Posted on 09/20/2013 4:29:03 AM PDT by spirited irish
“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).
“And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1)
In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who,
"Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the powers of hell against the churches of Christ."
John identifies antichrists, in this case clergy who serve the devil rather than Christ, sequentially. First, like Bultmann, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Funk, Paul Tillich, and John Shelby Spong, they specifically deny the living, personal Holy Trinity in favor of Gnostic pagan, immanent or Eastern pantheist conceptions. Though God the Father Almighty in three Persons upholds the souls of men and maintains life and creation, His substance is not within nature (space-time dimension) as pantheism maintains, but outside of it. Sinful men live within nature and are burdened by time and mortality; God is not.
Second, the specific denial of the Father logically negates Jesus the Christ, the Word who was in the beginning (John 1), was with God, and is God from the creation of all things (1 John 1). In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus is the Angel who spoke “mouth to mouth” to Moses (Num. 12:6-9; John 9:20) and at sundry times and in many ways “spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all…” (Hebrews 1:1) Jesus the Christ is the incarnate Son of God who is the life and light of men, who by His shed blood on the Cross died for the remission of all sins and bestowed the privilege of adoption on all who put their faith in Him.
Therefore, to deny the Holy Father is to logically deny the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, hence,
“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist . . . and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).
According to Peter (2 Peter 2:1), falling stars will work among the faithful, teaching damnable heresies that deny the Lord, cause the fall of men into unbelief, and bring destruction upon themselves:
“The natural parents of modern unbelief turn out to have been the guardians of belief.” Many thinking people came at last “to realize that it was religion, not science or social change that gave birth to unbelief. Having made God more and more like man---intellectually, morally, emotionally---the shapers of religion made it feasible to abandon God, to believe simply in man.” (James Turner of the University of Michigan in “American Babylon,” Richard John Neuhaus, p. 95)
Falling Stars and Damnable Heresy
Almost thirty years ago, two well-respected social science scholars, William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark found themselves alarmed by what they saw as a rising tide of irrationalism, superstition and occultism---channeling cults, spirit familiars, necromancers, Wiccans, Satanists, Luciferians, goddess worshippers, 'gay' shamans, Hermetic magicians and other occult madness at every level of society, particularly within the most influential--- Hollywood, academia and the highest corridors of political power.
Like many scientists, they were equally concerned by Christian opposition to naturalistic evolution. As is common in the science community, they assumed the cause of these social pathologies was somehow due to fundamentalism, their term for authentic Christian theism as opposed to liberalized Christianity. Yet to their credit, the research they undertook to discover the cause was conducted both scientifically and with great integrity. What they found was so startling it caused them to re-evaluate their attitude toward authentic Christian theism. Their findings led them to say:
"It would be a mistake to conclude that fundamentalists oppose all science (when in reality they but oppose) a single theory (that) directly contradicts the bible. But it would be an equally great mistake to conclude that religious liberals and the irreligious possess superior minds of great rationality, to see them as modern personalities who have no need of the supernatural or any propensity to believe unscientific superstitions. On the contrary...they are much more likely to accept the new superstitions. It is the fundamentalists who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today." ("Superstitions, Old and New," The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. IV, No. 4; summer, 1980)
In more detail they observed that authentic ‘born again’ Christians are far less likely to accept cults and pseudoscientific beliefs while the irreligious and liberalized Christians (i.e., progressive Catholics, Protestant emergent, NAR, word faith, prosperity gospel) are open to unscientific notions. In fact, these two groups are most disposed toward occultism.
As Bainbridge and Stark admitted, evolution directly contradicts the Bible, beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. This means that evolution is the antithesis of the Genesis account. For this reason, discerning Christians refuse to submit to the evolutionary thinking that has swept Western and American society. Nor do they accept the evolutionary theism brought into the whole body of the Church by weak, tepid, indecisive, or apostate clergy.
