Posted on 03/19/2010 4:56:11 PM PDT by chessplayer
I am deeply interested in reality; in fact, that’s the only thing that interests me. I never read novels, watch movies, have no interest in fiction, games, have no TV. Reality is all that interests me. You think “science” is the only way to know reality.
And I say you’re wrong. Whether transcendant reality beyond the confines of this universe, or temporaly reality. Science is a flickering penlight, that’s all.
You may well be interested in the fantasies about reincarnation that you THINK are reality. That is not reality.
You may well be interested in things “beyond” and “above” actual reality.
But the best way of gaining reliable and useful information about physical reality is science.
Nothing else even comes close.
Science is a searching floodlight compared to the dull fading sparks of theological musings about the afterlife in terms of gaining ACTUAL information that is of use in the ACTUAL world.
I would have to disagree with you right there, spunkets. And thus with your following conclusion.
I do not have "faith" because of something I've read, or because someone told me what to "believe" — and I, credulous fool that I am, simply believed it, without doing any work on my part. Duh!!!
My faith was acquired "the hard way" — by experience, by meditating on the world and its contents, including man and especially including me, and how it all fits together. In suffering and joyfulness. In good times and bad, over the course of some seven decades (I'll be 62 in May). Gradually, increasingly with the passage of time, by opening my soul to the illumination of the Holy Spirit; by trusting in Jesus Christ.
Along the way, I have found the Holy Scriptures to have been an inerrant guide to making sense of the world in which I live. I have discovered no finding in natural science that has ever contradicted anything in the Bible. These two "revelations" — the Book of Holy Scripture and the Book of Nature — correspond and work together astonishingly well.
And finally, I have faith because the Presence of God has been directly revealed to me on several occasions in my life, mainly at critical times when I've sensed myself to be in real imminent danger — in most cases physical danger, but on one occasion spiritual. (The latter was actually the most frightening.) I believe in angels, for I have actually met a couple of them.... I could go on, but at a certain point, such matters become very personal.
God got me through these ordeals (in most cases, without me even asking for His help). So of course I trust Him! He has already "saved me from myself" so many times by now, that I have no doubt that He'll continue to be my Savior. And Judge. Now and forever.
If God did not exist, neither would the world. For His Logos is the beginning, end, and guide to everything in-between in the natural world — which points to the world to come.
FWIW.
In short, Christians have reasons for being Christians: We're not just dumb, passive ventriloquist dummies!
That is merely your opinion. You think that natural sciences - that which can be seen under a microscope, or through a telescope, or discerned through mechanical devices invented by human beings, and understood via imperfect human intelligence and reason, is the only way to know truth.
I disagree entirely.
There is no point of reference that we agree upon, so further discussion is useless.
No other method has even come close.
Speculating about reincarnation doesn't gain one any useful or reliable information about the physical world, but it has the advantage that there is no actual knowledge needed to pontificate about the subject and nobody can ever prove you are right or wrong.
There must be some comfort in that.
Science, on the other hand, is difficult to know and understand and to keep up with all the accumulating knowledge. Far better for some to ignore it and feel satisfied that they know the answers to the questions that they think are important, like just how much I have to think about Tigers before I get reincarnated as one.
So what? It doesn't mean we ARE apes. Looks can be deceiving and science has yet to demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt the link between man and the rest of the bipedal mammals. They haven't found it yet, in spite of their efforts and repeated attempts at fraud.
If you want to think of yourself as an animal, then that's your prerogative. If you believe that God created man in His image, then you must believe that God is a monkey.
And who worships the lessor or inferior God?
Not me. The God I worship isn't a liar. I don't think He lied in the Genesis account of how He created man, and it was not through evolution, but from the dust of the earth in a separate act of creation.
What fact helps you to explain WHY we are more similar to a chimp and a chimp is more similar to us, than either is to a gorilla?
Looks are not what this is based upon, but a rigorous examination and comparison of DNA sequences. But yes, morphologically we “look” like a species of ape, and for non-deceptive reasons.
The link between man and bipedal apes is well established, and the thousands of autralopithocene and Homo fossils are not fraudulent, despite your repeated fraudulent efforts to characterize them as such.
Biologically we are animals. Spiritually we are made in the image of God.
If you think God looks like a hairless bipedal ape, than yes, God would look like us. We look exactly like a hairless bipedal ape.
A monkey is not an ape. How ignorant you must be to confuse the two terms.
Still our dear kosta persists in arguing with you about the ins and outs of electromagnetic radiation.
As if that were what you were talking about in the above italics. [It seems kosta resists all appeals to actual experience — such as an explosion in a microwave oven, which potentially causes some other really bad stuff to happen.]
Jeepers, dear shibumi, I've reached the point where I would hazard to say the above italics indicate precisely what our dear brother kosta needs to do, in order to "prove" his own point to his own satisfaction.
