'Mommy, why are atheists dim-witted?'

Jerusalem Post ^ | 12-18-06 | JONATHAN ROSENBLUM

[word_warrior_bob]

"If there is a God I am prepared to be judged upon my deeds"
That's why you don't stand a chance.
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"If there is a God he will make all knowledge available to me."
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He did, the Bible, and you chose to ignore it. You must be an apprentice word warrior.
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Why do so many devout "Christians" insist on sneaking in snide, personal remarks in your posts?? Is there something in the Holy Water?

How do I know it's the Bible? How do I know it's not the Koran, or the Torah, or Buddhism? Why is the way you worship superior? Do you believe God actually spoke to mortals? Every word of the Bible was written by MEN. MEN always created gods from the beginning of recorded history, men have claimed to be gods from the beginning of recorded history, men have claimed to talk to god from the beginning of recorded history.

I don't stand a chance? You know what's going to happen when we die, please tell me.

Has anyone been there and back, no.

Does anyone have any evidence of any form of the supernatural? no

We'll look back in a thousand years at this point in history the same way we look at the Greeks and all of their gods.

[Moolah]

God gave atheists the intelligence to know no one can prove his existence.

Lots of hypocrites on this thread I've noticed.

[editor-surveyor]

You obviously have the power to shut out the Holy Spirit, but at your own peril. No one here is wishing that you do so.

[word_warrior_bob]

Then please answer my questions.

[Moolah]

Your questions can't be answered, you either have blind faith in whatever religion or you don't.

[hosepipe]

[ "I don't know about Adam and Eve that story could be a metaphor or not" / If it is, we're in deeper do-do than I'm ready for. If there was no first Adam, then the second Adam is not our kinsman redeemer, and we will have to pay for our own sins ]

Good response... Thats the spirit.. So you say/imply that Jesus might not be answer to a metaphor..

I say that Jesus IS an answer to a metaphor.. Did Jesus exist before he was born thru Mary?.. Yes, before Mary and after the Crucifixion too.. The Son of God existed before Mary and after her too.. Else we are in trouble NOW..

Adam is the metaphor to the reality(Jesus) or reciprocal to the metaphor.. Psalm 43 says that God knew us too before we were born.. yes, US.. How can that be?.. This body(our body) might be metaphorical to whom we really are in the same way.. How bout that?.. Are we spirit or flesh?..

Anyway quite a subject here.. larger issues than I originally thought.. much larger..
Will consider this concept deeper..
You know Spiritual(Born Again) Physics/Geometry might be a legit disipline... All of Genesis Ch 1-3 might be metaphorical.. would answer several problems with "Origins"..

Is GOD Cool or WHAT?...

[hosepipe]

[ And why should one abandon all logic, throw out the entire fields of biology, geology and astronomy in order to conform to a 6,000 year old collection of books written by various men in the Bronze Age, who didn't even know that the Earth was a sphere, and later translated numerous times? ]

A sphere?..
Quantum mechanics don't even know what matter is yet..
Or what dark matter/energy is.. What appears to be a sphere might be something else.. 6000 years or 15 billion years.. QM shows that time itself might be a mental construct of humans.. Timeing however is quite real and trumps time..

6000 years could be an illusion..

[RunningWolf]

Thanks for the thought and the work of bringing the examples and graphic here. Your post here does not make the case you think it does, but reveals several things instead.

For one it shows that you view everything thing thru the filter of the evolutionist mindset. If that is so I ask you to start over and take a critical look at each piece of data and the theory/s behind the conclusions on that piece of data.

For example, the perception of the bony structures in the whales anatomy that give his flippers strength and rigidity as 'feet'

Now as to the nylon eating bacteria being a surprise and proof of evolution. IMO once again it shows that you are not able to look outside of the evolutionist paradigm. There may be other answers to the questions than what the evolutionist offers. We can all be surprised and astounded in this world, and many times we all share the the surprise equally

The use of the word 'synthetic' should always have a caveat added and that word is 'yet' Just because nylon and other 'man-made' products have not been seen in nature does not mean they are not already there at places we have not detected or in forms we have not detected or in compounds that are similar but better 'designed' LOL.

In any event microbial life has surprised the scientist on many levels from the environs they are found in to the foods and metabolic process they employ to process their food.

At a bimolecular level, nylon being a product of oil may look like and break down into food just like oil itself or various components in the oil that the micro-bio life feeds upon.

Science was also surprised that plastics nylon etc would break down from ultraviolet light too.

I will end with this. I ask you to start over and take a critical look at each piece of data and the theory/s behind the conclusions on that piece of data. I say to you that if you do this the 'reality of evo' will dissipate like the mirage that it is.

Wolf

[LiberalGunNut]

"3) If the parts of it which talk of a 6,000 year old Earth are part of the divinely inspired part, were those parts meant to be taken literally, or to illustrate vital moral truths in a way that even the Bronze Age Wal-Mart crowd would get?"

