Why should people believe that all religious understanding is relative and that no one interpretation is absolute?

HANK

psi42

But, like I said before:
You aren't taking into account the "natural selection" bit. It is not a series of random happenings, it is a series of changes that are selected for by the environment.

Faith has nothing to do with it. Faith has no place in the scientific method.

Meet the Punctuated Equilibrium model.

You are assuming a primitive eye would be exactly like a modern eye with bits and pieces carved out.

Try this on for size:
A primitive organ used for sensing the presence or absense of high-intensity light. This would serve a useful purpose. Let's say this is your starting point. It could very well be a precursor to the modern eye, but it is certainly not a half-formed cornea.

Well, considering you are mixing inherently incompatible terms (scientific fact and scientific theory), your question can not really be answered.

I never said man had made anything better than the eye. I never said the eye was not incredibly complex. I never said the eye was not a good thing. What I did say was that the eye was not perfect, because it cannot sense the entire electromagnetic spectrum and can be easily damaged.

But couldn't he have given you a better one that was not susceptible to diseases like glaucoma?

So, by enduring glaucoma and friends, we are glorifying God? Sorry, I'm not making the connection here.

Ask the child who is starving to death.

I have no basis to state what is a perfect form. However, I can state what is clearly _imperfect_ -- and that is the human eye.

But your God is omnipotent, is he not? Could he not just modify the structure of the World so that knives could only cleave food and wood but not flesh?

Sexual reproduction requires a mate. Asexual reproduction does not. Sexual reproduction requires intercourse. Asexual reproduction does not.

According to the scientifically accepted model, sexual reproduction allows the genetic makeup of the offspring to be different from that of the parents, for the simple reason that there is more than one source of DNA.

What is the creationist assertion here?


You are right, it does not. But why design something that wastes so many human resources if it has no other purpose than to be inefficient and to allow for the convenient transmission of certain communicable diseases. Surely your omnipotent God could devise a better way to reward marriage.

I'm just looking for answers. I cannot hope to shake faith with the scientific method. They are, by their very natures, incompatible.

Better brush up on your definition of theory.

If it was "divinely inspired," then why does it claim the World was created in six days? If it is the Word of God, it would be correct to the letter, no? No allegory, no nonsense, no "ancient society interpretations'" you said it was "divinely inspired." But Genesis contradicts the fossil record and carbon dating. How do you reconcile this?

You are referring to this, correct?
Granted there could be mistakes in the translation (I will come back to this later), but I see only the word "circle," not "sphere."

How is this evidence of divine inspiration? How do you profess to know the state of the ancient sciences at the time the book was written?

To what "unerring prophecy" do you refer?

I would be interested to see this in his words, and in context.

Ah... but you've stepped into a circular logic trap. In order for God to be the author of the Bible, he must exist. But you base his existence on the word of the Bible.

Are you _sure_ you know the origins of that book? It has been translated. Can you read Hebrew?

It has been edited and restructured over time as well.

Why should they be acceptable to your God? You are stepping in to this issue already assuming you are not only correct but also hold the moral high ground, when in fact you cannot even concretely tell me the origins of the Bible.

And if (for example), the ancient Greek religions were the "correct" ones (in this case I am referring to Mount Olympus and friends), then _your_ religion would have to be wrong, and your God and your Bible would hold no weight.

psi42

Funny you should bring this up. Christianity isn't exactly famous for holding the world together in peaceful harmony over the centuries.

I was not arguing that. I was asking you to prove your religion to be _the_ correct one.

Again, you are assuming the Bible is both the Word of God and infallible.

Don't get me wrong. I admire the strength of your faith. But you can hardly hope to convince a non-Christian of the existence of your God by quoting scripture.


~psi42

chrisl

You miss my point. Yes or no: are the mutations that are "selected" assumed to occur randomly?

I agree that it has no place in real science. But consider the primary definition of faith in the Houghton Mifflin dictionary: "Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing." Is that not how you feel about these theories?

A model--another theory. Theories are a dime a dozen and many suffer from a logical fallacy called "Argument from Ignorance," which in one form basically says, "If you can't prove it's false, then it must be true." Even the scientists themselves don't agree on the validity of all the theories floating around! How can any of them be used to prove a point? Just because someone can find theories to support a given claim doesn't make that claim true.

And did you read that Wikipedia article? Not only does it reveal the lack of agreement in the scientific community but it contains the statement: "The lack of substantial gradual change of perhaps most species in the geologic record, from their initial appearance until their extinction, is well known among paleobiologists, and has long been noted." I found it interesting that while the scientific community does not agree on evolution or the punctuated equilibrium model, they do agree on the lack of fossil evidence.

I think this is a gross oversimplification. There is a vast gulf separating a light-sensing cell from even the simplest eye. Explain to me how the optic nerve and the eye evolved independently and then came together so that the brain could process the information? It's absurd. If it weren't for that fact that denying it would mean admitting the existence of God, no reasonable person would accept it.

