homer
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Post by homer on May 12, 2012 0:47:38 GMT 2
The problem with atheistic evolution is if you come from no one and nowhere, and if you’re going to no one and nowhere, and you exist for no reason, and all your feelings are merely the crashing together of atoms, you do not really love, you do not really have compassion, you really do not have joy, your thoughts aren’t really thoughts, they’re the random explosion of atoms and conflict of matter, you have no soul, you have no spirit, you are simply exclusively material – NT Wright gets it right saying that then people just kill themselves because life is altogether without purpose. Dawkins’ words: pessimistic, bleak, cold, and empty." - Mark Driscoll sermon on Creation Homie, this is not a rational argument against the merits of "atheistic evolution". This is an argument for choosing to believe in something, regardless of the evidence, because it makes you feel good. This argument would also support belief in Santa Claus, leprechauns, and a benevolent alien named Zilx the Cosmage who keeps a watchful eye out for humanity and is willing to bend time and space to protect us. You point out that the universe is eternal, spontaneously generated, or created by an eternal god, but you don't show why the third option makes the most sense. It is the same logic that gives us Zeus standing on a cloud throwing lighting bolts at people. "How can we explain lightning bolts? I don't know, so magic." "How can we explain the existence of the universe? I don't know, so magic." Presumably, if you are a true believer in Christianity, you also believe that all the non-Christians (or at least, all the non-Christians, non-Jews, and non-Muslims) belong to cults. How did you decide that Christianity is the one true religion and the others made it all up? Did you study each religion in depth, carefully weighing the strengths and weaknesses and determining which one best explains the universe we live in? Did you pick the one that had the purest moral code, a set of laws that could only have been created by a perfect god? Was the absolute truth of Christianity revealed to you by an angel? Or were you simply raised as a Christian, and having accepted it as the absolute truth, you now find yourself looking for evidence to support your decision? If you were born in India and raised as a Hindu, would you now be searching the internet for videos that explain why Brahma is definitely the true creator of the universe? Given the importance of what is at stake here (everybody's immortal soul, and an eternity in a lake of hellfire for everybody who chooses wrong), why isn't the one true religion clearer? Why didn't God create us all with a copy of the 10 commandments burned into our mind, or appearing in the stars every 25th of December? Why don't bibles grow on trees? Why doesn't God send down another angel every so often to remind us that Christianity is still the only true religion, or at least have his own youtube channel? Why is it that every single last thing we know about God, religion, and the true path to heaven has to come through human agents? People lie and make mistakes all the time. Your bible was printed by humans, translated by humans and written by humans. You cannot ask God or an angel or Jesus if it's all true or if bits were left out or whether or not it truly represents what we should believe. There are no tests you can perform to determine its validity. You cannot conduct a study to see whether belief in the Bible increases your chance of entry into heaven. When you put absolute faith in Christianity, you are not putting absolute faith in God. You are putting absolute faith in the people that tell you these things.
Marge my dearest wife, how thou hast strayed from the faith. No wonder to me our son Bartholomew is such an insolent little prick.
Yeah you are right, it is rather an argument for choosing to believe in something because it gives greater purpose, not a rationale based on pure logic. This was I think point 9 or 10 he made in that sermon on the flaws of Atheistic evolution, had anyone bothered to watch the whole video....But I quoted this one because it spoke powerfully to me, and I thought it might speak powerfully to other people who do not function on logic alone. Sacrificial love for strangers or people who despise you, isn't really logical, but that was what Jesus did for us. Forgiving people that nailed you to the cross is illogical, love the emotion can sometimes be illogical and inexplicable if you look at it from a purely rational and mechanistic evolutionary standpoint. And yet you have that love all around you in people.
"You point out that the universe is eternal, spontaneously generated, or created by an eternal god, but you don't show why the third option makes the most sense. It is the same logic that gives us Zeus standing on a cloud throwing lighting bolts at people. "How can we explain lightning bolts? I don't know, so magic." "How can we explain the existence of the universe? I don't know, so magic.""
