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Posted on 07/09/2003 12:08:32 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Meanwhile I really wish you'd answer my question, which I posed to you in all seriousness, with no macho debate points sought. It's just you, me, and a few other bleary-eyed regulars here anyway, sequestered in the Smokey Backroom. I think you creationists have a fundamental internal contradiction you're not dealing with when it comes to the flagellum vs. The Fall. Do you agree there's a contradiction there, or not? If not, how do you resolve it?
God gives being to each thing without stint or reservation. You can say "my puppy is good," and "that cougar ripping the living entrails out of my puppy is bad," but the cougar is too busy being a cougar to heed your commentary.
I'm inclined to believe the goodness of God is in the freedom with which he gives being to the world and the things in it (which being is not just a quality imparted, but is God's own being expressed in physical creation). I don't think He "controls" everything in a strict, mechanical sense. Instead God allows each thing to be fully itself. Even though it's being is entirely a gift from God, there are no strings attached. I suspect that God, in creation, is to some extent exploring the possibilities of physical being. If that experience is limited only to joy and pleasure, excluding pain and suffering, then God's self exploration is limited. God creates and sustains all things, and experiences all things.
I don't think, from within the web of the world, there is any telling what balance of joy and suffering, "good" and "bad," represents a "proper" balance. There may be many worlds that God has created (that exist as manifestations of physical being within God). It may be the case that in some of those worlds pleasure predominates, and in others pain does. Whether we are in one of the "better" ones or the "worse" ones there is no telling. In yet other worlds there may be no pleasure or pain at all, but only dances of particles or plasmas.
Now I'm not suggesting that God is amoral, I'm not even suggesting that God's morality is "beyond" our own in that it is of a completely alien kind. I suspect, for instance, that the "love" we feel and experience is at least in some sense "like" the love God feels. I believe God loves the world, but that does not mean the world must be absent of pain and privation, just as a parent can love a child that is horribly crippled, or even one with a twisted personality or character.
I also think that Gods wants the world to be the best world it can be, just as we wish for our own children to be the best people they can be, whatever their handicaps. I'm not preaching a fatalism that says we should accept evil and not try and mitigate or eliminate it. I believe very much the opposite. At the same time, though, I think we can become closer to God by loving the world in ALL it's aspects (even those we choose and strive to change) in the sense that we recognize them all as manifestations of God's freely given being.
Be that as it may, for whatever reason, you are evading a pertinent, interesting and well framed question from jennyp. I'm certainly interested in your response, if you'd reconsider engaging the question.
Non Sequitur.
Isa 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these [things].
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Your insults are worlds better than your tantrums.
There are grownup conversations in progress, and the noise level is too low. Your little games won't work.
Well, it was accepted that there was "a relationship", based on sequence comparisons... ;)
To: AndrewC
Yes. So you demonstrated that they are very alike. Did anthrax come from Aquifex aeolicus or is it the other way? Or was the gene for MOTA transferred from a flagellar bug to Anthrax?
Anthrax and A. aeolicus have very similar proton transport systems, in the form of motA, ExdB/ExbB, and TolQ/TolR. In the absence of more information, we cannot say what the exact relationship bewteen the two is, but we cannot rule out the hypothesis that they are related somehow. What did you expect?
1,153 posted on 12/06/2002 1:01 PM EST by general_re
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1151 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]but we cannot rule out the hypothesis that they are related somehow. What did you expect?
I would make a stronger statement, there is a relationship, presently unknown. We can rule out the no relationship verdict.
I did not expect anything until the numbers were shown. If the expectation were 1.0, I would not make my first two statements.
1,159 posted on 12/06/2002 1:53 PM EST by AndrewC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1153 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]To: AndrewC
Actually, I meant "what did you expect me to say?" rather than "what did you expect to find?" ;)
I would make a stronger statement, there is a relationship, presently unknown. We can rule out the no relationship verdict.
I would agree. As I said before, we can try to make some educated guesses about the relationship by using the degrees of difference to try and place them in a relative taxonomy. That's not conclusive, of course, but it can point us in a productive direction. And we can compare our results to morphological/cladistic taxonomies, to give us another factor in deciding the relationship.
And eventually, we can accumulate enough evidence to begin to lean in one direction or another about what the relationship is - do they share common ancestry? Did one of them just scarf up the genes from the other? Maybe they both obtained the same gene from a third source?
We'll make a materialist out of you yet.... ;)
1,160 posted on 12/06/2002 2:48 PM EST by general_re
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1159 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]To: general_re
I would agree. As I said before, we can try to make some educated guesses about the relationship by using the degrees of difference to try and place them in a relative taxonomy. That's not conclusive, of course, but it can point us in a productive direction. And we can compare our results to morphological/cladistic taxonomies, to give us another factor in deciding the relationship.
Yes, some judgement can be made by taking other information into consideration. COGS has little cladistic trees for each COG.
(snip)
This must be viewed in light of the photosynthesis experience.
As for the materialism, been there, done that.
Mat 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
1,161 posted on 12/06/2002 3:37 PM EST by AndrewC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1160 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]Materialism explains some things very well, and other things not at all. The trick is knowing which is which...
1,163 posted on 12/06/2002 4:07 PM EST by general_re
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1161 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]The trick is knowing which is which...
That is the question.
1,164 posted on 12/06/2002 4:19 PM EST by AndrewC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1163 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
LOL! He's trying his usual tactics, but he's got nothing to work with, which makes it kinda amusing (in a slightly pathetic way, like a has-been comic recycling a tired old vegas routine on Letterman).
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