The Watchmaker Revisited

[sealchan]

I think it is more a problem with storytelling. Folks create a plausible story and tend to believe it's true without any possible verification.

Even science people create stories based on what evidence is available which may or may not match the reality. These remain theoretical until either proven or disproven. People should understand these theories can be wrong.

Religions also create stories which may seem perfectly plausible to the believer. However with religion there is generally not a requirement for verification. What is asked by religion is faith and conviction. Requirements that science criticizes. If/when faith and conviction supersedes verification in religion or science then the truth is not what one seeks. They end up seeking another plausible story to support their conviction.

Faith and conviction should be avoided if one seeks the truth.

It is a problem with story-telling...but for Christianity it is a problem with the concretization of the story through it being forever a closed book and the book being a literal history. That is the problem.

A religion, in order to survive under the scrutiny of a modern point of view, need to cultivate a culture of spiritual literature reflects the experience and the need of the modern believer. More and more the Bible is becoming fairy tales and out of date moral rules. The Bible needs to be recast in today's world and with a better sense of the author's original understanding. The Bible is, in fact, profoundly a work of literature with an aim to create a world view different than that of other more powerful nations. As a result it created a resilient belief system that has thrived for centuries.

But any living truth needs to continue to grow and evolve. The Bible simply hasn't and those that have fettered it are complicit in the degradation that its followers' perpetuate IMO.

The Bible carves out a sacred space of story that few creative artists want to tread in because the have to choose between two unpleasant roads...conform to the original story or risk loud rejection for not doing so. For me the modern movies Noah and Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ are great examples of movies which take the Biblical account and begin to move us forward in our spiritual understandings. It matters little whether they reflect the original story so much as whether they reflect the universal human experience of the spiritual life.

Put in this context, religion's stories should be inspired works of literature not misbegotten works of dubious history. Taken as such, no believer would mistake the individuals depicted in such stories as real people, but they would recognize that such stories do reflect real human experience. This is the high art of story and its benefit to humanity.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

"the atheists who run this place", specifically.
I wonder if @lewisnotmiller will let me lick his for him.
Tom

Ha!
I wasn't sure whether to rate this 'Informative' or 'Friendly'...

 

[gnostic]

There's nothing wrong with assumption as long as you follow up on it with some substance. Evolutionist thinking, and I use the term loosely, aware of the contradiction, tends to be cyclical.

You are making assumptions here, yourself.

You are assuming that “evolutionist” as you call it (btw, there is no such things as “evolutionist” or “Darwinist”), “is not a theist”.

What about all those those biologists who are theists but who also understand and accept evolution as explanations for as to why biodiversity and speciation occurred over time and places?

The theory of evolution is a factual explanation based on observable and verifiable evidences, hence it is not “cyclical” as you claimed.

What is cyclical or circular is believing in the NT disciples and followers of Jesus can heal the sick, just as Jesus did (as claimed in the gospels), and that you believe in Jesus and in the gospels, but you cannot heal people with touch of your hands or words spoken like Jesus’ “sin no more”, then that belief (“yours”) and assumption are without substance.

In another word...

If your faith in Jesus and in God is strong, as strong as Jesus’ disciples, you should be able to heal people just as Jesus and his disciples did. The fact that you cannot perform such miracles yourself, then your belief and your faith are unjustified.

Darwin visited South America and Galapagos islands, observing species during 1830s, a couple of decades before he wrote and published On Origin of Species (1859).

Any biologist can visit these places and do the research the species, to see for themselves, thereby verifying Darwin’s observations. That’s not circular thinking.

The difference between religions and science, is that religion isn’t evidence-based knowledge, it is faith-based belief.

Science required verification, meaning it required evidences that are observable and measurable, hence testable. Evolution is science.

Since Darwin’s time, biologists have corrected and expanded natural selection, as well as expanding to include other biological mechanisms that Darwin didn’t know about in his time, eg mutation and genetic drift, etc.

All of which, are based on evidences, not like your wishful thinking (belief) of healing or the afterlife as the New Testament claimed.

 

[gnostic]

Well, that’s unfortunate.

I have replied one of RothschildSaxeCoburgGotha’s earlier posts, only to find in his later post, he has run away.

I have just wasted my time.

 

[InChrist]

I recommend that you read the book Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne. This is the best, and easiest to understand book that I have found when it comes to explaining all of the evidence that makes evolution a fact. If you're truly intellectually honest, you won't be afraid of reading a book that could change your mind.

Here is an excerpt and link to a review of that book...

"Whenever I picked up a book of this sort I used to wonder, “What new evidence has been found? What does the author know that I don’t?” In the back of my mind I used to wonder if the author had discovered some evidence that would genuinely support Darwin’s theory. Now, since I have been doing this for some time, my fears have abated. I have read enough books of this sort to realize that most of the arguments are simply recycled from previous works."
Why Evolution Is True Book Review

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

And what does the man think of a stone that he sees on the same beach? Isn't your position that God made the stone also? Therefore isn't the stone just as grand an object? Why all this focus on a watch?

Absolutely right! Or a starfish! Or a crab! Or a bird! Or a piece of seaweed! The Lord God Made Them All!

 

[shunyadragon]

The sound of air seeping from an empty balloon...

Phfffffffffft! Now the ballon is empty.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I'm done. This is my last post on these forums. I'll let the atheists that run the place lick their wounds and gnash their teeth, I've got better things to do. As Eric Cartman would say, "Screw you guys, I'm going home."

How appropriate. You, just like Cartman, can only scream "Respect my Authoritae!!"

