For those who want to know more about Satan than what is mentioned in the Bible here is some additional information.
Satan in The Urantia Book
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Just Accidental?
- Thread starter Deeje
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Satan in The Urantia Book
You are simply pitting one scientist's opinion against another. Pick your opinion. Who says your quoted scientists are right and Behe is wrong? You will naturally choose the scientist that backs up what you want to believe.....this is what we see in all these so called "debunking" articles? There is no real debunking because nothing can really be proved either way.
You said and I quote: "What if he gave all of his intelligent creatures free will and decided that he would choose not to know the outcome?"
It's impossible for an omniscient being to not know an outcome.
Logic, reason and common sense. What those quoted scientists say is logical, rational and makes sense. Hence Behe is wrong.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
I never stated nor implied that some bias can't creep in, but what happens next with a biased analysis is important, namely that other scientists will chime in to point that out and correct it.I think we all understand what "delusional" means and who is exhibiting it. You don't think there is bias in science? Now that is funny.
BTW, why doesn't the "appeal to emotion" supposedly not apply to you with the above?
To compare your approach with what we do in science, there is no correction procedures in place with theism since almost all religious beliefs are unfalsifiable. Therefore, between science and theism, which makes more sense in terms of using realistic procedures, and I think the answer is quite obvious.
We're talking here about scientific evidence, which is not what the Bible is about. And even when we ask you for scientific evidence to support your assertions, you mostly deflect the question without answering them.
Oh ya, I'm not gonna be "saved" because I don't have the politically-correct religious beliefs.
"... judge ye not..."-- Jesus
As for me, I'm so glad I took that advice.
Just about the entire scientific community, a team of prosecuting attorneys, and one judge.
That would be to the detriment of those claiming that some biological systems are irreducibly complexity, not evolutionary science.
The ID people have made that claim, but failed to prove that such a thing exists in biological systems, exactly what would be expected if they were wrong.
Behe wrote, "An irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would be a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution" What then is the significance of failing to find such a thing after a long and ardent search?
Every specific claim of irreducible complexity has been debunked.
And if a system were ever presented that could not be shown to be irreducibly complex, it would not necessarily mean that it was. The last evolutionary step may have been the loss of a part needed to arrive at an earlier stage, but no longer needed now.
Suppose that ACDE was irreducibly complex. There was no functionality with ACD, ACE, ADE, or CDE, thus none of these could have been created by evolution, since none would be selected for if they didn't confer a selective advantage. But the sequence in evolution might have been A -> AB -> ABC -> ABCD -> ABCDE -> ACDE, with each of the first four steps offering a selective advantage over the prior step, followed by the loss of a now superfluous part. That is always a possibility since it may be difficult to identify what served as B.
And as you undoubtedly realize, omniscience is not compatible with free will. If a god knows the future of a universe it creates before it creates it, then the events that come to pass over time in that universe are like the events in a recording being played out. There is no freedom of any kind there.
There is an alternate way of understanding reality that doesn't require gods or demons, one which has been extremely successful. Supernatualism played no part in that method or its success, and adds nothing to our collection of useful ideas.
Irrelevant even if true. The scientific method works, and the scientific community is self-correcting.
What is your point? That science isn't valuable or reliable because of corruption? Science has made life longer, healthier, safer, more comfortable, and more interesting despite any corruption in its ranks, and that includes evolutionary science.
You are not the measure of what is known, and I doubt that anybody thinks that they can prove anything to you without your cooperation. Proving is only possible to a mind that is willing to consider an argument dispassionately and be convinced by a compelling argument. We expect truths demonstrable to those who can and will think that way to elude those that can't or won't. What such people know and don't know isn't the standard for others.
The same sound argument can be made to two people, one a critical thinker and the other a faith based thinker with a stake in not knowing what the argument demonstrates. Proof being that which convinces, if only one of them is convinced, the conclusion of the argument was proved to him but not the other.
The other will often claim that there was no proof. To those who were convinced by the argument, that claim is considered wrong and therefore irrelevant, as are the other criticisms and objections of those who can't follow along.