I can get behind this idea 100%. These stories were written as parables teaching people to live right, but divinely inspired? Why are the Hebrew stories divinely inspired as opposed to the hundreds of other religions? Why should I, an agnostic, believe the Bible over the hundreds of other religions?

[LiberalGunNut]

It doesn't contradict. if I breed a large cow with a large strong bull, I will probably get a large strong calf. Nowadays we even have genetic engineering.

If i see an unwanted mutation in a bull, I can choose not to breed that bull.

I am guiding the process carefully to get a product I will be satisfied with. In nature there are a thousand different variables that man has no control over, rendering the process unpredictable.

[LiberalGunNut]

(6000 years could be an illusion..)

I'm officially lost.

But moving on...

You still haven't stated a reason as to why the Hebrew creation story is better than the thousands of others.

[LiberalGunNut]

"For example, the perception of the bony structures in the whales anatomy that give his flippers strength and rigidity as 'feet'"

Look at the feet on the back end of the whale. Those ARE clearly feet.

If we were "intelligently designed" then:

Why do we have a pancreas?

Why do we have an appendix?

Why does the Octopus have a far superior eye?

Why do we have wisdom teeth?

Our design is remarkably inefficient. If I were to design a something, why would I add useless parts? Why are we designed so badly?

"The use of the word 'synthetic' should always have a caveat added and that word is 'yet' Just because nylon and other 'man-made' products have not been seen in nature does not mean they are not already there at places we have not detected or in forms we have not detected or in compounds that are similar but better 'designed' LOL."

So now you won't even accept that nylon wasn't around before 1935? You need to take basic chemistry.

By your reasoning humans should be able to digest hydrochloric acid. (we don't have a problem with hydrogen in water!)

[cookcounty]

"Sorry, but the Theory of Evolution does not concern itself with how life got here ."

Then how come it keeps showing up under the chapter "Evolution" in the kids textbooks? Year after year after year?

"Science" may be self-correcting. "Evolutionary Scientists" clearly, are not.

[cookcounty]

The very lame athiest "Argument from Imperfection":

"If I were to design a something, why would I add useless parts? Why are we designed so badly?"

I'm not sure how some "Creation-God" believers would answer this, I can only speak for myself. But are you aware that in Christian theology, the physical world is not regarded as being in a state of perfection, but rather existing in a state of significant corruption and degradation? This concept is very rudimentary Christian theology and long pre-dates Darwin and is not, therefore some anti-Darwinian "dodge."

We don't know why we have an appendix, it's very possible that at one time it provided some purpose or enhancement. It's demise and apparent vestigal condition says absolutely nothing about original intent or design.

Historic Christian theology explicitly endorses the idea of loss of function in the biological world. It presents no impediment to Christian belief, indeed, its evidences substantiate, or at least harmonize with Christian theology. --and this is a very ancient view.

[flevit]

see what happens when you start from false assumed premises

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15228837&dopt=Abstract

[tacticalogic]

What you're calling "evangelism" is just mean-spirited religious bigotry.

[flevit]

http://www.mamashealth.com/organs/pancreas.asp

insulin, very important, now the fact that its not the only organ that produces insulin would tend to lend to wisdom as well...back up systems in a design very wise indeed....

anyway LGN, any time you want to use your intelligence come up with a better design than they eye, on a bird, fish, jellyfish feel free...or do you suggest that you are no match compared to 'complete lack of intelligence' when it comes to creativity?

BTW cook, well said on the corruption/decay.

[grey_whiskers]

I am guiding the process carefully to get a product I will be satisfied with. In nature there are a thousand different variables that man has no control over, rendering the process unpredictable.

Fair 'nuff, that's what I had *hoped* you meant.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Why should I, an agnostic, believe the Bible over the hundreds of other religions?

The answer is too unwieldy for a brief answer, will have to wait...

In brief, you are countering Pascal's wager with a counter-dilemma of higher multiplicity.

And for the nonce, illustrating *why* the flying spaghetti monster is so appealing (or appalling) depending on one's views :-)

Cheers!

[betty boop]

You still haven't stated a reason as to why the Hebrew creation story is better than the thousands of others.

May I venture to answer this question LiberalGunNut?

The Hebrew creation story corresponds amazingly well with the big bang/inflationary model of the origin of the universe, which is increasingly "mainstream" in physics. The Christian Gospel of Saint John is a further elaboration on the same theme.

The 2006 Nobel prize for physics was awarded to John Mather and George Smoot, of the cosmic background explorer (COBE) satellite program launched by NASA in 1989, for their work on cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped pinpoint the age of the universe [IOW, the universe had a “beginning”] and lent additional support to the big bang/inflationary model of the universe.

This seems to be a case where Christian theology and physical science are actually coming together. FWIW

It may well be the case that some physical cosmologists would prefer to have an "eternal universe model" of some sort, so to obviate the necessity of a beginning in space and time. This would track pretty well with Buddhist ideas.

But the evidence we have increasingly suggests that the universe did have a beginning, roughly 13 billion years ago. And it seems pretty sensible to recognize that it didn't create itself, or space and time either.