's Expert Committee" received no responses (Vlaardingerbroek n.d.). Several people have tried to collect on his challenge, only to get a runaround or to be ignored. Hovind was willing to offer $2,000 for proof that a dog and a banana have a common ancestor, but he backed out of this when it was required that the judges be unbiased (Kolosick n.d.)
Again, even secular scientists would not agree on that "full library" of transitional forms. All you have to do is go to the link you sent me and see how often they use terms like "probably, could have, maybe, likely, etc." This is not science; it is mere speculation and interpretations based on their presuppositions about the past. Every one of those supposed transitional forms can be interpreted from a creationist perspective as well.
You have not named a single secular scientist or provided any specific reasons why they dismiss them. You use Ray Comforts arguments again, practically verbatim. His feeble argument called the “language of speculation” basically says you cannot trust someone who does not use absolute terms. Science never claims to be absolutely true; scientific theories must remain falsifiable. Read that again: falsifiable. Scientists must choose their words very carefully, because science is brutal in peer-review, new data is always being introduced, and no scientist would ever get away with any of the wild raving propaganda which religious zealots or the news media use. That’s why they say the devil is in the details! Truth may be pursued but never possessed. That’s why we should trust those who seek the truth and doubt those who claim to have it!
Even if we did not have a single fossil, there is still evidence to prove common descent (phylogeny, ontology, genetics, taxonomy, biogeography, etc. all these fields of science confirm common descent without a single fossil needed). Creationists do interpret the way they see fit to fit their biased views. Even creationists cannot agree what a fossil is. There are three different types of transitional forms and we have ample examples of each. But creationists still insist that we’ve never found a single one, because what they usually ask us to present are impossible parodies which evolution would neither produce nor permit, like the Crocoduck. Consequently, we can and have proven that humans are apes in exactly the same way that lions are cats, and iguanas are lizards, and whales are mammals. So where is the proof that humans descend from apes? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now! Even secular scientists will be out of their minds to deny this.
Ray Comfort constantly says that he can “absolutely prove” God exists, what does this man posses that the greatest philosophers in the past did not? And yet, the best proof Ray can come up with is a banana!?
Michael, would you ever believe that given enough time, a digital camera could evolve from nothing. Or how about a 747, or a computer, or a crayon, or a pencil, or an automobile. Of course not, you're smarter than that. You know those things were created. Their existence alone is proof that they were created, someone had to create them. So how could you believe that something as complex as the human eye, or even the simplest known bacteria, which is more complex than any of those manmade objects, somehow happened on its own? You claim that people that think there is a creator are simple minded. That is because it is simple to see. Look around you. Look at the sun, moon, stars, your body, your brain, your eyes, your circulatory system, your lungs, your nervous system, etc. They all testify to a Creator simply by their existence.
I love this argument here Jason. Let’s use a bunch of examples that are not alive that cannot reproduce to pass down certain heritable traits. C’mon Jason you are smarter than that. You purposely use man-made objects and fallaciously equate them to living things.
Let me make this perfectly clear Jason, evolution does NOT say anything evolved from nothing. That is a dishonest creationist straw-man. Creationists know it’s dishonest, but they keep reusing it anyway because they are not honest. I suggest if you ever want to be even remotely honest with yourself, you will drop it now. Evolution explains the diversity of animals, it does not say that the animals just poof into existence out of thin air. That is what creationism explains. What I keep noticing is that I have yet seen any evidence from you is “how” these creatures were created, but you ridicule any natural process is possible. Do crystals have a creator? We see patterns in clouds, but we do not think they were specially created. We understand these things were made through natural processes, none of them require help from the supernatural. Besides, your claim is irrelevant to the theory of evolution itself, since evolution does not occur via assembly from individual parts, but rather via selective gradual modifications to existing structures. Order can and does result from such evolutionary processes.
We know the eye can evolve through simple gradual steps a Darwin predicted. Nilson and Pelzer performed a computer simulation of the evolution of the eye using tiny, non-overlapping steps. Despite using very conservative parameters, they found the modern eye could evolve in less than 400,000 generations –a blink of the eye in geological time. [Proc Biol Sci. 256:53-58] We also see the work of natural selection on animals that do not use their eyes and over time lose them, such as the fish Astyanax mexicanus (the Mexican tetra) and the salamander species Typhlotriton spelaeus and Proteus anguinus, are blind yet have rudimentary, vestigial eyes
There are many flaws with your eyes right now, a sign of evolution. Images travel to our brain backwards and upside down so the brain needs a compensatory mechanism to solve this. Your eye even has a blind spot. If you don't believe your eye has a built in blind spot check the following picture and paragraph I got from here.
Looking at moons, suns, stars… yeah, very simple minded. You look at birds, trees, and bees and dwell in a form of fantasy and awe, then equate it to a narrow version of your favorite magic man. We already know how stars and suns form, and none of them require any help from the supernatural or magic.
Michael, if you don't believe God exists, then I don't even know why you would mention something like evil and Hitler. Do you believe what Hitler did was evil? I assume you do. But if you take God out of the equation then what is evil? If evil exists, you must believe the opposite of evil, namely good exists as well. If good and evil exist, then you assume there must be some moral law by which you differentiate between good and evil. If there exists a moral law, there must exist a moral law giver, i.e. God. That moral law giver, God, is exactly who you deny exists. But if God or the moral law giver doesn't exist, then there cannot exist a moral law, and then there is no basis for you to differentiate between good and evil. So, if you believe what Hitler did was evil, you are borrowing from the Judeo-Christian worldview while at the same time trying to verbally deny its existence.
Ah, this one again. Law requires a law giver. I remember all my classmates in Philosophy saw through this one during a live debate.
Let me first point out: I do not deny the existence of God. To deny something is to imply that it does exist; therefore I do no deny the existence of gnomes, fairies, unicorns, Zeus, or Allah. None have been proven to be real.
Moving on, this law requires a lawgiver is an equivocation. There is a difference between prescriptive laws (like highway speed laws) and descriptive laws (gravity). You are comparing apples and oranges, plus if this argument was valid, the mind of God, not being a random jumble of synapses, would equally be “governed” by some laws or order itself and thus require a higher lawgiver. Laws do exist, and they do not require any higher source to exist.
So there you have it Jason. Simply claiming something is evil is not borrowing from a christian worldview, which by the way it is not. Moral laws existed centuries before God gave man the commandments. The oldest form of morality may be a form of humanism, which Christianity adopted bits of. Morality existed and continues to exist without religion.
You asked what is evil without God? That is no big mystery. Good is what enhances life and happiness, evil is that which takes away life and causes harm. If morality means anything, it is the intention of minimizing or avoiding suffering and harm. Morality comes within humanity, more specifically: evolution and our brains. We see animals showing signs or morality, such as vampire bats sharing food or dolphins pushing their sick to the surface to get air. Why should I treat my neighbor nicely? Because we are all connected. We are part of the same species, genetically linked. Since I value myself and my species, and other species I am related to, I recognize that when someone is hurting, my natural family is suffering. By nature, those of us who are mentally healthy recoil from pain and wish to end it.
But what if you do believe in God, what is evil? Tell me that. Question Jason, and please answer: Does God say certain things are evil because he just says so, or does he say they are evil simply because they are evil?
In fact, some would argue morality can be used as an argument against God. From what I included earlier, god is not the common place for morality, but if humans did receive their morals from God, then we would expect theists to behave much better than nonbelievers. However, this is not what we see. Ignoring the history of Christianity engaging in many atrocities lets look at the present. Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the UK are among the least religious societies on earth. According to the United Nation’s Human Development report (2005) they are also the healthiest, as indicated by life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, homicide rate, educational attainment, gender equality, and infant mortality. America, on the other hand, is among the most religious countries in the world and is beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, and infant mortality. Even if you deny that any discrepancy exists between the behavior of believers and what is taught in their scriptures, the empirical fact that nonbelievers show themselves to be no less virtuous provides strong evidence that morals and values come from humanity itself.
[I claimed creationists took joy in distorting what science overall is.] This is absurd. Clearly, creationists can indeed be real scientists. There are 1000s of creation scientists across the globe that have gone to school and researched to get their PhDs right alongside the same scientists that believe in evolution. They undoubtedly understand what science is and how it works. And this shouldn’t be surprising since the very basis for scientific research is biblical creation. The universe is orderly because its Creator is logical and has imposed order on the universe. God created our minds and gave us the ability and curiosity to study the universe. Furthermore, we can trust that the universe will obey the same physics tomorrow as it does today because God is consistent. This is why science is possible. On the other hand, if the universe is just an accidental product of a big bang, why should it be orderly? Why should there be laws of nature if there is no lawgiver? If our brains are the by-products of random chance, why should we trust that their conclusions are accurate? But if our minds have been designed, and if the universe has been constructed by the Lord as the Bible teaches, then of course we should be able to study nature. Ultimately, science is possible because the Bible is true.
It is not absurd Jason, it is true. I noticed you left out the entire paragraph me explaining why. What part about it did you not want to share? I explained one example of a creationist admitting in court that they were not performing science, but “fringe” science to the point even pseudoscience like astrology can be considered science. I can list more examples. I review and analysis creationist work, lately I have been writing reports on Ray Comfort. I can prove that creation scientists distort the facts, both in the fields of science and in court. In my last post I showed you a peer-review of a creationist textbook and it was laced with unscientific dishonesty and propaganda. In 1987, creation “science” was outlawed in public schools as being exclusively religious and not scientific in any sense.