When someone like that claims that such-and-such isn't known and can't be demonstrated, those who do know understand that they are dealing with someone unwilling or unable to participate in the journey of discovery. Such a person sees himself as being on an even footing with the others, and his objections as being valid, but that is not how he is perceived by those others. What such a person doesn't know can never be the standard for what is known.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Evolutionary science is made up of the same science that has given us all the knowledge we currently possess about the world we live in. There is nothing different about the way scientists do science to come up with conclusions about evolution than they do to draw conclusions about gravity or germs or anything else. I assume you accept gravitational theory? How about germ theory? The only reason I can see that you deny it is to preserve your religious beliefs. Otherwise, your stance doesn't make any sense to me. It's all science.Ah...and therein lies the problem. Its a bit like conspiracy theories.....among them is the odd genuine article, but because they are all lumped in together, you will find it hard to pick the real story from the fake ones.
True and provable science is an asset to all of us, but hidden in amongst the amazing revelations about so many wonderful things in nature is the "theoretical" stuff that has no basis in fact at all. Surrounded by all the good things, they hope you won't notice their complete lack of substantive evidence.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
It was actually. All of your arguments apparently stem from logical fallacies. Which means they are invalid.Blah, blah, blah, Sapiens......very informative.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Actually, in the beginning, all humans were vegans. The only flesh eaters were carrion creatures as nature's garbage collectors. It was only when the Creator handed rulership of this world over to a pretender with something to prove, that everything went belly up. If you are going to speak of a "divine plan"...at least know what "plan" you're talking about....
Actually, what's sad is that those who seek to judge God, do so as if he is answerable to humans. He exists and will demonstrate his existence only to those who acknowledge him and give him credit where it is due. He doesn't need us to fulfill his purpose in creation....we need him and everything he has provided to keep us living. Nothing is preventing him from being where he wants to be.....he doesn't want a bar of this world for the reason he offers. (1 John 5:19) He exists outside of it and tells his worshippers to be no part of it either. Godless humans, on the other hand are destroying the only home we have. Science has contributed more to this situation than religion ever knew how to. Do they have solutions to the mess they have created down here? I can't see any.
I believe that the Creator is just observing at a distance, who is seeking him, and who wants to dismiss him in favor of their own preferences. He doesn't jump up and down and wave his arms to get anyone's attention.....he doesn't have to. He shows us who he is by what he has made.
We humans are deciding our own future for ourselves, based on what is the main motivator in our lives. I think its a brilliant strategy actually. He is giving humanity "enough rope"......
Please demonstrate this.I expect your demonstration to rise to the level of evidence that scientists have provided for the theory of evolution.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
No. I can believe whatever I like and not have my life ruined by anyone within my profession.
Yes, just as a history teacher would lose his job if he taught that the holocaust didn't happen, or if a biology teacher taught racist ideas, or if a geography teacher taught that the earth is flat.
I'm sure that's the narrative you tell yourself, but at the very least you have to acknowledge that the data you cited means your advocacy of creationism just isn't working.
So? He's still working there, isn't he? He's an outspoken advocate of ID creationism yet no one has ruined his life over it.
Behe is a professor at Lehigh University.
Sapiens
Polymathematician
No, it is not just one scientist's opinion against another. You do like to make that pretense. Behe has been falsified at every turn and, as a result, now finds himself an intellectual pariah, even in his own department. It is the logic of the arguments (which you, by your own boast, lack the basic background to understand) that says that Behe is wrong (not to mention a conservative, Republican, judge.
And you are free to accept any understanding of whatever appeals to your mind and heart. Who is stopping you? Who is forcing you to believe in God or in anything "supernatural"? I don't see anyone with a big stick.....yet.
I don't believe that is true.....in fact I believe the exact opposite is true. The scientific community are self deluding. They feed one another a steady diet of what their professors tell them is true, whether they can support their assumptions with substantive evidence or not. Isn't that blind faith?
It is true that science has achieved many good things in the last 100 years or so, but as a balance, lets not forget that science has also taken planet earth to the brink of extinction. Science has created the materials and expertise that led to this....
Are you proud of science for that?
And science isn't either. What it can prove by experimentation is known, but what it assumes about the variety of life on this planet and how it got here cannot be backed up by anything but supposition. This is what this whole thread is about.
The Emperor has no clothes.....but he is convinced that he is wearing a beautifully tailored suit.
Exactly. The same applies to belief in God. If you don't want to "believe" then no one can make you. Its all about whose argument appeals to us, and why, because neither side has proof for their "beliefs". One is claiming to but its not really true.
