Life From Dirt?

[Brian2]

Do you know these people? :- BioLogos - God's Word. God's World. - BioLogos. I have not read in any great depth what they have to say, but it seemed to me from casual perusal that they are fairly sensible about all this. If I were you, this is the sort of reading I would do on the subject. There's also a guy called Alister McGrath, a fellow chemist (he was one year ahead of me at Oxford, though I never knew him), then biochemist and now Professor of Divinity. He is Anglican. He has written quite well on this.

Whereas the site you linked looks like a treasure trove of bad science. If I get bored I may well dip into it again, for some more nuggets of nonsense to dismantle.

Glad I could contribute to your entertainment.
I have read some BioLogos stuff and have learnt things there and no doubt will go back. To move along a spectrum can have problems however. It's a matter of the way you think having to change.
The name Alister Mc Grath sounds familiar.

 

[Brian2]

True, and remarkable, given the lack of evidence.
Most people aren't very rational, particularly about things that affect them only indirectly.

I suppose God knows what He is going and why.

That we deny the theistshave objective evidence.

That's true.

First, most atheists don't claim god doesn't exist. Why is this basic, definitive feature of atheism so elusive?
Second, the basic premise of atheism is reason or logic based, not founded on any scientific findings.
Third, science is a method of avoiding subjectivity.

You don't really need logic to say that you don't know something.
Sure, science "tries" to avoid subjectivity but does not always succeed.
Science says the same as most atheists claim, that it/they do not know about God.

I find making unsubstantiated claims on RF can be hazardous.
Q: What unsubstantiated claims do you think atheism or science are making?

An example might be that science has shown that God is not needed or that science has shown that naturalistic abiogenesis is true or that science has shown that naturalistic evolution is true.

 

[Brian2]

And now we see eye-to-eye.

All that disagreement when we actually agree.

 

[PureX]

Speaking of pointless.
Yes
News of the obvious and well known about the nature
of myths.

You managed to miss the reason for bringing up
flood, making your little lesson and opinion altogether
worthless.

So why do you and others continue your argue endlessly about "evidence" when evedence has nothing to do with myth? It doesn't matter in the least whether there is evidence for the mythical people and events being portrayed, or not. And I say this to those theists that think evidence should matter, too?

Why? Myth is not intended to convey any factual event. It is intended to convey a cultural ideal. And the particulars of the story are tailored to that end. Not to the end of presenting factuality. Mythical truth resides in the ideal, not in the actuality.

 

[Brian2]

Fine. You believe as you feel. But don't claim your belief has any epistemic validity. It's ontologically indefensible.

It is faith, it has evidence but the evidence which everyone can see but it is subjective in that it does not prove God.

Science doesn't even attempt to work with the unevidenced, or the subjectively evidenced.

True, but many scientists still believe in God. They can see the difference between the subject---- science----, which needs a certain type of evidence to study the material universe, and the evidence they need to believe in God.

 

[Brian2]

You've spoken to Him? It's this claim has nothing to work with.
The naturalistic, scientific claim has all of physics and chemestry to work from.

And does not refute that God did it.

How do you define life, absent chemistry? Is it some kind of magical spark?

Life is more that chemistry. It is hard to say when chemistry would change to life, but it is easy to say that consciousness is a different nature than the material universe. The material universe produces machines without the magic spark.
A materialist philosophy denies that from the start, just as I deny the materialist philosophy from the start.

 

[Brian2]

Your 'evidence' has retreated to a first cause assertion. which you know can't be refuted. But it is unevidenced conjecture. You can't meet your burden of proof, so it can be dismissed as unfounded.

Nothing wrong with a first cause.

We all know abiogenesis occurred. There is life, where previously there was none. Science proposes a familiar, testable mechanism. Theology proposes magic. There are no other propositions I'm aware of.

So which should a rational person believe? Is ignorance of the proposed scientific mechanisms accounting for the order and complexity reason to conclude "goddidit?" Is personal incredulity evidence of magic?

There is no proposed scientific mechanisms accounting for abiogenesis or for creation. It is a future science of the gaps, "science will find the answers", but will all be speculation even if or when it happens.

