Just Accidental?

[Deeje]

Isn't that *convenient*? I call BS.

Why would you "call" otherwise when you know what it means for those who don't get that invitation? God does not 'need' us to believe in him....he 'wants' us to....but not against our will. We need him to continue living beyond the life we live at present in this pathetic world. If you want no better life beyond what we have at present then God will not force it on you.....you will get what you expect.....so who loses?

I see. So it isn't a rational conclusion, but an irrational opinion?

No, not at all...it is a rational opinion based on what I see and what I know of life in this world.....I have been around a long time. I am not uneducated nor am I stupid....I am spiritual though and and I received the invitation to understand God's truth quite early in my life, when my education in evolution was quite fresh. The more I explored evolution, the more I saw it was not based on facts but on pre-conceived assumptions that were founded on Darwin's theory. Every conclusion was made to fit that theory. I see the whole scenario of macro-evolution as based on the irrational opinion of scientists trying to prop up a fantasy, without scientific facts.
Science knows that "nothing comes from nothing" and that "all life comes from pre-existing life"....yet evolution denies those two well founded principles because they don't fit their theory.

My heart is a muscular organ in my chest. Emotions, like thoughts, are aspects of the brain.

We are so much more than our brain and our fleshly bodies. The Bible speaks of the figurative heart, not the physical organ that pumps blood, but the depth of feeling that is tied to our emotions. Our physical heart is affected by stress and tragedy, and people can literally die of a "broken heart". It is inextricably tied in with love. Can you deny this?

In any case, thanks for admitting there is no hard evidence for your beliefs. Given that, I find no reason to believe.

If you don't want to believe, then that is up to you. You obviously think that you know all there is to know about God and Christianity......but I can see by what you write that you know very little. That is not God's fault.....the truth is available to all, but not all are in the right mind set (or condition of heart) to accept it.

 

[Deeje]

I most certainly hope that we would NOT welcome such a ruler!!!!

And there is the biggest difference: you wish to have someone control you. I do not. You wish to live under a benevolent dictator. I do not.

Even the most benevolent dictator is still a dictator. The loss of freedom is an evil that is not eliminated by the benevolence of the ruler.

You think you have real freedom now? It is a sad delusion. People who defect from the Creator have just opted for a different form of slavery.....their 'master' is neither kind nor loving. He is cold like the cash that drives their selfish lives. (1 Timothy 6:10)

 

[Deeje]

God needs to give evidence of Himself. Then we can discuss connecting Him to our universe.

The evidence is all there....lots of people just attribute it to Mr Nobody....or God's wife, "Mother Nature". According to your beliefs, Creation is just an accident and so are we. All the complexities of interwoven and interdependent life on this planet are just the result of blind chance. You can believe that if you wish.....its complete fantasy to me.

General evidence would do.

There is an abundance of evidence, but again you just see 'accidents' where I see deliberate design and carefully executed ingenuity.
Blind chance is not ingenious. It has no purpose or design, so to your mind, it requires no designer with a specific purpose for those designs. I see purpose everywhere. I see design everywhere too. None so blind apparently....

We're well aware of that. And He has done nothing as always. It's the signature of this god and how you know it is Him: He always perfectly imitates a non-existent god.

He has done amazing things, but he operates in a different time zone to us earth bound human beings. I see what he has accomplished and the way he has organized events from the beginning, yet keeping his distance so that the devil can prove his case completely without unnecessary interference.....the plan is almost complete and we already know how it ends. The precedents set will last for all eternity. You can choose not to believe it. I believe it whole-heartedly.

Muslims tell us that as well. What do you say to them? You were warned abut Islamic hell - and over a billion believe it is real on existing evidence, so don't say that you weren't told. If you find yourself in Allah's hell instead of Jehovah's heaven, whose fault will that be? Yours for your refusal to acknowledge your true creator.

A Muslim would admonish you to just look at the universe, which screams, "Allah!" and tell you that the evidence is all right under your nose. You can choose to believe or not. Allah will not force you,

I am not a Muslim and I have no faith in the nameless God of Islam ("Allah" is Arabic for "God"....al ilāh, iliterally meaning "the God") any more than I have faith in the nameless God (Lord) of Christendom. I worship the God who revealed his name to Moses. (Exodus 3:15)

I do not accept the Quran as scripture, nor Mohammad as a prophet. I have no belief in a fiery hell and no desire to go heaven. My beliefs are all founded on scripture and I have a close and personal relationship with God that I could not begin to describe to an unbeliever. Suffice it to say, I have a very strong conviction. That is what faith is. (Hebrews 11:1)

Still no answer to, "Why is a god that wants to be known still unknown to the majority of the earth's population?"

O, I answered you already.....but you must have dismissed it. It was prophesied that God would remain unknown to those who don't want to know him. How many of the world's population are willing to give up their own ideas about God to accommodate the truth? He already said that "few" will even enter the gate that leads to the road to life. There is a superhighway that most prefer to travel. It makes little demand on them apart from some superficial performance. Those who think Jehovah merely wants mindless performance are kidding themselves.

