Discussion on the FSM- keep it clean/respectful

Question for STO, LTS, etc.


Theoretically, let's assume that you are the only member of your family that is truly religious. That is, your spouses, your children, your parents, your siblings, and even your best friends are all outwardly religious but will not be allowed into the kingdom of heaven. I do not mean to slight those people close to you, but surely you can admit that there could be such a person somewhere. So theorizing that this is the case for you:


Is there such a thing as "heaven" in which none of the people important to you in this life are present? Is there such a thing as "hell" if all those people are with you?

Be as hard on me as you like, STO, I am taking no offense.  I know your ploy.  Its the standard creationist edict...insult the nonbeliever until he gets frustrated and walks away.  Won`t work, buddy, sorry.

Nowhere in their statement of beliefs does it say they are going to bury evidence to the contrary if found.

It doesn`t write the words, STO, but only an idiot couldn`t put it together!  READ THE DAMNED THING!! Read the part called `Tenets of Scientific Creationism`.

In it, it is made plainly obvious that they have no interest in finding out the truth, but their only interest is in supporting their faith.

Secular scientists, of course, enter into almost any study with a preconceived notion of how it will turn out.  However, the difference is, they haven`t made a statement that they won`t entertain the possibility that their premise is wrong!

If it is not possible to be wrong, then you aren`t being an honest scientist!!  These guys have no flex in their stance on concepts that have not been proven true, so how can you sit there and say they are searching for honesty?

By your definition Albert Einstein should be ignored, he was a creation scientist too by my definition.  He firmly believed in God and said "Science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind".  You see, he thought you were a FOOL if you weren't both religious and scientific. 

Of course you can be religious and a man of science!  Why couldn't you be?  One does not preclude the other, STO. 

BUT

Einstein didn't believe that God waved his magic hand 6000 years ago and plopped Adam and Eve on Earth in the Garden of Eden either!  He understood that while science can explain a great many things and that it had already proven, even with his own great theories, that the stories of the Bible were just that...stories, that none of that meant there was no such thing as God.

I have never claimed that there is no God, and very few secular scientists will either.  However, you won't find a scientist worth his salt within his community that doesn't agree with the general consensus on the age of the earth...including the late Albert Einstein.

Lastly,  let's see a perfect example of what science apart from morality creates:

That's an interesting look at the Japan situation and certainly something to take seriously if true, but what the hell does it have to do with this discussion?  How does a natural disaster causing a nuclear reactor to fail...

Oh...I see...you've gone to the whole, "God has struck down the sinners!" route!  My goodness, STO, give me a break!

And since we are quoting Einstein...

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

That's what he thought of your religion, STO.  "Feeble souls".  Full of "fear or absurd egoism".

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated.  I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.

Maybe we should all convert to Buddhism...

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of Nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.

And one of my personal favorites!!

A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

^^^^^^

See, STO...this is what scientists call religion! 

Albert Einstein was a brilliant man, even you don't deny that.  His understanding of the universe was epically greater than any of us in this forum.  He understood that science, no matter how advanced it became, would never fully understand everything.

We know nothing about [God, the world] at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. Possibly we shall know a little more than we do now. but the real nature of things, that we shall never know, never.

Even with his great knowledge and understanding, he knew better than to claim he understood the beginnings of the universe.  He understood that the universe was ancient.  He understood that because of the ancient nature of the universe, it is impossible for man to ever fully understand it.

Why is that so difficult for some people to accept?  Why does the Bible have to be right about this one thing?  Does it really invalidate your whole belief system if you accept the true reality that has been presented to you instead of the archaic fairy tale that even the mass majority of your fellow Christians have rejected?

Im glad you find humor in what i said, wel to be honest it slightly irrates me to read that. A fallen world, allowed to fall by your supposed creator- oh my, lets all bow down before his awesome plan. Look first of all, i said it begins with, and its pivotal if you want to abolish such things, now im not saying it WILL be done, to completely obliterate slavery and such cant be done completely, but if we want to reduce levels of poverty and oppression in the world by a great amount it starts there. it starts with the womens ability to work in the middle east, to wear what she likes, TO SAY NO to culture and outdated bronze aged dogma, it starts when women can be looked at as equals- ill grant that men are clearly physically more powerful but the capicity for a woman's intellect is no less than a mans, in fact, judging by what i see at times i would say they have the edge on us males in that department.