 

[Thief]

I think it is more a problem with storytelling. Folks create a plausible story and tend to believe it's true without any possible verification.

so picture yourself at a campfire and some old guy tells you a story about
someone going into a deep sleep.....and a rib is removed while he slept

and the reaction would be......WHAT!?
take a rib from a man and he not die?????????
and he slept as he was cut???????

it did not seem plausible THEN......but they believed

we know it is plausible NOW......and yet you don't believe?

Faith and conviction should be avoided if one seeks the truth.

and if ever you find the truth.....
you would have no conviction to it?

 

[columbus]

the reaction would be......WHAT!?
take a rib from a man and he not die?????????
and he slept as he was cut???????

it did not seem plausible THEN......but they believed

Why wouldn't it be plausible?
People used to believe in magic a good deal.
Tom

 

[Thief]

Why wouldn't it be plausible?
People used to believe in magic a good deal.
Tom

no no no......

the answer to a previous post......why believe in something not plausible?
and for centuries ....people did
reading scripture and nodding their heads to a story with no likelihood

but in these most recent hundred years.....
the story IS plausible

and yet we have non-believers among us

 

[Deeje]

Oh really? I'll get me a copy of it when you've completed the Watchtower's 1971 tome, Aid In Understanding the Bible.

That actually was updated about 30 years ago!...we have a two volume encyclopedic set called "Insight on the Scriptures". Available online.....just type in your subject or go to the alphabetical reference and choose what you want to know....its awesome!

https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/lv/r1/lp-e/0/678
It leaves the AID book in the shade......boy you do need updating!

LOL

 

[exchemist]

Oh really? I'll get me a copy of it when you've completed the Watchtower's 1971 tome, Aid In Understanding the Bible.

Running up the Jolly Roger at last, eh?

Oh, he's gone: the "grand trampling exit", no less.

 

[shunyadragon]

I'm done. This is my last post on these forums. I'll let the atheists that run the place lick their wounds and gnash their teeth, I've got better things to do. As Eric Cartman would say, "Screw you guys, I'm going home."

No body agrees with me.
No body loves me.
Everybody hates me.
I am gonna eat some worms,

 

[BilliardsBall]

No, infinite regression and the conservation of energy and matter are only problems with creationists trying to create problems in their own minds.

Another thought, if energy and matter cannot be Created nor destroyed than there was no initial Creation in the first place.

So . . . you disagree with modern cosmology and BB theory, and feel the universe is eternal? Interesting.

 

[exchemist]

Here is an excerpt and link to a review of that book...

"Whenever I picked up a book of this sort I used to wonder, “What new evidence has been found? What does the author know that I don’t?” In the back of my mind I used to wonder if the author had discovered some evidence that would genuinely support Darwin’s theory. Now, since I have been doing this for some time, my fears have abated. I have read enough books of this sort to realize that most of the arguments are simply recycled from previous works."
Why Evolution Is True Book Review

Well of course they are! The observations support evolution in just the same way today as they did several decades ago.

There won't be any new arguments, just different ways of expressing them, perhaps. Probably the last major new "argument", if you might call it that, would have come when DNA fingerprinting first became good enough to test the family trees built on the basis of fossil evidence, by an independent method (biochemistry).

The creationist determined not to accept evolution will always be able to point to things that he can use to bolster his "doubts".

What intrigues me about creationism is why there is this focus on evolution of life. We rarely seem to come across the same impassioned refusal to accept science when speaking of the age of the Earth, or plate tectonics. Yet presumably these theories fly in the face of biblical literalism just as much as anything to do with life. So why the obsession with relationships between living organisms? Do you know?

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Here is an excerpt and link to a review of that book...

"Whenever I picked up a book of this sort I used to wonder, “What new evidence has been found? What does the author know that I don’t?” In the back of my mind I used to wonder if the author had discovered some evidence that would genuinely support Darwin’s theory. Now, since I have been doing this for some time, my fears have abated. I have read enough books of this sort to realize that most of the arguments are simply recycled from previous works."
Why Evolution Is True Book Review

Have you read *any* pro-evolution books?

 

[Robert Landbeck]

Just a quick aside.

The trouble with science and religion is assumption.

If a man from primitive earth is walking along the beach and comes across a watch it's assumed that man would think the watch had a designer. Not necessarily. It's quite possible the man would think "What a pretty rock, I think it would look cool if I rubbed some **** in my beard and stuck it there."

It's also possible that the man would think "That's not a bad watch. Not as good as the ones on my home planet Rolex V but, not bad at all. . . "

There's no reason why we can't have a sense of humor.

'Assumption' is often the beginning of a thought process and journey. The 'problem' is when any assumption has no where to go. And that is what differentiates science from religion. Science attempts to take assumption as the stepping stone to possible insight and discovery. Religion, contrary to it's own scriptural record, without a path to discover anything as definitive, demands faith to avoid confronting the reality of its own profound ignorance.
And if history ever judges the good news to be fake news, I have to doubt whether God will see the humor of it?

 

[Nakosis]

so picture yourself at a campfire and some old guy tells you a story about
someone going into a deep sleep.....and a rib is removed while he slept

and the reaction would be......WHAT!?
take a rib from a man and he not die?????????
and he slept as he was cut???????

it did not seem plausible THEN......but they believed

we know it is plausible NOW......and yet you don't believe?

It's not the same world they lived in.

and if ever you find the truth.....
you would no conviction to it?

Why would the truth need conviction?
The truth needs neither my conviction nor your conviction.

 

[shunyadragon]

So . . . you disagree with modern cosmology and BB theory, and feel the universe is eternal? Interesting.

Current cosmology and the various BB models (not theories?) do not conclude our physical existence has a beginning. There are other competing models such as the cyclic model and the Black Hole model that are based on the same evidence as the BB models for our universe,

Based on the current objective evidence it is possible that our physical existence (universe?) is ether eternal or infinite, or finite or temporal. It remains an unanswered question.