Life From Dirt?

[Kenny]

Yes. This is at least the third, and you still show no signs of understanding what was written to you, and also no curiosity what that is. I've been referring to a cognitive bias wherein the meanings of words are converted from what the words say to something else. You don't seem to understand that. Nothing you've written suggests that you do.

I was addressing your recommendation to investigate supernaturalism. The vampire analogy is very apt. I recommended that you investigate claims of vampires existing, an unfalsifiable claim like other claims of supernaturalism including god claims. You haven't, both because you can't, which was my point regarding other forms of supernaturalism, and because you understand that it would be a waste of your time to give the subject any further consideration than you already have.

The two are perfectly analogous, but you probably don't agree. Most theists are offended at having their unfalsifiable claims treated the same as all others. But why should that matter to somebody making the argument?

I wonder if people who believe that vampires but not gods exist would also be offended by that comparison. Vampires are real, but not gods, they might exclaim. They deserve special exemption, they might say.

It is no wonder you get the responses that you don’t like...

We are back to the original statement that I made…

Maybe the question really is… “If you don’t rule out supernaturalism, why don’t you investigate it and pursue the possibility? What is the “why?"

Certainly doing nothing can’t be called an “investigation”.

 

[YoursTrue]

Abiogenesis and Evolution are based on objective verifiable evidence and your's on magic.

You have your viewpoint. Thanks.

 

[shunyadragon]

You have your viewpoint. Thanks.

No Thanks! Abiogenesis and Evolution are based on objective verifiable evidence and your's on magic.

 

[shunyadragon]

It is no wonder you get the responses that you don’t like...

We are back to the original statement that I made…

Nor answered: How can you investigate the supernatural?

 

[Kenny]

Nor answered: How can you investigate the supernatural?

Let me say it……… again.

The way I did it is I took the postulate of “I will start with the Bible is true. Then I will test test (you could somewhat use the word investigate here) the sucker and I will find out soon enough if it isn’t"

Of course, this is what I did, someone else may do it differently.

It was tested in many applications but what you do is you find a promise, believe the promise and then see if the supernatural manifests. (For me, the Father who will give every good thing) provides and manifests the promise.

So, whether it was healing, provision, daily bread, and other instances, I investigated and found out the God is real, His love is real, His gift of forgiveness is real, His deliverance is real, His presence is real, His plan for my life is real as it is for everyone.

 

[ratiocinator]

The way I did it is I took the postulate of “I will start with the Bible is true.

Why? As soon as you read it you find that it contradicts itself so cannot possibly all be true.

So, whether it was healing, provision, daily bread, and other instances, I investigated and found out the God is real, His love is real, His gift of forgiveness is real, His deliverance is real, His presence is real, His plan for my life is real as it is for everyone.

So are you claiming that you got everything you asked for or do you have the usual 'get outs'? And how on earth do you (objectively) test if 'deliverance', 'forgiveness', and 'his plan' are real?

What specific and objective tests did you actually carry out? How did you assess the results? What results would have been enough to falsified your 'postulate'?

 

[Kenny]

Why? As soon as you read it you find that it contradicts itself so cannot possibly all be true.


So are you claiming that you got everything you asked for or do you have the usual 'get outs'? And how on earth do you (objectively) test if 'deliverance', 'forgiveness', and 'his plan' are real?

What specific and objective tests did you actually carry out? How did you assess the results? What results would have been enough to falsified your 'postulate'?

Try asking questions that actually say “I’m interested” instead of lacing everything with the pcp of unbelief.

I said “investigate” and not “throw everything in the garbage"

 

[ratiocinator]

Try asking questions that actually say “I’m interested” instead of lacing everything with the pcp of unbelief.

Why does my belief or otherwise matter? You said you'd assumed a 'postulate' and tested it. What you said was rather vague after that which is why I asked the questions. You don't have to answer but the point was how anybody would investigate the supernatural and your answer needs clarification if you're ever going to convince those who are not already convinced, IMO.