So — sigh — let us all just stand back, so to view the coming auto-da-fe....
Personally, I wouldn't wish this sort of thing on my worst enemy, which surely kosta is not. (Truly, I pray for his soul daily whether he wants me to or not.)
The amount of work, or examination one does is irrelevant. Faith is fundamentally based on what someone has heard, read, or has been told. Nothing that you've posted contradicts that. What might be considered your strongest evidence can amount to no more than testimony. IOWs, it is fundamentally no more than a claim.
"If God did not exist, neither would the world."
That's a claim based on what you have heard and read. Where's your evidence for such a claim, that anyone can examine at will by the scientific method?
Especially when that road does not lead to truth. It can't: It has no principle and so terminates in Nowhere.
A doubter needs to understand that; and then ask himself whether he really wants to risk walking down that road....
There are far better ways to "relieve doubt."
A lot of people have faith in airplanes, boats, brakes, steering wheels, elevators, overpasses, bridges, bolts, food, without ever even thinking about how they are placing their lives in their faith that what they are doing at the time is somehow safe.
Faith is an experience, the evidence of things not seen. It is not a conclusion based on what we see or have heard, or have read. It goes to our very soul, of who we are and how we view the universe.
We have faith in a lot of things because to have doubts in those things would result in a disruption of our lives. People have phobias because they have a loss of faith and with that loss of faith comes an irrational belief (i.e., that the elevator is going to fall, the airplane is going to crash, the food is going to kill them, the brakes are going to fail.)
Hey Quix, have I got this right?
Thank you, Betty.
As I said, there are many ways to find truth. Some are partial, some are mostly or totally hallucinatory, and only one giver pure, complete knowledge.
You have faith only in science, and scorn all other methods of knowing truth. I could discuss with you if you were not steeped in arrogance, harshness, conceit and ignorance. Also deceit, since anyone who is an actual Christian would acknowledge that God can reveal truth to the sincere and surrendered soul.
So, I cannot dicuss with you. Sorry.
The Bible never says that God took one species and imparted a soul to it resulting in man. It says that God took the dust of the earth and created man separate from the rest of the creation of life.
So what if man happens to be similar? Just because there is some general resemblance, doesn't mean they are the same thing or that they even have to be related.
A monkey is not an ape. How ignorant you must be to confuse the two terms.
Evos are so easy......
Cretards are so ignorant....
If you persist in that understanding, spunkets, then you have not understood a single word I wrote.
Rather, you simply declare: "You are WRONG!" (I'm still waiting to see your evidence in support of that conclusion.) Then you suggest I am "WRONG" on the grounds that what I have offered is "fundamentally no more than a claim."
Here we are, back again, scratching our heads, wondering what on earth could possibly qualify as "evidence" in the minds of certain people nowadays?
Spunkets, P-Marlowe and I have been pleading with kosta50 to pul-eeeeeze tell us what passes for legit evidence in his mind? It's a humble request really. If he says we're "wrong," and he hates our evidence — then what sort of evidence would satisfy him, such that we might test whether his verdict of "wrong" is, er, actually wrong, in a way HE can understand???
So, same question to you, spunkets: What sort of evidence satisfies your discriminating taste? FYI, kosta, too, dissed witness testimony....
Might I just humbly note that "witness testimony" is testimony of direct human experience? From the most "up-close and personal" aspect?
You wanted "evidence" for my "claim" that: If God did not exist, neither would the world. All I have is witness testimony — and the fact that I can see and appreciate that this world in which we live is not a "garbage heap strewn at random." But to say as much is still "only" witness testimony.
Well, that sweeps away a ton of philosophers and scientists right there, not to mention the rest of the human race — of anybody who knows or can know anything about anything.
Can the scientific method even DEAL with questions like this?
Short answer: No.
Would you like to discuss that point further?
Science cannot lead to truth. It can lead to data and facts, some more accurate than others, some closer to reality than others. It can lead to technological advances that have resulted in the improvement of the lot of mankind (for the most part, but not always) in numerous ways through its application in technology.
But truth is a philosophical consideration, which those who call themselves scientists in this modern age, reject as being *not science*.
What they continue to forget, and ignore, is that modern science is based on philosophy, and that philosophy is that science can lead one to the *truth*, so it’s a false philosophy. Science itself cannot prove that it itself can lead to truth.
Truth is outside scientific endeavor.
Science is a useful tool and that’s the extent of it. Those who elevate it to the status of *truth* and demean and disparage those who don’t believe as they do, have lost sight of what its purpose is and have elevated it to the status of a religion and treat it and respond to it as such.
Those who make science the measure of all things, have been deluded and abandoned the real truth.
Compared to mental giants like you who stoop to name calling?
I don’t think so.....
I find it interesting that those who reject witness testimony as evidence of something they disagree with, instead depend on the witness testimony of someone's interpretation of the fossil record, something they DO agree with.
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