Bunyip
pro scapegoat
What has social Darwinism got to do with atheism? You could argue that the NAZI were applying social Darwinism, but they were Christian - so how are you linking social Darwinism to atheism?
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The "something can't come from nothing" argument
- Thread starter Big_TJ
- Start date
What has social Darwinism got to do with atheism? You could argue that the NAZI were applying social Darwinism, but they were Christian - so how are you linking social Darwinism to atheism?
Yes. The only problem is that another denomination or Christian will obey different laws. They also have the Holy Spirit, the Bible, the personal relationships and all the rest.
So, how can you declare these laws objective? Where is the evidence of their objectivity?
Well, my ex professor was not my employee either. But when I was not sure, I asked him. And he used to give the same answers to the same questions to different students.
Well, someone once asked me what could convince me of God's existence. I think that having general agreement on God's mind about simple but important issues shared by all theists would be good evidence.
Fine. Whose creed matched your understanding. My point, actually.
What makes you think that I apply faith to science? And I think I can apply science to faith, especially when the faithful cherry picks scientific consensus to prove a point.
Surely, they all have one thing in common. They already knew the stories about Him. Another good evidence of the existence of The Christian God would be to find a cross or a church buit in pre-columbian America.
Or by an underlying symmetry. But I think it is pretty safe to say that the speed of light is the same here as in Andromeda.
By the way, how old is the Universe for you, if I may ask?
Yes, if the moral giver does things that collide with our morality, then we have a problem. It is not clear what kind of morality He is giving.
You are confusing mathematics with physics. In mathematics, infinities are not a problem. For instance, projective geometry treats them like normal objects. And infinity can be traversed easily.
They exist in physics, too, and in many cases they are innocuous. For instance, I can go from A and B crossing an infinity of points and instants of time without any inconvenience. Or do you think that space and time are not continuous?
Do I need to show that there is unjustifiable evil? You do that for me. For instance, is abortion justifiable?
True, but we seem to have stopped. For the first time in history. I suspect that the brand new threat of mutual annihilation helped a lot. Maybe the inventor of thermonuclear devices deserves a peace Nobel price, who knows?
Ciao
- viole
I doubt that. If the standard was a sort of nazi like dystopia, would you agree to play along? You must have some morality a-priori that is independent by any external standard. Well, i hope so. And if stopping believing in your God or in the existence of an external standard would turn you into a crazy psychopatic , then keep your faith, by all means.
Yes. Except that they are not common. I think they even change between states in a confederation. I mean, you guys do not even agree on whether gas stations must be attended or not.
A far cry from an universal standard.
And I think everybody is a nihilist. Some live happily with their nihilism. Others get into depression. Others make up an imaginary escape.
Social Darwinism? I think you guys are closer to social (economical) Darwinism than many very secular countries. For what is free market without a centralized guide and without a welfare program if not social Darwinism?
I actually believe that there is a direct correlation between religiosity and the insecurity that arises by being left alone in the cold to fight to survive.
Ciao
- viole
And what are the 50% claims you accept? that dogs come dogs?
Let + be a microvelutional step on x.
Do you think that
x+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ etc. etc. A million + following....
Is also a microevultionary step from the original x?
Yes, with the possible exception of talking snakes. Serpents, sorry. Of course we observe serpents talking all the time
not to speak of people living three days in a tuna fish.Well, we have alrady ascertained that it anticipated Darwin with its revolutionary insights about kinds. Which begs the question: why did we have to wait for Darwin and Einstein if everything was already available? Are we really so silly?
Look at a beach and the amazing collection of fine stones magically separated from the bigger stones. Shouldn't we observe a chaotic mix of them?
Well, of course they claim that. I don't even think there is any need to claim that, for it is obvious. Go to that beach and ask yourself how you can get a sun burn if the earth is not an open system.
Why are you lost? What I am telling you is that the all history of evolution on earth could be packed in a couple of decades (instead of a couple billion years) without ant violation of thermodynamics principles. So, if God guided evolution, He was not very efficient.
The quantum is in its infancy? What? The quantum (sic) makes the most amazing predictions in the history of science. Good luck dismissing that. And the quantum does not talk of quasi-random. It talks of fully random.