 

[Kenny]

Why does my belief or otherwise matter? You said you'd assumed a 'postulate' and tested it. What you said was rather vague after that which is why I asked the questions. You don't have to answer but the point was how anybody would investigate the supernatural and your answer needs clarification if you're ever going to convince those who are not already convinced, IMO.

Presented much better here.

Belief is important. Why? How many people reach a gold medal saying “I can’t do it and I will never get a gold medal”? Or you could say it this way in a natural example like Jesus used, “The Kingdom of God is like a sower who sows the seed”. If you didn’t believe, would you sow a seed? Would you pull out the seed to check if it is growing or not?

There are principles that govern the supernatural even as there are principles of physics that govern the natural realm.

Of course, I speak as per my signature and in the context of the faith that Jesus Christ gives all of us.

So, as one case, Jesus said “Lay hands on the sick and they shall recover”. Consistently I was plagued by a situation where one moment I was completely fine and in a very short period of time, I was sneezing, eye-watering, snot making moment that accompanied a fever that would knock me down for a day or two.

The pastor quoted me the scripture when it hit me on a Sunday morning and it instantly left. No fever, no more sneezing and no more snot producing 24-48 hour attack.

The next time it happened at work and I called the pastor up. She said, “Doesn’t matter, it works over the phone too” - (The soldier that understood authority). I said “Really?”. She prayed and it was instantly gone.

Then I found out the promise that healing was a promise achieved by the work of The Cross. The next time it hit me, I prayed myself and it instantly went away and didn’t come back except for one time that my wife handled with wisdom.

Things like unto this one. The stories are countless and too numerous to be coincidence.

 

[Brian2]

Naturalistic hypotheses for the origins of life and the universe are more than speculation if they make testable predictions about what should be observed if the hypotheses are correct. For example, the Big Bang hypothesis for the origin of the universe (published in 1948) predicted that there should be a background of redshifted radiation from the hot early stage of the universe. This prediction was fulfilled by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965. Can the hypothesis of a creator or a god make similar testable predictions?

Evidenced predictions sound like a reasonable way to test hypothesese but that is probably not 100% reliable as I hear that evidence is turning against the BB these days.

The Scientific Evidence Against the Big Bang - LPP Fusion

A Summary from LPPFusion, Inc.

www.lppfusion.com

I don't care if the BB is correct or not really. Either way it does not show that the universe had a naturalistic beginning.
It is the "naturalistic" part of the hypothesese that is the problem and the unknown part, especially by science, which always wants a naturalistic answer until a God can be shown to exist.

 

[Brian2]

How much of what science says about evolution are you willing to accept? 90%, 80%, 50%, 10%, 5%, 1%? What specific parts of the scientific account of evolution do you reject, and for what reasons?

That is something I don't really know, but the Bible God is not a deistic God and I would say His manipulation of the environment and the design of life is true to be able to get what we have in life forms. The universe and life shows design imo but that does not mean that I know just what God did.

 

[Brian2]

Thank you for your response, Brian. I appreciate it.

I believe that there are earthbound human spirits wandering around and that these spirits can travel at will between the spirit world and the physical world through spirit portals and spiritual vortexes. I also believe, however, that some of these spirits can get stuck in the physical world, and they need a psychic medium to help them cross over (see here for a further explanation). I believe that there are earthbound human spirits because of the experiences I've had since I was a small child. I've been to places where there are more of the dead than there are of the living. I'm not afraid, though, because seeing, hearing, interacting with, and feeling their presence is natural to me. I'm so used to it that I don't think much of it sometimes, unless they want to interact with me.

We have our differences of belief and interpretation about what might be going on but I find it interesting that the experiences of people like yourself seem to have no effect on what skeptics believe or not believe.

 

[Brian2]

What I see is beyond any possible reasonable doubt that cells and their workings described here are a result of natural processes. Simply describing these cells does not conclude anything other than simply describing the cells. I know the biology behind this and evolution involved.

Well you might know what the TOE hypothesises the evolution of a cell might be, but those hypothesese are no more than hypothesese based on the idea that God did not jump in and set it all up.
Actually I would have thought that how a cell came about is part of abiogenesis and not the TOE.

