Why does my God allow children to die? Is he evil?

[1robin]

Yes, it happened during 20 million years, which is relatively short. But I do not see how this can exclude naturalism. After all, you can pack all evolution from bacteria to us in a couple of decades without having any natural law broken. At least thermodynamical laws.

This is the type of argument I mentioned before. It is a false equality. You at least point out it is not impossible. That does not make it equal with a probable explanation. I also do not rule out a natural explanation entirely. Just that the trend in these type of issues makes God look more necessary than when they began. IOW Darwinian evolution left not a lot for God to explain. However as we learn more the more necessary God seems to be. This is a long post so I will leave it here but I could add volumes to this point.

Actually, I think this is an argument against God. Waiting a couple billion years with protozoah before making up His mind?

Actually this is not an argument specifically but is of a type of philosophical question. Is it consistent with God to allow time for things to act on their own? IOW why not just instantly do everything. I do not think we have any reason to suggest anything here. I have idea how to decide if God should allow things to run on their own towards a goal or not.

Not to talk of all other contingencies that allowed mammals to prosper, getting bigger and evolve primates. Asteroids, earthquakes, vulcanos and the lot. Sure He likes to complicate things after billions years of boredom, if He ever had the final result in mind, as we can expect from a deity that knows what He wants.

All these issues are forms of the principle question above. I have no reasons to limit God's methodology or impose on it any arbitrary time frame. BTW how many years is too many. 1? 1 million? 1 trillion?. I understand your question but it has no teeth nor an answer.

The problem is that there is no evidence of anyone having had a quantum leap of this size within a generation. That would be enough to kill evolution, which is not in discussion, last time I checked. If there is a change, it can still be minor. That does not entail that the long terms effect cannot be major.

I am not trying to kill evolution. I was pointing out that it dies not seem to account for everything. For every example I gave I can add a thousand. There are huge swaths of reality naturalism has no good answers to. Now I do not force God into the gaps. I look for evidence the gaps have reason to be attributable to him. For example there are some Genesis reasons why these huge leaps should have occurred.

The idea that primate X could do most things that his direct parents could not possibly do seems absurd. And has no evidence whatsoever. There must be tiny differences sometimes but surely not in the range you seem to assume. Not enough to justify a soul for them and not their parents, anyway

I think there is evidence for at least that type of thing in abundance. I should not expect to find fossils that can show it for a single generation or two but it is obvious it occurred in a genetic blink of an eye.

That does not entail that there was not a remote ancestor of X that did not possess this capacity. But this works both ways. We cannot live in water for more than a couple of minutes without oxygen. Our remote ancestors could. And this a much bigger change, still naturally explainable, than a few additional cognitive abilities against our cousins.

You ever notice how many of your arguments are of the form that some alternative is not impossible? I am looking for the best explanations. I am not interested in collecting the maximum number of non impossible explanations. I do not have any certainty but I would grant we came from primates a thousand times before I would grant anyone knows (or probably ever will) that we came from fish.

Every species is unique. That is why we differentiate among them.

Every creature within a species is unique, probably every atom within every creature is unique. That was not really the point.

Yes, and this is why i added "wiring" to "size".

What do you mean by wiring? Synapsis or something?

All you need is a relatively simple adaptation: the capacity to copy, store and reuse other people's ideas. And show it to your kids.

Primates all do all these. Yet only one builds space shuttles.

Once you have that, the sky is the limit. Not even the sky, actually. After all exponential curves appear everywhere in nature. They start very slow, can remain low for a long time, and then explode. They always occur when you have positive feedbacks in a retroactive system.

Apparently not since they have them are still in the pre-stone age. Fractals appear in nature, Fibonacci sequences appear in nature, has not helped a single monkey know they do.

And our capacity of copying, improve and communicate the improvement is a positive feedback in a retroactive system. The negative feedback is provided by a dramatic scarcity of resources which we have not reached, yet.

Apes also have had vast resources for extremely long times. If we would not have been so smart we would have run out long ago. It is our intellectual capacity that allowed us to maximize resources.

Well, you should buy it bacause it might be fundamental. And when you say "we" you should not generalize. There are tribes that are still hunting and gathering. The capacity is there, but the context did not ignite significant progress. They are still on the flat part of the exponential curve without reprogramming.

I can take a person at birth out of those tribes and train him to be an engineer. The best I can do with a monkey is teach him a few signs.

Hit a nut with a hammer and a chimp will understand what you do. Make just the gesture, without a hammer, and it will not. It is possible that this little difference in abstraction is all you need to make the difference.

I would love to train them to troubleshot the G-force effect of a ground simulator on a F-15 HUD and sit back and watch him fix it but I can't and never could with any non human. I did not say chimps were unintelligent. You do not have to be Einstein to whack a nut with a stick. You do to get relativity.