I am not overstating the effect an entire gender, some 3.5 billion people, have on our world. In fact i think you are understating the strife they endure and the potential good that would come if society as a whole, the world as a whole, stopped being so deeply drenched in god damn misogyny. ( pun definately intended)

I wanted to address this separately because I realize I don't think about the fact that your background is one that has direct knowledge of the suppression of women.  So I apologize for being insensitive in my response.  

My life is such that I work with professional women every day.  They are business owners, executives, high level managers, etc. so my reality is that women don't need empowering.  Despite their presence in business and government at every level, no problems have been resolved or lessened over the past 60+ years due to the contributions of women.  My opinion is that if you single out any demographic when espousing equality then you have already lost your argument.  Anyway, I do apologize for my response because we come from opposite ends of the spectrum on that topic as well.

What is the overall story that you believe in? what did not jive at first with you when you were reading through the bible at first? just curious is all. beucase it seems like my assertion was correct, you were driven by blind faith far more than the inquisitve aspect of your mind, you fellhook line and sinker before you had probably even finished the first couple accounts, which allowed you to in essence neglect or undervalue the contradictions that you saw, or things you disagreed with.

The overall story I believe in is this:  God created the world and all life; God has standards that must be met in order to attain an eternal existence in His presence, which is a paradise of sorts; because man is not able to meet those standards He allowed for substitutionary sacrifice to pay the penalty for sin; the sacrifice is God Himself who took on a physical existence to fulfill God's requirements; by trusting in God and in the sacrifice of Christ I am given that gift of eternal life.

My questions throughout the OT dealt largely with issues of time and literalism - were the 6 days of creation meant to be literal?  The lifespans of the people listed throughout the book of Genesis?  A global or regional flood in Noah's day?  Where did Cain's wife come from?  Largely things like that.  I thought about the fact that I was reading things viewed from the perspective of people who did not have the advantages of technologies we take for granted, and the corresponding scientific discoveries that led to those technologies and resulted from those technologies.  I was struck by the cultures described in the OT and was taken back by many of their practices, especially the violence with which they lived and died.  I contemplated human nature and came to the conclusion that we are exactly the same as they were - though in the western world we have been sheltered from many aspects of that kind of violence and that manner of living.  My conclusion was that the Bible was about the interplay between God's nature and human nature, and certain details faded in importance; I was no longer concerned about literalism because my opinion of Inspiration was that God would use the experiences and knowledge of the penmen to get His point across; He would not possess a person to write things unkown to the person, but would rather "inspire" the writer to record certain things using the circumstances in which the writer found himself.  I fear that is very over-simplified but that's what was going through my mind.

Im interested in why that happened? literalism in this sense does not matter, the core values of god are my concern, the nature of your life, the purpose of existence, his plan, his actions, are all so silly that i cant bring myself to believe that the words come from or are inspired by some all powerful deity.

I think in order to truly understand anything you must immerse yourself in the whole of it - if I remained detached and skimmed the surface of Scripture I would only see fables and stories that seem to contradict what I have been told about life on this planet, and the story of one specific family over a period of several thousand years.  If I began to study evolution and only skimmed the surface I think you would agree I would be left with an unsatisfactory and incomplete picture.  But if I immersed myself in evolution and accepted all of what was taught at face value, then I would have a real grasp of what evolution teaches and could make a decision based on the entire picture - not stopping halfway through when confronted with something I disagreed or had questions about.  That is how I approached reading the Bible, to accept what was written as I thought it was intended to be received based on my own thinking at the time.  After absorbing much of it, and spending a lot of time looking at Hebrew and Greek word studies to see if my King James was really an accurate translation, I came to a point where I simply accepted it.  It was definitely before I finished the entire Bible as you suspected (and have stated as much more than once on this thread), but not quite as early as you say.  I was at the end of John's gospel which is maybe 80% through the entire Bible, about halfway through the New Testament.  As I said I came to a point of acceptance and surrendered myself because I was left with no more doubts about the truth of the Bible's message.

By what evidence can you assert that he is god? by what observable virtue can you grant this being level of godhood in your eyes?

I have none to offer you, as stated somewhere about Page 3 of this thread.