Over eighty years ago, Rev. C. Leopold Clarke wrote that priests who embrace evolution (evolutionary theists) are apostates from the ‘Truth as it is in Jesus.’ (1 John2:2) Rev. Clarke, a lecturer at a London Bible college, discerned that evolution is the antithesis to the Revelation of God in the Deity of Jesus Christ, thus it is the greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration:
“It is a battering-ram of unbelief---a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow Religion sky-high. The one thing which the human mind demands in its conception of God, is that, being Almighty, He works sovereignly and miraculously---and this is the thing with which Evolution dispenses….Already a tremendous effect, on a wide scale has been produced by the impact of this teaching---an effect which can only be likened to the…collapse of foundations…” (Evolution and the Break-Up of Christendom, Philip Bell, creation.com, Nov. 27, 2012)
The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed ‘mouth to mouth’ by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. But how horrible a travesty of the sacred office of the Christian Ministry to see church leaders more eager to be abreast of the times, than earnestly contending for the Faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). It is high time, said Rev. Clarke, that the Church,
“…. separated herself from the humiliating entanglement attending her desire to be thought up to date…What, after all, have custodians of Divine Revelation to do making terms with speculative Biology, which has….no message of comfort or help to the soul?” (ibid)
The primary tactic employed by priests eager to accommodate themselves and the Church to modern science and evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when we see Genesis, especially the first three chapters, in a non-literal, non-historical context. This is the argument embraced and advanced by mega-church pastor Timothy J. Keller.
With a position paper Keller published with the theistic evolutionary organization Bio Logos he joined the ranks of falling stars (Catholic and Protestant priests) stretching back to the Renaissance. Their slippery-slide into apostasy began when they gave into the temptation to embrace a non-literal, non-historical view of Genesis. (A response to Timothy Keller’s ‘Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople,” Lita Cosner, Sept. 9, 2010, creation.com)
This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this damnable heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of the Origenists. Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics,
“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)
As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40)
In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to reduce the Revelation of God to allegory and myth is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.
Scenarios commonly proposed by modern Origenists posit a cleverly disguised pantheist/immanent nature deity subject to the space-time dimension and forces of evolution. But as noted previously, it is sinful man who carries the burden of time, not God. This is a crucial point, for when evolutionary theists add millions and billions of zeros (time) to God they have transferred their own limitations onto Him. They have ‘limited’ God and made Him over in their own image. This is not only idolatrous but satanic.
Additionally, evolution inverts creation. In place of God’s good creation from which men fell there is an evolutionary escalator starting at the bottom with matter, then progressing upward toward life, then up and through the life and death of millions of evolved creatures that preceded humans by millions of years until at long last an apish humanoid emerges into which a deity that is always in a state of becoming (evolving) places a soul.
Evolution amputates the entire historical precedent from the Gospel and makes Jesus Christ unnecessary as the atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically points out:
“The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus…into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity.” (“Atheism vs. Christianity,” 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)
None of this was lost on Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1985). Huxley was thoroughly familiar with the Bible, thus he understood that if Genesis is not the authoritative Word of God, is not historical and literal despite its’ symbolic and poetic elements, then the entirety of Scripture becomes a collection of fairytales resulting in tragic downward spiraling consequences as the Catholic Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation makes clear in part:
“By denying the historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis, theistic evolutionism has fostered a preoccupation with natural causes almost to the exclusion of supernatural ones. By denying the several supernatural creative acts of God in Genesis, and by downplaying the importance of the supernatural activity of Satan, theistic evolutionists slip into a naturalistic mentality which seeks to explain everything in terms of natural causes. Once this mentality takes hold, it is easy for men to regard the concept of spiritual warfare as a holdover from the days of primitive superstition. Diabolical activity is reduced to material or psychological causes. The devil and his demons come to be seen as irrelevant. Soon ‘hell’ joins the devil and his demons in the category of antiquated concepts. And the theistic evolutionist easily makes the fatal mistake of thinking that he has nothing more to fear from the devil and his angels. According to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome, there is a tremendous increase in diabolical activity and influence in the formerly Christian world. And yet most of the bishops of Europe no longer believe in the existence of evil spirits….To the Fathers of the Church who believed in the truth of Genesis, this would be incredible. But in view of the almost universal acceptance of theistic evolution, it is hardly surprising.” (The Difference it makes: The Importance of the Traditional Doctrine of Creation, Hugh Owen, kolbecenter.org)
Huxley had ‘zero’ respect for modern Origenists and received enormous pleasure from heaping piles of hot coals and burning contempt upon them, thereby exposing their shallow-reasoning, hypocrisy, timidity, fear of non-acceptance, and unfaithfulness. With sarcasm dripping from his words he quipped,
“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the “ten words” were not written by God’s hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?” (Darwin’s Bulldog---Thomas Huxley, Russell Grigg, creation.com, Oct. 14, 2008)