You keep forgetting that you cannot arbitrarily force causality, which make sense only within the universe itself, and only under some thermodynamic conditions, to the universe as a whole. I think it is called the composition fallacy.
The relevance is that it is morally suboptimal to give life sentences to gays. Or do you think differently? Should we kill them, maybe?
And I think we should indeed to go through Christian countries which practice the death penalty and see how they fare against other morally significant issues. After all, you claimed that many christian countries practice it.
Well, it depends. I could make a case that it is morally unacceptable to kill anyone with a nervous system in place, including baby Canaanites and murderers. The question, of course, is how we measure that. I am quite confident that a couple of a few hours old duplicating cells do not have a nervous system, whereas a nine month old embryo does. So, it lays somewhere in the middle.
And your Bible with all those commanded gruesome mass murders of women and children cannot obviously be used as a reliable guide. Especially because it does not say a lot about unborn human embryos, as far as I know. With the possible exception of those pregnant women cut in two, righteously, apparently.
Ciao
- viole
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1robin
Christian/Baptist
How is it you can think a person who was disobeying the most fundamental teachings of Christianity was acting on Christianity? How many Nazi's do you know? Hitler hated Christianity. He wrote extensively in condemning it. Some people unfamiliar with history confuse his courting of the influence that Catholicism had with his actual beliefs. As soon as they refused he turned on them with a vengeance.
What has social Darwinism to do with atheism? Well it is the most often source of morals cited by atheists in my experience. In fact I have never heard an atheist who granted morality exists use any other foundation for it except Sam Harris who admitted he used pure assumption as his foundation, but then linked it with evolution anyway.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
I have been part of at least five denominations. I do not recall ever having a single moral requirement differ between them. Are you suggesting that even if there was disagreement that means we should fold up the tent and give it up? Why does no one use that philosophy in any other aspect of their lives? Any moral foundation ever posited will l have some disagreement. Social Darwinism can explain both self sacrifice and killing every human on earth that does not contribute to my tribes survival. Comparatively Christians morality is perfectly uniform.
I didn't. I did not declare any set of laws objective. You did not even refer to a set of laws. I said almost everyone perceives at least a moral law as objective. If even one was right it requires God.
He was your employee. You paid his salary. Regardless that is his role. He was required to answer questions. God does but is not required to in any specific case.
That would only show that doctrine was simple and unified. Not true. That is a strange demand. You have adopted tens less time yet it is very controversial. Why do you not use uniform standards?
Southern Baptist was the closest though it was not a perfect match.
The claim preceding the one in which I pointed it out. I also did so above partially.
If we did then the Bible would be wrong not right. Christ ascended to heaven in Israel to not return until the second coming and that events will be obvious and requires the temple be rebuilt first.
Also the details of the experience are not spelled out in the bible. It just says be born again. It does not give details about what that feels like. Finding that there is almost universal agreement on the details is persuasive and not based on any stories.
O
I agree but I also admit I take that on faith not proof.
I have no idea but I usually just use the 15 billion or so science does for convenience. There are thousands of pages of data that suggest a much younger earth but I really have no dog in the race.
How old is the universe given tens less time? Is everything now?
We may have a problem but he wouldn't because he judges us by his standards not he by ours. He is the criteria if he exists.
Infinites are a problem in both and absent in physics as a real entity. When you mention projective geometry you credibility goes up a notch and when you say infinites can easily be traversed the bottom falls out. If you actually think that then my refuting it will not help.
Is there and infinite number of seconds between 1pm and 2pm of the same day? You cannot simultaneously have points that have concrete value and an infinite number of them. Between the 1 inch mark and the 2 inch mark on a ruler there are not an infinite number of points if that points are assigned any real value. Your confusing a semantic paradox with an actual one. When you go from any real A to any real actual B you never ever cross an infinite distance.
Find me an actual A and B that have an actual infinite distance between them then cross it.
I am not God. I cannot say that in no circumstance would abortion be right. For instance it may be justified if the mothers life was the cost. The point was that only with Go dis the completely obvious fact that mere convenience is not an excuse for abortion but without him it is. It was not that I am the sum total of all moral knowledge.