After all, you know that the difference between an exponentially growing curve and one which is not exponentially growing can be very small. Just a little delta on the value of the basis. From 1 to 1,00000000001, for instance. With the former, is stagnates, with the latter it will grow monotonically. A few little genes difference, maybe.

I do not think cells can explain this. It is not having more that makes us this smart. At least in my non biological experience. Many animals have had astronomically larger brains yet were as dumb as cows or birds. I do not think number or size can explain this. Maybe type can but that is above my pay grade.

Equations involving stability, or lack thereof, are ubiqutous in evolution theory. So, no big biological step required and naturalism is still live and kicking.

I don't get it. I was not saying evolution requires a big step. I said it is not a good explanation for it. Proof for that is it took so long for fossils showing rapid bursts to be accepted as such because they so radically differed from the models. I also think we are only at the start. The trends are towards showing evolution even as it is today does not explain huge areas of reality. I think the problem will grow exponentially as we learn more.

 

[1robin]

You should have continued reading the rest of the links then.

I wouldn't take that bet.

Elephant cognition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Science Is In: Elephants Are Even Smarter Than We Realized [Video] - Scientific American
http://www.elephanttag.org/professional/Publications/Byrne_Bates_Moss_2009.pdf

I will admit I have grown so disillusioned with what is claimed a link demonstrates with what I have found it actually does I am loath to comb through them all. So I take the blame but it's not my fault. I might make a politician yet.


Let me change my claim. I would bet I actually do remember more than an elephant. He may could remember more but I bet he does not. I have entire battles down to the last detail, much of secondary mathematics, three aircraft worth of schematics, a petabyte of song lyrics, probably a hundreds times all hat in meaningless trivia, maybe a thousand times that in just random junk you collect without trying, etc.... No matter how capable an elephant is he just does not have that much stuff to remember. Unless someone shows me one memorized ever plant in his region of Africa I can bull squat.

What I know for a fact is that their memory no matter how capable was not the issue nor has it enabled them to do the tiniest fraction of what man has for good or bad.

 

[1robin]

We have zoos cause of ignorance. Like I said chimps are smarter, probably due to having to survive the hard way all this time. For humans, the smart people get our technology going while the rest of us get lazy using it.

I never had an ignorance class in civil engineering school. Whatever ever your arbitrary moral position on zoos are no monkey ever has, can, or ever could build even the ticket booth to a zoo. This is just way to silly to continue. Please change subjects.

 

[idav]

I never had an ignorance class in civil engineering school. Whatever ever your arbitrary moral position on zoos are no monkey ever has, can, or ever could build even the ticket booth to a zoo. This is just way to silly to continue. Please change subjects.

I am not talking about no monkey, I am talking about great apes. Jeez people really underestimate non-human animals.

 

[1robin]

Sorry to do this to you again, but what do you think of this guy's claims on the influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism. I'm leaning toward believing more towards his view, but I'm open to what you have to say. I've got to go right now. I'll be back and comment on progressive revelation.

If you want to discuss this that is fine but it will be an involved issue. Most other parallels are easily shows to be groundless but Persian theology is a whole other animal. Both Judaism and Persian's can trace their ancestors back to Mesopotamia so there was a lot of shared truth and instead of them both being wrong, or only one being wrong it will come down to which one is most likely right on a case by case basis given specific claims. They both grew out of a similar historical events and places so I expect a lot of commonality so the issue will be which one is most right or better attested. It is very important to keep this in mind.


Before I can weigh any specific claim you would have to decide which specific one or two you want to concentrate on. Be it creation, or salvation for example. I think you here have concentrated on which influenced which so I will make some initial comments on that alone.

1. As above I imagine they both grew from a common set of oral traditions that started to differentiate over time.
2. Judaism's textual foundation precedes Zoroastrianism.
3. It is unknown when the doctrine's of Zoroaster originated so I am forced to use the dates the faith was founded.
4. Judaism was founded between 1500BC and 1800BC. It was not complete but the Torah was written. Zoroastrianism between 800BC and 600BC. There is speculation on both sides pushing the dates much farther back but we are stuck discussing what we do know not what we might in the future.
5. Now based on this I would expect some commonality and some diversions. For instance Judaism does not contain two God's in doctrine. Zoroastrianism id a divine dualism with two competing Gods. Yahweh created Satan as an angel, he is no God and God is not fighting him in the classic sense. The only issue is which one is true.
6. A redundant supreme being is a logical absurdity. You can not have two beings who are superlative in every way. Yahweh is also the originator of everything else. He can do anything logically possible. Creating another supreme being is not logically possible, no more than a square circle is. So I have to go with Judaism. Keep in mind we are not discussing what some Jews believed but what the text says.

Most of the issues in what you quoted are corollary or incidental and provide no causal evidence. They are also relatively minor issues. For example my faith has nothing to do with the festival of booths. Let me provide a more important and common set of claims made about Christ and Zoroaster and why they fall apart as an example of the general inexactitude found when looking closely.