 

[Brian2]

You keep selectively citing him because of his beliefs, not meaningful I believe in God and evolution. So what?!?!!?

Sorry I don't know what you mean.

 

[Brian2]

Contemporary academic history does not trash the historical value of the Bible nor make any judgements that the supernatural claims are not true. Academic history is simply neutral concerning the supernatural beliefs and legitimately cannot consider them factual history regardless of whether they are claimed to occur thousands of years ago or yesterday, We have been over this several rimes before and I cited references as to how academic history deals with miracles. They simply record them as religious beliefs in terms of religious history. To do any differently would be to require academic history to endorse on religion over another, The Bible is not considered any differently than any other ancient religious or other ancient texts.

I have been discussing that dating of the Gospels with @Subduction Zone and he claims that historians are neutral about the prophecy of Jesus concerning the destruction of the Temple and that they don't use this prophecy to date the gospels after 70 AD. I'll just give him summons here so he can see what it seems neutrality means to academic historians. It means according to you, that the prophecies (supernatural) are considered to be untrue and so would be used to date the writing of the synoptic gospels to after 70AD.
IMO that neutrality is not neutral, as it ends up making those gospels into stories that were told by people who probably did not know Jesus and what He did.
This of course does not disqualify the gospels from being the truth but does lessen the veracity of them for people who want more evidence rather than less.
Neutrality would be to ignore the prophecies altogether and just use other evidence.

 

[Brian2]

Science does not remotely propose something comes from absolute nothing. Contemporary science considers the well supported hypothesis that the boundless Quantum World underlies all of our physical existence, and absolute nothing never existed.

For a theist surely this boundless Quantum World is something that God could have created to underlie all of our physical existence.
Sure, absolute nothing never existed if God existed before all created things.

 

[Brian2]

Not even close. You are not applying constant and reasonable standards. You need to apply the same standards towards the prophecies of the Bible that you apply to the prophecies of other religions.

I'm not the one who claims to be using neutrality towards the supernatural and at the same time saying that prophecy is not true and can be used to disqualify scriptures, to make them all into a lie in the name of so called neutral academia.

 

[YoursTrue]

I have been discussing that dating of the Gospels with @Subduction Zone and he claims that historians are neutral about the prophecy of Jesus concerning the destruction of the Temple and that they don't use this prophecy to date the gospels after 70 AD. I'll just give him summons here so he can see what it seems neutrality means to academic historians. It means according to you, that the prophecies (supernatural) are considered to be untrue and so would be used to date the writing of the synoptic gospels to after 70AD.
IMO that neutrality is not neutral, as it ends up making those gospels into stories that were told by people who probably did not know Jesus and what He did.
This of course does not disqualify the gospels from being the truth but does lessen the veracity of them for people who want more evidence rather than less.
Neutrality would be to ignore the prophecies altogether and just use other evidence.

My comment is that animal sacrifices are no longer warranted.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I have been discussing that dating of the Gospels with @Subduction Zone and he claims that historians are neutral about the prophecy of Jesus concerning the destruction of the Temple and that they don't use this prophecy to date the gospels after 70 AD. I'll just give him summons here so he can see what it seems neutrality means to academic historians. It means according to you, that the prophecies (supernatural) are considered to be untrue and so would be used to date the writing of the synoptic gospels to after 70AD.
IMO that neutrality is not neutral, as it ends up making those gospels into stories that were told by people who probably did not know Jesus and what He did.
This of course does not disqualify the gospels from being the truth but does lessen the veracity of them for people who want more evidence rather than less.
Neutrality would be to ignore the prophecies altogether and just use other evidence.

Oh my, another problem with reading comprehension on your part. He did not imply anything different from what I have been saying.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I'm not the one who claims to be using neutrality towards the supernatural and at the same time saying that prophecy is not true and can be used to disqualify scriptures, to make them all into a lie in the name of so called neutral academia.

You are claiming that, but you are not being neutral.