You mentioned creationists with Ph.D.s, like the mail-ordered ones or phony ones? Or are you pointing to creationists who are not even biologists?
Thankfully, our brains are not the result of random chance, and thus operate well in reality. However, we should still hold doubt as a virtue. Doubt exists in all areas of life. Nothing can be proven absolutely. However, many things are certain enough that we call them facts and do not worry about the possibility that they are wrong until we see actual evidence that they are wrong. Without such an attitude, we would never be able to get on with our lives.
I stand by it that creationists distort facts. I can provide many links to such dishonest tactics. Here is an article reviewing a creationist textbook written by creation scientists that was exposed as an unscientific total fraud in court.
Science is not based on Biblical anything. Actually, it is more likely based on the Greeks and paganism. The Greeks invented reason and any reader of the Bible knows Christianity is based on scripture and revelation, not reason. If you want to see a religion actually based on reason looks like, look at the formal theologies of the Greco-Roman philosophers. Yet, the pagans invented theology too (read Aristotle Metaphysics, or John Dillon Alcinous (Oxford, 1993))
The article below shows that the Ark of Noah was completely feasible. There is plenty of evidence for the feasibility of the Ark in the article. If you are truly open minded, please read it and consider the points the article makes.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/really-a-flood-and-ark
Feasible? It says a dozen times magic may have been involved.
Notice how this article does not even try to comment on the basic problems I pointed out on my previous blog. The biggest problem with this article is that it’s laced with supernatural claims, basically invoking magic in all the holes or absolute impossibilities to justify their position. Seriously Jason, do you think presenting magic tricks will do anything? Remaining open-minded, where is the evidence for the supernatural? Talismans, incantations, elemental component spells, enchantments, clairvoyance and prophesies all consistently fail every test. To confirm this, James “the Amazing” Randi, a former Las Vegas illusionist well-versed in the angles used in supernatural pseduoscience -has for ten years- offered a million-dollar prize for anyone who can show testable evidence of the things we should expect would also be true if there were etherial entities influencing things with molecular structures. In that time, he has exposed a few frauds. But to date, no one has ever produced any actual evidence for faith-healing, telepaths, psionics, precognative psychic friends with astral bodies, past life remembrance, or spectral manifestations of any kind. So where is there any field of study or accurate fact positively promoting a magical creation? Nowhere, not even in your creationist article.
Here are some specific things I will point out in the article.
*Not peer-reviewed, thus it is hardly scientific. Nor is it presented or processed by any credible scientific association.
Now I will move on and examine the whole article. For assistance, I will verify what I use with professionals at my university and peer-reviewed material. For mathematics, my half-brother will be helpful. He got through calculus and he is the son of a physicist. As for myself, good thing I took courses in Geology and Meteorology (studying the atmosphere and weather patterns).
(BTW, for the logical arguments I made earlier about God creating time, my half-brother asked this question: “Can Jesus (God) heat a burrito so hot he can’t eat it?” It is a serious question. You can respond to my half-brother if you wish and I will be sure to tell him your answer. As a joke I responded with this: “Jesus would never eat a burrito, he’s Jewish and only eats kosher.”)
*One Continent* This article hypothesizes that the world back then was one huge continent several thousand years ago. This is not supported by plate tectonics one bit. For the lands to separate to seven modern continents in a short amount of time would need massive amounts of energy and cause so much heat and chaos. The catastrophic formation of mountains and subsequent return of the sea into its basin would have released tremendous amounts of heat and mechanical energy, enough to boil the oceans and metamorphose the minerals in the mountains. No trace of such a catastrophe exists. Plus, if the continents did separate during the flood, how the hell did the animals migrate from the Ark to their modern habitats. How did the flightless little kiwi bird get from Ararat, across an ocean onto the island of New Zealand? How did the America bison cross the Atlantic Ocean to America? How did koalas get from Ararat to Australia, polar bears to the Arctic, etc? Also, why are so many animals found only in limited ranges? Why so many marsupials are limited to Australia; why are there no wallabies in western Indonesia? Why are lemurs limited to Madagascar? The same argument applies to any number of groups of plants and animals. Here is a good question: Why is inbreeding depression not a problem in most species? If all there was were two of every species after the Flood, how and why are many species affected at all?
*Average size.* It does not matter on the average size, but the TOTAL size. The total size is greater than would have been practical for the ark to carry (Isaak 1998). The average size of vertebrate aboard the ark was 347 kg (765 lb.), according to the values used by Woodmorappe (1996). Woodmorappe said that Whitcomb and Morris's sheep comparison is overly generous because the median size is that of a large rat, but the median statistic is not useful for anything in this context. Woodmorappe placed 15,746 animals aboard the ark, for a total weight of 5,464,000 kg. That is about putting 25 Statue of Liberties on the Ark. There is no way you can fit that onto a vessel 450 ft long, 75 ft wide and 45 ft tall. And that is not including the amount of food required to sustain the animals. Elephants eat about 110,000 kg of food every year. Lions eat about 16,000 lbs of meat a year. Giraffes eat 63 kg of plants daily, that’s 13,000 kg each year. Do the math for the rest of the animals.
(BTW, WOODMORAPPE’S REAL NAME IS JAN PECZKIS)
Woodmorappe's address listed in an article of his in the Creation Research Society Quarterly is identical to the listing for Jan Peczkis, that Peczkis has the same geology degree as Woodmorappe, and that Woodmorappe claims to be a teacher while Peczkis is a teacher. The claim that the two are the same person has been in print since 1991 though one talk.origins poster reports that Peczkis threatened him with legal action for making this claim online. Why bring this up and why would anyone care who Woodmorappe really is? Because in an online article Woodmorappe quotes a Peczkis article from the Science Teacher without any mention that they are the same person. Writing something under one name so that it can be quoted and given positive notice using a different name is not honest. It is also worth mentioning that Woodmorappe/Peczkis has a well-deserved reputation for dishonest quoting as well as for name calling and has used some fairly incompetent arguments.
*Behemoth* The article says this creature was a dinosaur just by interpreting the proportions of its tail –or so they think. There is no evidence to support such a claim of dinosaurs in biblical times. Fantastic creatures appear in folklore from all times and places. There is no reason to believe that the ancient Hebrews would be different. The "tail like a cedar," which creationists think indicates a large dinosaur, is not even a real tail. "Tail" was used as a euphemism in the King James version. A more likely translation for the phrase is, "His penis stiffens like a cedar" (Mitchell 1987). The behemoth was probably a bull, and the cedar comparison referred to its virility.
*Juveniles instead of adults* So they try to skip around the size problem and say that only infants were brought on board. How did this work. Did the animals leave their original habitat as babies. For most of them, after traveling so many leagues through harsh unfamiliar environments –somehow not getting eaten by predators– they would be full grown adults by the time they reach Noah. Even assuming the largest animals were juveniles, the ark would still have been overcrowded. Noah was instructed to take "the male and its mate," implying sexual maturity of the animals (Gen. 7:2). Juveniles do not have mates. Juveniles must still be old enough to be weaned and, in some cases, socialized to learn behaviors from their parents. This would make many of the animals old enough to be mostly grown already.
*Hibernization* Again, this paper fills all the problems with magic. Here is the real problem with this piece. Most animals do not hibernate, and most of the ones that do are small animals. The large animals are the ones that require the most food and care. Among them, hibernation would probably have been an insignificant factor. Woodmorappe (1996, 127-135) considered the issue of dormancy uncertain enough that he did not include it in his calculations. The opposite problem of overstimulation or lack of privacy may have been a problem for some animals. In zoos, great care is necessary to provide not only food, but also the proper stimuli to keep animals healthy (Hsun and Menon 2003). In particular, large spaces are necessary for territorial animals to behave normally, and the sight or sound of predators will increase the stress of their prey. There exists another problem. If the Flood waters did cover the highest mountain, then the Ark being in such a high altitude would have killed nearly all of the animals.
*Caring for the Animals* Three hundred and twenty full-time employees are needed to care for fewer than 3000 animals at the Washington National Zoo (Grimaldi and Barker 2003). Granted, many of these would be working on administration and visitor concerns that would not have existed on the ark. Still, assuming that only a quarter of them cared for animals, that is still eighty people to care for 3000 animals. On the Ark, there were eight people to tend more than 15,000 animals (assuming Noah's crew were not needed to do maintenance and bail water). They would have had to work more than fifty times harder than professional zookeepers. Double shifts are not enough to make up the difference. Accepting Woodmorappe's number of 15,754 animals aboard the ark, and assuming the crew attended to them sixteen hours per day (a very generous assumption), each animal would receive an average of about thirty seconds of attention per day for all its needs. Labor-saving mechanisms proposed by Woodmorappe are unrealistic. For example:
1) Watering many animals at once via troughs would not work on a ship. Most of the water would slosh out as the ark rolled with the waves.
2) Automatic feeders would allow pests to infest the food. Animals with automatic feeders would probably eat more and waste more food, too, increasing the amount of food that must be stored. Woodmorappe did not account for the extra space required.
3) At least one third, and probably two thirds, of the manure could not be disposed of by simply pushing it overboard, since it would be below the water line. The manure would have to be carried up a deck or two.