Pouring more contempt on them he asked,
“When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah’s wife, and his sons’ wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of “Wolf” when there is no wolf? If Jonah’s three days’ residence in the whale is not an “admitted reality,” how could it “warrant belief” in the “coming resurrection?” … Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to him?” (ibid)
Concerning Matthew 19:5:
“If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a “type” or “allegory,” what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?” (ibid)
And concerning Cor. 15:21-22:
“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic?” (ibid)
After much thought, C.S. Lewis concluded that evolution is the central, most radical lie at the center of a vast network of lies within which modern Westerners are entangled while Rev. Clarke identifies the central lie as the Gospel of another Spirit. The fiendish aim of this Spirit is to help men lose God, not find Him, and by contradicting the Divine Redeemer, compromising Priests are serving this Spirit and its’ diabolical purposes. To contradict the Divine Redeemer is the very essence of unfaithfulness, and that it should be done while reverence is professed,
“…. is an illustration of the intellectual and moral topsy-turvydom of Modernism…’He whom God hath sent speaketh the Words of God,’ claimed Christ of Himself (John 3:34), and no assumption of error can hold water in the face of that declaration, without blasphemy.” Evolutionary theists are serving the devil, therefore “no considerations of Christian charity, of tolerance, of policy, can exonerate Christian leaders or Churches who fail to condemn and to sever themselves from compromising, cowardly, shilly-shallying priests”---the falling stars who “challenge the Divine Authority of Jesus Christ.” (ibid)
The rebuttals, warnings and counsels of the Fathers against listening to Origenists (and their modern evolutionary counterparts) indicates that the spirit of antichrist operating through modern rationalistic criticism of the Revelation of God is not a heresy unique to our times but was inveighed against by early Church Fathers.
From the scholarly writings of the Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Seraphim Rose, to the incisive analysis, rebuttals and warnings of the Catholic Kolbe Center, creation.com, Creation Research Institute, Rev. Clarke, and many other stalwart defenders of the faith once delivered, all are a clear, compelling call to the whole body of the Church to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles, for as God spoke and Jesus is the Living Word incarnate, it is incumbent upon the faithful to submit their wills to the Divine Will and Authority of God rather than to the damnable heresy proffered by falling stars eager to embrace naturalistic science and the devil's antithesis--- evolution. But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord,
“…you have your choice: choose this day that which pleases you, whom you would rather serve….but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15
Or not. Or both at once while being neither. Any red herring will do.
betty: “all of modern day science is rooted in the insights of classical philosophy. The very foundations of logic and reason and natural law were laid down there.”
Spirited: Note that modern science is based in a two-sided “total view” of reality consisting of material dimension and spiritual dimension. Man created in the spiritual image of the supernatural Holy Creator exemplifies total reality as he consists of matter (body) and soul/spirit (mind, conscience, will).
Modern science however, has been eclipsed by what CS Lewis describes as magic science. Magic science is natural science which is actually a type of monism positing a one-sided view of reality consisting of physical matter. In this one-sided view soul is reduced to genetic matter, spirit to grey matter and abilities of mind to movement of chemicals and firing of neurons.
As Lewis finally realized, keeping God out is the real purpose of natural science and/or materialism. And this necessitates the a priori rejection of the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo:
“...one belief that all true original Darwinians held in common, and that was their rejection of creationism, their rejection of special creation. This was the flag around which they assembled and under which they marched.... The conviction that the diversity of the natural world was the result of natural processes and not the work of God was the idea that brought all the so-called Darwinians together in spite of their disagreements on other of Darwin’s theories. (One Long Argument,1991, p. 99, Ernst Mayr (1904–2005), Professor of Zoology at Harvard University)
“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” (”Billions and Billions of Demons,” Richard Lewontin (b. 1929), PhD Zoology, Alexander Agassiz Research Professor at Harvard University)
If evolutionism was a gas-powered generator, then spontaneous generation would be its indispensable fuel, admits Ernst Haeckel, pantheist mystic, fraud and ardent defender of Darwinism. In the following quote, Haeckel confesses that spontaneous generation is a metaphysical conception. Furthermore, this metaphysical doctrine is the essential replacement for creation ex nihilo — the miracle of creation in other words:
“...spontaneous generation appears to us as a simple and necessary event in the process of the development of the earth. We admit that this process, as long as it is not directly observed or repeated by experiment, remains a pure hypothesis. But I must again say that this hypothesis is indispensable for the consistent completion of the non-miraculous history of creation, that it has absolutely nothing forced or miraculous about it, and that certainly it can never be positively refuted. It must also be taken into consideration that the process of spontaneous generation, even if it still took place daily and hourly, would in any case be exceedingly difficult to observe and establish with absolute certainty as such. This is also the opinion of Naegeli, the ingenious investigator, and he, in his admirable chapter on Spontaneous Generation, maintains that “to deny spontaneous generation is to proclaim miracles.” (The History of Creation v.1, 1892, p. 422)
So as it turns out, spontaneous generation is yet another “just-so” story. However, the importance of this particular fairytale is that it is the irreplaceable metaphysical foundation of the larger myth of Darwinism. Without spontaneous generation, Darwinism...indeed all evolutionism...falls apart, leaving only the miraculous and much maligned Genesis account of creation ex nihilo.
