evolution vs creation vs Intelligent Design

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RonH @ Apr 22 2006, 12:09 AM) [snapback]243565[/snapback]</div>

I'm not sure what you are asking. Are you asking about the various theories in theology about what happens to non-Christians (or more specifically, those who are not "saved"?) Or are you asking about my personal beliefs on that subject?

There's a wide range of beliefs in Christiandom about the afterlife, from the "everyone makes it" theory to the "fires of hell" type of thing. Many evangelicals today believe that Jews make it too (there are those promises from God in the front part of our Bible to contend with!)

My own personal beliefs fluctuate between that entire range because, to be honest, its not something I've studied enough to make an intelligent decision on. There are smart guys on all sides of this one.

CS Lewis said an interesting thing once when asked if he really thought his puny prayer could change God's omnipotent mind on an issue. He said the purpose of prayer wasn't to change God's mind, but to change his. For me, the purpose of religion is not to exert influence or control others, but to restore my relationship to God through changing me. I'm bemused by the social engineering attempts by people of faith, both liberal and conservative, as they are often simply disasters.

Does hell exist? I simply don't know. I'm not sure why it matters.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Apr 22 2006, 01:23 PM) [snapback]243697[/snapback]</div>

I thought it was fairly straightforward. There seem to be lots of opinions about what those going to hell, or at least not going to heaven face. But what's waiting for those heaven? I mean if I'm going to give up all that partying and free thinking, I need to know that its worth it.

 

_The Last Battle_ by CS Lewis (the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia) does the most straightforward description of heaven that I've ever seen. It's like the world, but realer. =) You'd just have to read it. Actually, the Chronicles of Narnia do the best job of describing Christ and a relationship with Him of most anything I've read thus far. (Not that I've read exhaustively on this subject.)

Heaven is spending eternity in God's presence, free of the imperfection we're now stuck in. There's no possible way we could imagine what that actually is...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RonH @ Apr 22 2006, 07:01 PM) [snapback]243803[/snapback]</div>

Ah, you meant what is the alternative to eternal torment? Best I can tell, its eternal worship of God, starting with a good family meal. I won't talk about the basking in the glory of God part, since you don't want to hear it.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Apr 22 2006, 02:37 AM) [snapback]243560[/snapback]</div>

No mistake whatsoever, since his fascistic tendencies are less important then a mere insult, I'm glad to insult you as well, as you must be thinking within the same lines as he is.

Now I've insulted windstings and you, keep foaming about it.

YOU HAVE BEEN INSULTED, NOTA BENE AVOWEDLY!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RonH @ Apr 20 2006, 11:25 PM) [snapback]243041[/snapback]</div>

If he "had" to do every silly thing that pops in your little brain, he wouldn't be omnipotent either.
Fortunately He is sovereign and does what He thinks is best.... Sorry, but He doesn't ask for your approval.

It sounds like you don't have the ability for sound reasoning.... you reason with air and come up with air.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(zapranoth @ Apr 21 2006, 06:23 PM) [snapback]243447[/snapback]</div>

Looks flat where I stand!... must be?.... aren't we supposed to go by our sight and natural senses?

How do you know its not?.. because you read it in a book?

Have you ever seen it round?.. I haven't.......

why do you believe the world is round?... because your dad or your teacher told you so?

Moral of the story is .... everything is not as it appears with the senses, and logic.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Apr 22 2006, 11:23 AM) [snapback]243697[/snapback]</div>

Doesn't matter much if you don't go there!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dsunman @ Apr 22 2006, 08:09 PM) [snapback]243835[/snapback]</div>

Thats ok Dsunman.... I accept your apology.... I know it must be bothering you like crazy...... I hate to see you suffer so for so many days...... Don't worry about it any more... quit losing sleep over it.....

No but seriously folks.... it's nice to have a warm chat by the fireside...... I don't take it personally..... the fact that your still talking means you really care. :wub:
Just don't tell me your gay and I'll be ok....

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Apr 23 2006, 02:06 AM) [snapback]243870[/snapback]</div>

You know, the man has a point here... I PERSONALLY have not determined it to be round. I have not set out walking towards the Sun, only to ultimately arrive where I started. Only from pictures I've seen, and what I've been taught am I led to believe the Earth is round.

Of course, how do we even know we really exist in the first place? What if we're merely dreams of some entity composed of elements we don't yet know exist, in a universe where OUR logic is senseless.