These are common claims of parallelism and very important.
•Zoroaster was born of a virgin and "immaculate conception by a ray of divine reason."
•He was baptized in a river.
•In his youth he astounded wise men with his wisdom.
•He was tempted in the wilderness by the devil.
•He began his ministry at age 30.
•Zoroaster baptized with water, fire, and "holy wind."
•He cast out demons and restored the sight to a blind man.
•He taught about heaven and hell, and revealed mysteries, including resurrection, judgment, salvation and the apocalypse.
•He had a sacred cup or grail.
•He was slain.
•His religion had a Eucharist.
•He was the "Word made flesh."
•Zoroaster's followers expect a "second coming" in the virgin-born Saoshyant or Savior, who is to come in 2341 CE and begin his ministry at age 30, ushering in a golden age.

Continued below:

 

[1robin]

Now let's see what exists to justify these claims:

Zoroaster was born of a virgin and "immaculate conception by a ray of divine reason." It's hard to quantify this one -- the Avesta (note again, a late source, later than Christianity) refers to a "kingly glory" that was handed onward from one ruler to the next; this glory resided in Zoroaster's mother for about 15 years, including during the time she was married to Zoroaster's dad, Pourushaspa. It seems that a human father was still needed for Zoroaster [Jack.ZP, 18, 24] and that this "ray" was merely for the infusion of Zoroaster's spirit, not his body.
•He was baptized in a river. I can find no reference to this at all. There is a story of Zoraster receiving a revelation from an archangel while on the banks of a river, which Zoroaster later crosses [Jack.ZP, 41], but that is as close as I have found.
•In his youth he astounded wise men with his wisdom. Here's what I have on this: At age 7, Zoroaster was placed under the care of a wise man; as he was raised he had disputations with the magi -- the practitioners of occult and magic, necromancy, and sorcery. These were "put to confusion" by him [Jack.ZP, 29, 31]. Later he also made sport of the wise men of King Vishtapsa, who became one of his major converts [Jack.ZP, 61-2], and these wise men plotted against him, accusing him of being a necromancer. Zoroaster was imprisoned, but got out when he helped heal the king's favorite horse by making its legs grow back. Zoroaster was clearly a prodigy, but in quite a different area than Jesus.
•He was tempted in the wilderness by the devil. This one is true, sort of -- after 10 years (not 40 days!) of visionary experiences, a sub-demon named J. Buiti was sent by Ahriman (the functional devil-equivalent in this context -- he didn't come himself) "to deceive and overthrow the holy messenger." [Jack.ZP, 51]
This temptation involved an attempt to persuade Zoroaster to renounce the "good religion" of Mazdeism and worship evil spirits -- no bread to stones, no leaps from towers, but it bears at best a superficial similarity to the temptation of Jesus.

•He began his ministry at age 30. This one is absolutely right [Jack.ZP, 16], but rendered meaningless in this context by two things. First, it comes from the Pahlavi literature, which is post-Christian by several centuries, and second, thirty is the age at which Iranian men come to Wisdom. [WL, 54] The ancients gave as much regard to the "big three-oh" as we did -- there is no copycatting here.
•Zoroaster baptized with water, fire, and "holy wind." This is kind of odd, because this would equate with a "John the Baptist myth," not a Christ myth! Even so, I find no evidence of any of these at all. Zoroaster did have an association with sacred fires [Jack.ZP, 98] that were part of the fire-cults in three particular temples, and seemed to have taken a part in preserving the fire-cult (which liked to keep the fires going, sort of like our eternal flame at Arlington Cemetery) but he did not "baptize" with and of these things.
•He cast out demons and restored the sight to a blind man. "Cast out" is a little vague for a description here -- Zoro apparently didn't like demons, but I find no record saying he cast them out of people as Jesus did: This was one of several abilities Zoro had, including driving out pestilence, witches, and sorcerers. There is a record of Zoroaster healing a blind man, but this comes from a document dated to the tenth century AD -- and he did it by dropping juice from a plant into the blind man's eyes. [Jack.ZP, 94]
•He taught about heaven and hell, and revealed mysteries, including resurrection, judgment, salvation and the apocalypse. As this goes, it is true, but not all of these terms have the same meaning in Zoroastrianism that they do in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Only "resurrection" is a good match here -- Zoroaster's faith taught that after judgment, the "dead will rise up" and men will become "not-aging, not-dying, not-decaying, not-rotting" [Herz.ZW, 299]. It's resurrection, it sounds like, though described by negatives.
In terms of the other stuff, there aren't a lot of similarities [Wat.Z, 95, 96, 98, 102]. Salvation was by works alone; there was "practically no place for repentance or pardon:" and "no doctrine of atonement." There is some issue about the fate of the wicked; one account says they will be tormented three days, then return to do good deeds; another source says they will be annihilated. There is an essential equivalent to Heaven and Hell, but it wouldn't be too hard to create such a concept independently one way or the other based on the simple assumption that people will get what they deserve.