You quibble over definitions. History is filled with examples. The earth-centered universe comes to mind first but there are many others. Do you disagree?

The Bible says that we were given one that was not susceptible to glaucoma. We are currently imperfect, though.

Hmm. An appeal to pity that totally ignores the point...

Yes, he could have, but he didn't. He could have made us all robots with no freewill too, which is the logical end of your line of reasoning. Your argument leaves no room for freewill. I wouldn't be surprised to find others who would argue that if knives were that way that God was unfairly restricting their freedom of choice. Once again, what's your point? That the Creator who had the power and intelligence to produce the wonders of nature got it wrong and should have done things the way you think they should have been done?

I don't know what you're asking. Please clarify.

Sigh

No they're not. The scientific method is incompatible with what many so-called Christians are spouting but not with the Bible.

From this Wikipedia article: "According to Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time...'Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis; you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory.'"

I just knew you were judging the Bible on the basis of other's bogus claims! Don't confuse me with those who claim that those were six 24-hour days. The Bible uses the word translated as "day" in many ways. Depending on context, it can mean almost any amount of time, kind of like saying "In my grandfather's day they did things differently." The length of the creative days are not specified but Bible chronology indicates that the minimum figure for a creative day is about 7000 years.

Do not put words in my mouth! The Bible as it was given to mankind is correct to the letter but I do not claim that human copyists and translators have reproduced it perfectly across the centuries. But scholarship has revealed very little significant change in the text. You can argue about punctuation or words, but the Bible has come down to us with the message intact. The integrity of the Bible when compared with the Dead Sea scrolls is tough to explain if you argue that the text was forged or distorted.

This opposition to the Bible is more of the fruitage of hucksters and extreme fundamentalists. I've heard their claims that the King James Version is the authoritative Bible. Some even call it the "King James Virgin"! What a crock. Every translation must be carefully evaluated for bias. Today, we have several high-quality translations of the Bible, but the KJV is not one of them.

But even so, the KJV is not so bad that it cannot be used. You just have to keep in mind its limitations.

Genesis does NOT contradict the fossil record and carbon dating. Where is the proof of that statement? Again, you base that statement on the claims of others, not what the Bible actually says. Carbon dating is not the "end-all-and-be-all" either. It has its critics too. And consider this statement from Wikipedia:

"Since it is assumed that the cosmic ray flux is constant over long periods of time, carbon-14 is assumed to be continuously produced at a constant rate and therefore that the proportion of radioactive to non-radioactive carbon throughout the Earth's atmosphere and oceans is constant"

If the flood account is true, what effect would all that water in the atmosphere have on the radiocarbon dating? There's no knowing how great the distortion would be, but very likely things would look older than they are. At the very least, the RC dating system would be very untrustworthy.

Again, I think you quibble, although the Hebrew word here does actually convey the idea of a sphere. But even if it didn't, the Bible still had it right at a time when most were in ignorance.

Come on, now, you're being argumentative! My point is that the Bible had it right at a time when this wasn't known for sure. That is a piece of evidence that supports inspiration rather than contradicts it, right?

Wow, where to begin? How about the dozens of prophecies fulfilled by Jesus? How about the succession of world powers in Daniel that reach up into our day? The destruction of Jerusalem, Babylon and Tyre?

This quote is common knowledge--Google it. Newton's respect for the Bible was well known. Check the Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_N...eligious_views

This comes from Higher Criticism which, like many other theories, does not enjoy widespread support. The fact is that the Bible is astonishingly consistent despite that fact that it was written by 40 people over a period of about 1600 years. You can't even get two or three scientists to agree on a theory. How do you explain 40 different authors producing a consistent document like the Bible?

chrisl

If you substitute the word "Christendom" for "Christianity", then you are absolutely correct. Do not confuse the two, they are separate and distinct. Christendom professes to be Christian but is not.

It was Christendom that formed the Inquisition and later put Galileo before it (finally admitted their error centuries later) and who throughout their sordid history have meddled in politics, killed each other in countless wars, insisted on literal 24-hour creative days and made other absurd claims about the Bible.

They may claim to be Christians but their actions expose them as hypocrites.

The Bible does not support them. In fact, Christendom has denied the Bible by its actions. If all mankind actually followed what the Bible teaches as true Christianity, there would be no war, no violence, no crime, etc. Gandhi once said that the solution to the world's problems lay in the simple truths of the Sermon on the Mount. But true Christianity requires self-sacrifice and few are willing to abandon their selfish lifestyles to live it. Many want the benefits that the appearance of righteousness brings but are unwilling to make the changes it truly requires.

So beware of words with no actions to back them up. It is especially dangerous when someone claims, "All you have to do is believe!" The Bible says otherwise. (Matthew 7:21; 1 John 5:1-3; James 1:22; James 2:14-26)

And before you object that you don't recognize the authority of the Bible, I'm only providing scripture references to show the hypocisry of Christendom, who profess to follow it.