Furthermore, the respected scientist Louis Pasteur definitively disproved spontaneous generation just three years after Darwin published his book “On the Origin of Species:”
“... Darwin’s celebrated tome On the Origin of Species, which had been published just three years before Pasteur’s experiments, sought to discredit the need for God to create the species by showing how one species can transmute into another. But Darwin’s account left open the problem of how the first living thing came to exist. Unless life had always existed, at least one species — the first — cannot have come to exist by transmutation from another species, only by transmutation from nonliving matter. Darwin himself wrote, some years later: ‘I have met with no evidence that seems in the least trustworthy, in favour of so-called Spontaneous Generation.’ Yet, in the absence of a miracle, life could have originated only by some sort of spontaneous generation. Darwin’s theory of evolution and Pasteur’s theory that only life begets life cannot both have been completely right.” (The Fifth Miracle, 1999, p. 83, Paul Davies (b. 1946), Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science)
Colin Patterson writes that after studying evolutionary theory for many years, he finally “woke up and realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way.” Patterson goes on to say:
“One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, or let’s call it a non- evolutionary view, was last year I had a sudden realization for over twenty years I had thought I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up and something had happened in the night and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That’s quite a shock to learn that one can be so misled so long. Either there was something wrong with me or there was something wrong with evolutionary theory. Naturally, I know there is nothing wrong with me, so for the last few weeks I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people....Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, ‘I do know one thing — it ought not to be taught in high school.’” (Evolutionism and Creationism” November 5, 1981, p. 2, Colin Patterson (1933–1998), Senior Paleontologist at British Museum of Natural History)
When C.S. Lewis pointedly observed that the entire edifice of the so-called “natural science” of Darwinism has but one purpose, to keep the supernatural Creator out, he was merely confirming admissions made by Lewontin and many other Darwinists. (The Oxford Socratic Club, 1944)
In conclusion, Darwinism is a deception perpetrated by self-worshipping swindlers who have been “pulling the wool” over the eyes of the uninitiated masses, to use Lewontins’ own words.
Creationism seems to be based on a "single sided" view, that Man is created in God's image, both spiritually and physically.
Quit whining. You will be named for what you are. Everyone knows the drill. No one is allowed to make societal assertions under the color of “discussing” Science, and get away with it. Our FRiend, boop has more than once pointed out (as has Alamo-Girl) that any theory of evolution that cannot explain the origin of life (not to mention mind or consciousness) cannot explain what happens once it (life) has “emerged,” from presumably lifeless matter. Darwin never heard of DNA, but more recent scientists understand that DNA is “information-intensive.”
“So,” Miz boop quite reasonably inquires, whence comes the information matter receives (how does “dumb matter” become “smart matter”), so that it “knows how to ‘evolve’ DNA?”
You seem unable (or unwilling) to address these issues. Rather then ducking & dodging and emitting great gaseous discharges, can you simply answer that basic question. If not; why not?
Or not. Or both at once while being neither. Any red herring will do.
Red Herring works... when pickled... sour cream Yuk...
Creationism seems to be based on a “single sided” view, that Man is created in God’s image, both spiritually and physically.
Creationism seems to have several variations.. the one you quoted being one of them..
The only ones that seem to know how man was actually MADE are evolutionists..
Creationists dont broach that subject.. deferring that GOD did what God did.. He did a God thing..