Here is something that bugs me, how did the animals with very short life-spans survive. Some animals only live as short as a few weeks, who can survive a whole year on a boat? How did they fit enough food onto the Ark? The Titanic was MUCH larger than the Ark with only 3,500 people on board, but only had enough food for about a couple weeks. How do you feed 15,000 animals and 8 people for a year (especially how do you feed those who have certain diets and not have the meat rot). Don’t forget, above I named how much elephants, lions and giraffes eat, but I barely scratched the surface of how much food would be required for the rest. After all this trouble, how can the animals survive after the Flood? All the other animals are dead, so they only option they have is to eat the other passengers, which by the way, would cause an entire species to go extinct.
*Where did the water came from?* The article does not provide any models, so it is basically all guesswork. But let’s examine the problems, and I did not think my courses in Geology and Meteorology would ever come in handy. First of all, there is not enough water above or below the earth to flood itself. If the water came from above, which would mean there must have been a greater volume (MUCH GREATER VOLUME, I have to stress that point) of water in the atmosphere. So much as 40 ft of extra water (and that is just being nice) would raise the atmospheric pressure accordingly, raising oxygen and nitrogen levels to toxic levels. If the water started off as vapor, any water coming from it would be superheated and Noah would be screwed. If it started off in the atmosphere as ice, the gravitational potential energy would likewise raise the temperature past boiling. Let’s not forget that a thicker atmosphere of any significance would block sunlight and reduce the temperature. What about water beneath the earth? Still not enough water to flood itself, even if you include the modern oceans. How was the water contained? Even a mile deep, the water is boiling hot, for it to shoot up to flood the earth would have cooked Noah and his company (not to mention the falling water would have generated heat from the gravitational energy. How did the water cut through solid rock? If you examine a water cutter, the pressure must be maintained at all times, even a split second off the whole thing fails. So how was the pressure maintained to provide enough force to cut through mile(s) of solid rock? Not to mention there is no geological evidence of this anywhere. The article says secularists deny the existence of the flood, but this is a cop out and a diversion from the real problem: no proof of a global flood. The global flood does not even agree with basic physics and math.
*Where did the heat go?* Limestone formation: There are roughly 5 x 1023 grams of limestone in the earth's sediments [Poldervaart, 1955], and the formation of calcite releases about 11,290 joules/gram [Weast, 1974, p. D63]. If only 10% of the limestone were formed during the Flood, the 5.6 x 1026 joules of heat released would be enough to boil the flood waters.
Magma: The geologic record includes roughly 8 x 1024 grams of lava flows and igneous intrusions. Assuming (conservatively) a specific heat of 0.15, this magma would release 5.4 x 1027 joules while cooling 1100 degrees C. In addition, the heat of crystallization as the magma solidifies would release a great deal more heat.
5.6 x 1026 joules is enough to heat the oceans to boiling. 3.7 x 1027 joules will vaporize them completely. Since steam and air have a lower heat capacity than water, the steam released will quickly raise the temperature of the atmosphere over 1000 C. At these temperatures, much of the atmosphere would boil off the Earth.
*Disease and suffering* I noticed that the article says there were no diseases and suffering before the Fall. Well let me ask you this, if there were no diseases before then, then why did God build us with an immune system? What is the point of having one if there were no diseases? Basically, the immune systems points to the obvious fact: there were external harmful forces in Eden before the Fall. Not to mention, it is impossible for there to be no suffering. Look at sharks. Do you know how they breed? In a shark’s womb, there are dozens of embryos, and one will be lucky to develop first. Why lucky? Because while still a baby in the womb, it will eat its siblings everyday to sustain itself until conception. That’s right: cannibalism. Every shark is born a predator. Other animals have specific diets where all they eat is other animals. Even God in Genesis 1 says eat from the trees as they were meat. This indicated Adam and Eve ate meat, and only place you get that is from dead animals. Even if they just ate fruit from the trees, you are still eating a cellular organism and killing it.
*2 Peter 3* This book is unanimously considered a forgery by the vast majority of critical scholars. Enough said. It talks about seeing catastrophic events around the world, while the article points it to a flood. What they don’t do it TEST IT. That is what’s missing in this article. Then again, I’m not surprised. They do not answer the basic problems. How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? Why weren't the Sierra Nevada’s eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood? Why is there no evidence for the flood in the ice cores? How the hell would the polar ice caps be possible after the flood? (even Greenland would not regrow that fast). Where is the evidence in the sea floors or tree tings? How does a global flood explain angular unconformities? How do you explain the formation of varves? (The Green River formation in Wyoming contains 20,000,000 annual layers, or varves, identical to those being laid down today in certain lakes. The sediments are so fine that each layer would have required over a month to settle.) How could the Flood deposit layers of solid salt? How could a flood have deposited chalk? (Chalk is largely made up of the bodies of plankton 700 to 1000 angstroms in diameter. Objects this small settle at a rate of .0000154 mm/sec. In a year of the Flood, they could have settled about half a meter. This does not add up to what we observe in nature.)
*Mt. Aratat* Gary Greenberg, a New York City attorney and President of the Biblical Archaeological Society of New York (he is also a member of The Society of Biblical Literature, The Egypt Exploration Society, The American Research Center in Egypt, The Archaeological Institute of America, and The Historical Society) has written many books, journals and maintains a website. He provides many lectures on ancient history, mythology, and biblical studies and has presented papers to many international conferences, including the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. In Greenberg’s book “101 Myths of the Bible” he goes into detail about the Biblical account of Noah landing on Mt. Aratat. The reality is the mountain in the flood story originally referred to the primeval mountain in Egypt. After the Israelites moved to Canaan, they changed the location to the mountains of Ararat, believing it to be the highest point in the world. Many people think that the Ark landed on top of the mountains of Ararat, but the Bible does not say which one. The area encompassed by ancient Ararat now crosses the borders of modern Turkey, Russia, Iran and Iraq. Genesis 11:2 however implies that the survivors landed at a far different location, landing in an unidentified place east of Babylon then moved west across Shinar. Ararat, however, is way to the north and slightly west of Babylon.
*Was Noah righteous?* Hard to believe, since Paul said “there is none who are righteous, none” Someone is wrong here.
The problem is Jason, everything! There is no model or evidence to support such a scenario. Nothing dreamed up in these articles matches what we observe in nature (chalk layers, ice caps, etc.), and often they contradict what we actually see. Also, they do not explain some very important questions, nor does not provide any testing, dating, predictions, models, anything. Instead of admitting when the article contradicts with nature or claiming events that are outright impossible, the only way creationists dance around the problems is using one favored word: MAGIC. This article admits that supernatural forces are needed. This is not science Jason!!! These guys have no interest in doing science. Many have admitted they want to undo science. Thankfully, creationist Phillip Johnson already admitted that this is not about science at all "This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It’s about religion and philosophy."
You know, Jason, for someone who thinks the universe operates in an ordered way you surely has no problem invoking magic to bend or totally eliminate physics, math, order and natural law just to fit your particular fantasy beliefs.
The story alone makes little sense. Why would an omnipotent omnibenevolent God go through this sort of trouble? If God is just going to do everything with magic, why go through the trouble of all this? Why not magically caused heart attacks and all the wicked humans die of a bad ticker? Why harm the animals? What did they ever do? What could they have done that was so bad? I thought he was omnibenevolent, but he kills the little puppies for a crime they did not commit. Not to mention God kills countless unborn babies in their mother’s wombs.
I did not even begin to touch on historical problems with the flood and the ark. It blows my mind. How did the human population grow so freakin fast? Genealogies in Genesis put the Tower of Babel about 110 to 150 years after the Flood [Gen 10:25, 11:10-19]. How did the world population regrow so fast to make its construction (and the city around it) possible? Similarly, there would have been very few people around to build Stonehenge and the Pyramids, rebuild the Sumerian and Indus Valley civilizations, populate the Americas, etc. How do you get from eight people to just the number of people in the Exodus story alone? In 1446 B.C.E. (about 900 years after the traditional Flood date), Moses was said to be leading 600,000 men (plus uncounted women and children) on the Exodus, but it gets worse. It does not including the populations of the time: the Egyptians and their army, the Babylonians, Canaanites, Mesopotamians, Asians, Americans (North, Central, and South), Africans, Maoris, Indians, and the rest. Breeding would be WAY WAY WAY WAY off the charts, each generation would have to have over 10,000 babies, and they would have to start breeding as kids. Bloody hell man, this make the Octo-mom look infertile and it makes the Whore of Babylon look like a nun. Not to mention the mortality rate would have to be extremely shifted. There is no way this happened.
Michael, I feel like you are just trying to argue everything I say for arguments sake. I never said our senses aren't reliable. I said, in science, we presuppose that they are reliable; otherwise our observations could not be trusted. I was just showing some of the presuppositions scientists must have in order to do science.
We did not start this whole talk for arguments sake, this is not Clerks II. I am discussing with you why I no longer view Christianity as a justified religion or why your “proof” is lacking. After showing you why they fall short, you have a better idea what proof is demanded for. Can you actually provide empirical proof for your claims that are not identical to arguments provided by a Muslim? They use the same arguments you do, in fact they are more persuasive. You still have yet to explain why we must conclude a deity exists to explain the nature of things.