You seem to have not noticed the constant battles between Pakistan, Iraq, the US, Russia, and other Nuclear powers. It is only that the stakes have not coincided with the insanity to actually push the button yet. We have stopped nothing but we have not yet quite pushed the nuclear button. Let me tell you how close it was. In the 80's Reagan ordered massive military exercises in eastern Europe. By coincidence the Russians had begun to get word from spies that the US was going to turn an exercise into a real war. It was not true but with Reagan I can see why Russians believed it. Things started escalating without anyone on either side realizing what was occurring. In radar bunker a Russian technician saw an actual launch detection signaled by his systems. I think it was Gorbechev who was personally talking to the technician. Missiles were fueled armed and targeted. Half our army was in motion towards Russia and we started to detect the pre launch signals. Exercises were suspended and alerts given. Anyway it came down to Gorbechev asking what the technicians opinion was. If he said he trusted the equipment it was Armageddon. He answered possible sun flare as a pure guess. Turned out he was right but the world hung in the balance.
BTW certain claims in revelations can only occur if nuclear war is the methodology of Armageddon. I am a veteran and a life long military historian. I honestly have no reason to think that either Jesus will come back or we will destroy at least most of each other or both. I wish I could. I see no way to do so. All the evidence suggests the opposite.
Sapiens
Polymathematician
Hitler had whatever opinion was convenient and expeditious at the moment, best to not try to use him as evidence of anything except a bad example.
Here's point twenty-four, of the NAZI program:
24. We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German race. The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession. It combats the Jewish-materialist spirit within and without us, and is convinced that our nation can achieve permanent health from within only on the principle: the common interest before self-interest.
Social Darwinism and Evolution are not the same thing, in fact, they are not even mutually supportive. I have never seen Social Darwinism cited by any but the extreme right wing, who tend to be Christian worshipers. You must travel in rather restricted circles because I known of (and been part of) an active conversation concerning the Evolution and function of morality since the early 1970s, long before Sam Harris ever put pen to paper.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
That was a guess. I cannot enumerate 50% of evolutionary theory.
I would have said the data set includes known pluses. That is all I can know. Using your format I would say that x ++++++++++++++ has occurred but to explain it requires another factor y be incorporated in ways not yet known.
Don't say that word. I just ate some bad tuna yesterday. I made my claim in a scientific context. The bibles scientific claims are observable or consistent with observation. talking snakes is not a scientific claim. It is an exception to natural law. Of course exceptions to natural law are necessarily not natural or scientific. I did not think I needed to point that out. Claims like oceanic currents, germ theory, sanitation, cosmology, are scientific. Turning water into wine is the opposite of scientific. It is a miraculous claim. If it had said water became wine by natural processes then you have a complaint.Yes, with the possible exception of talking snakes. Serpents, sorry. Of course we observe serpents talking all the time
No, we are far more silly than that. We are criminally insane at times. If God is truth then rebellion against God would deprive of us at least much truth. I do not think civil war doctors rejected sanitation, they rejected God and sanitation went with that. By rejection I mean neglect.
Let me give another example. I saw some medical papers from recent centuries that pointed out the verses in the OT that talked about leprosy being on the walls and floors and to burn a lepers clothes. They at that time thought leprosy was genetic. They said those verses were proof the bible was wrong. Now it is known leprosy can live outside the body for many hours on it's own.
Who knows how many people died as a result of neglecting what was given to men 4000 years ago. Just in our civil war it was in the hundreds of thousands in just one aspect of medical ignorance alone.
I would describe it as such but I am the one that denies actual randomness. But hydrological sorting is not information. You ever seen the sea arrange the stones in a poem before? BTW what is your avatar a picture of?
Getting a sun burn is evidence of the suns being destructive not creative. The nature of systems is a little more than I want to bite off right now. However open or closed how do you get the mechanism that proceeded the first mechanism complex enough to convert energy into complexity. Lets say that first system was + number 1 thousand. How did you get the previous 999 without that ability. Openness is not even relevant until you do.
I am sometimes lost through no fault of yours. I attract a lot of long winded posters and lose context between them at times. Whether evolution violates thermodynamics or not does not depend on it taking either a thousand years or a trillion. Actually intuitively it seems more obvious it would if it only took a few years. Can you imagine watching it if it only took a year and explaining it naturally?
I did not say it was unimportant I said it was on the whole not yet reliably understood. It is like finding a 10 story UFO. It would change everything but we do not yet know in exactly what way. There are I think ten mathematical approaches or models associated with the Quantum. I think half are random and half are determinative or more than half. Not only do we not know which is right, but we may never be able to know.