Has anyone ever sat down and tried to comprehend infinity? The infinity of space? The infinity of the number line. I have. Often at that. I've also determined it is impossible to actually get from 0 to 1. Why? Because there are infinite values within each infinite value. To better illustrate, you can have .999999 go off into infinity and never actually "hit" 1, or if you want to look at it another way, take a number and divide it by 2. You can do this to infinity. SO, if you cut your Mom's apple pie in half, how can that REALLY be? Better yet, how do I know I'm actually hitting keys on my keyboard if the distance between my finger and the key can be halved to infinity?? HUH?

How do you know you've REALLY driven a mile if you can go .9999999999 miles forever? There is most definitely a ceiling to human logic and understanding... A fish in a fish bowl can only comprehend what it is biologically able to comprehend, yet it comprehends more than a single cell organism. Go the other way, and a Squirrel comprehends more than the fish. Does it stop in either direction? Does the number line? Nope.

We're simply at the top spot in OUR domain. There's no "reason" to believe we AREN'T the fish in something else's fishbowl... Maybe God's... Maybe something else... This is why Atheists are are narrow minded fools. They've chosen to exclude the concept of a God, when they cannot, with any degree of certainty, prove he/she/it, doesn't exist in the first place, EVEN aside from proving they themselves may or may not really exist...

Infinity is the key folks. Or at least part of it....

h34r:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Apr 23 2006, 02:06 AM) [snapback]243870[/snapback]</div>

Perhaps to your dissapointment, God has chosen for me to be wired with hetero properties from my birth on, otherwise you would have had an opportunity of bundling me into another 'kin' :lol:

BTW, you're a lucky bastard for having all the fancy gizmos in your Prius :angry:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mystery Squid @ Apr 23 2006, 02:32 AM) [snapback]243880[/snapback]</div>

Let me give you a piece of a good advice, don't mix hearty spliffs with cheap vodka... :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Apr 23 2006, 01:06 AM) [snapback]243870[/snapback]</div>

Only if you remove the context from my post. A cheap high school debate club trick. I'm out of here.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Apr 23 2006, 01:06 AM) [snapback]243870[/snapback]</div>

You've never seen Earth's shadow on the moon during an eclipse? Or a picture of Earth from the moon, or from orbit?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dsunman @ Apr 22 2006, 08:09 PM) [snapback]243835[/snapback]</div>

OK, so you now admit you insulted him? Were you lying when you denied it?

The problem is that your position on other issues is compromised by the insults and, possibly, the perception by others that you are lying. While those that perceive you as lying may point to the specific example above, how are they to know you aren't lying all the time?

The evolution/creation debate has a few strident folks on both sides, but some large percentage of the American people ... we'll say 80% ... are not strident about the issue.

Sometimes those folks in the middle have to make a decision. Let's say they are on a school board, or are a parent of a child in a school, where the evolution/creation debate has been introduced.

Because I am actually on YOUR side of this issue, i.e., favoring only science being taught in science classes with absolutely no mention of ID or Creationism, I pray that they don't see your arguments at all. Your arguments polarize the debate and force people into a false choice where Creationism wins. Since they believe in God, and the pro-evolution folks seem like strident agnostics or atheists, then they accept the explanation by the Creationists that this debate is not about science, but about the "culture wars".

I pray that they see arguments by people like Dr. Barbara Forrest, who is respectful, polite and devastatingly knowledgeable (see http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/0...orres.html#more for how her deposition helped defeat ID in the Dover case). I want more Christians supporting science.

ID has reached a milestone that Creationism never did by getting a paper published in a respected scientific journal (see http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/0...hopeless_1.html. The *late* peer review process underway is getting rather brutal (see the same link for a critique of the article's methodologies). If ID is able to continue submitting such papers, and the peer review process is done before publication instead of after, and if ID is able to establish itself as a viable scientific theory, then and only then should it be allowed to be mentioned in a science classroom.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Apr 23 2006, 11:19 AM) [snapback]243946[/snapback]</div>

No, I still consider my statement as a labeling, you on the other hand considering it as insult, so for the sake of ongoing exchange of posts that resorted just to semantics, I did gave you the benefit and admitted that I've insulted him just to end your "the consumptive habitus". I can still talk to windstings as he doesn't mind my "INSULT", obviously that's too much for you. So, what other deameaning verb or a noun are you going to come up with in the next post?

whatever... I'm done with you, pat yourself on a back! You're a winner in a debate.

I'm adding you to the list of ignored among wildkow and schmika, as it's impossibe to communicate with you. I suggest you do the same to me, as this will spare other posters to be exposed to this foolishness of our form of 'incommunicado'.