[1) Isn't reliable senses a presupposition for any human endeavor? If one cannot assume reliable senses, how does that bolster the case for a deity or deities and magic as an explanation for the world and the universe we perceive?] Yes, reliable senses are a presupposition for almost anything. I am glad you understand that. In your previous response, you said that science has no presuppositions but I am glad you are starting to see now how we all have presuppositions. I am not saying we cannot assume reliable sense, I am saying that we do assume reliable senses and the reason we can do so is because God upholds the universe in a uniform and consistent manner. Genesis 8:22 says "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." In other words, things will carry on consistently from day to day. This is WHY we can assume our senses will be the same tomorrow as they are today and this is also WHY we can observe something with our senses today and can assume the same would hold true tomorrow under the same conditions. Then we can begin to formulate hypotheses and theories and make scientific predictions. If there is no Biblical God who upholds the universe in a consistent manner, there is no basis or reason why we should assume that things will be the same tomorrow as they are today. If we can't assume things will behave consistently then we could not do science as we know it. Thus, the very underlying principle for why we can do science is rooted in the nature of the Judeo Christian God who is upholding the universe and His creation by His power. As I stated earlier, without God, science would be impossible.
Basically, you think our sense is constantly reliable only because a magic man wills it. Why must there be a magical being to conclude the universe operates in an orderly way? It seems to do just fine on its own. You can believe whatever you like. As long as you admit that it is a belief, you don’t have to defend it. But if you assert your belief as a statement of fact, then you do have to defend it! You provided no other argument than just saying things would not be the same if your sky friend turned out to be wrong. So, two options: the universe stays in order because of a supernatural being, or the universe is orderly by nature. I think Occam’s Razor would favor the latter. Science is not impossible without god, in fact science does not include or even comment on God.
[2) Assuming that when you refer to a constant speed of light when you say "light travels in an orderly way," what empirical evidence can you offer that would lead one to suspect that the speed of light varies and what physical processes do you propose as a mechanism capable of causing the speed of light to vary?] Michael, again you are trying to turn something I stated into an argument. I never said the speed of light can vary. It travels in an orderly way and this is another presupposition we make when making scientific observations. We take it for granted that light is constant. The basis for this fact is because as I previously mentioned, God upholds the universe in an orderly and consistent manner. In an atheistic universe, there is no logical basis as to why the speed of light could not just randomly change tomorrow. Again, this is why the Judeo Christian worldview is foundational to the nature of scientific endeavors. Even though many atheistic scientists will deny this truth, they take it to the laboratory with them every day when they assume that the universe will behave today as it did yesterday.
Christianity is not responsible for science or a worldview as you claim it is. If Christianity was, then they would not fight so hard to suppress science during the Enlightenment all the way to present day.
I know of no atheist who would need to explain why the universe operates the way it does, because they don’t have to. An atheist is just someone who lacks a belief in God, nothing more. Their position makes no comment on the universe, thus I would not expect them to provide a response. They are free to try, but like everyone else they have to provide a credible case.
[3) What does "the universe continually behaves in an orderly, logical way" mean?] This means that it is not chaotic and random, but is consistent from day to day. If we stubbed our toe getting out of bed this morning and it really hurt, we can expect that same feeling to occur if we stubbed our toe tomorrow morning. The basis for this is that God is upholding the universe in a consistent manner from day to day.
If you remove God (or whatever you want to call it) from the equation, things still operate just as they do now. I am still waiting for a good reason why the universe being governed by a god is more plausible then no god, multiple gods, etc.
[If you mean that we presume that there are physical constants governing how the universe functions, then doesn't repeated and repeatable experiences validate the assumption? If I observe several people jumping off a cliff, and the result is invariably a plummet followed serious injury or death, doesn't that validate the idea of physical constants?] Again, I am not saying that we can't assume physical constants, I am saying that the reason we can is because God is consistent and He upholds the universe in a consistent manner. Alternatively, if there is no God and there are just blind chemical reactions happening all around us, there is no reason why those chemical reactions must be consistent from one day to the next. Why couldn’t gravity reverse itself and when people jumped off the cliff they floated away from earth. There is no reason why they cannot change in an instant and everything as we know it would be different. If my nervous system began behaving in a different way tomorrow morning, I could stub my toe and it could feel absolutely wonderful. If there is no God upholding the universe in a consistent manner, there would be no reason why this scenario could not or should not happen.
Why must there be no reason why these chemical reactions should be consistent? You say things would shift or change, but why would this be if there is no God, Allah, Aton, Ra, etc. You never explain why this must be so. It is basically wishful thinking and an argument from ignorance: just because I do not understand how everything operates on its own, then I guess the answer must be magic.
[4) Inductive reasoning is a part of many human activities. Are you suggesting that the use of inductive reasoning and forensics in crime investigation, for example, is invalid?] Never would I suggest that inductive reasoning is invalid. Again, the reason induction (i.e. assuming that something I do today will be repeatable in the future under the same conditions) is valid is because God is consistently upholding the universe and what we do today will be repeatable tomorrow under the same conditions.
I think it is interesting that you are so skeptical about the Bible, Jesus, Creation, etc. but you are so quick to jump on and endorse "some guy next door" who posts a video on YouTube. You assume everything they say has to be true when they are basically putting a video together in their garage. If you are skeptical about everything you encounter you would think you would hesitate to endorse Joe Schmoe on YouTube so quickly. I think you are not skeptical about everything; you just don't want to believe the Bible because of the moral implications. If you believe the Bible, then you are morally accountable for your actions and I think the thought of that might put a wet blanket on some of the things in life that you enjoy doing.
You never explain why the universe cannot be consistent without God. It seems to work just as fine without any supernatural deity.
The “guys next door” are not random people I don’t know and I did not jump onto their videos without doing research. They have degrees in biology and I can verify their claims and sources -which all come from legitimate scholarly sources. I do remain skeptical about their claims, I contact them for answers about anything left unanswered. Unlike you Jason they actually can present peer-reviewed proof. You may think I am picky, but it takes a strong set of evidence to convince a skeptic. This is the same exact kind of evidence scientists demand, and all your work does not come close.
Also, Jason that last comment is seriously disappointing. Who are you, some “guy next door” with a mail-order material from Living Waters (a company who is willing to lie to advance their agenda). If you want to make a persuasive argument, quite dodging the real problem: you have no proof. Instead of providing proof, all appeal to my emotions by saying I don't want to be accountable? Right, like you just don't want to be accountable for your sins against Allah, but you do not accept that. Why? Because there is no proof for Allah, and if you want me to accept God then actually provide proof.
Creation scientists have all that same data and evidence to observe that evolutionists do. It is not like creation scientists have their own set of genes and proteins that they study; it is all the same. I'm not sure why you insist that they are different. The conclusions they come to are different, but again, this is because of their presuppositions that they bring to interpret the evidence. All the evidence is the same.
What creation scientists have that that other scientists don’t have is a preset biased conclusion and work backwards. Scientists rely on testable evidence that can make predictions and can be peer-reviewed, creationists don’t. Scientists examine the evidence and then draw conclusions, not the other way around. Scientists have their material brought through massive peer-review before being introduced into textbooks, not inserted non-peer-reviewed material straight away through political pull.
For example, you look at a fossil and immediately think "evolution and millions of years" and I think "God's judgment and buried during Noah's flood". To prove this to you, imagine if you were to apply carbon dating to a fossil of a dinosaur bone and the carbon dating showed that the fossil was 6000 years old. Immediately, you would think that there was an error with the test and rerun it and would already be thinking that the age should be millions of years. Even if it came up as 100,000 years old, you would still date it as millions of years old because that's what you believe it is, not because of what the scientific data says. This shows that you are pre-committed to a certain age for a fossil rather than letting the scientific data speak for itself. This happens all the time in real science. We find Carbon 14 in dinosaur bones and diamonds that are supposed to be hundreds of millions or even billions of years old. This shows that they are only thousands of years old, but scientists will still insist in a very old age in spite of what the scientific data says.
I do not immediately think such a thing. I see a bone (if it is a bone) and many questions pop up. The difference between the two views you presented is that only the former one can actually be tested. I already went through your AIG article, and showed why the evidence does not hold up to scrutiny.
Also, if you did carbon date a dinosaur bone, the scientific community would laugh at you. Do you know why? Because there is no carbon in it! Carbon dating works as far as 50,000 years, dinosaurs lived way earlier than that. Thankfully many other forms of testing exist.
So no, I did not decide beforehand how old it is, the evidence does speak for itself: it’s a very very old bone. And if the age of a bone did come up as 100,000 years old, that is not my problem, its YEC’s problem.
As I said earlier, you don't need proof because it’s already right in front of you. In order for you to know that a building had a builder or a painting had a painter, you don’t need any further proof than the building or the painting. The same is true with Creation. We don't need any further proof than the Creation itself to know there is a Creator. It takes no faith to say that Creation is absolute 100% proof of a Creator just like it takes no faith to say a building proves there was a builder. This should be obvious to any thinking adult.
Right in front of me. This is not merely encouragement to blind faith, it is a discouragement to be skeptical.
Building needs a builder. Wrong again mate. As I already explained, this line of thinking fails. A snowflake does not need a creator. You keep labeling everything as creation, but provide no proof that this is a creation. The law already says that matter cannot be created, so we can already tell we are not a creation.
For a thinking adult, you still fall for simple fallacies and fill the things you cannot answer with magic, that old excuse children make.
In an earlier response, I told you that I believe the Bible gives me the right basis to understand this universe and correctly interpret the facts around me. I gave you some examples of how building my thinking on the Bible explains the world and is not contradicted by science. For instance, the Bible states that God made distinct kinds of animals and plants and I talked about that. I explained that when I build my thinking on this presupposition, it makes sense of what we see and observe around us. You have not shown me how your way of thinking, based on your beliefs, makes sense of the same evidence.
The Bible gives you understanding of the facts around you? So you still think blood is the source of life? Or snakes talk? You and I both know you don’t use the Bible to understand anything around you.