I don't disregard science, I believe God ordered the universe accordingly using scientific law's which he created (laws though not theories) many things have perfectly reasonable scientific explanations (like lightning bolts), but I do not believe nor see that science can account for all of life's mysteries and questions. God created the laws and logic of the universe to govern it naturally, but we have taken science and worshiped it, saying it's the solution to all life's problems and that it can explain everything even creation, when all it really does is break matter down infinitely smaller, until it eventually is forced to make the claim that something came from nothing, even if that something is plank lengths or dark matter within a proton's void space, it is still SOME THING coming from NO THING. So if the idea of something coming from nothing, and lifeless matter organizing itself into life, to evolve over billions of years into multi-cellular organisms which in turn over millions of more years develop and evolve feelings and emotions as an evolutionary response to further the expansion of your species makes more sense to you than an omnipotent, eternal creator, that ordered the universe, then take it for what it is, and believe what makes more sense to you. But to me, logically science has far more failings than the idea of an eternal creator. Don't misunderstand me, I believe in evolution from the stand point that living creatures can adapt to their environments, but not to the level that man has sprouted legs, and birds wings, over what? necessity? or trial and error?
Trying to picture birds developing wings right now out of necessity to perhaps escape a predator? Wings are a pretty straightforward thing, they either lend you the ability to fly, or they just hang off your side uselessly like an ostrich. Now these wings must not have developed over night since major evolutionary developments generally take long periods of time to develop, so then I ask you to please paint a picture for me in your mind how this happened over thousands or even millions of years? Did the birds jump from high places only to splatter on the ground and break their necks until finally the development took place? Did they run across the ground from predators hopping into the air, until finally they started flying? Yes, yes that sounds better, it must be option B. Or maybe option C, they really wanted to get away from this place to that other island cause it looked like it sustained more life and food, so they started paddling across the water flapping useless appendages on their sides until they strove so hard to reach it they took flight. Maybe birds are not the victims here but the predators, and they are just hopping down from tree's onto their prey, until they finally evolve wings so they can shoot down from even higher. Or are birds from fish, the fish with wings, that glide out of the water, they needed to get completely out of the water though to be better predators so they earnestly adapted to make wings that flap, and developed lungs too so they could go a little longer out of the water....
"Presumably, if you are a true believer in Christianity, you also believe that all the non-Christians (or at least, all the non-Christians, non-Jews, and non-Muslims) belong to cults. How did you decide that Christianity is the one true religion and the others made it all up? Did you study each religion in depth, carefully weighing the strengths and weaknesses and determining which one best explains the universe we live in? Did you pick the one that had the purest moral code, a set of laws that could only have been created by a perfect god? Was the absolute truth of Christianity revealed to you by an angel? Or were you simply raised as a Christian, and having accepted it as the absolute truth, you now find yourself looking for evidence to support your decision? If you were born in India and raised as a Hindu, would you now be searching the internet for videos that explain why Brahma is definitely the true creator of the universe?"
I was raised Christian and find myself trying to understand the faith more clearly. Like I said earlier in some other post God has worked in my life in times of hardship, which has increased my faith, and solidified my belief in him. I'm not one to believe in something because I'm told to, I have asked the same questions most people do about Christianity and all religions, and I won't claim to be an expert on the many many many sects of Hinduism, or thousands of other pagan religions in the world, or Buddhism. The best explanation i can give you to this is two things,
1) As I said I believe God put in each of us a desire to seek him and know him and the only reason so many deny it is because it's counter to our selfish desires and wants, to follow God, because he asks us to deny things we would put above him like idols, which can be sex, T.V., video games, beer, anything you put before him. It means not being able to make your own truth and do whatever you want. I also believe in him because of the way he has worked in my life.
Paul in Athens
16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
Paul Addresses the Areopagus
22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,[c] 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;[d]
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’[e]
2) Why would Christianity be a man made religion!! It's so counter to all of man's natural selfish desires. It preaches sexual abstinence until marriage, monogamy, sacrificial love, forgiveness and mercy to the infinite degree, it also boasts of a God that not only loves us but wants to have a personal relationship with us.
Other religions reflect man's desires for the flesh, religions of works that men can earn their salvation by making proper sacrifices or obeying or doing more good than bad as if salvation was a score card. Or Buddhism that denial of self and the strictest discipline can lead to nirvana, these are good traits but they cannot bring salvation or even true lasting contentment, NO, ignoring one's circumstances by living outside of them in the mind does not change one's circumstances. It is a state of self denial which enacts discipline which is admirable, but it is also a state of denial to what reality is.