Judgment would be made by committee: the Persian Mithra and two other gods are on the panel. If you aren't sure where you might go, word is that Zoroaster himself will come and plead for you. A concept of purgatory appears in a Zoroastrian work of the 5th-6th century, and later Zoroastrianism did develop rites of repentance and expiation, contrary to Zoroaster's recorded teachings. There's an apocalypse planned to be sure: a flood of molten metal to burn off the wicked. Zoroastrian eschatology comes for the most part, however, from those late AD sources [Yam.PB, 465].

A reader also sent us this note:

"The case for a judeo-christian dependence on Zoroastrianism in its purely eschatological thinking is quite different. And not at all convincing, for apart from a few hints in the Gathas which we shall shortly be considering and a short passage in Yasht 19.80-90 in which a deathless existence in body and soul at the end of time is affirmed, we have no evidence as to what eschatological ideas the Zoroastrians had in the last four centuries before Christ. The eschatologies of the Pahlavi books, though agreeing in their broad outlines, differ very considerably in detail and emphasis; they do not correspond at all closely to the eschatological writings of the intertestimentary period nor to those of St. Paul and the apocalypse of St. John. They do, however, agree that there will be a general resurrection of the body as well as soul, but this idea would be the natural corollary to the survival of the soul as a moral entity, once that had been accepted, since both Jew and Zoroastrian regarded soul and body as being two aspects, ultimately inseperable, of the one human personality." -- R.C. Zaehner, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism. G.P. Putnam's Sons. New York. 1961. Pg. 57

Note especially the implication that an idea of resurrection could have come up independently in the Zoroastrians because they shared the Jewish perception of totality of body and spirit.

•He had a sacred cup or grail. If he did, the Zoroastrian scholars don't know about it. Not that it matters -- the idea of Jesus having a sacred cup or grail is a product of medieval legend, not the Bible!
•He was slain. Zoroaster was indeed said to be slain, but his death isn't vested with any significance. There are a couple of stories about his death. A late story has him struck by lightning, but that is from a post-Christian source. An account that is generally accepted has Zoroaster killed at age 77 by a wizard/priest. There are no details on this death, other than that it occurred in a temple. A nice story from the 17th century has Zoroaster whipping out rosary beads and throwing them at his assassin as he dies. [Jack.ZP, 124-9]
Either way, Zoroaster's murder has neither the invested significance nor the surrounding similarities of the death of Jesus. There is also a third account that has him killed in battle as a king! However, none of this may matter as Herzfeld, after analysis of the data, concludes that the "murder of Zoroaster is entirely unhistorical" for the stories of it are all in late sources as much as 1400 years after his time, and had he truly been murdered, it would "resound loudly and persistently in history" before that [Herz.ZW, 241, 845].

•His religion had a eucharist. Not that the Zoroastrian scholars are aware of, though I would not doubt that the Z people had communal meals like every religious and political group in ancient times. And since there is no atonement in Zoroastrianism, how can there be a Eucharist? The closest I can find to this is the fact that in later Zoroastriaism, there is a rite involving the intoxicating haoma plant, which may or may not have been known of and/or endorsed by Zoroaster [Yam.PB, 418] and involves a daily rite of consumption with no "eucharistic" significance (i.e., it is not Zoroaster's body or blood, etc.).
There is also a ceremony calls the yasna or veneration, which does involve the use of bread (topped with clarified butter) and a drink made from ephedra, pomegranate twigs, and milk (strained through a filter made from the hairs of a white bull), but evidence indicates that this ritual was established as part of liturgical reform in Zoroastrianism in the post-Christian era [Yam.PB, 449-50].

•He was the "Word made flesh." Not that the scholars know about it, either.
•Zoroaster's followers expect a "second coming" in the virgin-born Saoshyant or Savior, who is to come in 2341 CE and begin his ministry at age 30, ushering in a golden age. I have been able to confirm that this is true to some extent: a return is expected in 2341 CE, to start a golden age; the details on age 30 I have found nowhere. Whether this future Deliverer would indeed be Zoroaster himself again is indeed something that has been interpreted, but later Zoroastrian texts think that the person will be of the line of Zoroaster, not Zoroaster himself. [Wat.Z, 94-5]

Zoroaster vs Jesus

I think you can see how this kind of discussion can snow ball. You chose well. Persia is the best candidate for outside Biblical influence but on closer inspection many of the claims evaporate. Anyway this is a start I guess.

 

[1robin]

I am not talking about no monkey, I am talking about great apes. Jeez people really underestimate non-human animals.

I do not care how great the ape is you bring up. He did not build a single thing even a stone age man could, much less a micro chip. I have used Ape, Chimp, and monkey and every single one has been said to not be the correct term. I do not care what you call them. They have yet to invent an alphabet anyway.