I did not extrapolate causality from the individual parts to imply it applies to the whole. I deduced that things that begin to exist have causes from the fact no exception to it is known. I did suggest that since the universe does not contain its own explanation it's explanation is not natural. The universe being everything natural that exists. But Leibniz's explanation argument is not identical to Kalam's causal argument.
It is probably more morally optimal to prevent the 60% of aids cases that the 4% of us that are gay create. How you would go about doing that is a whole other issue and not in my prevue.
What do you mean how they fare. Compared to what? Let me clarify that the bible does not mandate capitol punishment but it does justify it's use. I was arguing in another context from your response I think.
You might could attempt to as far as humans are concerned by arbitrarily redefining morality to mean something other than it does. In God's case no attempt could even get started. We simply do not have what we need to judge God. I will add that your equating a nervous system with morality is scary. You I am sure do not reject to us killing cows by the millions for our food. How does your criteria apply there? If I was a non-theist I would never acknowledge the word morality exists. It the deadest dead end your side is stuck with.
Those specific actions were never supposed to serve as general moral principles. They are exception not the rule. That is not where Christian based morality comes from and only deals with specific God ordained temporary issues. If given God's existence and the bible's accuracy you will find no morally unjustified actions even in those shocking verses. Whatever the case society has always had to assume moral systems very similar to my world view and not with yours to attempt to maximize justice. No joking, an actual moral system without as Jefferson said being evident from nature's God is horrifying. Thank God we have not adopted anything lie it.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
Well are we accepting Nazism and denying Hitler, denying and including Hitler, denying Hitler for my use but ok for your use. I was going to yet again agree to any standard that is consistent and get rid of Hitler. Then you introduce doctrines of his party. I no longer know what to do exactly. What's meaningless and what is meaningful exactly.
I have never equated the two. Ones a biological principle and one is an arbitrary extrapolation of abstract concepts by assuming God does not exist and we must look to amoral nature to get morality.
You cannot seriously be suggesting social Darwinism is the promoted by the side of the issue that denies evolution the most. We cannot be both a black face on a white world and a white face on a black world. Let me state again what are the facts at least in my case. Without God an atheist only has two logical choices for morality and so far every single one of hundreds I have debated or seen debate have chosen one of he two. 1. That morality is Ruse says is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes and is not actually true. or 2. That it is derived by evolutionary goals like survival, etc... and these are not.
There is no third option here for the atheist. Actually there is only one. Opinion and opinion alone is possible without God. However the average Christian has only the third option, that morals are reflections of God's nature. You may run in some bizarre circles or something but on the mainstream scholastic debate circuit and in my almost 10,000 posts it holds true in every case I can think of.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
I did not mean I would adopt any moral standard. I meant I will adopt any standard for truth as long as it is consistent in this case. IOW I want to weigh al the evidence evenly.
That comment was about the need for some standards, not any specific standard. You really misunderstood that post. I am not a nihilist unless Go does not exist then I am a partial one.
We are closer to economic Armageddon than anything else. I do not think there is enough money on earth to pay off our unfunded liabilities. Have you ever reviewed that Tyler guy's life cycle of Governments? For democracies it is a bell curve. Starts off at some low point. Then goes through moral progression by faith, then revolution against injustice, then economic flourishing, then apathy down into the death spiral of using money to buy votes. That is where we are at. We have so much untapped oil we will get a reprieve and so much military might we might create a reprieve but we will fail eventually as all government have a fatal flaw. They include us in them.
I don't see it. Actually I don't even get what your trying to get me to see. How does it correlate?
But we do not have a morar giver and a relationship with Him. Disagreements are expected from the naturalistic point of view. Less so if you claim to have a relationship with the giver if that moral.
Everbody perceives pain if you hit them on the head with a baseball. The fact that we all perceive something in common, morally or not, does not add an iota to God's plausibility.
Yes, and by sheer accident, these cases are the controversial ones. It looks pretty tautological: God gives answer or emanates moral values where you agree and does not when you don't. That works also if my ipad is the moral giver.
Tenseless time is not controversial. Tensed time is, since it contradicts what we know about time. So, I am not sure what you mean.