The Islamic faith's idea of heaven is clearly man made because it's eternal idea of heaven is based on human wants and desires as if any man would be content with sex, and riches for an eternity even sex with 72 virgins. The greatest example of this absurdity is rich and famous stars who have everything the world has to offer and still cannot find happiness. Give me a break, it promises worldly things to content the soul in a heavenly realm for all of eternity, whilst Christianity promises things greater than anything we can fathom from this Earth, mainly the presence of God which is a perfect Trinitarian union between the Father, the Son, and The Holy Spirit, characterized by Love, Peace, AND perfect Justice, tempered by mercy and Grace.
Yes Christianity is based on morals and values that men would never dare create, because they are completely contrary to men's natural desires and wants. Sex being one of the most powerful examples there. It is a religion that hinges on nothing we can do for ourselves and everything a loving GOD has done for us. WHO and WHY and FOR WHAT interests of any men does it serve to create a religion like Christianity that would ask so much of us and allow us no compromises between what may be wrong and right when it comes to the gift of salvation. It is mans nature to seek vengeance when wronged, to seek the desires of the flesh, to want to be able to earn forgiveness and salvation through works, and to obtain peace by the sheer power and will of the mind (Buddhism), the Judeo-Christian religion is founded on none of these principals because it was not found by men at all, but revealed to men through the Holy spirit, the Father, and the Son who even went so far as to come here as a man and lay down his life for our sins and perform many miracles the greatest by far being his Resurrection, not just being a miracle to prove his divinity but to give us all a chance to spend eternity with him, all me must do is accept it and turn to him.
"Given the importance of what is at stake here (everybody's immortal soul, and an eternity in a lake of hellfire for everybody who chooses wrong), why isn't the one true religion clearer? Why didn't God create us all with a copy of the 10 commandments burned into our mind, or appearing in the stars every 25th of December? Why don't bibles grow on trees? Why doesn't God send down another angel every so often to remind us that Christianity is still the only true religion, or at least have his own youtube channel? "
Why do people sometimes refrain from doing something they think is wrong? although it may not break any law or harm anybody? For example why does some kid not throw a rock at a defenseless bird for fun? Why does he have compassion on it, it's just a bird after all, not our species, he does not obey survival of the fittest according to Darwin, but he spares the bird (sometimes), because knowing he will not eat it, he regards its life as sacred and his purpose in killing it useless and cruel. This is because God has given us all a conscience, we already know what is wrong and what is right in our hearts, he has written it there. But due to our own sin nature we conveniently grow up to ignore it where it suits us to ignore and follow it where it suits us to follow it, so he not only has held us accountable to our sin through imparting a conscience to each of us but has also written down clearly, literally set it in stone in the 10 commandments, and then written it again on papyrus and parchment and used Godly men to produce the scriptures on millions of Bibles, which has been a bestseller for the last 1,000 years, not because it's got a bunch of awesome stories but because the truth of it resonates with your conscience.
Romans 1 says it this way: “What can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and his divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.”
The other part of your question is, why isn't God purposefully revealing himself to me? Because you've already denied him.
You think that if he stood over your shoulder and told you what to do constantly that you would believe in him and maybe love him. That would not be free will and absent of free will, love ceases to exist. All of creation points to God, it's organization, it's beauty and it's marvels. He's revealed himself many times, worked many miracles, even sent his only son from Heaven to this corrupted world, sent his son from his presence to die for you and prove himself to you through countless miracles only a handful of which are recorded in the Bible, otherwise you'd have volumes just devoted to what miracles Jesus did. He still works miracles to this day. Seek him and he will reveal himself to you. Approach him as if he owes you something after he has already given you the gift of life and choice and he will not reveal himself to you. Approach him with a complete unwillingness to obey or even entertain belief and he will not reveal himself because their is no point in doing so. God wants [voluntary] faith, and proof would force faith. God has always chosen the slow difficult way – respecting human freedom regardless of the cost. If he does not respect human freedom he may as well have created us all as slaves or robots. Love cannot exist outside of free will.
"Why is it that every single last thing we know about God, religion, and the true path to heaven has to come through human agents? People lie and make mistakes all the time. Your bible was printed by humans, translated by humans and written by humans. You cannot ask God or an angel or Jesus if it's all true or if bits were left out or whether or not it truly represents what we should believe. There are no tests you can perform to determine its validity. You cannot conduct a study to see whether belief in the Bible increases your chance of entry into heaven. When you put absolute faith in Christianity, you are not putting absolute faith in God. You are putting absolute faith in the people that tell you these things."
Why does God use people for anything really? We are all imperfect beings. He does because he can.