You seem to have skipped too far ahead, and have convinced yourself that this being is god, where as i first decided to examine the claims and ask myself - ' does this seem godly? devine? morale? Supremely intelligent?logical?' what im getting at is; it seems like you were convinced of gods existence without even attempting to verify what was being told to you or going out and seeing if any of what is being spouted has any merit to it in the real world.

First, "Does this seem godly?" is a question based on your personal view of what godly would be if you could make your own god, or when you consider what kind of god you would think worthy of reverence.  "Does this seem moral?" is based on your view of morality.  "Does this seem intelligent, or logical?" is based on your opinion of intelligence and logic.  I don't think that is how you can make a judgment concerning God because "His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts".  Some people think it is logical and moral to kill other people because of their religion or sexual preference.  Some think it is logical and moral to take money from one group of people and give it to another group without their consent.  You may agree with one or the other, or disagree with both, but the point is your sense of morality, logic, and godliness is different than what is portrayed in the Bible.  Similar in many ways, but different.  You can certainly disagree with God's morality and judgment, even despise and ridicule them, but you cannot (or should not) disallow for His existence based on your own personal opinions.  This is why I mentioned my view that you have to immerse yourself in it and receive it as you think it was intended.

Second, "attempting to verify"- you know full well there is limited evidence as to the existence of Jesus.  There are only a few references I am aware of by historians, none of whom were eyewitnesses.  There is none - except for our very existence - relating to God the Father.  My faith as it relates to the Bible is fully dependent on the actions and reliability of the apostles.  Again, I take the writing at face value and do not believe anyone fabricated the events therein.  The lives of the apostles after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ are significant to me.  I am not taken back by a sparsity of contemporary writings because they lived in a tiny corner of the Roman Empire and were seen as a tiny sect of the Jews.  So why would there be volumes of information on the early Christians?  They were so small in number and so scattered that I wouldn't expect a lot of information.  I have no problem with your accusation of blind faith - really, I admit to it.  I understand that you require observable phenomena to believe something, I don't have that burden.

Again with the incorrect comparisons, your coach may have deserved your respect because he has demonstrated a career that speaks to what he is teaching you, he is able to do so because the evidence of his achievements and prowess in the whatever field you are being taught in- IS OBSERVABLE AND MORE SO PROVEABLE. GOD HAS NIETHER!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't believe it is an incorrect comparison.  You added a great deal to my argument when you wrote the underlined part.  I was taught that Coach is always right, period.  Coach may have never coached a day in his life; he may have never played the game a day in his life and is only there to help out because the team needed a coach.  He could be Bruce Arians, but that doesn't matter because Coach Is Always Right.  Without earning anything.  The position is given respect, not the man.  My point was that God gets that respect for the simple fact that He is God (which is the assumption I was allowing for in that context).

So you didnt answer my question, what makes you think he is god, saying 'if he is god then he has my respect' is not good enough by any measurement, THE WORD IF, stands out, you dont know do you? you simply dont, but you are attatching the lofty title to this thing you cant know, you are assuming on blind faith alone that this thing exists in the face of little to no evidence, you are essetnially making up the most important facet of your life and of reality for what?because of what?

And im one of those people that question things when i think they are stupid, but if my coach wants me to play a certain way for the good of the team ill give him the benefit of the doubt and see how it goes, if it doesnt work, ill discuss it with him after the game.

You can feel free to discuss it with God after the game, I have no problem with that.  I would prefer you do it much earlier, but I believe you'll have your chance.  My evidence is all subjective, admittedly.  I accepted the teaching of Scripture as the truth, surrendered my will to it and have tried to mold myself to fit the requirements of Scripture, which are faith and service.  I have prayed for specific things in my life and the lives of others, some of which I had a hand in but much of which I had no involvement other than concern for my loved ones.  Many of those situations were resolved exactly as I asked, many were not.  Many of those that were resolved as I asked left me no doubt that God was involved; many involved other people and so although I still credit God since that is my right, I can allow for the fact that people also did their job well, or had a change of heart about something.  I have personally heard and witnessed the same things in other people's prayer lives.  Some of the things are more miraculous in nature, such as cancer disappearing from someone within a few weeks despite a complete lack of treatment, or a change in the weather that corresponds exactly to prayer offered to God.  There are stories of the death of loved ones where they sometimes mention the presence of other people in the room, people who can't be seen by anybody else.  In all these things I can allow for the possibility they may still have occurred without prayer, but my conviction is that they are God's affirmative answer to those prayers.  And for all the times when those prayers were "not answered", my opinion is that the answer was given, but in the negative.  