You explained to me what “kinds” is, but I just explained why science contradicts you big time right there and thus is not what we observe around us. I indeed did present a case, remember that it would be impossible for Noah to take up two “kinds” of felines on the Ark?
Here are a few Creation Scientists that you might be familiar with:
The validity of evolution rests on what the evidence says, not on what people say. There is overwhelming evidence in support of evolution and no valid arguments against it. Many of the scientists in the below list lived before the theory of evolution was even proposed. Others knew the theory, but were not familiar with all the evidence for it. Evolution is outside the field of most of those scientists. A couple hundred years ago, before the theory of evolution was developed and evidence for it was presented, virtually all scientists were creationists, including scientists in relevant fields such as biology and geology. Today, virtually all relevant scientists accept evolution. Such a turnabout could only be caused by overwhelming evidence.
1. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) Scientific method.
Lived before evolution was proposed. Made no scientific discoveries by using faith or the Bible.
2. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Physics, Astronomy
Again, lived before evolution was proposed. Btw, don’t forget religion suppressed his discoveries, not enhanced them.
3. Johann Kepler (1571–1630) Scientific astronomy
Again, lived before evolution was proposed. He was an astronomer, not a biologist, and his theories contradicted the church’s view of the universe.
4. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) Hydrostatics; Barometer
Blimey, lived before evolution was proposed. This guy was a mathematician.
5. Robert Boyle (1627–1691) Chemistry; Gas dynamics
*Facedesk* lived before evolution was proposed. Not even a biologist.
6. Isaac Newton (1642–1727) Dynamics; Calculus; Gravitation law; Reflecting telescope; Spectrum of light (wrote more about the Bible than science, and emphatically affirmed a Creator.
Oh come on. None of these men were alive to observe the evidence for evolution. Newton was a believer in astrology and numerology and was even an alchemist, but his discoveries were based on science not fantasies. Whether he wrote more or less about the bible is irrelevant, because not one single thing in Scripture provided any revelation or breakthrough for Newton, in fact nothing from the Bible has been beneficial or helpful to science. The only argument that you can be used is an ad hoc, basically claiming the bible, quran, Vedas, whatever knew about this "new" scientific discovery MUCH LATER AFTER the discovery.
Even if they did not believe in evolution, all these scientists were firmly committed to the scientific method, including methodological naturalism. Plus, evolution is compatible with belief in God. However, if you look at the history of science and belief in God, things get interesting. Famous scientists of the past were theists but they were theists because that was a reasonable conclusion one could draw from the evidence at hand. Notice the vast majority of top scientists before Darwin and Hawking were theists and the vast majority after Darwin and Hawking are atheists.
A 1996 survey in Nature indicated that 60.7% of randomly selected scientists express disbelief or doubt concerning the existence of God. Even more striking, however, was a 1998 survey that focused on members of the National Academy of Sciences. This survey discovered that only 7% of these members of the highest tier of scientific achievement believed in a personal God
There is a more extensive list here. According to you, these were not “thinking people” and apparently could not “see through the crap.” Many of these men are considered “Fathers of Science” and when people refer to science standing today on the “shoulders of giants” these are the “giants” they are referring to. They are some of the smartest and intelligent men to contribute to the many fields of science.
I have seen that list before. There are four times more historians who deny the Holocaust than scientists who approve of creationism.
Giants they may be, but their success and contribution to society rests on the scientific method. None of their works was based on the Bible. F=MG is not found nowhere in scripture. In fact, many of their works contradicted the Bible, such as blood is not the source of life.
Your argument is simply ad populum, an appeal to popularity. Since most people in general believe in a god, and since all scientists are people, it makes sense that a high number of scientists believe in a god, whether or not this is derived from their understanding of science. However, this tendency toward belief does not make the assertion of any god being true.
While scientists themselves may be religious men of many different faiths, their methodology was designed to be the antithesis of faith because it requires that all assumptions be questioned, that all proposed explanations be based on demonstrable evidence, and that all hypotheses be must be testable and potentially falsifiable. Blaming magic is never acceptable because miracles aren’t explanations of any kind, and there has never been a single instance in history when assuming the supernatural has ever improved our understanding of anything. In fact such excuses have only ever impeded our attempts at discovery.
Michael, you also throw a lot of quotes around here about faith being contrary to reason. My simple response to this is that it doesn't matter what Martin Luther or others say about reason, what matters is what the Bible says about it. Faith and reason actually go hand in hand. Without faith, you would not be able to reason because to reason you have to have faith in the laws of logic, which are immaterial and unobservable with our senses. Please take the time to carefully read the following paragraphs about what the Bible has to say about faith and reason.
You say that it only depends what the Bible says about faith, Martin would disagree because he based his entire worldview on biblical principles. Faith and reason do not go hand in hand. The laws of logic may be immaterial, so are numbers, and they do not require faith at all. What makes the use of your Bible more irrational is that the definition of god is unintelligible.
Faith is irrational by its very nature. Every principle of faith may be peeled back in layers to an underlying assumption that is both irrational and unverifiable. The bible is the word of god? We know that the bible was written by men, and indeed every book in history has been, so there is nothing rational about assuming a book authored by men is the word of god. How would we find out if god inspired men to write his book? None of us can get into the heads of the bible authors and know just exactly what was going on. They could have knowingly written a lie, they could have written down the words of someone else who lied to them, they could have written their interpretation of an event under no divine inspiration, and they could have simply experienced a hallucination that motivated them to write. Believing the bible is the word of god is an article of faith both irrational and unverifiable.
The Bible actually encourages reason in Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. The Bible also tells us we are to have a good reason for what we believe, and we are to be always ready to share that reason with other people (1 Peter 3:15). So, as I have been trying to do with you Michael, I have attempted to show that belief in the Scriptures is reasonable, justified, and logically defensible. The Bible makes sense.
The message the Bible encourages is nothing but blind faith. It may mention reason in a passing moment, like Isaiah, but what is reasonable of putting faith in a book written by superstitious men who thought they knew more about the universe than people in the 21st century?
1 Peter 3:15 only instructs believers to answer those who ask questions about their faith, it gives no specifications for whether those answers should be rational and objective or experiential and subjective.
Did you know that 1 Peter is a forgery? How can the Bible make sense if it justifies itself with magic and contains works written by false authors?
The Bible tells us we are also supposed to have faith. We are supposed to trust God and not lean on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). The Bible tells us that the “just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11). Does that mean that we are supposed to trust God regardless of whether His words make sense to our understanding? Are we to accept the teachings of Scripture without regard to logic and reason, even if it does not make any sense? The apparent conflict between faith and reason troubles many people. But when they are properly understood in their biblical context any apparent conflict disappears. Yes, we are to have good reasons for what we believe, and we are also to have faith. In fact, without faith, we could not have reason, as I briefly mentioned above with the laws of logic.
The laws of logic do not require faith, nor does reason. Faith is incompatible with reason.
Are believers meant to disregard reason for faith. I have asked several Christians hypothetically if I can develop a machine with a screen that can play back to any moment in the past, and we saw that a global flood did not happen, they would say it would not matter because faith demands them to believe regardless.
You mention Romans 1:17, but what about Romans 1:20? According to this passage, god's existence is self-evident and there is no reason to question or doubt it. Somehow his "invisible qualities" have been "clearly seen". Again, this is not merely encouragement to blind faith, it is a discouragement to be skeptical.
Proverbs 3:5 "Lean not unto thine own understanding." Don't try to understand things; just accept whatever the Bible and your religious leaders tell you. It seems even the Bible authors knew that they did not want thinking people to question their faith.
Mark Twain once defined faith as “believing what you know ain’t so.” You stated above that “faith is belief with little or no evidence at all.” But is this what the Bible means when it uses the word faith? Not at all. The Bible does not promote a belief in the irrational or any type of unwarranted “blind faith.” Some people have said, “Faith takes over where reason leaves off.” Taken this way, rationality is seen as a bridge that reaches only partway across a great chasm; faith is needed to complete the bridge and reach the other side.
Reason is limited to the facts. If you ignore the facts you are left with nothing but a hypothesis or wishful thinking. Faith is the acceptance of a statement in spite of insufficient or contradictory evidence, and has never been consistent with reason. Faith by its very invocation is a transparent admission that religious claims cannot stand to their own two feet. Faith assumes its own conclusions, believes impossible things without reason, and defends those beliefs against all reason to the contrary.
Whatever the Bible may define faith as, all faith is blind. And it faith is valid, everything goes. Muslims are right, Greeks were right, Hindus were right, and such.
Science is completely opposite in every respect. Rather than any need-to-believe, science is driven by a desire to understand. And the only way to improve your understanding of anything is to seek out errors in our current position and correct them. You can’t do that if you claim your initial assumptions are already infallible, and you can’t even begin to seek the truth if you won’t admit that you might not already know it, or that you don’t know it all perfectly already.
People who take this view would say that Christianity cannot be proven, that reason leads us most of the way to God and then we must make a “leap of faith” in order to say that Jesus is Lord. But this is not what God’s Word teaches about faith. The Bible itself tells us what faith is. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So biblical faith is not blind but is strongly warranted confidence. The phrase “hoped for” does not imply a mere wishful thinking as in “I sure hope the weather is nice next week.” Rather, the Greek word for faith indicates a confident expectation: the kind of confidence we have when we have a good reason to believe something.