Don't know a lot about it.. Any differences with northen Baptists, apart from the geographical location?
The temple? Does God insist that it gets build in Israel?
Yes, be born again, whatever that means
Then everything in science is by faith. Actually, everything is by faith apart some mathematical tautologies. I also take it in faith that i am not a brain in a vat and I am not really typing on a computer.
Good. After your interpretation of evolution, you scared me.
Very good. You did not miss it. Of course, it is meaningless to talk of an age of the universe, since there are no external clocks that can measure its alleged aging. However, even the word "now" is not applcable, since there is not such a thing like a universal "now".
So, His standards are right by default? No matter what He does?
I really wonder where you get those ideas. Without infinities the whole of point set topology (I am trying to raise my credibility, lol) would fall apart. And, with it, all of calculus which is, allegedely, the amazing language used by God to describe our Universe.
And crossing infinities is very easy. All you have to is to map all points of the infinite line uniquely onto the points of a circle. Spin a point around the circle and check what the corresponding point on the line does.
So, now the problem is not with infinities but with infinite distances. That's something.
I cannot traverse an infinite distance. But that is because of nomological constraints, not logical ones. After all, the only speed I can have in space-time (and always have) is the speed of light. Which is finite and constant. But if I lived in a Newtonian world without limitations and a separate time dimension, I could.
And what is God going to do about that? What if a woman repents sincerely after her fertile days?
And? I would never exchange this state of affairs with any of the past. Where there was a war each decade. At least, destruction would be more democratic. For sure, governments will think twice before pulling the trigger, since their own rear end is at stake.
i am not sure I understand you. If you have no reason to think that any of these three possibilities will occur, why are you worried (and believe in the return of Jesus)?
Ciao
- viole
Maybe you should get into it if you want to debate it. Boring or not.
What? How do you know that? For what we know, only x occurred, or x ------. The rest of the pluses do not need a designer, independently of your incredulity. All you need is a simple chemical replicator, about which we do not know a lot. The rest of the complexity follows with things we know.
Well, maybe your tuna had just ingested some prophet. Who knows?
If I had to make up a creation myth, I would probably include universes and earths starting from scratch. And I would probably also notice that washing my hands after tending to my sheep, might help.
This is called shotgun prophecy. Shoot a bunch of made up things. Keep the ones which are true and reinterpret the rest as metaphor. You cannot be wrong.
Rebellion against God? You really think civil wars doctors rebelled against God? By the way, the ancient Romans introduced sanitation, independently. I wonder where they got the idea. Either Jupiter or it was available knowledge.
Is that something about cancer in the Bible? In case we missed the cure written between the lines.
Yes, and i wonder how many got infected by bubonic plague in Europe by collecting in churches to pray against it.
And who is talking about poems? We are talking about natural entropy reduction in open systems. Separating sand from bigger stones is a natural process that reduces entropy locally.
My avatar is me looking at the earth from the swedish coast. Isn't that obvious?
Nope. It is evidence that we are an open system. Can something be destructive if it lies outside a closed system that has no interaction with the rest of the Universe? I think you are deflecting by invoking poems and other not relevant things instead of addressing the thermodynamic properties of systems.
Well, evolution (the real thing) does not violate any thermodynamic principle, for the simple reason that sun's photons are very low in entropy. For, as for everything, information is physical. I wouldn't be surprised if even Answer in Genesis discourages using this argument, but maybe I am overrating them.
That is why the second law does not say: entropy tends to increase in an isolated system, except for living systems on earth.
Well, I think the mathematical treatment is more or less the same. Reality consists of evolving probability waves; each probability describing a certain reality taking place. All differential equations involve state of things as probability waves: the greek letter for that is psi.
Only the (philosophical) interpretations differ. The ones which are deterministic involve multiple parallel universes getting spawned all the time. Me, and people like Carroll, together with most of our multiple instances, prefer this interpretation because of its information preserving unitarity. But maybe we should follow Feynman and renounce any appeal to our adaptive and necessarily unreliable intuition; and just shut up and do the math.
So it is your call, really. Do you prefer true randomness or determinism?
Oh, Mann. Universes do not begin to exist. And Boltzmann brains developing from a massive thermodynamic fluctuation might begin to exist in our future and getting more complex towards our past.