 

[Brian2]

I have determined, based on what the Bible says, that Adam was created from the dirt or soil directly by the power of God. He was not an infant when created but fully a man. I no longer go along with the idea that man evolved by incremental changes from an Unknown Common ancestral ape. I used to believe that, I no longer find relevance or substance in that idea. Jesus died so that man could be restored to perfection in happiness one day. Everlasting life.

I can still see possibilities in the idea of the human body and mind having evolved but God having given man a spirit, breathed from God to change him from an animal to human.
I guess that is something that sees the human spirit as more than just a spark of life however.

 

[blü 2]

Yes there were plenty of gods in those days that people worshipped and they sat in shrines etc and were made out of wood and stone etc.
But not everywhere that translations use the word "god" are actually referring to gods. Sometimes it is humans (Ps 82:1) Sometimes it is angels or demons.

But mostly it is. Chemosh (in the Judges quote) is the God of his tribe, and 'our God' is the God of the Jewish tribe. The text isn't ambiguous in any way. And as for the bible God being the biggest and the best god (rather than the only god), that's called henotheism.

The declaration that Yahweh is the sole God is in the books of Moses. If you want to say that was written at the end of the Babylonian captivity then that is a misrepresentation of the Bible.

Grateful if you'll provide the quote. But it won't make all the other quotes go away,

God was known by the first humans and the story of God was passed down. The people did not know God's name however, they just reached out for God.

They each devised as many gods of such nature, sex, powers, locales, &c as seemed to them to be required. Yahweh is definitely not the only god around back in those days. And note how the model for Yahweh is Mesopotamian, borrowed by Semitic tribes from the non-Semitic Sumerians ─ Abraham is said to be from Ur, for example, a Sumerian town but with Semitic (Akkadian) neighbors, and the Canaanite tribes and their gods were largely Semitic too.

Contrast the Egyptian model, where gods are realized as animals or the sun, and an elaborate and ritualized concept of an afterlife. Or animism, the idea that not only all living things but caves, mountains, rivers, woods, fields, had a supernatural element. Yahweh isn't found in early humanity; [he]'s the product of a particular time place and ethnicity. The gods of Sumer, whose tradition via the Semitic tribes shapes much of the idea of [him], are known to have existed at least 2,000 years before [he] did. So are the wholly different gods of Egypt.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Sure, science "tries" to avoid subjectivity but does not always succeed.
Science says the same as most atheists claim, that it/they do not know about God.

That is not correct. Science and atheists can very honestly and without any hesitation say that they have not come across or have ever been given any verifiable evidence of existence of God, souls, heaven, hell, end of days, judgment, resurrection, reincarnation, rebirth, deliverance, moksha or eternal life.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Myth is not intended to convey any factual event. It is intended to convey a cultural ideal. And the particulars of the story are tailored to that end. Not to the end of presenting factuality. Mythical truth resides in the ideal, not in the actuality.

Would you say that for the birth of Jesus or his resurrection, nothing factual? No feeding of 5000 with five loaves, no walking on water, no changing water into wine, no healing of the lame, blind or leprous, no raising Lazarus from death, all fiction?

 

[Audie]

So why do you and others continue your argue endlessly about "evidence" when evedence has nothing to do with myth? It doesn't matter in the least whether there is evidence for the mythical people and events being portrayed, or not. And I say this to those trust that think evidence should matter, too?

Why? Myth is not intended to convey any factual event. It is intended to convey a cultural ideal. And the particulars of the story are tailored to that end. Not to the end of presenting factuality. Mythical truth resides in the ideal, not in the actuality.

So you give more news of the obvious when
told its not needed. And ask the same question.

You really- really don't know that your fundie
friends get angry if they are told the " flood"
is a myth?


" So why do you..."

Exactly.
You did miss the point, just as I said.

You are so full of your " philosoohy" you'd
miss a coal train going by.

A q for you.

So why do you keep going on about myths as if you
are somehow the only one who has heard news of
the obvious?

Is it arrogance, or mere failed - to -regard- the- coal train oblivious?