What proof could I possibly give you that you would accept? All I can tell you is to study the Bible with an open mind--not biasing your opinion with hearsay or the prejudices of others--and see for yourself if it is the truth or not.

The Bible is a book that encourages reasoning, not credulity, and it can be reasoned on if you are open-minded. I think that the churches of Christendom have poisoned the well in this regard. Their wacky claims have made people hyper-critical of the Bible.

We'll just have to agree to disagree, then! The Bible stands on its own. You are free to ignore it, if you choose. The Bible says that not everyone wants the truth. My concern is for others who are genuinely searching for the truth because, while you are free to do as you wish, others are harmed when they hear untruths about the Bible or are encouraged to dismiss it because the latest scientific theory is being tossed about as if it were a fact.

Chris

psi42

Apologies for the delay.

As far as I know, yes.

No. Science is not a religion, we do not adhere to scientific theories because we consider certain scientists to be infallible. We adhere to scientific theories because they are explanations with a multitude of evidence, supported through the scientific method.

If a better _scientific_ explanation was found, then it would surely displace the evolution by natural selection explanation. Have you got one?

I've often seen this fallacy used s an argument against Strong Atheism....

You're talking about these theories like "someone" just conjured them up during their lunch break.

Scientists do dispute _how_ speciation occurs, but that does not mean that speciation does not occur at all.

You asked how the lack of "intermediate forms" in the fossil record could be explained, I pointed to the punctuated equilibrium model, which is a well-thought out and well-respected theory to explain it.

What about the Compound eye?

No, it wouldn't. I believe this is the "Either/or fallacy" (A is false, so B MUST be true).


How does the earth-centered universe idea qualify as science?

So you are saying God just _chose_ to give us glaucoma?
...How does glaucoma glorify God?

How does it ignore the point? In order to sustain ourselves, we have to consume organic matter. In order to do so, we have to destroy other organisms--other Creatures of God, so to speak. If we do not eat, we not only die, but suffer incredible pain. Why impose this requirement--surely we could have been given the pleasure of eating without having to destroy other life or fear starvation.

If there is a Creator, why would he do things that simply do not make sense? How does a cattle slaughterhouse glorify God? How do starving infants glorify God?

Let's take a look at sex.

Sex is good because:
It is pleasurable
It forms bonds between people
(etc...)

Sex is bad because:
It allows the transmission of disease
It allows for unintentional procreation
(etc...)

Admittedly this is a very brief and shallow list, but that isn't the point.
Now why can't we have the good things without the bad things? How does gonorrhea glorify God?

Explain.

Interesting.

Now, as I'm sure you know, some animals and plants exist in symbiotic relationships (for example, some bees and some flowers). If bees and flowers were created on separate 7000+ year "days," then how did they survive without their symbiotic counterparts?


But you don't have a copy of the perfect Bible you speak of that was given to mankind. So you cannot know what changed between the time the Bible was handed out and the time the Dead Sea scrolls were written?

I don't claim to be an expert on radiometric dating, but it seems an awful coincidence that such "mixing up" of carbon isotopes would create a coherent geological timeline.

Carbon dating is not the only way to date an object. What about uranium-lead dating?

And does the flood explain the fossil record. Did organisms decide to line themselves up by geological strata and wait to be buried, just for kicks?

Even if this particular author was speaking literally and not metaphorically, the Bible got many other things very wrong.

But how do you know the prophecies weren't written _after_ the events transpired?

psi42

But a while ago, didn't you say:

Exactly.


And I feel people are harmed when creationists try to redefine science and twist logic in order to bring it into line with an aging religious text.

And such is life.


Have a nice day,
~psi42

chrisl

BTW, I have nothing to do with anyone's efforts to change what is taught in schools. As the Bible directs, I stay out of such worldly affairs and teach my children the truth on my own.

Anyway, debate like this takes up too much time so let me ask a simple yes or no question:

If God did exist and had provided information about Himself and His purposes that explained the condition of mankind, would you want to know?

If yes, then we can keep on with this for a little while more. If no, then there's no point in continuing because spiritual matters must be considered with an open mind.

Chris

psi42

Yes, of course... IF He proved that said information was genuine.

chrisl

Cool. I sometimes get carried away with arguing and debate, so let's try a more reasoned approach to see if we can find something genuine to agree on. Let me lay out my case and see what you think. Bear with me...

Based on your statements about glaucoma, starvation and suffering, is it safe to say that you can find no reason why an omnipotent Creator would permit such things to exist?

Would you think it reasonable that if an an omnipotent Creator did exist, He might sometimes do things in a way that is not always immediately understandable to His creatures, or that might take some effort to fully grasp? A good analogy would be the way a caring parent might explain to a child why he must undergo a painful medical treatment: "I love you and I'm acting in your best interest. You will understand my reasons in time."

I'm not asking you to accept any particular explanation at this point. I'm only asking if you can even consider that there might be another way to look at these issues?

Chris

mike145k

its great to worship god but not anthony roberts