Sayonara to you!
Peace

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dsunman @ Apr 22 2006, 11:47 PM) [snapback]243882[/snapback]</div>

Not everything that happens at birth is of God.... when we take our first breath, we breath smog... God didn't put it there... we are fed with our mothers blood while in her womb and she at and drank pesticide infested foods and or drugs that dont' mix either... that too was not given of God....
Genetics from prior lineage and byproducts of sin and mankinds waste that affects generations to come.

The part of you thats from God that is untouched by mans doings is your spirit. Thats the part of you thats perfect... it can be corrupted once your in this world, but from birth it is perfect... flesh is flesh and spirit is spirit, they don't mix.


a Sidenote:
As far as the gizmos... I only have a fraction of some of the goodies some folks have.. those can-views still have me mystified... I'll have to get one some day.

But of all the things I've gotten thus far... believe it or not.. I think the BT plate was maybe the most important upgrade.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RonH @ Apr 23 2006, 01:10 AM) [snapback]243898[/snapback]</div>

Your right.. that was a bit harsh.... my bad... how about I take away silly and just say "little"?

At our very best, we are all far short of being able to comprehend the emensity of God and the universe... I can barely really concentrate on more than one thing at a time.

My main point is that, if we have not the ability to percieve what really going on in our own brains and hearts.... the good book says (Jer 17:9 KJV) The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
(Jer 17:10 KJV) I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
If we cannot tap into our own world and understand our nature and surroundings.... how in the world are we supposed to assume we know Gods heart and mind except trusting what He tells us?

Sorry being so harsh......

(Isa 55:6 KJV) Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:

(Isa 55:7 KJV) Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

(Isa 55:8 KJV) For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

(Isa 55:9 KJV) For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dsunman @ Apr 23 2006, 08:45 AM) [snapback]243957[/snapback]</div>

I really have trouble following you. Now you're saying you weren't lying when you said calling Windstrings a religio-fascist was an insult, but you lied about it, and said you lied, to stop the debate?

YOU engaged ME on this issue, so you had the power to stop it all along. No reason to not tell the truth about whatever it is isn't true now.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dsunman @ Apr 23 2006, 08:45 AM) [snapback]243957[/snapback]</div>

Ah, fair enough. I guess you have a list of folks that "win" or "score points", and you simply ignore them? I may have to try that; it certainly would be easier than engaging people and actually finding out what they believe, considering their positions, challenging my own presuppositions.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Apr 24 2006, 02:24 AM) [snapback]244175[/snapback]</div>

fshagan,
I find it interesting that you decided to pick on one poster for insulting another poster but completly ignored other insults.
If this isn't an insult than you are either stupid or you don't want to see it (perhaps you are into King James as well)
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Apr 21 2006, 01:34 AM) [snapback]243022[/snapback]</div>

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Apr 21 2006, 12:04 AM) [snapback]242998[/snapback]</div>

If you are not defending windstrings than what are you doing? You don't seem to be screaming about his insulting posts.
Ohh, BTW calling windstrings a "religio-fascist" was mildly put. Basic religious doctrine???? There are religious doctrines that don't make people go around screaming and telling others that they will go to hell and that they need to be eradicated because they are believing in a wrong God.

I find it more amusing that you spent 3 days trying to prove how windstrings has been insulted by dsunman, than dsunman pointing out to you how windstring deserved the name he was called and whether it was an insult or not.

You sir need to be ignored as you can't follow your own reasoning.

This post was meant to insult you.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wildkow @ Apr 19 2006, 06:05 AM) [snapback]242019[/snapback]</div>

Actually, you are quite mistaken. There is a genus of algae, in which certain species only exist as single cells, while other exist as colonies of just a few cells, up to a dozen or two. It is quite reasonable to suggest that the first true multi-cellular organisms arose from cell colonies. And as it happens, there is one species of this genus of algae that forms a hollow ball of a few hundred cells. And the interesting thing about this species, is that within the ball, are a few individual cells whose only function is reproduction. These reproductive cells get their energy from the other cells, and cannot survive on their own, while the other (non-reproductive) cells cannot reproduce.

This extraordinary species of algae, although extremely simple, is clearly a multi-cellular organism, since it has distinct cells with different functions which cannot live and reproduce without each other.

