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The Miracle of Water.

ecco

Veteran Member
ecco:
I seriously doubt I would hear anything from you that I haven't heard many times before. Just variations on a theme from someone who believes he has discovered something better than most.​

I got over being bewildered long ago when I realized the deep, lasting effects of early childhood indoctrination. When the concept of god in particular, and superstition in general, is instilled into young minds it precludes reason.​


Uh huh. :) (Sounds like my son, figured everything out already)
I'm quite a bit older than your son.

As I said, it's not about figuring out as much as it is listening to the same old BS over and over and over. Some people just love to wallow in woo. For many, it's because they cannot find enough satisfaction in the real world. They have to live in the hope and belief that there must be something more.

Whether that something more is ghosts or gods or 72 virgins or aliens is immaterial. Once the concept of something more is ingrained they will always be searching to find something.
 

Notaclue

Member
No, the stars, or starry heavens, were NOT made ( as in created ) on the 4th day.

In the beginning (Day One)God created the heavens and earth ( that means the starry heavens were before earth )
Please notice at Genesis 1:16 the word used there is the word ' made ' and Not the word created.
So, God ' made ' the existing lights: sun, moon and stars to do something.
Their already created light was now ' made ' to reach earth's surface.
Just as a parent's child can be ' made ' to do something like ' made ' to sit in a chair or 'made' to go to school.
God ' made ' the already created lights to do their job so we could enjoy living life on Earth.

Gen.1:16God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. 17God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,

If the stars were already in the expanse why did God have to place them in the expanse of the heavens?



2Cor.5:17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
 

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
we have no evidence that can't be accounted for naturalistically, and therefore we have no need for a god hypothesis.

Your first premise doesn't logically lead to the next.
The evidence of life itself cannot be explained naturalistically,

And empirical science doesn't reveal any facts as to how mutations provide functional information in forming new genetic structures....they can only utilize what already exists.
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I guess you've run out of anything reasonably intelligent to say so you resort to one liner insults. OK.
I've run out of things you're willing to learn anything about. You made that clear in saying you already know everything I have to say. If I'm not mistaken, that was you ending discussion. :)
 

ecco

Veteran Member
I've run out of things you're willing to learn anything about. You made that clear in saying you already know everything I have to say. If I'm not mistaken, that was you ending discussion. :)
So you thought I was ending the discussion, but you couldn't help yourself and just had to make a final insulting post.
 

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
Young earth is not a science claim. It's a religious claim that lacks any science supporting it. What you mean to say is, you are open to religious claims regarding science matters, over science's claims regarding science matters? Is that an accurate assessment of your position?


You certainly can question how people read the Bible. But are you qualified to question how science interprets the data from science? Are you qualified to offer other scientific explanations? Do you think that science is a matter of opinion, and nothing more? Do you believe that Jane in the checkout lane of the Kwiki Mart can weigh in with her opinions about Black Holes, equally to that of the late Stephen Hawking?

No, you have not accurately assessed my position. I've always used the hypothesis method to evaluate both scientific and religious claims.
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
No, you have not accurately assessed my position. I've always used the hypothesis method to evaluate both scientific and religious claims.
What do you mean "the hypothesis method"? What is that? Do you mean to say the "scientific method"? Hypothesis is only one part of that. Testing and independent verification is also part of that method. Otherwise, an hypothesis is just an educated guess. And if you're not knowledge about science, that does even qualify as an educated guess. It's just uninformed opinion at that point, and worth nothing in a discussion about science.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
All one needs to do, is look at Day 6, and notice all that was going on...way too much for a literal 24 hours!

An omnipotent god couldn't get that done in 24 earth hours?

Certainly Jehovah could. But does that mean, he has to?

Let me share a concept I call restricted choice. In a universe with an omnipotent god, that god could have created any amount of a universe instantaneously (if not, the god isn't omnipotent), or dragged the process out over an extended period of time, perhaps billions of years, whereas in a godless universe, there is only one possibility - the naturalistic one that science describes for us.

It turns out that there are dozens of these of these observations that can be made in the form of "In a universe with a god, it could have been this way or that, but in a godless universe, only one of these is possible," and it's always the one that that would be the case in a godless universe. For example, "In a universe with a god, we might have found regular, unvarying physical laws or not, as an omnipotent god could keep the cosmos running by will alone without laws, but in a godless universe in which stable matter, life and mind exist, there must be laws to maintain order and regularity."

You put enough of these together, and you make a strong case for a godless universe, the only alternative being one with a god that always chooses what a godless universe would be forced do.

Consilience - (also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence) refers to the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" on strong conclusions.

Only changes within species, genera, possibly families.

You've made an unsupported claim. There is no known barrier to the tree of life evolving from a single common ancestral species. Evolution occurs in all living populations at all times. There is no known way to stop it short of an extinction event. At no time does it reach a point where no more evolving can occur.

I've never seen anybody but creationists make this claim. There's a good reason for that. Nobody would claim that evolution can only proceed so far if they didn't have a reason to want it to be true. The rest of us don't have any agenda apart from discovering how nature works, whatever the answer. If life was created by an intelligent designer, we'd like to know that. If not, we'd like to know that, too.

The evidence of life itself cannot be explained naturalistically

Once again, this is an unsupported claim. There is every reason to believe that life arose naturalistically through blind chemical evolution, and no way to rule out this possibility at this time.If you've eliminated it from you list of candidate hypotheses for the origin of life, you've done so prematurely and unjustifiable.

