Similarly, you can deny theories and world views all day long.
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Truth: either God exists or He don't.
- Thread starter capumetu
- Start date
Pilgrim Soldier
Active Member
If a single one of the hundreds of Bible prophecies, or one of the hundreds of God's promises ever failed to come true I would immediately abandon my faith and become an Atheist.
i'm also willing to sell everything I poses and give the money to anyone who can find an error or contradiction in the bible.
Pilgrim Soldier
Active Member
Yes, but nothing in secular science is for sure, everything is constantly changing. Yesterdays theories are discarded like trash and new theories are adopted until some other novel theory is given oxygen for a while.
Pilgrim Soldier
Active Member
I just can't accept the theory that nothing caused incredibly complex life forms to just exist. If everything has always existed, then why is everything in a state of self destruction or de evolution. Nothing is evolving, everything is getting old and decaying and dying.
I can't accept the theory which claims that new stars, planets, moons, life forms just decide to evolve without a cause, causing them to evolve and die.
If secular science teaches that you can observe something being created, then assert that there is absolutely no cause or purpose for this then I give up
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Just in case you have the courage to read it, here is the story of a former young earth creationists who went to work for an oil company and had to face real geological data, which he tried (and failed) to reconcile with his religious views. He also tells of how his fellow YECs refused to face up to the data.
Some selected quotes:
Within a year, I was processing seismic data for a major oil company.
This was where I first became exposed to the problems geology presented to the idea of a global flood. I would see extremely thick (30,000 feet) sedimentary layers and wonder how the flood could have deposited all that sediment and still given time for footprints to be formed if it was all deposited in one year. One could follow beds with footprints from the surface down to those depths where they were covered by such thicknesses of sediment that much time would have been required. I would see buried mountains which had experienced more than ten thousands of feet of erosion, which required more time than a single year. Yet, my belief system required that the sediments in those buried mountains had to have been deposited by the flood. I would see karsts (sinkholes due to limestone erosion) and salt sandwiched in the middle of the geologic column (supposedly during the middle of the flood). Yet the flood waters would have been saturated with limestone and incapable of dissolving lime. And salt can only be removed from the ocean waters by evaporation. It was inconceivable that salt could be deposited during the Flood. It became clear that more time was needed than the global flood would allow. But my faith in the young-earth interpretation told me that the data were not to be believed.
...
Unfortunately, my fellow young earth creationists were not willing to listen to the problems. In general, they were not interested in discussing the difficulties and they did not want to read any material that contradicted their cherished position ... I would have eagerly isolated myself from geologic data, but my job would not allow it. I preferred darkness of self-deception to the light of truth. Yet, day after day, my job forced me to confront that awful data. And to make matters worse, I was viewed by my fellow young-earth creationists as less than pure for trying to discuss or solve the problems.
...
When telling one friend of my difficulties with young-earth creationism and geology, he told me that I had obviously been brainwashed by my geology professors. When I told him that I had never taken a geology course, he then said I must be saying this in order to hold my job. Never would he consider that I might really believe the data. This attitude that the messenger of bad news must be doubted amazed me. And it convinced me that too many of my fellow Christians were not interested in truth but only that I should conform to their theological position. To all intents and purposes I was through with young-earth creationists (not -ism yet) because I knew that they did not care about the data.
...
Eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationism. Nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology had turned out to be true. I took a poll of all eight of the graduates from [Institution of Creation Research]'s school who had gone into the oil industry and were working for various companies. I asked them one question, "From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true?"
That is a very simple question. One man, who worked for a major oil company, grew very silent on the phone, sighed, and softly said, "No!" A very close friend that I had hired, after hearing the question, exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There has to be one!" But he could not name one. No one else could either.
...
It was my lack of knowledge that allowed me to go along willingly and become a young-earth creationist. It was isolation from contradictory data, a fear of contradictory data and a strong belief in the young-earth interpretation that kept me there for a long time. The biggest lesson I have learned in this journey is to read the works of those with whom you disagree. God is not afraid of the data.
This was where I first became exposed to the problems geology presented to the idea of a global flood. I would see extremely thick (30,000 feet) sedimentary layers and wonder how the flood could have deposited all that sediment and still given time for footprints to be formed if it was all deposited in one year. One could follow beds with footprints from the surface down to those depths where they were covered by such thicknesses of sediment that much time would have been required. I would see buried mountains which had experienced more than ten thousands of feet of erosion, which required more time than a single year. Yet, my belief system required that the sediments in those buried mountains had to have been deposited by the flood. I would see karsts (sinkholes due to limestone erosion) and salt sandwiched in the middle of the geologic column (supposedly during the middle of the flood). Yet the flood waters would have been saturated with limestone and incapable of dissolving lime. And salt can only be removed from the ocean waters by evaporation. It was inconceivable that salt could be deposited during the Flood. It became clear that more time was needed than the global flood would allow. But my faith in the young-earth interpretation told me that the data were not to be believed.
...
Unfortunately, my fellow young earth creationists were not willing to listen to the problems. In general, they were not interested in discussing the difficulties and they did not want to read any material that contradicted their cherished position ... I would have eagerly isolated myself from geologic data, but my job would not allow it. I preferred darkness of self-deception to the light of truth. Yet, day after day, my job forced me to confront that awful data. And to make matters worse, I was viewed by my fellow young-earth creationists as less than pure for trying to discuss or solve the problems.