The books of the Bible, the 66 books include 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament. They’re written over the course of about roughly 1,500 years by roughly 40 authors. We know most of the authors of the books of the Bible. A few there is not certainty. The books of the Bible as well are written primarily in three languages, Greek and Hebrew being the preponderance of writing, a few smaller bits in the language of Aramaic. They write from Africa. They write from Europe. They write from Asia, so it’s a multicultural and global book in that regard.
Not that you care since you don't consider it Valid but here is what the Bible says about itself and therefore what I believe God says about the Bible. The Bible says that nothing is to be added to it or taken from it. It says that in Deuteronomy. It also says that, for example, in Proverbs 30:5-6, where it says that “every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.” It goes on to then say in 30:6, “Do not add to his word, or he will rebuke you and prove you to be a liar.” Right there, the Bible says, “Don’t add anything to the Scriptures.” There we’re talking about what theologians will call the sufficiency of Scriptures.
The Bible also claims to be true in John 17:17. That’s Jesus’ high priestly prayer, his longest prayer in the Bible. He prays this: “Father, sanctify them” – speaking of you and I – “sanctify them by the truth; your word” – or the Scriptures – “are truth.” And so the Bible is true.
Who wrote the Bible? And when we answer this question, the truth is that there really is a partnership between God, who is the divine author, and men, who are the human authors, and they’re working together. And in saying this I am not saying that they were in some sort of catatonic state, that rather God was working through their personality, that God was working through their education, that God was working through their observation and experience to empower, to enable, to inspire – that’s the word – to inspire them to perfectly write down an absolutely trustworthy and perfect record of what Scripture records.
Old Testament authors that are human are mentioned in many of the books: David, Moses, Joshua, Solomon, Nehemiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Habakkuk – you could just look those names up in a concordance and they actually appear in books of the Old Testament. They’re named as the authors.
I believe that the words of Scripture are miraculous revelation from God the Holy Spirit. Plenary – all of the Bible is from God. And inspiration – I believe it all comes from God, unlike every and any other book. There are no other books that are divinely inspired by God the Holy Spirit as Scripture is.
Furthermore, they couldn’t have seen the panoramic scope of history and predicted in advance in such excruciatingly amazing detail exactly what would happen with Jesus. But the Holy Spirit is God. He’s all-knowing. He knows the future. He’s sovereign over the future and he revealed to the authors of Scripture exactly what would happen, and that’s what he said. The authors were carried along by the Holy Spirit. They held in their hand the pen, or their scribe did, as it were. But nonetheless, without the Holy Spirit they don’t know anything about the coming of Jesus because they have speculation, rather than revelation. But because of the Holy Spirit they were able to tell us about the coming of Jesus in great detail. Reference PSALM 22 which was written by David some 1000 years before Christ. The original ancient texts are still around (don't have them in my possession sorry)
Psalm 22
For the director of music. To the tune of “The Doe of the Morning.” A psalm of David.
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest.
3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the one Israel praises.[c]
4 In you our ancestors put their trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried out and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
6 But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
8 “He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
“let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him.”
9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
10 From birth I was cast on you;
from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
11 Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.
12 Many bulls surround me;
strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.
13 Roaring lions that tear their prey
open their mouths wide against me.
14 I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
it has melted within me.
15 My mouth[d] is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death.
16 Dogs surround me,
a pack of villains encircles me;
they pierce[e] my hands and my feet.
17 All my bones are on display;
people stare and gloat over me.
18 They divide my clothes among them
and cast lots for my garment.
19 But you, Lord, do not be far from me.
You are my strength; come quickly to help me.
20 Deliver me from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dogs.
21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;
save me from the horns of the wild oxen.
22 I will declare your name to my people;
in the assembly I will praise you.
23 You who fear the Lord, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!
24 For he has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.
25 From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
before those who fear you[f] I will fulfill my vows.
26 The poor will eat and be satisfied;
those who seek the Lord will praise him—
may your hearts live forever!
27 All the ends of the earth
will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him,
28 for dominion belongs to the Lord
and he rules over the nations.
29 All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
those who cannot keep themselves alive.
30 Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.
31 They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it!
And again in Isaiah 7:14 - Still hundreds of years before Jesus.