Notice that I have not ruled out a creator god from my list, because I recognize that I cannot. I have no test, measurement, observation, experiment, or algorithm to do that.

Likewise, you have no way to rule out naturalistic abiogenesis, although it seems that you have anyway.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Why are you making this an either/or case? I don't see any reason that is necessary.

Because that's how I see it. Either the Bible is the unadulterated thoughts of a transcendent being with insights unavailable to unaided humanity, insights that should be treated as authoritative and infallible, or it is at least in part the ideas of human beings, which I would not receive that way.

The internal contradictions in the Bible tell me that one or both of the conflicting ideas came from humankind. Even if one were divine, which one? Any amount of contamination with human input makes the book

I am a musician. I create music from my soul. I know what inspiration is. It is raw, spontaneous, and unique.

So am I - electric guitarist. I think I know what inspiration is as well. In fact, I was inspired by Jerry Garcia, Duane Allman, and Dickey Betts. And that means the same in this context as it did with the Flintstones and West Side Story : I started with the work of others - assorted lead guitar solos that I found moving - and tried to capture the feel of the other guitarists without plagiarizing them.

Let me share a recording of the cover band my wife (electric bass, vocals) and I formed in the mid-nineties. The following features just the two of us with a drum machine covering the Grateful Dead's Lazy River Road. The guitar solo at 3:30 is improvised, so original, but in the style of (that is, inspired by) Jerry Garcia.

I'd like to hear some of your music, and your feedback as a fellow musician (or anybody else's).


Why must God be some entity outside of yourself, and not living inside your heart and speaking to you through it?

Does this god exist anywhere else but my heart? If so it has a presence outside myself.

And yes, I feel urges, desires, compulsions, and inspirations, but I don't attribute them to a sentient being speaking to me. Notice that I don't deny this possibility. I simply don't accept it either.

Here's an interesting problem :

When we have one group of people claiming to have a certain kind of knowledge or experience such as the experience of a god, and another saying that they have no such experiences, how do we determine if the first group is claiming to experience something that is not there, or if the second group lacks the ability to experience something that is there?

Easy. We compare the reports of those claiming to be experiencing whatever it is that we are discussing - in this case a god or gods. Descriptions of this god vary widely, which suggests to me that such people are simply experiencing their own minds and projecting that experience onto external reality (objectifying subjective experience).

Compare that to somebody with red-green color blindness that makes red look like green to them. How can such a person confirm that he cannot see what is being honestly and accurately reported by others? Show red and green socks, for example, to people that claim to be able to see these colors. The answers from honest people with normal color vision interviewed independent of one another will be the same. That's how we know that they really are experiencing what they claim they are.

It is on this basis that I conclude that people claiming to experience God are experiencing their own minds and confusing it for something else.
 

URAVIP2ME

Veteran Member
Gen.1:16God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. 17God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,
If the stars were already in the expanse why did God have to place them in the expanse of the heavens?

As verse 17 says God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.
So, God's purpose was that the existing light from the heavens would now reach earth's surface.
In other words, the starry heavens were already in place, but now their light would be seen brighter on Earth.
They were placed with the purpose of now giving more of their light to earth's surface.
God now ' made ' them do something they had Not done before. They were 'made' to 'rule' daylight and night light.
 

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
What do you mean "the hypothesis method"? What is that? Do you mean to say the "scientific method"? Hypothesis is only one part of that. Testing and independent verification is also part of that method. Otherwise, an hypothesis is just an educated guess. And if you're not knowledge about science, that does even qualify as an educated guess. It's just uninformed opinion at that point, and worth nothing in a discussion about science.

The hypothesis method inside the scientific method--test observable, verifiable FALSIFABLE items--the Bible gives quite a few appropriate tests.
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
The hypothesis method inside the scientific method
There is no such thing, to the best of my knowledge. This is what the scientific method is, it includes an hypothesis, but there is no "hypothesis method". That sounds made up. Here is what the scientific method actually is: Scientific method - Wikipedia

The process of the scientific method involves making conjectures (hypotheses), deriving predictions from them as logical consequences, and then carrying out experiments or empirical observations based on those predictions. A hypothesis is a conjecture, based on knowledge obtained while seeking answers to the question.

Exactly as I stated before. Nothing you said changes that.

--test observable, verifiable FALSIFABLE items--the Bible gives quite a few appropriate tests.
Such as?
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
The hypothesis method inside the scientific method--test observable, verifiable FALSIFABLE items--the Bible gives quite a few appropriate tests.

And when it does, they have uniformly been actually falsified. For example, the existence of a global flood is eminently testable and has been shown to be false.
 

viole

Ontological Naturalist
Premium Member
Where does it say water is before the stars? Water was here from the beginning....and so were the heavenly bodies. (Genesis 1:1-2)

Well, verily verily I say to you: there was no oxygen at the beginning. Not even stars. That appeared much later.

Let me guess: you do not accept evolution, and you do not accept astrophysics either. Not to speak of cosmology. I wonder what you think of geology.

And all because you rather believe in a book written by unknown ancient goat herders without a clue.

Well done.

Ciao

- viole
 

Deeje

Avid Bible Student
Premium Member
And all because you rather believe in a book written by unknown ancient goat herders without a clue.

LOL what makes you think that scientists have a clue what happened billions of years ago? No one was around to document anything so they fill in the blanks with imagination and guesses.

There were no goat herders who wrote a single word of scripture as far as I know......did the scientists imagine that too? :shrug:
 
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