Beginnings and things like evolution depend on thermodynamics.
No comment. Only one: is consistent female homosexuality ok?
It does not? So, can I collect wooden sticks next Saturday without fearing stoning? Maybe, when you say Bible, you should be more precise. Because its prescriptions seem to be time dependent.
Yes. I am an avid eater of steaks. But others abhor the killing of animals, for moral reasons. So, it could be very well be that i am wrong, if moral objectivity existed. After all, it is their opinion against ours.
Alas, i am not a moral realist (many atheists are). So, i reject any meaning to the word morality which is not linked to our biology. Killing babies is wrong for humans, including me. Metaphysically, it is not right. it is not even wrong: it is meaningless.
And even if it is a dead end, and probably it is, like everything, it seems to be functional towards our survival. So, I think you are looking for standards which might not exist, metaphysically.
Temporary issues? I was not aware that universal truths depend on temporary issues. 2+2=4 independently of temporary issues.
And those verses are not shocking at all. i know they have been written by humans pretending to act under the sanction of their imaginary sponsor in the sky and not by God Himself, on account of His non existence. However, i would contemplate applying parental guidance against exposing children to these "universal" truths.
And what do you mean with moral systems similar to your worldview? Does your worldview contemplates stoning people for working on Saturday or giving a free pass for injuring slaves, as long as they can still work after recovery? Or selling daughters as sex slaves? What about stoning rebellious kids or women who married without being virgin? Or stoning anybody for whatever reason?
A temporary lapse of morality, as it seems.
If that is the case, I hope you indulge me if I don't find it particularly problematic that we have different world views.
Ciao
- viole
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Have you followed what's happening in Iraq and Syria with ISIS? Where do they get their morals from? Are their morals reflections of God's (Allah's) nature or just their opinion?
1robin
Christian/Baptist
I do not have any morars so I need no morar giver. Just kidding me spelling is even worse. However there is no way possible you know we do not have a moral law giver, so I simply reject the statement. It is true that on naturalism you do not but that is my point. Without God there are no morals only opinion based ethics.
That had nothing to do with what you responded to. I did attempt to do what you reject there. Regardless commonality implies common design, common design implies a common designer. A terribly weak argument but more than an iota. What is an iota anyway besides a Greek letter?
I actually find the opposite to be true. I find the most essential salvation doctrines to be the most emphatic and clear and way way down the list background details to be the least clear. I have no need to know the age of accountability. I have little need to know if it was six 24 days or six eons, I even have little need to know if Christ was divine or received divine power. I need to know moral principles but less need to have a twenty volume set of detailed instructions for every single moral issue I may ever face, plus I even have access to a moral conscience. I have an embarrassment of riches where needed and more than enough where not. Your ipad is no less faulty than who programed it. That is another terrible analogy.
Well why is the former a fringe concept and the latter almost universally accepted. I have no idea what it is we know your referring to. Time is one of the most unknowable things there is.
Honestly I have never heard of a Northern Baptist denomination. Southern Baptists is not an excusive label to separate it from another geographical denomination. It is just where it was adopted the most. It is not what I chose but my methods that are important here. You can't find fault in them. I did it right. Back then I was much more spiritual, perceptive, and obedient. Now I am more intellectual and have only suffered loss. I used to feel God much more often than I do now. I have more of a faith than a relationship these days.
Not really. But as it is the reconstructed Solomon's temple said to be constructed on the temple mount it never the less will take place there. God's looking into the future is not to say he is causing it exactly. BTW did you know there are serious efforts underway to collect the money to rebuild it? It is terrifying and a relief to see so many end times prophecies coming true. We have a ways to god but we are in the end times.
You just had to get that dismissal in there didn't you? Who cares if there is astronomical similarity across millions of claims to being born again. It is does not matter unless perfect agreement exists, unless it is any other subject. Is that about right? I am just joking but I have been at this so long these tactics have become humorous.Yes, be born again, whatever that means
That is true if you start restricting assumptions based on perceptions. If you keep going you wind up with only that we think being knowable. I usually am much less demanding. I only want the same standard to be used consistently.
I did not interpret evolution. I said what part I can agree to as reliable IMO and what I could not. It changes so fast I would not bother interpreting it. It changes more than what it represents.