New International Version (NIV)
14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and[c] will call him Immanuel.[d]
Romans 1:18. It says that we suppress the truth because of the unrighteousness of our deeds. What he’s saying is this. He’s saying that sometimes the Bible is hard to understand. But sometimes it’s not hard to understand, it’s that we’re unwilling to repent. I think it was Mark Twain said, “It’s not the parts of the Bible that I read and don’t understand which bother me, it’s the parts of the Bible which I do read and do understand which bother me.”
Probably in high school or college most of you had to read Homer. We don’t know how old the earliest copy is. From the time it was originally written to the earliest manuscript we have, we just don’t know, and there’s only 643 copies.
Likewise, Plato – anyone who studied philosophy, you start with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Plato, we only have seven copies, early copies, manuscripts of Plato’s work. And the earliest is 1,300 years removed from the writing of the original. Yet no one is saying, “Let’s get rid of Plato. We can’t trust Plato. How do we know that this is what Plato really said?”
Aristotle – similarly we only have five ancient copies of Aristotle’s work. And the earliest copy is 1,400 years removed from the original – 1,400 years. Caesar, as well – you all studied Caesar at some point in history. We only have ten copies of Caesar’s work and the earliest copy is 950 years removed from the original. Tacitus – some of his work in history is very helpful. We only have 20 copies and the earliest is about 1,000 years old from the original.
Now, taking these pieces of literature that are accepted within the western canon, that are taught in high schools and colleges and accepted as historically accurate and factual. From these copies, manuscripts, translations are made that we all read and no one has any question about them, even in English. The New Testament, we have about 14,000 copies. It’s not even comparable. The next closest in this illustration is 600. And the date from the original to the oldest manuscript that we have, some would say – and this is very generous, even to the skeptics and critics – is 100 years. A man named Carsten Peter Thiede – he’s a secular papyrologist, he said that he can date certain fragments of the gospels back to the 60s, meaning within 30 or 40 years after Jesus was actually walking the earth, while many of the eyewitnesses were still alive.
My point is simply to reject the New Testament by saying, “Well, we don’t have enough manuscripts,” or, “They’re too far removed from the original,” or, “How do we know that’s what they originally said?” is completely absurd and it’s academically irresponsible. Were we to treat the rest of the canon of western literature with the same degree of scrutiny as the New Testament we would have no ancient books.
And some would say, “But there are variations between the manuscripts.” The truth is that when you’re hand copying 14,000 manuscripts there are a few minor spelling and punctuation errors. But with 14,000 manuscripts, if you have 13,900 that all agree and 100 that do not, you can assume that the mistakes are in those 100. And again, it’s punctuation and spelling, which you as well as I know that if someone gave us a pen and told us to write the New Testament 14,000 times we would miss a comma, we would misspell a word at some point no matter how hard we tried.
Additionally, less than one percent of any of the debated material that is in the New Testament has anything to do with any major doctrine. Most scholars agree that we’re looking at far less than one percent of any potential misspellings or punctuation in the manuscripts relates in any way to any major doctrinal issue. Most of the errors are something like saying “Christ Jesus,” when it was “Jesus Christ” in the writing – sort of flipping the words, as it were, which in the end is not an enormous error and it doesn’t really change who we’re talking about or what is being said.
And so what I would like to just stress is that it is most reasonable, it is most humble, it is most acceptable to believe in the New Testament as we have it. That God has given us ample number of ancient manuscripts closely written to the date of the original Autographa so that we could trust the Bible.
But that being said it's all prefaced on the belief that scripture is the inspired true word of God, and if you don't believe in God to begin with, what does it matter really right? I can't logically prove to you there is a God through any means. I would never be so stupid to make that claim, just as you would never be so stupid to claim you can prove their is no God. But I'll also say this, any thing claiming to be biblical that denies who Christ is, was, and his mission on Earth is denying the very foundation of Christianity and should just call itself something else. People will try to change the Bible to suit them in the future by doing what they claim will be making it more "culturally relevant" this will mostly likely mean adding and detracting from it, if it is the word of God, I don't think he'll take kindly to that.
I am putting absolute faith that God is speaking through Godly men using the holy spirit, as I have never experienced the audible voice of God. Yes correct.