Remember I pointed out Matthew 7:13-14? This is Jesus' own words.....
“Go in through the narrow gate, because broad is the gate and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are going in through it; 14 whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are finding it."

I believe him. You can believe whatever you like. It won't change anything.

 

[Deeje]

I rather prefer professorial pontification

Which means..... "to assume pompous and dignified airs, issue dogmatic decrees"

Yeah, I noticed that......

 

[Deeje]

Hilarious. Gotta love how Christians go from "God loves you" to "God isn't going to do anything for you personally. Who do you think you are?"

God loves those who love him......don't you do the same? Do you love people who hate you or who want to deny your existence?
Who do you think you are?

 

[Deeje]

This is plain stupidity and bias.

There are number of Christians who accept science, and number of them worked in all different branches or fields, and not just in biology.

You wrote "science students", not "biology students". That's a very broad brush to paint every Christians who ever study "science" as brainwashed.

To say all Christians, who are science students, and are being brainwashed by science, just show you are seriously deluded. You are basically telling them that they are too stupid to think for themselves.

Is this what Jehovah's Witnesses really teaches people?

I think the only ones who are brainwashed, Deeje, is you are one of them. Go see a psychologist, because you really need help, and you need deprogramming if this is what JW are teaching you.

Yep, and here we go with the personal put downs again....a sure sign that you've got nothing else.
It's against forum rules to personally attack a poster, so unless you want to be reported, I suggest you keep your personal observations to yourself. There is a difference between light hearted banter and outright slander.

I have not seen a single shred of solid evidence for macro-evolution from any of you that did not require a measure of faith to believe it.

 

[gnostic]

I have not seen a single shred of solid evidence for macro-evolution from any of you that did not require a measure of faith to believe it.

That's because you don't understand biological speciation, and you make distorted assumptions about speciation.

Try reading actual thesis, article or textbooks from biologists, instead of JW or creationist propaganda webpages, then you might learn something.

 

[Polymath257]

You think you have real freedom now? It is a sad delusion. People who defect from the Creator have just opted for a different form of slavery.....their 'master' is neither kind nor loving. He is cold like the cash that drives their selfish lives. (1 Timothy 6:10)

Yes, we have more freedom now than we have had at any point in the past. Much more than we would under any dictator, however benevolent.

The main threats to freedom now come from 'conservatives', mostly religious conservatives, who want to set up a theocracy.

 

[Jose Fly]

God loves those who love him......don't you do the same? Do you love people who hate you or who want to deny your existence?
Who do you think you are?

I thought God's love was unconditional. At least, that's what I was always taught in church.

 

[Polymath257]

God loves those who love him......don't you do the same? Do you love people who hate you or who want to deny your existence?

Whatever happened to 'love your enemies'?

Who do you think you are?

A human being that seems to have more morals than your mythological deity.

 

[savagewind]

God loves those who love him......don't you do the same? Do you love people who hate you or who want to deny your existence?
Who do you think you are?

The irony is blowing me right over, away from the Jehovah's Witnesses.

@Deeje, you say to be a JW a person must be one mind with it. So, what the hell are you TALKING about?

 

[Sapiens]

Which means..... "to assume pompous and dignified airs, issue dogmatic decrees"

Yeah, I noticed that......

Once a quote miner always a quote miner, eh? You do remember that it is a form of lying?

 

[Deeje]

Yes, we have more freedom now than we have had at any point in the past. Much more than we would under any dictator, however benevolent.

The main threats to freedom now come from 'conservatives', mostly religious conservatives, who want to set up a theocracy.

Fake theocracies can never be set up by men. A true theocracy can only be set up by God. It will never come about politically because Jesus said his true disciples would be "no part of this world". (John 18:36)

It was prophesied in the book of Daniel, written about 500 years before the birth of Christ that the "Kingdom" Jesus taught us to pray for will not "come" by the actions of men....it will come as a direct result of the actions of God.

Speaking of the rulers of our day (in this "time of the end") Daniel wrote....
Daniel 2:44:
“In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. And this kingdom will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it alone will stand forever"

Again, you can believe it or not. Every prophesy written by Daniel has come true so far.....even down to the present world rulers. With these rulers, the prophesy ends.

We just wait now for the finale.

 

[Deeje]

That's because you don't understand biological speciation, and you make distorted assumptions about speciation.

I understand completely. Science has no direct evidence for anything but adaptation. Adaptation is not evolution. It is a programmed response to a change in environment in all species. Adaptation NEVER morphs one kind of creature into another. That is where the deception begins. Adaptation is used to prove macro-evolution when it does nothing of the sort.

Try reading actual thesis, article or textbooks from biologists, instead of JW or creationist propaganda webpages, then you might learn something.

I have read the evidence posted here by evolutionists themselves. I have already demonstrated many times that it's not what it purports to be. Would you like me to re-post some of those very enlightening articles and show you what assumption looks like, dressed up as fact? There are many of them in this very long thread. Assumptions and conjecture about what "might have" or "could have" taken place is not a substitute for hard evidence. The fossils are not telling your story without coercion.