The most compelling argument for me is all around me. Nature itself is its own testimony.
How can you dismiss these as 'just accidental'?
Time for the pretty pictures again.
Ah, but getting to know the Creator is also a journey of discovery. Many are just as unwilling to embark on that journey, believing that there is no one worth knowing. I assure you there is.
That works both ways. I do not see the objections of evolutionists as being a valid reason to dismiss the existence of a superior Intelligence behind it all. In fact it beggars belief that you can attribute the amazing variety in nature to the blind forces of chance mutations and "natural selection" to explain the exquisiteness and endless variety of what we see. Science can't even tell us how life began....so how can you be so sure it knows how everything got to where it is now?
I'll let you sit back and imagine yourself before the judgment seat of God, shaking your fist at him with the accusation that he is unfalsifiable.
You are free to choose your position by any measure that appeals to you metis. That's the beauty of free will.
Earth - presumably you mean the life on it - is not on the brink of extinction.
As you know, one of my chief objections regarding Christianity is the nihilism, pessimism, and misanthropy that it generates in so many of its adherents. Too many appear to be able to see only the dark side of existence, and in an exaggerated form. Whatever beauty they identify, they give the credit to their god, but assign whatever is undesirable about life to man and Satan.
One could just as easily see it the other way around. The smokestacks and mushroom clouds are what God is doing to mankind. The love and beauty we see are man and nature fighting back.
I am very proud of mankind. Many Christians are robbed of that.
Accidental is your word. Mine is unplanned. And it is much easier for me to imagine life arising unplanned than a god existing unplanned, undesigned, and uncreated. In fact, I can't think of anything else less likely than a god to exist by "accident."
Nothing around you is evidence for a god. Our world is only evidence that it exists, not of any gods.
Evidence is that which helps us decide between competing hypotheses. There is nothing in the world that makes supernaturalism more likely, which is evidence against a supernatural realm and its denizens having any effect on our world. It is exactly what an atheistic worldview predicts - no sign of the supernatural.
For the scientifically naive, it all seems like magic. The scientifically uninformed can't imagine how it could have happened unguided. But that's the view that science has given us. The scientists of several centuries ago showed us how planets go around their stars without an angel pushing them, and why the sun seems to move through the sky without the help of Apollo's chariot, and why the lightning appears without the help of Thor. They showed us a clockwork universe that needed no ruler gods to function day to day. From this came the deistic movement - the idea that a god was necessary to build the universe, but then stepped out of it leaving no revelation, performing no miracles, and answering no prayers.
Then, another wave of scientists explained the evolution of the universe from a formless speck and the evolution of the tree of life from an original replicator. No builder god was necessary.
So what do we need to invoke gods for? What jobs are left to them?
Creating the singularity or the laws of physics? That can be better accounted for by a multiverse capable of budding uncounted copies of any type of universe possible, including this one. The multiverse hypothesis is preferred because it is more parsimonious. It requires that less be true about reality. It has no requirement for a conscious agent. An unconscious, amorphous substance would be simpler.
Creating the first cell? Once again, the evidence suggests that naturalistic abiogenesis is possible, and it is a preferred hypothesis for the same reason. No gods are required.
I assure you that if there is a creator or creators, none of us knows anything about them.
Getting caught up in a mythological system is not a journey of discovery. It's a distraction from an authentic journey. I know. I was on that path myself for most of my twenties. I tried faith. I suspended disbelief and immersed myself in it. It was a dead end. And making decisions by faith turned out to be costly.
We dismiss the claim that there is an intelligence behind reality because we see no evidence for it, and have no need of that hypothesis to explain anything. It adds nothing to our understanding.
No such claim was made. I don't expect science to be able to answer all questions, but I do expect Christianity to continue to answer none. For example, I don't expect science to be able to tell us how life arose on earth, although I do expect it to show us ways that it could have happened. But I do expect religion to continue to have nothing to offer in that area. This is not an answer:
I'll let you sit back and imagine yourself before the judgment seat of creators disappointed in you for abandoning the most precious gifts they gave to you, reason and curiosity, and turning uncritically to an untenable mythology instead.
What will you tell them when they ask why you did that? That you believed the words of men making believe that a god was speaking through them because you didn't know to be skeptical enough to even consider that the words came from men?
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
It's fascinating to see Christian creationists say things like this (earlier Deeje referred to science as a "fraud factory") and then later they'll insist that they are not anti-science. Cognitive dissonance anyone?