I disagree with everything after the second sentence though I do acknowledge that I tis what you believe. I wish you would use I believe instead of it is.
That is what I conclude from divine command theory. I do not like it. It seems to convenient and ends debates but I can't see how it would ever be false. He is the standard.
I don't get why you so often confuse abstract concepts with concrete reality. I was saying there are no infinite concrete realities. You keep giving me abstracts in response. Normally I don't think certainty is possible but in this I case I thought it was so I consulted my resident Phd guy. It is a fact that there is not an infinite distance between any set of points you pick that have a concrete location. There is a theoretical abstract infinite number but the instant you assign any actual concrete value to those points they become finite. At least this example of yours is perfectly wrong.
Ok start mapping an infinite number of points and see how that goes. I am not waiting for infinity for the results. You have yet to find an infinity to cross much less to do so. You invented a non existent infinite line out of the ether that is not concrete then made a bunch of abstract assumptions about this non existent line. Let me ask you this. If there is an infinite object anywhere in reality why is it not everywhere in reality including here? Lets quit wasting time you are not aware of a single concrete infinite anything, and move on.
You mean besides the fact you still have not found one except in your mind.
No you can't. Even in a Newtonian world (which an unjustifiable hypothetical anyway) nothing could withstand the strain of infinite speed, nothing has the infinite power to propel it, there is no infinite place for it to cross. I will give you an out. I will not object to abstract infinite concepts if you admit you have no idea where a concrete infinite is or how it could be there. You can keep it as an idea if you admit that is the only place you know it is.
I have no idea why you asked this. She would be forgiven. Actually if she was born again she was already forgiven but might not experience it until she repented or was resurrected if she did not. I can't imagine why you asked this.
That concerns what you prefer. It says nothing about what is. No they pull the trigger the same as they normally do. They just do not push this new button as easily as they use the bullet. So you get what we have always had plus a whole new threat of extinction added to it. Thanks progress.
Let me clarify. I think nuclear war will occur and not to far off from now. The bible seems to make it inevitable. I believe that it will occur in Israel. Can you not see the seeds for that today. I believe Israel will be surrounded and in this instance will be losing because most of the world is attacking them but both sides will take intense casualties and flare ups may take place all over with mass casualties. However before Israel is over run Christ will return and destroy those who are attacking them. That is Armageddon IMO and current events seem to bare this out. I have no idea which side we are on or if we are still even around as a super power but it will not matter. God will win. Did you know every single nation Christ fights in revelations is an Islamic nation hostile to Israel today. Revelations may be the best and most ominously accurate text ever written. It certainly is quoted enough.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
Not too much. I just get too mad. I tried to even join the IDF once but I was too old. They get their morals from that immoral vacuum left once you reject God. Theirs (IMO), humanists, communists, pantheists, most of the ists family except Christian theists, and Jewish theists get morality from their opinions, maybe Satan, and occasionally from their impaired God given conscience if it has not been seared into complete dysfunction. IMO Islam is just as lacking of a God as any atheist is.
So if you had rejected God you would have no empathy, altruism, compassion, conscience, respect for others, self-respect, feel no love, duty, obligation or responsibility, wouldn't obey the laws or the Golden Rule, you wouldn't have morals and ethics, just an immoral vacuum?
1robin
Christian/Baptist
I don't. I thought I said that. I just wanted you to to know my position and move on.
How do you know, you ever gotten a simple chemical reactor and created life from non-life then watched it evolve as you suggest. No you took it on the word of others. I doubt more than 1% of us can meaningfully evaluate all the data and theory on what occurred on the early earth. Are you in that 1%.
Either I am too stupid to get it or you were not as clever here as you normally are. Tuna ate a prophet. I don't get it.
You might do so now that we know that took place, but over the course of history and thousand of creation story I think only the Bible posits a pre-existing eternal God and a finite universe from nothing. There might be a few but most give ridiculous story's we can easily see are just wrong.
About Germs you did not get it. Not only did they not get it with sheep, they did not even wash the knives between surgeries as late as the mid 19th century killing tens of thousands. These were not bronze age farmers these were the best science had to offer and in very recent times. The best science had until now has been wrong and I mean WRONG when the bible was right 4000 years ahead of them in many scientific issues. Historically it gets much much worse though much less deadly.