BUT the EVOS postulate where they think they know where humans came from.. FOR SURE..
Even tho they have a few variations to be sure..
Seems whether your Creationist or Evo... you’re pretty much a smart alec..
Truth is nobody actually KNOWS where man came from.. nobody..
And practically will NEVER KNOW...
Until he leaves this mortal coil and God sets his ass down and learns him a few things.. after a few Godly SLAPPPS to shut the idiot up for a minute.. Call it re-education..
If they knew, it wouldn't be a theory.
Creationists dont broach that subject.. deferring that GOD did what God did.. He did a God thing..
They seem absolutely certain he did not do it by a process of evolution.
If you can get someone to follow it.
They seem absolutely certain he did not do it by a process of evolution.
Not only that they are sure it’s a him...
For the life of me I cannot compute why God would have gender...
But dealing with humans especially primitive humans I guess you need a corporeal I.D...
That's probably another heresy that'll have to be dealt with.
That’s probably another heresy that’ll have to be dealt with.
Could be God has no hair or even a body... or needs one..
Human bodys demand a boatload of time and effort..
You’re almost a slave to the sucker.. i.e. the maintenance...
Making gender obsolete would be a blessing.. i.e. after life..
No (physical) body would eliminate need for water, food, air, pain, grooming, gender, money, and a host of other things that are vectors for human corruption..
What if death was an illusion?... even an allusion..
The human need for corporeal existence.. is short sighted..
God I want a heretic badge on my Heretic Scout uniform..
I’ve earned it..
Heresy is religion, done wrong (according to someone else). I guess you'll need to get that religious bone in your personality first.
First, as I've pointed out here many times: there is no confirmed scientific theory of abiogenesis.
There are only various hypotheses, which mean: guesswork, that's it.
Indeed, we might even say there are at least as many hypotheses as there are scientists working on the subject, if not more, since one scientist can easily hold several hypotheses as equally possibly valid, pending some definitive falsifying test.
Second, and more importantly, abiogenesis has nothing -- zero, zip, nada -- to do with the emergence of conscious life in human beings.
That's because, among other reasons, the geological record suggests to us that the emergence of life on Earth and human consciousness are events separated in time by something like three billion years.
Third, the very word "life" is a matter of definitions.
For example, used very informally, a navy ship is said to be "brought to life" when manned by its crew.
Used scientifically, it is still a matter of sometimes disputed definitions, for examples:
Point is: as with the word "species", dividing lines between what is just a package of chemicals and what is actually living are matters of scientific study and debate.
So, there is no doubt whatever that organic chemicals can and do change, becoming more complex under certain natural circumstances.
Of course, it's not been demonstrated in labs that these complex organic chemicals necessarily become more & more life-like over billions of years.
But the geological record strongly suggests that's exactly what did happen.
spirited irish: "Abiogenesis is such an embarrassment that Francis Crick and other natural scientists (even Dawkins) now favor panspermia theories."
Just like those other unconfirmed hypotheses, panspermia lacks any seriously confirming evidence.
So it's just guesswork, and therefore one scientist's opinions are as valid -- or invalid -- as anybody else's.
Yes, there is evidence of organic chemicals in comets, and suggestions of possible "life" found in rocks from Mars.
But the chemicals are not life itself and the "life" in Mars-rocks is not confirmed.
So it's guesswork.
That's why opinions of various scientific luminaries on the matter are interesting, but ultimately irrelevant.
All of this was already pointed out now several times on this thread, but you never actually learn anything, do you?
spirited irish: "These fanciful theories are remarkably similar to ancient pagan cosmogonies holding that the gods came from the heavens and created life on earth."
Or Genesis, for that matter, none of which is of much scientific interest.
"All" is a very big word, mis-applied in this case.
I would suggest that among the most interesting biological studies these days are ever-more-sophisticated DNA analyses.
These do require inputs from mathematics and physics (or at least chemistry), but then, much of the most interesting scientific work has long been inter-disciplinary.
Of course, every new discovery over the past 150 years (since Darwin) has improved our understandings of various evolutionary factors.
But none (that I know of) has challenged Darwin's basic theory of speciation through 1) descent with modifications and 2) natural selection.
FRiend, there's a big difference between sharing information, including opinions, and launching personal assaults on someone we disagree with.
Posters like tacticalogic eschew the latter.