None of the things I listed are proof of anything.  Because I am a believer I give credit to God and for me they are affirmations of my faith, but they are in no way proof that I can use to convince anyone else.

WAIT WHAT? ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!! ok woosah woosah. he makes the rules? thats your justification for atrocities? how does it make you feel? how does it feel to know that your god will torture, or allow the torture of billions for no good reason, when he knew they would sin, HE KNEW LTS, he knew they would wrong him and yet he let them exist and sin for what?

You know what?  I trust that God is good, and just.  When it comes to eternal punishment, or the lack thereof, I throw myself on the mercy of God.  And yes, "he makes the rules" is valid to me.  You don't like it, but it is what it is.  Who will tell God no?  Who will stop God from executing judgment?  There is a reason the Bible says God will "wipe the tears from their eyes", because judgment is a horrifying thing.  

Why could he not simply forgive you? how hard is that ' you are forgiven' thats all he had to do/say, but no, he set a condition upon his salvation, and then rested this condition on a mountain of clouds and asked for humanity to stand on top and beleive...

Then why have any rules at all, about anything?  If there are no standards, if there is no law, why do any of it at all?  Yes, salvation is conditional on belief.  That is the rule, like it or not.  It is not negotiable.  I accept it, you reject it.  Again you are putting your image of what you think a god should be in place of the God described in the Bible.  That is certainly your right, but your disagreement about it does not disprove God any more than my acceptance proves God.  

Well what you say then is wrong. Im sorry but something being real would be factual evidence, proof if you will. thats real, faith is the assertion of believe in something that is not proveable, or has little to no evidence.

Faith doesn't make it real in the physical world.  Faith makes it real to me.  Depending on the specific translation you read, faith is either the conviction or the evidence of things not seen.  That's all I'm saying, is that it is real to me just as if I could put my hands on it.  In the Matrix Neo asks if you die in the matrix do you die for real, and the answer was "your mind makes it real".  In another scene the goofy guy (Cipher?) is eating a steak and he admitted that even though he knew the steak was not real, "ignorance is bliss".  I guess that's me

Laugh now 2k.....it will be difficult when you are burning in hell.

Spoken like a true man of god, cant imagine who wouldnt coming running to church without that forceful reasoning 

This message has been removed by the administrator.

This message has been removed by the administrator.

This message has been removed by the administrator.

 I prefer the kind Einstein preferred:  religious scientists.

Did you even read my post about Einstein?

Nah, of course not...like most creationists, you just take one small bit of something that can be shaped to fit your argument and latch onto it with a death grip.  Its called quote mining, and you've done it before, so I shouldn't be surprised.

Ahh...Dr. Parker!  It was an enjoyable read, STO, but again, you are just copying and pasting an article without taking the time to verify it.  You take something written almost 2 decades ago and don't bother to see if there is anything out there that might bring its theories into question?  Not very scientific of you, my friend!

LINK!

I like that one the best.  It is based not on Gary Parker's work that you pasted, but that of Steven Austin, but most of the evidence is similar.  He presents BOTH sides of the argument with equal detail and waits until the very end to draw any conclusions.  Its actually pretty fair, if you bother to read it.  I won't paste the whole article, but he does ask some interesting questions:

• Why are there no fossils of advanced organisms in the pre-Flood rocks of the Grand Canyon Supergroup? Before the Flood, there were supposedly countless animals and plants and other lifeforms around. It seems only reasonable to suppose that some of these organisms would have been buried and fossilized, yet there is no trace of any of them in the Grand Canyon Supergroup rocks. Those rocks contain only fossils of extremely primitive lifeforms, like stromatolites and acritarchs.
• How is it possible that the Redwall Limestone became so hard that it remains a rigid, nearly vertical, extremely erosion-resistant wall today, yet its top was so soft that substantial erosion could take place within hours after it formed?
• How is it possible that "sand waves" deposited rapidly, by fast-moving and turbulent water, could preserve such delicate features as footprints?
• Austin's Flood model says that the 4000 feet of rock between the Great Unconformity and the Rim were deposited in the 150 days between the onset of the Flood and its peak (Austin, p. 77-8). Actually, there would have had to be more than 4000 feet deposited, because of the several unconformities which represent eroded surfaces. This works out to almost thirty feet of sedimentary rock deposited every day. Yet all throughout the Canyon rocks, we find structures that take time to form, such as burrows. What sort of animal would take the time to dig a burrow when it will be under ten feet of sediment before it finishes? We also find a great many trace fossils, including many trackways. Why don't we ever find body fossils associated with trackways, where the animal that made the tracks was caught and preserved by the rapidly accumulating sediments?
• Why are there no fossils of any large Mesozoic or Cenozoic animals anywhere in the Grand Canyon rocks? All Grand Canyon fossils are typical of the layers in which they're found. Nowhere do we find a single out-of-order fossil. The Grand Canyon rocks are all Paleozoic, and all have only Paleozoic fossils in them. There are no fossils of Mesozoic sea animals, such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. There are no fossils of Cenozoic sea animals, such as whales and seals. There are no modern fish species, only Paleozoic ones. I'm not saying this selectivity in the fossil record can't be explained by the Flood model. I'm saying that Austin doesn't offer any explanation. In fact, he doesn't even mention the problem at all. The absence of any discussion of the topic is certainly a mark against Austin's model.
• What about the rock layers that Austin doesn't tie into his Flood model, like the Grand Wash Dolomite and the Surprise Canyon Formation?

Can you answer any of these for us STO?

He goes on to make this conclusion about the flood theory:

In short, the Flood model for the origins of the rocks of the Colorado Plateau is internally contradictory and inconsistent with the actual data. It doesn't deal with all the available data, and it can't even adequately explain the data it does deal with. It simply doesn't work. So it seems safe to say that Austin's Flood model is definitely wrong. Furthermore, most of the objections raised here against Austin's particular model can also be raised against any model that attempts to explain the rock record as having been formed rapidly and recently. So we can reasonably conclude that any young-earth interpretation of the Colorado Plateau is doomed to failure.

And this one about the orthodox theory:

On the other hand, the orthodox interpretation of the Colorado Plateau fits the facts pretty well. We've already concluded that the Colorado Plateau cannot be as young as the young-Earthers claim it is. Given that, it seems reasonable to also conclude that the Plateau is as old as conventional theory says it is. There are a few holes and gaps in the conventional theory; the one that stands out the most is the discordant Rb-Sr and K-Ar dates for the Cardenas Lavas, and even that has a tentative explanation. The anomalous dating of the Pleistocene lava flows is readily explained as a false isochron, something well known to geologists and the primary reason why geologists insist that samples for radiometric dates must all come from the same unit of rock. The orthodox explanation is also consistent with the rest of modern geology, with the Colorado Plateau rocks matching rocks from elsewhere in appearance and lithology. The fossil record is also consistent with the rest of the geologic record, with only primitive, simple fossils in the Precambrian rocks; more advanced fossils typical of their periods in the Paleozoic upper canyon strata; faults, folds, landslides, lava flows, and other features which can readily be explained by well-understood geologic processes.

So, while this particular scientist allows that there are a "few holes and gaps in the conventional theory" (like all good scientists will allow) he has surely blasted the YEC concept out of the water.

But keep holding onto your antiquated ideas and concepts, STO.  Ignore the real science in favor of your faith in men who also ignore the real science.

This message has been removed by the administrator.

Any honest person that looks at the evidence from the Colorado Plateau will see things my way,

How can you say that and keep a straight face, STO?  "Your way" has been proven to be false.  Not just rumored, or hinted at, but PROVEN to be false.

Has it been proven that the other way is absolutely true?  Perhaps not, but just because one theory can't be proven with 100% certainty does not mean that the fairy tale is true!!!

just as many humanist scientists have been forced to do.

Puhlease!!

You play games with rhetorical questions just like the 20 pages of supposed contradictions regarding the bible which were thoroughly proven in this very thread to not be contradictions.

Don't change the subject, STO.  READ THE LINK!!  Please, by all means...show me where his science is wrong!  Go point by point with it and explain to me where its wrong using SCIENCE as your proof!  None of those questions were rhetorical, by the way!  Every single one of them should be answerable if your science is true.

I will eagerly await your sure to be enlightening response.  I won't hold my breath, but I will await it eagerly!

You are a sad man.  

I am alot of things STO, but sad is not one of them.

I don't require an imaginary friend to be happy.

This message has been removed by the administrator.