It was not claimed to be prophecy at all. This type of thing is called unknowable knowledge. It doe snot predict some future event. It is systematic statements about the nature of existing things which they had no possible way to know naturally. Like I have said a hundred times you guys rely way too much on yelling fallacy. It almost never applies.
Of course we all rebel against God. My life would probably be much better if I read the bible more instead of watching Triumph the comic dog clips. We all (including all Christians rebel) and we all pay for it. I think Roman sanitation was more about convenience than disease prevention but either way the Jews preceded them by a long way.
I
I don't think so. It is not a medical text. It fixes spiritual problems and only fixes some physical problems to re-enforce that. You may make no other demand than it be accurate when scientific.
Y
A bunch. The bible is not a text to end disease in this life. The next yes but not this one. It does not fail to meet intentions it does not have. This is a tactic not an argument. I do remember something of interest. One of those pope dudes said he was told to light fires around him day and night by God. He did so and did not get sick. That's just for information not argumentation. I have never verified it and do not care.
Was this your attempt to give me an actual thing that gained complexity over time? If so it will take me some time to evaluate it. Thermodynamics is tricky.
Not to me. Isn't the Swedish coast part of the earth? maybe if I blew it up I would see it is really on the moon.My avatar is me looking at the earth from the Swedish coast. Isn't that obvious?
Actually I am trying not to get bogged down in a boring, contentious, and had to define scientific application of thermodynamics. I used to love it but have gotten burned out. I will look into hydrological sorting though. Good answer, no whammy's.
I really dread getting into this. I will avoid it again hoping you will forget it. It takes so long to get into.
I know well what it says. It does not even mention actual systems specifically but does apply to them.
Ok, what am I supposed to do with this? It's 4pm, I have been debating of making actual science work in my test equip all day. My brain is tired.
Not the extrapolations from the models. The models themselves. Half suggest things are determined absolutely by conditions and some say crap happens for no known reason, and no one knows which is true. I can't shut up and certainty can not do the math. I just conclude from those that possibly can that we do not know which math to even use yet. It is revolutionary but as yet we have no reliable idea in general what will be revolutionized and in what way.
I think pure determinism is false as a lone explanation and true randomness does not exist. I believe choice is true. The supernatural is true, and limited determinism is true. For the quantum I do not know enough to say and I do not think anyone else does either. If anyone does I expect to find them at MIT not a forum.
Quit saying it is. Say you think or believe it is. The evidence suggests you are wrong.
Vilenkins verdict: All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.
Beginnings do not. A thing coming into being depends on no natural thing.
Nope but I am not getting into subdividing the concept of homosexuality. Less destructive in the absence of sufficient merit is still unjustifiable. I have done so in a homosexuality thread but it was meaningless to my main contention, it only changed the degree of damage, it never justified it. Please see that thread if you wish. It was surprisingly one of the few arguments I thought was absolutely resolved. I kept begging for a counter to my two main contentions and finally gave it up as hopeless.
That part of the bible does not apply today and never applied outside Israel. I was stupidly thinking you meant now when we actually exist. I do not you could retroactively enforce scriptures that have not applied to anything in 2000 years. Of course now and then mean little to you. Ancient Israel is just a few feet away to you. Your bizarre as Will would say.
No they oppose it for emotional reasons. In my case it is their opinion which has nothing whatever to do with truth against the moral foundation of the universe. Fire alarm have to go.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
Why do you guys have to restate what I say in other ways? No you can have empathy and the rest but enacting those would not be based on moral facts. For example without God I could eliminate capitol punishment by empathy. What I cannot do is ever know if I was right. In fact I would never be right because right would not exist as there is no source for moral truth. Empathy its self nor the rest are moral in and of themselves. They can be but you need more information before they are. Atheists, and others can be right if God exists but they cannot be morally right if he does not nor can they find the moral right in Atheism. It must come from a transcendent source, humans alone can never make anything right or wrong. We can only do things that were right or wrong. Without God you can have empathy and the rest but they would have nothing to do with moral truth because moral truth would not exist. Your talking about ethics not morality.
Sapiens
Polymathematician
So ... with your god how do you know that you are right? Conversations with those thought to be imaginary friends are suspect, all men are fail-able, and the bible has lots of errors that are easy to see (e.g., Pi is not equal to three).