I make a point to not attack anybody who's not attacked me, and to stop returning when those attacks cease.
Others on this thread are not as self-disciplined.
Thanks for the links.
I've posted here several times that I believe the entire Universe is intelligently conceived, planned, designed, created and managed by God, from the Beginning.
Precisely how God accomplished (and accomplishes) all His miracles, we don't know, but science has suggested a very small number of theories.
By that I mean: the ratio of what we think we know versus what we don't know is still similar to that which Sir Isaac Newton reported 300 years ago when he said:
Once you get your Heretic badge, you can be compared to avowed atheists like Lewontin, so you should automatically qualify for your Apostasy badge at the same time.
If you can control the terms you can control the debate, and make "personal assault" whatever you say it is.
To the degree that is true (and no further) I agree with both Lewis and spirited irish.
I would not, however, use it as an excuse to descend from metaphysics to metaphor and thus condemn everything in natural-science.
spirited irish: "As Lewis finally realized, keeping God out is the real purpose of natural science and/or materialism."
If that is seriously true (which I seriously doubt), then it means CS Lewis wasn't even half as smart as he's usually given credit for.
I say that because excluding super-natural causes of natural processes is the first a priori assumption of natural-science.
It's the basic feature of what natural-science has been, is and always will be all about.
If Lewis ever failed to comprehend that, then he was not the genius he's supposed to have been.
That's why I don't believe you, spirited irish.
I think more highly of Lewis than you give him credit for.
Therefore, the real issue, the true concern of people like CS Lewis -- and all of us here on FRee Republic -- is not "how can we refute or deny natural-science", but rather: "how can we restore credibility, understanding and belief in the non-natural realm, specifically that described best in the Bible?"
spirited irish: "So as it turns out, spontaneous generation is yet another “just-so” story.
However, the importance of this particular fairytale is that it is the irreplaceable metaphysical foundation of the larger myth of Darwinism.
Without spontaneous generation, Darwinism...indeed all evolutionism...falls apart, leaving only the miraculous and much maligned Genesis account of creation ex nihilo."
First, let's repeat the obvious: your word "Darwinism" is an anti-evolutionist's fantasy, practiced by nobody in reality.
Second, "abiogenesis" is a scientific hypothesis -- actually a long list of various hypotheses -- not confirmed, which means that science itself has never made truth-claims regarding any particular abiogenic process.
So these are not matters on which science has any firm answers.
They also are not necessarily relevant to the validity of Darwin's basic idea of speciation through 1) descent with modifications and 2) natural selection.
spirited irish: "In conclusion, Darwinism is a deception perpetrated by self-worshipping swindlers who have been “pulling the wool” over the eyes of the uninitiated masses, to use Lewontins’ own words."
In conclusion: the word "Darwinism" is anti-evolutionists' fantasy, unrelated to real science.
In real science, Darwin's basic idea of speciation through 1) descent with modifications and 2) natural selection has been confirmed so often and so convincingly most scientists consider it not even "theory", but observed fact.
Any such claims are as false as saying, for example: if we don't understand the physics of star formation, then we can't explain the revolution of planets around them.
In fact, they are two separate scientific subjects.
YHAOS: " 'So,' Miz boop quite reasonably inquires, whence comes the information matter receives (how does 'dumb matter' become 'smart matter'), so that it 'knows how to ‘evolve’ DNA?'
"You seem unable (or unwilling) to address these issues.
Rather then ducking & dodging and emitting great gaseous discharges, can you simply answer that basic question.
If not; why not?"
Science itself cannot answer every question, and goes to great pains to distinguish between answers science considers valid -- theories -- and those which are simply educated guesswork -- hypotheses.
Evolution of species is a valid theory confirmed by innumerable observations (facts), predictions and supporting ideas from other branches of science (i.e., astronomy, geology, etc.).
Abiogenesis of life is an unconfirmed hypothesis -- or rather, a long list of possible ideas -- about how life might have originated on Earth.
Panspermia is another hypothesis suggesting life first arrived here from "somewhere else".
None of these ideas are confirmed, none are yet ready for "prime time".
All of it is just interesting speculation, so far.
So, FRiend YHAOS, your demand that all is invalid until everything is proved, should allow you personally all the room you need to believe whatsoever you wish to believe.
But it's irrelevant to the scientific enterprise of: natural explanations for natural processes.
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