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
And how about if God judges you? When He asks you why you have judged others in spite of what Jesus and Paul taught, what will you say? What will you say if He asks why you "bear false witness" against Catholics, such as claiming they worship a "sun-god", or against scientists when you say they only operate by faith like theists, what will you say? Do you think God to be so ignorant that you can fool Him through some sort of song & dance as you do so often here?I'll let you sit back and imagine yourself before the judgment seat of God, shaking your fist at him with the accusation that he is unfalsifiable.
Maybe worry about your own "salvation", Deeje, and then let others worry about theirs.
He will....just as he will judge everyone else. His appointed judge showed us how he feels about those who fail to teach the truth of God's word....
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut up the Kingdom of the heavens before men; for you yourselves do not go in, neither do you permit those on their way in to go in. . .
15 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you travel over sea and dry land to make one proselyte, and when he becomes one, you make him a subject for Ge·henʹna twice as much so as yourselves. . . .Blind guides, who strain out the gnat but gulp down the camel!" (Matthew 23:13-15, 24)
How many of the Jews saw the truth in what Jesus was saying and changed their course? Not many. How would those "lost sheep" have done so if Jesus had not exposed the errors of the Pharisees and given them a more authentic way to worship? Jesus didn't come to institute a new religion...he came to clean up the old one. I believe that he has done the same in these "last days".
I will say that I have emulated my Master in exposing religious error whenever I encountered it.....like every Christian should. (1 Peter 2:21) Jesus and his apostles warned us that apostasy would appear soon after the "wheat" were established and growing. (1 Timothy 4:1-3) Christendom pretends that didn't happen.
I have provided enough evidence to show you clearly that Catholicism is based on sun worship...you can deny it if you wish. We are all free to choose metis. We all have the same "evidence" in front of us. (James 1:5-7) The difference is in the way it is interpreted.
How is this not sun worship? How did the 'holy day' of the week get to be moved to "Sunday" when there was no command from God to alter it? Is it a case of none so blind?...being led by blind guides?
I will say that I told the truth, but God already knows this.
Macro-evolution is as much "faith" based as ID is. None of you have proven anything to the contrary. You just don't like it when the truth has revealed the 'suggestions' masquerading as facts. The imaginings of fertile minds are presented with little to show for all the bluster except some nice diagrams and drawings....and some scientific jargon that sounds impressive but is actually devoid of any certainty. How is that real science?
At least I have actual evidence that people alive today can see in the flesh. Living evidence of the master craftsman's workmanship. I believe that it is worthy of our praise. Shouldn't we give credit where it is due?
Who do you thank for creation, if not the Creator?
No!...do you think he is fooled by the show put on here by all the evolutionists claiming that macro-evolution is an established fact....and that there is no proof for an Intelligent Designer? We all know that there are NO FACTS ever presented in evolutionary science? So who is fooling who?
I am not just worried about my own salvation and neither should any Christian be solely concerned with saving his own skin.
As Paul wrote to Timothy...."Pay constant attention to yourself and to your teaching. Persevere in these things, for by doing this you will save both yourself and those who listen to you." ( 1 Timothy 4:16)
Also the words of the apostle John in the closing words of his Revelation...."And the spirit and the bride keep on saying, “Come!” and let anyone hearing say, “Come!” and let anyone thirsting come; let anyone who wishes take life’s water free." (Revelation 22:17)
The invitation has to be extended in order for people to accept it.
"For “everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved.”14 However, how will they call on him if they have not put faith in him? How, in turn, will they put faith in him about whom they have not heard? How, in turn, will they hear without someone to preach? 15 How, in turn, will they preach unless they have been sent out? Just as it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who declare good news of good things!”
16 Nevertheless, they did not all obey the good news. For Isaiah says: “Jehovah, who has put faith in the thing heard from us?” 17 So faith follows the thing heard. In turn, what is heard is through the word about Christ. 18 But I ask, They did not fail to hear, did they? Why, in fact, “into all the earth their sound went out, and to the ends of the inhabited earth their message.” (Romans 10:13-18)
There will never be an excuse not to respond to that message now being preached "in all the inhabited earth". (Matthew 24:14) We can all be like the "few" or we can choose to be among the "many"...its up to us. (Matthew 7:13-14)
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