 

[idav]

I do not care how great the ape is you bring up. He did not build a single thing even a stone age man could, much less a micro chip. I have used Ape, Chimp, and monkey and every single one has been said to not be the correct term. I do not care what you call them. They have yet to invent an alphabet anyway.

Thats silly, apes did too build all that stuff, the human apes were able to do it so there is the evidence.

Just cause you have the capacity doesn't mean we are in the right conditions. You and I are intellectual but I doubt either of us would invent an alphabet if it didnt already exist. Humans have to learn this stuff, we arent just born with all this knowledge.

So why is the chimp passing the memory test quicker and more accurately than humans? How come the human gets some wrong and fumbles with the speed of the test? Why does this indicate chimps have higher iq's when push comes to shove?

Maybe they are prepping to become the dominant species.

 

[CG Didymus]

Now let's see what exists to justify these claims:

I just got home from work. I'll read through your post later, but I wanted to thank you for taking the time to read through that article.

 

[1robin]

I don't know. Atheism seems to be ubiquitous here. Even Christians do not really believe many of their doctrines when pressed hard. What they believe is in the importance of the belief, not necessarily the object thereof. Like someone said, Jesus is an ideal proxy to teach what is good and can even serve as an imaginary baby sitter to teach behavior to kids. Of course, they mean the meek version, not the avanger one.

I think you mean they can't explain them or can't defend them, or even they do not obey them. I would be hard pressed to say what a person believes.

I have never known a Christian who was not the most introspective persons I knew. We seem to be cursed with questioning everything all the time. I have not spent a day in over 20 years without examining some theologically relevant issue. I am probably more demanding than most but most seasoned Christians have tested their faith without end. That is why it is almost always Christians who sponsor professional debates.

I will C.S. Lewis address your last point.

C. S. Lewis Cambridge professor (former agnostic) and Famous Christian

"That is one thing we must not say. A man who was a great moral teacher and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, page 41)

Maybe I m biased by being European.

Biased towards what?

You make the assumption that the first replicants were as complex as a today's cell.

Not really. I get that from secular evolutionists. It probably is not true but they commonly state the cell was the first life. Maybe it is dated a bit. I will add this as well. It takes things composed of countless cells to take energy and create complexity so there is an even bigger problem here. It would be like starting off in the 20th century with no industrial revolution possible.

Sure, but the mechanism is very simple. Random change, selection, transmission. This is how new information can be selected, added and preserved.

Simplicity is not truth. Simplicity even if true is not usually sufficient. I can't build a jet engine only knowing hot air expands.

I think it is not only possible, but necessary once you have replicators that transmit their building recepy to their offsprings.

Ok, do that with chemical evolution to start with. I am letting you start with an easy one relatively.

That is what life is. A slightly disturbed communication channel that can opportunistically create "better" phenotypes.

Put that sentence in a box and see if a frog ever hops out. Life is (heck DNA alone) is so complex a library could not contain it's descriptions in detail.

Even if you don't believe that this can account for the complexity we observe, I don't see how you can refute this simple algorithm as an engine to provide new information without a designer.

I do allow it, I just deduce it has limits. I am not qualified to state exactly where they are, no one is. But I can say it works for this and probably not for that.

Well, then you should suspend judgement or accept the scientific orthodoxy, in the interest of intellectual honesty. I find the history of medieval chinese theater also quite boring, but I can very well expect to be called out if I start arguing about it and come out with explanations that, mutatis mutandis, are equivalent to your version of evolution based on kinds.

I said it was boring I did not say I find no merit in it. I probably agree with 90% of science in every field.

Well, I doubt this D'Souza is a scientist, obviously. Who is he by the way? Sounds portuguese or brazilian.

Indian. PhD from Dartmouth, immigrant, on Regan's staff, Hitchens said the best debater he ever faced, and producer of the second highest grossing documentary on politics ever made. Look his debates up. He is sharp.

Well, Faraday had basically no formal scientific education, either. So, technically, he was not a scientist either, if you are so obsessed with education.

If so then no he was not. Of course scientists is very subjective. I just meant he was not trained very well.

The importance of Darwin cannot be underestimated. He made what is probably the most influential discovery, ever. That is why his face is printed on English pounds and he shares the same burial place with Newton.

I said nothing about his importance though his theory has not produced a valuable thing of any kind, even if true. Build a house with it or use it for surgery and then it will be important. Never the less it is probably true in many of it's principles.

A.R.Wallace came at the same conclusions of Darwin at about the same time.

Actually a Augustinian monk had the same concept long before and I do not think he was the first.

There is a nice book of J. Diamond explaining why all this exploded in Europe and not, say, China which was also relatively advanced. In a nutshell: wars and strong competition between different powers packed in a relatively small place. Nevertheless, this fact does not entail that science cannot be corrosive of religious belief. i think it is. It is also corrosive of alchemy, a Newton's darling.

I can hardly disprove something so general but let me give you the conclusion of the other guy. He said it was their faith that a rational God created a rational universe. One of these things is radically wrong.