Using biblical definitions to prove the Bible, see the circularity in there. Faith is indeed blind. Hebrews 11:1 in other words, faith is the evidence of non-evidence. It’s a free lunch, a perpetual motion machine. Faith is being "sure of what we hope for", "certain of what we do not see," and logic and evidence are not taken into account. The very notion of rational faith is an oxymoron according to how faith is defined in the bible. There is nothing rational about convincing yourself that what you hope for is true or convincing yourself that what you do not see is really there. These are both contrary to reason and human experience. Hebrews 11:1 encourages faith IN SPITE of evidence and logic, not faith accompanied by them. Later you mention Hebrews 11:6 which says without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is. Even the Bible admits that you can’t know if God exists. You have to “believe that he is.” Abracadabra. Sorry, as you admitted at the Promenade, reality does not magically change just to fit your personal belief and wishes.
Biblically, faith is having confidence in something you have not experienced with your senses. Biblical faith is not “blind”; it’s not the act of “believing without a reason.” Just the opposite; biblical faith is the act of believing in something unseen for which we do have a good reason. For example, when we believe that God will keep a promise, this constitutes faith because we cannot “see” it and yet we have a good reason for it: God has demonstrated that He keeps His promises.
Using biblical definitions to prove the Bible. All faith is blind, even biblical faith. There is no reason to believe in a magic man to explain away the mysteries of life – this is a fallacy called god of the gaps, where basically you can fill in the areas you do not know with whatever you wish, whether it be Allah, Thor, God, Buddha, Chuck Norris (amen!), etc.
God keeps his promises? Such as what? Is your only proof of these promises from a book that tells he did so in a story? If that is all you got, you just have an unknown author tell a tale of this mysterious thing fulfill something the author says he did (basically circular and illogical).
As many people have misunderstandings of faith, they also have misunderstandings of reason. Reason is a tool that God has given us that allows us to draw conclusions and inferences from other information, such as the information He has given us in His Word. Reason is an essential part of Christianity and as mentioned earlier, God tells us to reason (Isaiah 1:18) as we see the apostle Paul did in Acts 17:17.
Reason is not part of Christianity nor was it the result of it. Simply saying the two go hand in hand because you cherry-pick some verses do not make it so. You ignore the whole picture of the book demanding you believe in something unprovable regardless of what you think or burn. All Paul did in Acts was preach the same old stuff to philosophers, no wonder they laughed as he left. You also must ignore centuries of philosophers, mathematicians, and thinkers that came centuries before Jesus, all the way back to the dawn of civilization in Sumeria.
For example, I could not know that I am saved apart from using reason. After all, the Bible nowhere says that “Jason Gallagher is saved”. Instead it tells me that “if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). I have genuinely acknowledged that Jesus is Lord, and I believe that God raised Him from the dead. Therefore, I am saved. I must use logical reasoning to draw this conclusion.
You only consider yourself saved by faith, not reason. You base your “logical conclusions” on a book that provides no proof of what it promises. So this is not logical or reasonable, its just blind faith. You admit only your beliefs justify your thinking, and you do not ask for more proof than a few words on a page.
That Romans quote implies that faith is only required for salvation? Seems to contradict the demand for circumcision or baptism. In Romans 10:8 Paul misquotes Dt.30:14, leaving off the words "that thou mayest do it" and adding "that is, the word of faith which we preach." By doing so he completely changed the meaning of quoted verse (that it is necessary to follow the Law) to support his doctrine of salvation by faith alone. "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."
Paul says that whoever calls on the name of Jesus will be saved. But Jesus said: "Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven." (Mt.7:21) Keep on reading, things get interesting, "Their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world."
Paul says that everyone, even in his day, had the gospel preached to them. Even the Native Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders? In any case, if Paul is right about that, then Jesus is a false prophet, since he said he would return before the gospel was preached to everyone. (Mt.10:23)
Augustine reasoned from this verse that there could be no antipodes (humans that lived in the southern hemisphere) since they could not have had the gospel preached to them. (Andrew Dickson White, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, Chapter 2: Geography).
Biblical faith and biblical reasoning actually work very well together. In fact, faith is a prerequisite for reason. As I touched on above, in order to reason about anything we must have faith that there are laws of logic which correctly prescribe the correct chain of reasoning. Since laws of logic cannot be observed with the senses, our confidence in them is a type of faith.
Biblical views to prove biblical views. See the circular reasoning here.
Faith is not a prerequisite for reason, the two have never been consistent. Reason is a tool of critical thought that limits the truth of a proposition by tests of verification (what evidence or observation confirm it?), repeatability (can anyone else replicate these results?), falsifiability (what would disprove it, and have all such attempts failed?), parsimony (is it the simplest explanation, requiring the fewest assumptions?) and logic (is it free of contradictions and non sequiturs?). Thus far, you cannot use reason to verify any of your beliefs in an afterlife or if you are saved, you cannot repeat it, you hint of no way to falsify it (though many forms of it have been refuted), and non sequiturs are written all over it.
For the Christian, it is a reasonable, justified faith. The Christian would expect to find a standard of reasoning that reflects the thinking of the biblical God; that’s what laws of logic are. On the other hand Michael, you cannot account for laws of logic based on your worldview. Since laws of logic are necessary for reasoning, and since the Christian faith is the only faith system that can make sense of them, it follows that the Christian faith is the logical foundation for all reasoning (Proverbs 1:7; Colossians 2:3). This isn’t to say, of course, that non-Christians cannot reason. Rather, it simply means they are being inconsistent when they reason; they are borrowing from a worldview contrary to the one they profess. So Michael, just like Dr. House, you use reason in your everyday life but you can only do so by borrowing from the Christian worldview, which you are trying to tell me does not exist or is a fairytale. Like many unbelievers, you are not being consistent with your worldview because you subconsciously rely upon Christian principles, such as logic, whenever you reason about anything. So as a Christian, I have a good reason for my faith. Ultimately, the Christian faith system makes reason possible.
Addressing your verses, all of these deal with rationality from a very biased and distorted standpoint. Obedience to god is equated with knowledge and wisdom - reason and logic are redefined into a dependence on faith.
//Since laws of logic are necessary for reasoning, and since the Christian faith is the only faith system that can make sense of them, it follows that the Christian faith is the logical foundation for all reasoning// I found a new line for the Hall of Shame. I already explained that the only reason you claim Christianity makes sense of such things is because it is the only religion you are familiar with. Your argument would be equally as valid if you replace God with Allah or whatever you want. The whole point you keep missing is that you have not once shown any empirical proof that if there is a creator, it is your particular version of a creator.
Christianity does not make reason possible. You are also trying to rewrite history, big time. The ancient Greeks (pagans) invented reason, not Christians, so your whole point above falls flat on its face. You are the one borrowing from another worldview: paganism. This ironically, is the very system your faith demands you to avoid. These ancient philosophers were the first to create that which you claim you faith is based on. So I am not relying subconsciously on a Christian worldview, in fact you are the one subconsciously basing your worldview on a faith based system that borrowed and adapted many of its doctrines from earlier preexisting systems.
Colossians 2:2-3 “Of Christ; In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” “All”? Did Christ know everything? If so, then that raises a huge problems with Christianity, but it seems that he may not have. Otherwise, in passages like Mark 5:30, he would have not said “Who touched my clothes?”
Michael, you proclaim to be a skeptic but you jump on the bandwagon of any poster on YouTube or even Dr. House who says something that you think is true. This shows that your skepticism is not genuine as you claim but rather is narrowly focused on the Christian faith, Jesus Christ and the Bible.
These videos I posted from YouTube come from people with degrees in the relevant fields. Did you even watch the seminar on transitional fossils with the professor to an academic audience? Obviously not, because you replied earlier that not one fossil has ever been found. Basically, you dismiss that actually shown to you before your eyes. You are not being skeptical, you are in denial. You say a building requires a builder, but you cannot provide anything before me that there is a builder and that builder is the particular one you have in mind, while at the same time deny all the other possible “builders” that could be responsible.
Michael then says…This is why Jason I simply ask for something more. It is not much, while I remain open to all sides I cannot take them seriously until they provide evidence.
And I repeat myself. When I want to know how something came to be, the ones who come forth and actually present something right in front of me, their side outweighs the ones who say “just believe.” Well, I can believe an invisible gnome is floating over my shoulder right now, but that does not mean it exists in reality. On the other hand, the ones who can show belief in the gnome is irrational, and all tests show that it is not there, and they prove that there is no such gnome, they convince me.
All I have done is provide evidence. I honestly question your openness to all sides because you have not done anything but argue every piece of evidence I have provided up to this point. If I continued to provide you with evidence, I think the same would continue. What sort of evidence would you like to see other than what I have already provided? Here is a summary of some of the evidence I have provided thus far:
You make it seem as if I am being tough on you on purpose, and am not really trying to be open. Keep in mind, I am no harder on you than a scientist testing electromagnetic waves or a historian looking for proof if Caesar crossed the Rubicon, or a infidel being lectured by a Muslim.
I use a scientific approach of discovering if a certain position holds up to scrutiny. If it seems like I am being difficult, you then know how hard scientists are. They are like vultures, constantly trying to disprove things.
Remember, you use the same exact arguments I frequently get from Muslims (prophecies, archaeological proof, dozens of scientific foreknowledge in the Quran, salvation, ordered universe, THE WHOLE SHEBANG), and I carefully examine each and every point they make just as I do with you. I have to be thorough if I am to remain open to all sides. One side has to have evidence the other does not, and that is what I am trying to get across to you Jason. I hope you are getting the message. You are also not helping your case when you repeat the old lies that fly in the face of science and history.