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Post by blardtholomew on May 12, 2012 1:47:22 GMT 2
4:31 PM
<ghengis> do you think god speaks to homer and not us
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marge
Triple thrall
Posts: 37
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Post by marge on May 12, 2012 2:53:13 GMT 2
First of all Homer, Jesus Christ already died for our sins, you don't need to make my eyeballs suffer too. But to me, logically science has far more failings than the idea of an eternal creator. Don't misunderstand me, I believe in evolution from the stand point that living creatures can adapt to their environments, but not to the level that man has sprouted legs, and birds wings, over what? necessity? or trial and error? You misunderstand how evolution works. Life evolves when random mutations happen to be beneficial. These mutations do not occur in response to a particular need or desire of a lifeform. The vast majority of them suck. Bad mutations inhibit a creature's ability to survive and reproduce, so they are less likely to be passed down to the next generation. Good mutations improve the chance of reproduction by allowing those with the mutation to outcompete those without the mutation for food, territory, mates, etc. So- mutations don't arise to fill a need, but they stick around if they do. It also takes place very gradually. You don't get a complex structure like a wing as the result of a single mutation. What you get is a long series of mutations which eventually result in a functional wing. The initial mutations, of course, won't be useful for flight at all. This is OK, as long as they don't inhibit the creature's ability to reproduce. As the proto-wing continues to mutate, its function continues to change, until eventually you get something that's useful for flying. So, these in-between mutations might simply be stubby little arms getting a little longer to better reach food, or they might be feather-like structures that help a creature regulate its body temperature. Later, you might get something wing-like enough that it helps a creature jump a little bit higher to get to more food. You can read all about how complex structures evolve if you google it. Buddhism predates Christianity by many centuries. A central tenet of Buddhism is that suffering arises from cravings and desires. Why is it possible for Buddhism to be manmade and not Christianity? Or to turn this question on its head, why did God create us with natural selfish desires that drive us to act the complete opposite of how we're supposed to act? I don't need God to stand over my shoulder, I just need a reliable copy of his rules. This is what all your arguments boil down to, unfortunately. God does it this way because it's the right way, and it's the right way because God does it this way. You are unwilling to consider the possibility that God does something in an imperfect fashion because God is an invention of man. I'm not suggesting you reject the Testament for its literary value, I'm suggesting you reject it as the divine plan for the organization of your life and human society. |
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Post by SAUCEBOSS FIT on May 12, 2012 2:55:42 GMT 2
SAUCE BOSS IS THE KING
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Post by vihaan on May 12, 2012 8:54:53 GMT 2
HOLY SHIT THAT BLUE COLOR HURTS MY EYES
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Post by grim on May 12, 2012 12:34:20 GMT 2
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Post by switch on May 12, 2012 15:13:52 GMT 2
Homer: if you strictly believe in mechanistic evolution void of spirit that is what you are left with, this [meaningless emotions] is what you have chosen. The implication of this statement is that one can define the transcendental parameters of the universe with one's mind (physical emotions without the choice of belief in abrahamic theology = physically real but not transcendentally real; whereas, physical emotions with the choice of belief in the abrahamic theology = physically real & transcendentally real). Simply by believing in "god" you are in effect endowing your emotions with meaning through the creation of an entire transcendental reality. This is a vaguely Kantian perspective. Which is fascinating but nevertheless occurring entirely within the confines of the mind. If we agree that the basic physical properties are real and disagree about the reality of the transcendental properties, we can discount the necessarily metaphysical transcendental aspects, leaving us with a completely mechanistic universe. Diderot is a good source on this kind of mechanistic interpretation. I might add, even in a mechanistic universe there are debates about the importance of observation for effecting the conditions of reality, such as the coppenhagen interpretation. of quantum mechanics, although I doubt that's the kind of metaphysical transcendental spiritualism you had in mind. Grim: And since this whole conversation is just a repeat of the discussion we had two years ago, I'm not gonna bother copy/pasting the stuff I said there. I suppose you're referring to this catastrophe. |
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Post by vihaan on May 12, 2012 15:20:37 GMT 2
LOL AGNOSTICISM WINS GG GF
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Post by bigkrokv8ss on May 12, 2012 15:31:02 GMT 2
dumbest thread tldr
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Post by blardtholomew on May 12, 2012 18:14:35 GMT 2
I would assume that this was a joke, Blardstein. NOTHING GETS BY YOU |
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Post by switch on May 13, 2012 5:10:36 GMT 2
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Post by switch on May 13, 2012 12:23:26 GMT 2
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It's so counter to all of man's natural selfish desires. It preaches sexual abstinence until marriage, monogamy, sacrificial love, forgiveness and mercy to the infinite degree, it also boasts of a God that not only loves us but wants to have a personal relationship with us. 
