Posted on 06/17/2002 3:10:50 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Look in the mirror. You're the one damning yourself to hell--He's giving you the opportunity to escape.
If you as a parent did that to your kids, you'd be one creepy guy. Someone who would condemn another to eternal hell fires for such trivialities is not a god of "love" but a god of "hate." A really sick and twisted deity.
The only reason religions come up with vengeful gods is to scare the h*ll out of people who might otherwise start to think for themselves.
What a nightmare world you must live in to accept such a petty god.
No, not at all. A loving God, who wishes and hopes for every man and woman to embrace ultimate good, is forced to reject those who have rejected forcefully and unrepentantly such an invitation. Unrepentant murderers of men, women and children, unrepentant child molesters, unrepentant ruiners of peoples' lives (i.e., evil people) get thrown into eternal fire not because God has forced them to go. Rather, it is because they have put themselves there of their own free will. God (for Christians and Jews, anyway), wants very badly not to have people reject total goodness, and offers any person who has committed atrocious acts a path back to goodness (through forgiveness and redemption). Those who go to hell have turned their back on goodness. That is not God's doing.
Exactly. They are two different sets of arguments.
Let's see, who to believe, who to believe? A guy who's spent his entire adult life studying and testing the underlying premises of evolution in a scientific manner, or you, who probably had just enough biology courses to fulfill your degree obligations? Tough call ...
I believe God created evolution to serve His ends. That means the absolute hard core on both sides despise me (I have been accused of "theological Satanism" by one creationist, and a hard-core evolutionist likened me to a bone-in-the-nostril bushman who'd been taught how to wear a suit. IIRC, both of these folks are "No current Freeper by that name."
The development of life on Earth falls squarely into that category.
As for the other topics, I've expounded upon them at length in these threads before, and I don't have the time to reproduce them here. I'll give the short answers:
"Before the Big Bang": geometrically, there is no "before the Big Bang", for the same reason there is no "south of the South Pole".
Quantum Mechanics: it is logically impossible to describe QM in terms of quotidian phenomena like particles and waves, because quantum objects are more fundamental than the quotidian phenomena. Those phenomena are made up of quantum objects. You cannot describe the more fundamental in terms of the less fundamental; this is basic philosophy.
Extra dimensions: these are experimentally testable. Most of my research in physics over the last two years has been to design a machine that can perform these tests.
Mathematics: I agree with you. As a deist, I believe in "God the Geometer". God is the sum of all possible mathematical Truth. However, I have never seen any scientist attempt to make an argument against this (except in defense of a different religious faith).
Any source of knowledge that predicts a real world outcome is testable by "science." For instance, if prayers can change outcomes, that power can be statistically determined.
From what I can tell of all scientific studies, if God is involved with the day to day workings of the universe -- his fingerprint is indistinquishable from that of random events that exist within the range normally ascribed to nature.
So your assertion that there are alternate routes to knowledge about the real world is questionable -- since all testable routes end up having materialistic explanations.
But I'll ask, do you have an example of an alternate route to knowledge that came to us through intuition or divine revelation and not through scientific discovery?
I thought this prophesy was directed at the coming evolutionary assault, but what do I know? I have never claimed to be very wise.
It is best if you can use both mind and faith. It is bad to choose one over the other as a means to define all there is.
In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.
The above is false. The fossil record, and in particular the Cambrian explosion, disproves evolution. That 90%of the phyla ever known should appear within a mere 5 million years without trace of any descent from any previously known species is a hammer blow to evolution. That no new phyla have appeared in the last 600 million years is another hammer blow to evolution. One also must take into account the numerous scientists who have denied that gradual evolution takes place due to the tremendous gaps in the fossil record still existent after 150 years of digging including evo heros Gould and Eldredge.
It is not really science per se that fundies fear -- it is that science is diverging from literal interpretation of the Bible. It is a "literalist" issue from start to finish.
If the Bible isn't literal in toto, then where is it literal and where is it allegorical? Can you imagine the mental panic of those who just lost the safety of their certainty???
Because the theory of evolution actually says that only failures evolve. Why would a successful fish crawl up onto land? Why would a successful monkey leave the trees that make up his home? The failures are driven out of their eco-systems and forced to adapt to new ones.
We are thus the product of millions of years of failure--not success.
By rejecting reason? Morally impossible.
A more likely scenario is that, if I reject science for faith, and the two of us stand together in judgment before God, you may (although I can't promise it) be admitted to heaven for having stuck to your principles, but I will certainly be cast into hell for having violated mine.
Evolution necessarly has to debunk Biblical literalist interpretations. That's just unavoidable. They are in conflict. However, nothing in science can disprove the existance of a God.
You are quite correct. Scientific American is totally prostituting itself by publishing such drivel. It is also proof of the desperation of evolutionists when, as in the Clinton WH, they need to destroy the credibility of their most credible institutions in order to try to stem the tide of truth arrayed against it.
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