I don't think it follows. Waht is so special about a Christian meeting God? I guess you must first have met God in order to qualify as a Christian. Every theist meets her own God, which raises serious questions about the plausibility of such meetings.

Not even close. The entire doctrine of Judaism and Islam lacks the promise or expectation of meeting God for the average believer. Not to mention claims to personal experience are almost exclusively Christian. I have spent years looking for a Muslim, Jew and especially a Hindu who had claimed to have met God. So far I found one Muslim who had some vague claim about it. I literally seek them and can't find them. Born again Christians are so common they are actually a nuisances to others at times. If you can ask about what is special about meeting God your suspect.

And many things are motivated by money and power. That still does not explain why scientists are singled out as a statistically anomaly.

I did not single them out. We just happen to be talking about them. I am an equal opportunity offender. Politics, religion, and science have probably had more merit ruined by greed than any other fields.

I think the reason is much simpler. The fact that the methodological naturalistic assumption worked so well after all this time, provides confidence that all there is is natural. After all, I am not aware of any progress being made by whomever holds the position that God did it and we should stop right there.

That is funny. I get two mutually exclusive claims constantly. One is that Christianity does not change or adapt and another that it does the exact opposite. Of course both are proof it is wrong. Maybe you should bring it up at the next meeting and find out which it is.

Truth is: all the successfull endeavours of humanity you are so proud of, are based on the assumption that naturalism is true.

I did not say I was proud, I said no other creature in earth history could have done them. There is no much pride in beating an orangutan at a crossword, to be had.

Regardless which one of them requires naturalism alone be true?

 

[SkepticThinker]

I will admit I have grown so disillusioned with what is claimed a link demonstrates with what I have found it actually does I am loath to comb through them all. So I take the blame but it's not my fault. I might make a politician yet.

That's convenient.

Let me change my claim. I would bet I actually do remember more than an elephant. He may could remember more but I bet he does not. I have entire battles down to the last detail, much of secondary mathematics, three aircraft worth of schematics, a petabyte of song lyrics, probably a hundreds times all hat in meaningless trivia, maybe a thousand times that in just random junk you collect without trying, etc.... No matter how capable an elephant is he just does not have that much stuff to remember. Unless someone shows me one memorized ever plant in his region of Africa I can bull squat.

What I know for a fact is that their memory no matter how capable was not the issue nor has it enabled them to do the tiniest fraction of what man has for good or bad.

So is that.

You apparently have no idea what elephants are capable of.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I do not think cells can explain this. It is not having more that makes us this smart. At least in my non biological experience. Many animals have had astronomically larger brains yet were as dumb as cows or birds. I do not think number or size can explain this. Maybe type can but that is above my pay grade.

.

You probably should have read my links about elephants, brain size and capacity. You'd likely know more about this.

 

[1robin]

Hi, I'm back. The first time I heard of "progressive revelation," it was from the Baha'is. They believe all religions are part of the "progressive revelation." Until this forum, I had never heard it used by Christians. What I don't like about it, for both you and them, is that religions have different and conflicting beliefs. Them with all the religions. You with Judaism. So that's why I lean more toward thinking that all people borrowed ideas from each other and slowly, over billions of years, no, not really, but over time, they evolved their religion.

The Bahia's are my favorite religious group outside Judaism and Christianity and one of the worst theological systems I have ever heard of. They are at the same time the most polite and unjustifiable faith group I know of.

The concept is valid but their application is horrific.

It is logical to find that themes are expanded and amplified as humanity has progressed. It is not logical to think God said both Christ was crucified and that he was not crucified. That is what Bahia is stuck with trying to reconcile mutually exclusive faiths. I am not, my faith is extremely dependent on the OT being literally true where it was literal.

For me this makes more sense than believing that one, the Jews, were the only ones with the "true" Word of God. And then, after Jesus, their Word of God got itself "progressed" into Christianity. But then, look at Christianity itself, there has been a "progression," or an "evolving," of interpretations and beliefs and the formation of new denominations and sects.

There are several things that are relevant here.

1. There should be and is truth in all faiths. However not all truth is God inspired.
2. It is likely original truths later produced claims that diverged. Hopefully one remained fairly pure.
3. Truth is exclusive and so should truth claims be. There are only a few ways to build a god house but an infinity of ways to build a bad one. Also a God should retain the integrity of his actual message. So if a God exists I expect to find one fairly pure truth and many other faiths that are far less reliable.
4. I find the same core truths in Judaism that are expanded on and amplified in the NT. I find exactly what I expect to find in the bible if God was it's original source.

Oh, and one more thing fron the article in my last post. When he says:
To me, that's very possible. That, again, would show an evolving of beliefs, the Hebrew tribal God "evolving" into the one "true" God. That would, in a way, solve the problem we're having here on this thread. The Hebrews, with their

belief in their tribal God, said that their God ordered the killings. But God has evolved from that. The God we believe in today, the nice one, would never do such a thing.