1. The foundational presuppositions required to do science (i.e. Induction, an orderly and consistent universe, reliable senses, light being constant, etc.) are all based on the Christian worldview. Without God, all of these presuppositions ultimately have no basis.
You are basically trying to rewrite thousands of years of history. None of these came to existence around the time of Christianity; in fact they predate it by far. Reason and science is more of an invention by the pagans, many centuries before Christ. As I already pointed out, the universe operates just fine without God and you have yet to explain why if such a being was absent everything would be different that it would be necessary to invent a being to explain away that which you cannot explain.
2. Evil implies there is such a thing as good, which implies or assumes a moral law with which to differentiate between the two. A moral law implies a Moral Law Giver, who Michael is trying to disprove exists. If there is no Moral Law Giver, there is no moral law, there is no good and evil. Therefore, speaking about evil only makes sense if God exists.
I am not trying to disprove that which exists, I am showing why you are failing to prove that it does exist. There is a difference. I cannot disprove the idea of green horses galloping on the surface of the sun, but I can show that the evidence supporting such a concept is false. If there is no evidence to show something is real, there is no reasonable explanation to accept it. Thus far, all the supposed “evidence” I have been presented is not real evidence and is just as credible as evidence presented by a Muslim or Scientologist.
Morality exists, but it is not governed by laws. Throughout human history, morality is flexible and adjusts, but it all comes within humanity, not passed down from a higher source.
If good an evil only makes sense if God exists, it makes just as much sense if you replace God with virtually any other deity. Jason, does God say this is evil because he says so, or does he say it is evil simply because it is evil?
3. Faith and Reason – Reason is dependent on faith in the laws of logic, which are immaterial and unobservable by our senses. The Christian would expect to find a standard of reasoning that reflects the thinking of the biblical God; that’s what laws of logic are. On the other hand Michael, you cannot account for laws of logic based on your worldview where you exclude God.
Reason is not dependent on faith. Faith is not required for the laws of logic. One does not need faith to accept numbers. Both are concepts of the human mind.
"which are immaterial and unobservable by our senses."
The above violates the Law of Identity, since it's not accounting for the Laws of Logic by what they are, but by what they are not. (Immaterial) is a negation, and (unobservable) is a negation.
"On the other hand Michael, you cannot account for laws of logic based on your worldview where you exclude God."
Wrong here mate. Atheism itself, is not a worldview. However, there are secular worldviews can account for the Laws of Logic.
"that's what laws of logic are."
The Laws of Logic are conceptual absolutes that describe and represent existence in sum.
I ask you Jason to account for the Laws of Logic positively. Not by negations. The Objectivist worldview (which is a secular worldview) can account for the Laws of Logic POSITIVELY by recognizing that the Laws of Logic are concepts.
I'd be interested in seeing how you can account for the Laws of Logic in a positive manner, rather than just saying what they are not(ex. Immaterial, Unobservable)
4. I have given you evidence from Prophecy, Archaeology, Biblical Consistency, Scientific Foreknowledge and more, you just disagree with it. Nevertheless, it has been provided.
And I have explained why your prophecies are either not prophecies or failed prophecies. I have pointed out that archeology has not proven the Bible and modern critical archaeologists no longer support such a view.
I went through each scientific foreknowledge, and shown that a high-school education can refute it if you take a few seconds to think it through. Blood is not the source of life, the earth does not hover above nothing, and the biblical water cycle is wrong.
Just disagree with it? Are you agreeing that blood is the source of life? Why Jason? What did I say that did not convince you? Tell me.
You say you have provided me with material, but the problem is you have provided me with nothing. You material I s no different than a Muslim making a case for Islam. If you want your material to hold any weight, you have to provide something the other thousands of religions cant. As of yet, I am not seeing anything new or even remotely convincing.
5. Created Kinds and Natural Selection are completely consistent with how we observe animals reproducing and adapting to their environments today and reflect the Creation account in Genesis 1. What we see is consistent with what is revealed in Scripture.
By your definition of kinds does not fit with what we actually can test, nor does it fit with the Ark scenario. You cannot fit all “families” into such a vessel. You ignored my point about felines before and immediately after the Flood contradicts your views is consistent with natural selection. If you accept natural selection is consistent with how we observe nature, then why continuing to deny evolution overall?
Consistent with Scripture? So did God create plants before the sun? Plants rely on photosynthesis, and if there is no sun it is impossible for plants to live. Did God create birds before there were land animals? Could not have, otherwise we would find avian creatures appearing in the fossil record first, instead we find them appearing millions of years after land animals. Genesis taken literally puts the whole creation in 6 days, but what science tells us it is much older than that. There are dozens and dozens of methods to show that everything was not created in such a short time.
Michael, the evidence is overwhelmingly against you here and even the majority of atheistic historians will agree with me here. I read your history blog and my response to it would follow along the same lines as the quote below:
As a historian, I can say you could not be more wrong. Atheist or secular historians do not agree. Most historians accept the Jesus story just because of tradition and popular belief. It is what the actual evidence says that matters. Some historian scholars, such as Hector Avalos in his book, argues that the majority of scholars know there is no proof for the Bible, they just continue to study it because it provides a paycheck. If you have no bible, you have no job.
“In fact, there is more evidence that Jesus of Nazareth certainly lived than for most famous figures of the ancient past. This evidence is of two kinds: internal and external, or, if you will, sacred and secular. In both cases, the total evidence is so overpowering, so absolute that only the shallowest of intellects would dare to deny Jesus' existence. And yet this pathetic denial is still parroted by "the village atheist," bloggers on the internet, or such organizations as the Freedom from Religion Foundation.”
Whoever wrote this certainly gave up on reasoning and straight to ad hominems. Let him try to make a case and provide proof. Of course, he said nothing. Why don’t you say anything? For someone claiming to be the one presenting proof, I still have yet to see anything.
Please see the link here for evidence on the existence of Jesus.
Seriously, this guy barely made an argument, he just repeats old debunked arguments I already refuted on my blog, and several others have done so as well. If you are basing your sole response to me with this guy, then consider your faith hollow and pointless.
So then, it is safe to say that you were deceived back then when you thought the Bible was true? The question I would ask you is “Did you know the Lord”? If you did know the Lord, then you admit that God exists because you knew Him. If you didn’t know the Lord, you were never a Christian and therefore never truly believed the Bible. I pray that one day you will come to believe and put your trust in God’s Word. That is my hope for you!
Did I know the Lord? I know people who know Allah. I also know many other people who are equally convinced that a higher power exists after eating mushrooms. Michael Harner, and anthropologist who lived among the Jivaro Indians of the Ecuadoran Amazon, described his experience with ayahuasca as follows:
“For several hours after drinking the brew, I found myself although awake, in a world literally beyond my wildest dreams. I met bird-like people, as well as a dragon-like creature who explained they were the true Gods of this world. I enlisted the services of other spirit helpers in attempting to fly through the far reaches of the Galaxy.”
There a literally hundreds or thousands of these reported events that certain drugs, seizures, stimulation’s, rituals, etc. all can produce feelings and connections with higher powers.
What does this tell me? Did I know the Lord, or did the electric signals in my brain tell me that? The brain is very capable of producing such feelings that seem real with no help whatsoever from the supernatural. A number of investigations have shown that deep temporal lobe stimulation in the area around the amygdala and hippocampus of the limbic system produces feelings of intense meaningfulness, of depersonalization, of a connection with God, of cosmic connectedness, of out-of-body experiences, a feeling of not being in this world, déjà vu (a feeling that something has been experienced before), jamais vu (a feeling something is happening for the first time even though it has been experienced before), fear, and hallucinations.
The superior temporal gyrus, the hippocampus, and the surrounding ectorhinal cortex have been shown to be the site of a sense of the self in space. Aberrant functioning of this area can result in the out-of-body sensations, depersonalization and derealization so common in spiritual and mystical experiences. These spiritual experiences are seen as similar to those of ordinary experiences except that they are tagged by the limbic system as of profound importance, meaningful, immensely joyous and of providing a sense of being connected to something greater than ourselves.
Michael, see above for all the proof, or evidence, I have provided but you willingly deny. You have all the proof you will ever need. Remember, Creation proves a Creator just like a building proves a builder. However, you seem more eager to place your faith in random YouTube videos and Dr. House than the Lord God Almighty. This shows me that you are prejudiced towards the Bible and not truly open to all sides equally as you say.
“Willingly deny.” Jason, I explained why these are not convincing or not even proof at all, that does not mean I deny the supernatural I just say there is no evidence for it. What I am saying is, is there something anything more? If this is all the “proof” I will ever need, then Christianity is not just false, it is willfully false. If someone is denying anything here, is you denying the list of fossils (even the ones presented to you through video), Islamic prophecies, and turning down my history blog without any counterargument at all.
I already pointed out these videos are not just random people. They have degrees in biology or paleontology. The Dr. House quote seemed to perfectly illustrate what Luther claimed, which make it seem from someone on the sidelines that this is the case. Is it reasonable to believe in something that does not fit with reality?
Again, see above for all the evidence that has been provided. I can provide more if you like. Even the Big Bang points to the existence of a Creator. Also, biblical faith is not “blind faith.” What I am asking you to do is place your faith in the Bible and Jesus Christ, something that is unseen, because there is ample evidence and good reason to do so. What is the one biggest stumbling block you have towards the Christian faith, the Bible, and Jesus Christ? Perhaps we can turn this into a question and answer where you provide me with one major question at a time about why you don’t believe the Bible or Jesus and I will respond one question at a time. That will help with the super-long blog responses as well.