 

[Polymath257]

Fake theocracies can never be set up by men. A true theocracy can only be set up by God. It will never come about politically because Jesus said his true disciples would be "no part of this world". (John 18:36)

It was prophesied in the book of Daniel, written about 500 years before the birth of Christ that the "Kingdom" Jesus taught us to pray for will not "come" by the actions of men....it will come as a direct result of the actions of God.

Speaking of the rulers of our day (in this "time of the end") Daniel wrote....
Daniel 2:44:
“In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. And this kingdom will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it alone will stand forever"

Again, you can believe it or not. Every prophesy written by Daniel has come true so far.....even down to the present world rulers. With these rulers, the prophesy ends.

We just wait now for the finale.

Sorry, but I don't want to live in *any* type of dictatorship or theocracy. Your myths are dangerous.

 

[Polymath257]

I understand completely. Science has no direct evidence for anything but adaptation. Adaptation is not evolution. It is a programmed response to a change in environment in all species. Adaptation NEVER morphs one kind of creature into another. That is where the deception begins. Adaptation is used to prove macro-evolution when it does nothing of the sort.

Adaptation shifts the average characteristics of a population. It is NOT programmed. And, yes, over many generations it can and does and even *must* lead to large scale changes that you would call macro-evolution.

I have read the evidence posted here by evolutionists themselves. I have already demonstrated many times that it's not what it purports to be. Would you like me to re-post some of those very enlightening articles and show you what assumption looks like, dressed up as fact? There are many of them in this very long thread. Assumptions and conjecture about what "might have" or "could have" taken place is not a substitute for hard evidence. The fossils are not telling your story without coercion.

Given time periods that necessarily go beyond the ability to test directly (because they are at *least* tens of thousands of years and usually millions of years), we use simulations and mathematics. Those show that with reproduction, mutation, and selection, there is usually (not always) an increase of complexity. Such simulations also match the fossil record that we have.

So, you are right. If you want to have a sample of every single generation and every single gene that is involved in the transition from one biological family to another, you won't be able to get that. Ever. But if you want to be *reasonable* and use ordinary deduction about what happened in the past, the conclusions are clear.

 

[Deeje]

I thought God's love was unconditional. At least, that's what I was always taught in church.

God's love has to be 'conditional' because he could not carry out the death penalty on his opposers otherwise. God loves what he loves and hates what he hates. I believe that he will soon eliminate from existence all who practice what he hates. Why wouldn't he?

Jude 20-21: (ESV)
"But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life."

We have to "keep ourselves in the love of God" because many will fall away to the deceptions of the devil. His bait is attractive and can lure all manner of people, especially those with an strong spirit of independence.

The judge of all mankind has been appointed and he will extend "mercy" only to those who have demonstrated their loyalty to the Creator. That is what should have been taught "in church".

Hebrews 4:13:
"No creature is hidden from Him, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.”
According to that verse, all can expect an 'accounting' for what they have done....or not done. Whether we believe that or not will make no difference to the outcome if we are spiritually bankrupt.

 

[Deeje]

Given time periods that necessarily go beyond the ability to test directly (because they are at *least* tens of thousands of years and usually millions of years), we use simulations and mathematics. Those show that with reproduction, mutation, and selection, there is usually (not always) an increase of complexity. Such simulations also match the fossil record that we have.

Simulations based on what? Pre-conceived ideas about what 'must have' happened as opposed to what actually did?
Simulations are interpreted to match the fossil record. The fossils do not have a voice until scientists give them one.....a very biased one. You have no actual proof...only guesses. That is not very scientific.

You admit that evolution is "beyond the ability to test directly" because of the timeframe.....that means that all your conclusions are based on assumptions and biastly interpreted evidence. You have what science "thinks" happened, but you have no real evidence that what you "think" happened, actually did. You want it to, that is clear.

So, you are right. If you want to have a sample of every single generation and every single gene that is involved in the transition from one biological family to another, you won't be able to get that. Ever.

I would like to see transitional fossils between the ones science presents in its diagrams. Since millions of years transpired between these 'species', there has to have been many thousands, if not millions of these transitional forms that prove your theory. Where are they all? The ones you have do not demonstrate relationship, but only similarity. I question the assumptions of scientists of a link between them because the "gaps" are all still unbridged by anything material. There are no real links in your chain....just imaginary ones. How does that make your beliefs more reasonable than mine?

But if you want to be *reasonable* and use ordinary deduction about what happened in the past, the conclusions are clear.

LOL....I have always been *reasonable*.....just not compliant with your reasoning, based on your "evidence'.....which is thin to say the least. I am demanding more real evidence than you can apparently provide. I have real evidence for my Creator all around me and nothing you have produced to date tells me otherwise.

 

[Deeje]

Sorry, but I don't want to live in *any* type of dictatorship or theocracy. Your myths are dangerous.

Your wish may well be granted I find your myths to be much more life threatening.....

 

[Sapiens]

I understand completely. Science has no direct evidence for anything but adaptation. Adaptation is not evolution. It is a programmed response to a change in environment in all species. Adaptation NEVER morphs one kind of creature into another. That is where the deception begins. Adaptation is used to prove macro-evolution when it does nothing of the sort.

Then explain, without resort to magic, the phenomena of ring species.