It is very important to distinguish between what some Hebrews believed from what the Torah says. The Jews constantly mixed foreign ideas with their practices and paid a heavy price for it. However the only verses I have ever seen used to suggest the faith it's self was polytheistic is the command to have no other God's before me. Long before I ever got into history I always took that verse to be from our point of view. We should place nothing before God even if we think other God's exist. For example the bible indicates that whatever we obey becomes our God in a sense. I never took it and never met any teacher who took it as suggesting that additional God's actually existed. Even Genesis seems to correct that view before hand. Redundant God's are not even philosophically coherent.

Some Christians, of course, have a problem. They have to believe in the whole Bible. They have to find a way to justify and make sense of some of the things attributed to God. I, on the other hand, don't. I think people have made up myths and legends, heroes and prophets and have taken the best ideas around and added them into their religion.

That depends on if what they believe about it. I believe the bible was originally given as pure and perfect revelation. I believe and scholarship demonstrates it is at least 95% textually accurate. I believe that every historical claim that can be verified has been many times to the scholars embarrassment. It is even used as secular archeological resource. However interpretations is where the problems come in. I think I am justified in mine but am always open to better interpretations in the future.

For example, since the basic Christian message, what has happened to Christianity? Catholicism evolved, then Protestantism. Outside of Christianity, there was Islam and, more recently, the Baha'i Faith. If there is one truth, why do things keep changing? I think it's because there is a spiritual reality, but none of us really knows exactly what it is. Some forms of Christianity has stripped down and gotten back to the bare bones of what they believe Christianity should be. To me, that is still a type of "evolving." And it's not exclusive to Christianity. All religions have their sects that do that. And they all have their more liberal sects that try to find commonality between all religions. They also all have their offshoot sects that have a new "prophet" with a new purer message. Sorry, but all of it still looks like nobody has it together. All of them are still in a process of evolving or "progressing."

Protestantism was a rejection of Catholic dogma not the Bible. The Church has and should constantly reform it's self. However there is no need to reform the bible and there has been very little attempt to. We constantly fail, the bible rarely does. In fact even biblical critics like Ehrman admit that no textual error exists in core doctrine. Any human lifetime or even humankind's lifetime will never be enough to riddle out all divine truth. I usually put it like this. 90% of Christians believe 90% the same central doctrines. Everything else is commentary. Theology is not only the infinite communicating with the finite but about the most profound and divisive issues in human history. I expect and find division but I also expect and find a unique and extraordinary synthesis within Christianity only truth can explain. Your concerns are valid and have good answers but they are complex and usually not quickly resolved. I would suggest you concentrate your posts more on the most relevant issues to you and I can try and provide more persuasive responses.

I have to go for today but you have a good one.

 

[1robin]

You probably should have read my links about elephants, brain size and capacity. You'd likely know more about this.

We were not talking about things that involve core brain issues. Memory, motor skills, involuntary functions can be relevant with size. Intellectual capacity like abstract thought seems far less so. Many larger brains exist in history, nothing even intellectually in the same ball park exists with us.

 

[1robin]

That's convenient.

It was meant to be, it was also true.

So is that.

You apparently have no idea what elephants are capable of.

I doubt anyone does. I was trying to think how the testing would work. I found it made me laugh too much for the work environment. I have not devoted too much time to this because it is irrelevant. I am talking about intelligence not memory alone. I do not care if an elephant can memorize (what exactly is the issue here, what is it they have to remember so much of), they do not even use tools in any classic sense. They nor any other animal has written a symphony, created a space shuttle, not made it beyond a stick in a hole as a tool and that is rare. Memory apparently is not what makes this obscenely obvious difference.

 

[SkepticThinker]

It was meant to be, it was also true.



I doubt anyone does. I was trying to think how the testing would work. I found it made me laugh too much for the work environment. I have not devoted too much time to this because it is irrelevant. I am talking about intelligence not memory alone. I do not care if an elephant can memorize (what exactly is the issue here, what is it they have to remember so much of), they do not even use tools in any classic sense. They nor any other animal has written a symphony, created a space shuttle, not made it beyond a stick in a hole as a tool and that is rare. Memory apparently is not what makes this obscenely obvious difference.

Well, they can paint pictures. They can remember the exact location of watering holes hundreds of miles apart, years and years later. That's just two things.

Instead of pondering in ignorance, why not read one of the links? They go into all this stuff you're wondering about.

 

[viole]

This is the type of argument I mentioned before. It is a false equality. You at least point out it is not impossible. That does not make it equal with a probable explanation. I also do not rule out a natural explanation entirely. Just that the trend in these type of issues makes God look more necessary than when they began. IOW Darwinian evolution left not a lot for God to explain. However as we learn more the more necessary God seems to be. This is a long post so I will leave it here but I could add volumes to this point.