Jason, repeating yourself that you “presented” something does not provide it with any more credibility, especially after it has been critically analyzed and critiqued up and down and all around. You did not even provide any counter arguments to any of them.
How does the Big Band point to a creator? There is no part of the Big Bang that violates natural law.
I, and many others, will argue all faith is blind. You already know the first step towards me accepting Christianity. Where is the historical evidence for Christ? That will be a first step. As for a Creator, lets say that there is a creator, it seems to have no effect on the fact of an old universe and that we are primates.
Also, given that I already examined your claims that only a Christian worldview has provided with a logical view of the world and gave mankind reason is logically and historically false, and each point you have provided I pointed out where it goes wrong. Putting all that aside, give me a good reason why I should choose Christianity. If your answer is the fate of my soul, try harder.
But in either case, it doesn’t matter how convinced you are; belief does not equal knowledge. The difference is that knowledge can always be tested for accuracy where mere beliefs often can not be. No matter how positively you think you know it, if you can’t show it, then you don’t know it, and you shouldn’t say that you do. Nor would you if you really cared about the truth. Knowledge is demonstrable, measurable. But faith is often a matter of pretending to know what you know you really don't know, and that no one even can know, and which you merely believe -often for no good reason at all.
Again, you are so quick to place all your faith in some random person’s video on YouTube and question the Word of God. It seems like your skeptical mind goes out the window when you logon to YouTube and look for videos that try to discredit Christianity. All I can say is that Hell is not a concept, it is a real place of eternal torment where the fire is never quenched and the worm never dies (Mark 9:48). It is a place of utter isolation where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (Luke 13:28). I have heard personal testimonies from people who have died and came back and experienced the reality of hell first hand. When what they experience parallels what the Bible describes hell is like then it gives me reason to believe that what they experienced was real.
The reason videos like these are more convincing is that they actually provide me with a case and evidence I can verify, especially as a historian. The case is consistent and these events did happen. You, on the other hand, just assure me it is real by giving me two verses in a book and say that some people have visited hell without providing me any names or even provide actual empirical evidence that this place they visited was real or just in their subconscious or just an outer-body-experience. It would make sense if they believed beforehand that hell was real, come short of death, and experience a variety of effects projected by their subconscious of a fiery realm. Experiences like this feel real, but they are just in their heads. And if such a place was real, then why do we have conflicting stories, such as we get on planes or we go to another planet. What you cannot do is verify if this “place” you have in mind is real. Can you bring me back a rock from hell? If you could, you could settle this issue once and for all.
Do you know what else jesus said about death and hell: it was coming soon. Luke 9:1 "There be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power."
Jesus falsely prophesies that the end of the world will come within his listeners' lifetimes. For the sake of argument, if I accept Jesus did exist as a man, he was a failed apocalyptic prophet at best.
I continue to want to prevent you from facing God’s wrath on Judgment Day. You have broken His Commandments, as have I, and God will be absolutely just sending us to hell for eternity because of our sins against Him. His holiness demands that He punish sin wherever it is found. However, God is loving and merciful and does not want that for anyone. So He sent Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for your sin and mine and if you humble yourself, turn form your sins and place your faith in Jesus to save you, you have God’s promise that he will save you! Your death sentence can be commuted and you can go to heaven when you die and have a relationship with the living God starting today!
Your pleading and empty promises will not change reality just for your personal beliefs and wishful thinking. Either prove that such places or people exist, or accept the fact that your beliefs have no leg to stand on. As it stands, you are trying to save me from a fantasy in your head, which is completely harmless to me and the world (until that fantasy drives you to hurt others).
Michael, again, the proof is all around you. You just choose to ignore it. You even admit I have provided you evidence and you don’t find it convincing. I cannot convince you, nor is it my job to convince you. Only God can convince you and that won’t happen until you humble yourself and seek Him. But if you don’t believe He exists, then you will never seek Him, which is exactly what Scripture says. Read this passage from Hebrews 11:6: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” I hope you can see that it is reasonable to believe in God and I encourage you to seek Him, even if you are skeptical. Truly and honestly open your heart and ask God to reveal himself to you. Seek Him. Read His Word. Go to Church. Listen to sermons online. Seek answers to the questions you have about Christianity. If you seek him with all of your heart, he will reveal himself to you, that is a promise from God. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain, go for it!
You keep saying the proof is all around me, but so far your “proof” does not have a leg to stand on. Even if we assume that there is a creator, you still have to verifiably prove that it is your particular deity and not just dogmatically outright claim it is.
Again, you are asking me to go on a search for something without verifying first that it exists. You may tell me go search for the red gnomes in my garden, but that does not mean they exist in reality. A Muslim can tell me to go to a mosque. A shaman would ell me to eat this, and definitely I would start seeing things.
Hebrews 11:6 basically demands one must have faith. Just blind faith.
Seek answers to the questions you have about Christianity. Why do you think I engage in these sort of conversations?
At the end you are invoking Pascal’s Wager. Tell you what Jason, seek out the creator, but when you find him know this: no matter how sure you are, it is a trickster in disguise. The true creator will bless you if you are brave enough to doubt the existence of this trickster -and thus you lived your whole life un-fooled. The rest who are foolish to fall for the trick will suffer. As it stands, Jason, I have nothing to lose or gain, just like you. You think you have everything to gain, but repeating that to yourself will not matter.
My friend made an interesting observation about your advice above. He observed that you don’t even take your own advice. Why don’t you approach everything with doubt and skepticism. Surely you have not brought this skepticism to all the YouTube videos you posted. And you are not very skeptical about science, especially evolutionary science? Do you ever apply that doubt you advise me to use to science? You are taking science on faith. You also take all of the videos you post above on faith (like the one that tries to explain away the reality of hell) and you immediately embrace it as truth. Also, he reminded me that true humility is admitting we don’t have all the answers (and that God does). Pride is the opposite, thinking we have all the answers and we are smart enough to figure everything out ourselves.
What you and your friend missed is that this is exactly how I approach everything. I have no double-standard. These videos I posted contain many claims, and each can be verified from independent sources, journals and peer-reviewed articles and novels. How do I know? Because I actually talked to the makers of the videos to verify their claims. I myself took the time to properly research to check their claims. Their sources come from valid scholars, professional scientists, academics and historians. I chatted with the most of makers of these videos about any doubts, proof, and other sources I can read to expand my knowledge. The makers have degrees in the relevant fields, such as the one on transitional fossils was hosted by a professor at the University of Chicago (60% of their faculty are Nobel Prize winners). So what is the one thing I did not do? I did not take these videos on faith. I doubled checked their work. So remember that when you and your friend falsely accuse me of something.
As for evolution, for a year after leaving Christianity I never knew what evolution even proposed or what it meant. I could live my entire life right now and not accept evolution, but that would do nothing of making me return to religion. When I asked how they know we evolved, the evidence they provide was overwhelming, but I still ask questions about it to this today. As it stands, evolution via natural selection is the only explanation of biodiversity with either evidentiary support or scientific validity. There has only ever been one alternative theory against it, and it was an earlier version of evolution: Lamarckism.
The video on hell does not “explain away” a hell, because a hell was never there to go anywhere. The video provides a historical background of the concept of such a place, through Greco-Roman Hellenization and Jewish Scripture. These can be traced and verified, such as Judah under control of Egypt until Syria took control in 198 BCE and the Jewish response to Hellenization in the Maccabean Revolt in 166 BCE. You can check yourself by reading scripture, being even slightly familiar with Greek mythology, and a little history research. However, the real problem is Jason is not where the concept of Hell came from, but the fact there is no proof to support or prove such an actual place, so hell is not a “reality” it is just as mythical realm. A bigger problem is there is no proof of an afterlife.
Your argument is that since we do not have all the answers, then some superman does? It’s funny that wherever humans fault, we project the perfection onto a greater being. We are fallible, God is infallible. We are weak, he is all-powerful. Coincidence? I think anthropologists would say no. It is easy to give a concept certain traits, Jason. Proving its existence is something else.
I hope to hear from you soon. Thanks for all of your responses so far, I hope you find it worthwhile. In the meantime, I will continue to pray for you. God Bless you, Michael.
Feel free to pray as you see fit, in the mean time I will think for you. I hope you realize the importance of my message. I demand proof -- actual empirical, testable proof. The sources I present are the only ones meeting that criteria, and I do not accept them off hand just because they do not share your views. Of these different camps, the one who delivers what I ask for gets more credibility than the other camps. Christianity throughout my childhood never asked for proof. When I was born again, I was told that was a one way ticket to Heaven, but I wanted to ask the “How do you know that?” but I missed the opportunity and it has bothered me since. Christianity offered an escape, but from what? How did they know, if they knew anything at all? Christianity was compatible with several aspects of science, but those who denied reality showed a side of Christianity that I think is a really damaging Christianity. Creationism made Christianity look very dishonest, and perhaps the whole thing was dishonest.
Back when I was a Bible believing Christian, my view of creationism can be summed up to this Jain sermon.
Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected.
If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now?
How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression.
If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally.
If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense?
If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could.
If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all morality, would have no desire to create anything.
If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe?
If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble.
If he created because of the karma of embodied beings [acquired in a previous creation] He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else
If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not make creation wholly blissful free from misfortune?
If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all,
And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place?
Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own nature.
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