 

[exchemist]

Glad I could contribute to your entertainment.
I have read some BioLogos stuff and have learnt things there and no doubt will go back. To move along a spectrum can have problems however. It's a matter of the way you think having to change.
The name Alister Mc Grath sounds familiar.

He wrote a book called “Dawkins’ God”, in which he has a pop at Dawkins for attacking a simplistic idea of Christianity. I saw a copy in Blackwell’s the morning after a dinner for the retirement of my old tutor and bought it on impulse. It’s not bad.

 

[PureX]

Would you say that for the birth of Jesus or his resurrection, nothing factual?

I didn't say that nothing in a mythical story is factual. I said that factuality is not what myth is about. The myth of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is not a recitation of historical facts. It was never intended to be. It is a story representation of an important religious/cultural ideology. People that argue about the factuality of a mythical story are completely missing the whole point and purpose of the myth. And that goes for both theists and atheists.

 

[Audie]

Would you say that for the birth of Jesus or his resurrection, nothing factual? No feeding of 5000 with five loaves, no walking on water, no changing water into wine, no healing of the lame, blind or leprous, no raising Lazarus from death, all fiction?

There may be specks of fact in there.
The only things of reasonable certainty is that
someone, though not named Jesus, was born.
And died.
Stories are told and attached to some " jesus".
Very unbelievable stories.

The discussion with fundys is nowhere about
myths.

They think that if they had a time machine
they could go see parting of the red sea, serpent
tricking a and e, mesis in action, and, of course, ye mighty flood.
Some of us, perhaps seeing a bit of cultural
anthropology, like to see how weird n wacky a
flood believer can be.
My favorite is that the excess water was wafted to
Neptune where it shines to this day as a warning
beacon against, yes, incoming rogue angels.

There's nothing of any entertainment talking
"Myth" with someone who knows nothing and denies they are myths.
Our "philosopher" can't wrap his head around that.

 

[YoursTrue]

I can still see possibilities in the idea of the human body and mind having evolved but God having given man a spirit, breathed from God to change him from an animal to human.
I guess that is something that sees the human spirit as more than just a spark of life however.

I no longer see the possibilities that the human body and mind evolved from, scientists say, an "Unknown Common Ancestor" of apes, although the theory can be insinuating that has happened. I have come to trust the Bible's portrayal of the distinct forms of creation, such as fish or birds having been created by God, including humans. Obviously language took on different forms in human development.

 

[YoursTrue]

Nothing wrong with a first cause.



There is no proposed scientific mechanisms accounting for abiogenesis or for creation. It is a future science of the gaps, "science will find the answers", but will all be speculation even if or when it happens.

I will also say that learning about DNA which I just read about in a biology textbook is not purporting evolution from initial cells at the beginning without distinct formation and intelligence of what the Bible calls kinds such as fish and birds. To investigate what these things are such as bacteria is science. It doesn't say that cells evolved into elephants, for instance. Hope you get my point.

 

[YoursTrue]

I didn't say that nothing in a mythical story is factual. I said that factuality is not what myth is about. The myth of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is not a recitation, r of historical facts. It was never intended to be. It is a story representation of an important religious/cultural ideology. People that argue about the factuality of a mythical story are completely missing the whole point and purpose of the myth. And that goes for both theists and atheists.

While many would say that the history of the Jewish people is traditionally based on accounts of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, rather than calling it truth, it seems that the early Christian movement was certainly based on what was perceived by many to believe Jesus was real, not a myth.

 

[YoursTrue]

Anthropologists assume that ancestor worship together with mourning and burying the dead is at the beginning of religion. Elephants mourn their dead.

Elephants haven't written accounts of history as they have seen it.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I didn't say that nothing in a mythical story is factual. I said that factuality is not what myth is about. The myth of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is not a recitation of historical facts. It was never intended to be. It is a story representation of an important religious/cultural ideology. People that argue about the factuality of a mythical story are completely missing the whole point and purpose of the myth. And that goes for both theists and atheists.

So, according to your view, what is factual? Birth, miracles, resurrection or even much talked-about sermons?