So, you really think that the cambrian explosion increases the plausibility of God. I can only imagine how it could have happened:

God: let there be life! .... And life was. Apparently it was good (as if God could do something suboptimal)

God (a couple of billion years later): this is boring. Where are all Our nice and complex creatures? Maybe We should have been more precise. Let's try again: let there be complex animals! -> boom (in 20 million years slow motion): the cambrian explosion

God (a few hundred millions years later and getting impatient): where is Adam? All We see are those ugly big lizards eating each other. We could say "let there be man" but that seems now a bit too easy and lazy; after all We have to show some design and tinkering effort. Look at that little rodent hiding from the lizards in those stinking holes. That could be the ancestor of what We have in mind as the pinnacle of Our creation made in Our image. We just have to rid the lizards. Let us pollute the athmosphere with some vulcanos and tilt the orbit of one huge meteor to provide the coup de grace. Etc.

And so man arose from the ashes of the dinos and another non negligible amount of species.

Evolutionary theism in a nutshell

Ciao

- viole

 

[idav]

So, you really think that the cambrian explosion increases the plausibility of God. I can only imagine how it could have happened:

God: let there be life! .... And life was. Apparently it was good (as if God could do something suboptimal)

God (a couple of billion years later): this is boring. Where are all Our nice and complex creatures? Maybe We should have been more precise. Let's try again: let there be complex animals! -> boom (in 20 million years slow motion): the cambrian explosion

God (a few hundred millions years later and getting impatient): where is Adam? All We see are those ugly big lizards eating each other. We could say "let there be man" but that seems now a bit too easy and lazy; after all We have to show some design and tinkering effort. Look at that little rodent hiding from the lizards in those stinking holes. That could be the ancestor of what We have in mind as the pinnacle of Our creation made in Our image. We just have to rid the lizards. Let us pollute the athmosphere with some vulcanos and tilt the orbit of one huge meteor to provide the coup de grace. Etc.

And so man arose from the ashes of the dinos and another non negligible amount of species.

Evolutionary theism in a nutshell

Ciao

- viole

The cambrian explosion is no issue when there have been 5 mass extinction events that we know of. For a creationists it should mean that god did his creation event of "kinds" at least 4 or 5 times. However ee dont find new creations we continue to find gradual progression. Sure maybe out of a billion years, there may have been a couple hundred thousand good years, but mainly bad years which is why evolution takes so long.

 

[viole]

You ever notice how many of your arguments are of the form that some alternative is not impossible?

I would say all of them. For every argument there is a not impossible alternative. For instance, I cannot really exclude that planets are carried around the sun by invisible angels, independently from what Einstein or Newton said.

I am looking for the best explanations. I am not interested in collecting the maximum number of non impossible explanations.

Things that explain everything do not explain anything. Especially if they are not supported by confirming evidence. It could be that all of physics is driven by those invisible angels that manage to harmonize relativity with quantum physics in some inscrutable but effective way.

Wow. That was easy. The holy grail of physics finally found! I doubt, I will get a Nobel prize for that discovery though. Bummer. Those pesky scientists with a materialistic and exclusivist anti-angel agenda

I do not have any certainty but I would grant we came from primates a thousand times before I would grant anyone knows (or probably ever will) that we came from fish.

I wonder why. After all, if you are more ready to accept primates, you should be equally ready to accept that the direct ancestors of primates were not primates and so on. Where is appropriate to stop? Or do you think that God created intermediate primates from scratch instead of going directly to His goal? Why?

I make the assumption here that you understood that I do not mean that fish are our direct ancestors.

For your information: this atheist thinks that young earth creationists who hold that Adam had no ancestors are more intellectually coherent than theists who try to accomodate scientific evidence in some inevitably awkward way. I think both positions are equally absurd, but the formers seem to get into less problems. For starters, they have only one front to fight. If you hit the bottom where you are forced to admit that God did it from scratch at some point, then let Him have done the whole package from scratch. Your Baptist church will approve, probably.

Ciao

- viole

 

[SkepticThinker]

We were not talking about things that involve core brain issues. Memory, motor skills, involuntary functions can be relevant with size. Intellectual capacity like abstract thought seems far less so. Many larger brains exist in history, nothing even intellectually in the same ball park exists with us.

We are learning more and more than intelligence doesn't rely merely on brain size. Other factors like brain structure and organization of neurons and synapses (more specifically in the left prefrontal cortex, left temporal cortex and left parietal cortex) and molecular capacity within synapses (which explains why birds, for example, are quite intelligent despite the fact that their brains are rather small) have been demonstrated to play central roles in intelligence.

Apparently, you can't just look at a brain and determine that it's small so the creature must be stupid.

And as I already pointed out studies indicate that the cognitive processing capabilities of Asian elephants exceed that of any primate species due to the fact that they possess the greatest volume of cerebral cortex of all known land animals. Do you consider paintings good enough to represent abstract thought?