And it is clearly very closely related to other species of the same genus that merely exist as colonies of undifferentiated cells, thus providing an easy conceptual bridge between single-celled organisms and multi-cellular ones. And current thinking in biology is that this is probably how multi-cellular organisms first arose. It is true that we have no ancient fossils of this kind of organism, but living examples point out the very real possibility of this having happened a billion and a half years ago. After that, it's just a matter of slow evolution into more kinds of specialized cells within the ball, and eventually more complex structures. It is not necessary to have first a 2-celled organism, then a 3-celled one, etc. Once cells develop the ability to stick together, one would expect a few dozen or a few hundred to form a colony, and it is quite reasonable to expect that the colony would not begin to differentiate until it had reached some threshhold number of cells, so that the as-yet undifferentiated cells could support the newly specialized ones. In the above case, it seems to require a few hundred "vegetative" cells to support a few reproductive cells.

Source: "Biology: The Science of Life" a 36-hour lecture course from The Teaching Company (www.teach12.com) by Stephen Nowicki, professor of biology at Duke University. Specifically, the discussion of this alga is in lecture 25, out of 72 half-hour lectures.

Creationists always invent arguments, based on false claims about what science says or knows, or false claims about what is or is not out there in the world, but they pick stuff most people don't know about. In this case, I didn't know about this alga until listening to the aforementioned lecture, and had I not, Wildkow's false claim might have gone unanswered. Fortuneately for scientists, creationists are so ignorant of science, that most of their arguments can be easily refuted by an educated biologist. (Which I am not.)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hybridTHEvibe @ Apr 24 2006, 03:43 AM) [snapback]244193[/snapback]</div>

First, you need to pay attention to the time stamp of the messages. I did my review that had dsunman spinning out of control after your challenge to me .... on 4/19. That's 2 days before your example. I may be many things, but prescient is not one of them. But, so you understand my methodology, you are right that it wouldn't make my list anyway. Here's why:

Windstrings' quote didn't show up in the above quote, but you quoted him saying "And if your going to pray... don't bother... your God doesn't exist anyway so why waste your energy?" Newsflash: That isn't an insult.

It may be rude, in that Windstrings is telling the other poster that "his god" doesn't exist. But that's a statement of belief made without a personal insult to the other person. Its akin to someone saying "Christianity is a myth" or "your scriptures are nothing but a dusty old book." There are plenty of those kinds of comments by a lot of people here. I was looking for the "insults" that people said were here, and except for a single poster calling someone a fascist, as of April 19, my evaluation was that there were no other insults.

Now if Windstrings had said "And if your [SIC] going to pray ... don't bother ... your God doesn't exist anyway so why waste your energy, you moron?" it would have been an insult.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hybridTHEvibe @ Apr 24 2006, 03:43 AM) [snapback]244193[/snapback]</div>

Well, you failed to insult me (by my standard). You have an opinion, but you didn't call me names.

Please note that every post I made in this regard was in response to a challenge by dsunman. (Except for the initial "survey" I did on the 19th, that was in response to a challenge you made to me). I did not defend Windstrings' posts (I disagree with him on most issues), but merely said I didn't think he insulted anyone. In every post since that "survey" with dsunman, I was responding directly to his challenges. Perhaps he would have preferred me to remain silent, but then, he had complete control over that.

And yes, Windstrings views are "basic religious doctrine" for something like 20 million Americans who count themselves as conservative Christians in the fundamentalist or evangelical camps. It is important to understand the views of others, and where they are coming from especially in light of this topic.

Why do you think Creationism and ID keep popping up and winning skirmishes among school boards? Why has this been happening since the 1970s?

You are certainly free to ignore me, as is everyone else. It isn't my style to do that, personally, because I like the free exchange of ideas, even those I find uncomfortable. At least for a while, I do

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Apr 24 2006, 05:17 PM) [snapback]244580[/snapback]</div>

I'll disagree with you just a little bit here. While every educated biologist certainly KNOWS the facts to refute the claims, proving it is another matter. In order to refute a claim, research has to be done. An educated biologist is going to gather references and produce a bibliography, extract quotes and present his case.

It takes some time. And as soon as he produces the evidence, another quick comment sends him back to the books for more proof. It is more work than its worth, most of the time.

As an example, I noticed no one dug up the references for how we know the earth is round when a flat earth was mentioned. I actually know the answer to that question, here in one of my layman's books on science, complete with the date and the person who is recorded to have figured it out first. But because its common knowledge that the earth if round, I certainly didn't go to the trouble of refuting every flat earth claim. Someone working in the sciences dismisses anti-evolution claims because they are ... to him ... in the same category. Everyone in the business knows evolution is the winning theory, so why spin your wheels trying to convince someone who hasn't put forth the effort to really study the issue?