...
When telling one friend of my difficulties with young-earth creationism and geology, he told me that I had obviously been brainwashed by my geology professors. When I told him that I had never taken a geology course, he then said I must be saying this in order to hold my job. Never would he consider that I might really believe the data. This attitude that the messenger of bad news must be doubted amazed me. And it convinced me that too many of my fellow Christians were not interested in truth but only that I should conform to their theological position. To all intents and purposes I was through with young-earth creationists (not -ism yet) because I knew that they did not care about the data.
...
Eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationism. Nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology had turned out to be true. I took a poll of all eight of the graduates from [Institution of Creation Research]'s school who had gone into the oil industry and were working for various companies. I asked them one question, "From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true?"
That is a very simple question. One man, who worked for a major oil company, grew very silent on the phone, sighed, and softly said, "No!" A very close friend that I had hired, after hearing the question, exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There has to be one!" But he could not name one. No one else could either.
...
It was my lack of knowledge that allowed me to go along willingly and become a young-earth creationist. It was isolation from contradictory data, a fear of contradictory data and a strong belief in the young-earth interpretation that kept me there for a long time. The biggest lesson I have learned in this journey is to read the works of those with whom you disagree. God is not afraid of the data.
From: The Transformation of a Young-Earth Creationist
Pilgrim Soldier
Active Member
I only believe something if there is undeniable rock solid proof. I don't fancy lending my mind to someone who assaults it with lies, deception and fantasy
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Nobody is asking you to. This is just your own straw man. I suggest you learn something about evolution.
Populations are evolving. There is overwhelming evidence and direct observations.
Another straw man.
Pilgrim Soldier
Active Member
i will abandon my faith as soon as someone is able to find any fault of false claim in it. Secular unbelievers have been trying to find a shred of evidence against it for 6000 and all of their efforts have been in vein so far so it's a safe bet they never will.
Pilgrim Soldier
Active Member
Because that's exactly what they're saying but not admitting it.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
This is simply false. Try reading what people have actually said.
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ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Argument from ignorance.
The idea that the universe (or humanity, for that matter) is only 6000 years old (if that's what you mean), has been falsified by solid evidence, many, many times in multiple different disciplines.
Pilgrim Soldier
Active Member
God caused Himself, He is separate from His universe and His creation. Everything else is created so it's common but He is unique and not connected to anything.
He is the only One who doesn't rely on a life source to exist, but you rely on Him for your next breath and when He decides to withhold your next breath. The whole universe and every atom in it are 100% dependant in Him for their next moment of life. Everything is in the palm of His hand. He is outside of time and space and He is not subject to any force or answerable to anyone.
He is the only One who never had a beginning and He has no end. Everyone will stand before Him to be judged, they won't stand before Richard Dawkins
Pilgrim Soldier
Active Member
You said that evidence and proof must be examined using the scientific method. That's like asking the Mafia to investigate themselves and report their findings to the FBI and CIA
Pilgrim Soldier
Active Member
The straw man stands until you can bring him down with facts
Pilgrim Soldier
Active Member
As I said, I stand ready to abandon my faith and become an Atheist as soon as someone can find ant proof that the earth is more than 6-7000 years old. we simply have no evidence to support the counter claims but we do have dinosaurs buried in mood with blood cells in them. No any honest scientist will tell you that that skeleton should have fossilised 64.999 millions year ago
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
So you don't understand what straw man means. Okay, there's nothing wrong with that, but you could have just asked. Anyway, a straw man is when you replace somebody's argument with one that's easier to refute, and then refute that argument rather than the real one.
That's what you've done here. You are not addressing what people have said, you have set up your own misrepresentations ("the theory that nothing caused incredibly complex life forms to just exist" and "the theory which claims that new stars, planets, moons, life forms just decide to evolve without a cause") and then attacked them.
You've already brought down the straw men, now you need to go back an tackle the real arguments.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Cosmology, radiometric dating, geology (see #865), archaeology, astronomy, astrophysics, biology and genetics (evolution), and so on.
Just ignoring the evidence doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Simply not true. For example, there are new stars forming in the Orion nebula right now. There are new planets forming around even close stars right now.
Nobody said that life is uncaused. But it is important to understand that life is a complex collection of chemical reactions. It was caused by *previous* collections of simpler chemical reactions.
What 'just exists' is the universe itself, throughout space and time.
Well, at the macroscopic level, most things *are* caused. Stars, for example, are formed because of the action of gravity on the already existing clouds of gas and dusts, which were in turn formed from a previous generation of stars.
The only time you get to issues of quantum gravity (and thereby a lack of causes) is in the *very* early universe, even before the era of nucleogenesis.
Well, then give up. It has been observed that there are uncaused events. In fact, they happen all the time at the subatomic level. Causality, in fact, primarily holds because of the *averages* of the randomness at the subatomic level.
This is similar to the fact that is you flip a coin a million times, the percentage of heads will be close to 50%. That is a 'causal' prediction based upon the laws of probability. A similar thing happens at the subatomic level except that the events there really are random and not due to 'hidden variables'.
Yes, the terminology is rather messed up in this. in this context, the universe is usually defined as a part of the multiverse that only interacts with the rest via gravity (at most).