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Falling Stars, Damnable Heresy, and the Spirit of Evolution
Renew America ^ | Sept. 19, 2013 | Linda Kimball

Posted on 09/20/2013 4:29:03 AM PDT by spirited irish

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To: BroJoeK

I know and I’ve read your stuff. It’s why I like you. You’re a good thinker. Perhaps others suspect you’re simply lying when you say that God is at the center of it all. I take you at your word.

Take a look at those two books and ping me. I’m curious to get your reaction and insights.

Take care.


1,201 posted on 11/15/2013 6:59:34 AM PST by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: tacticalogic

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.


Lewontin does not believe in the devil... even tho he sees him everyday while shaving..
I’ll bet you’re aquainted with him/her too...


1,202 posted on 11/15/2013 11:20:53 AM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
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To: hosepipe
I’ll bet you’re aquainted with him/her too...

How much?

1,203 posted on 11/15/2013 11:29:33 AM PST by tacticalogic
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To: BroJoeK

I make a point to not attack anybody who’s not attacked me, and to stop returning when those attacks cease


I see...... so your perception of what an attack is holy writ?..
Even-though others may have a finer gauge than yours..

Attacking your ideas is an attack on you personally?..
Hitler pretty much felt the same.. and Stalin and Mao...
I’ve known several bully’s that operated that way..
The White Hut approves of your philosophy..


1,204 posted on 11/15/2013 11:33:57 AM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
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To: hosepipe; spirited irish; BroJoeK; Alamo-Girl; YHAOS; tacticalogic; metmom; marron
Designer evidence is an interesting concept.... Oh well back to “atoms” and “DNA” and all that stuff.... You know, “facts”... raised eyebrow....

Are "atoms" FACTS?

ATOMS have a fascinating history, dating back to Democritus (c. 460 – c. 370 B.C.) , who is credited as the "father" of "scientific" atomic theory.

Democritus described the atom as an undetectably small, homogeneous, "hard-bodied" object, irreducible to lesser "parts," and concluded that the atom is the ultimate building block of all that exists in Nature.

Well, Democritus' description of the atom had a really long shelf life, probably lasting well into the 19th century. Eventually, it was discovered that the atom itself is composed of lesser parts: a nucleus (composed of protons and neutrons) and electrons. This arrangement was pictorialized by the "mini-solar system model" of the atom, where the nucleus is the central sun, and the electrons "satellites" orbiting around the central sun.

This sort of model could suit Newtonian mechanics pretty well. But then, along came quantum mechanics, and Niels Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation thereof. After which the "mini-solar-system model" of the atom was utterly destroyed.

It seems to me, this ought to be of some interest to people who hold to materialist/mechanist/naturalist/"scientific" models of Reality.

One presupposes that such people would readily tell you that matter bottoms out in atoms. [And then they'll turn around and tell you that atomic matter is "smart enuf" to negotiate the next biological sea change, into life and mind. But that's a problem for another day.]

Strangely enough, Eric Voegelin (1901–1985. RIP] — to my mind the greatest philosopher of the Twentieth Century — weighed in on this very problem of "matter," in his astonishing essay, "Configurations of History":

In theoretical physics we ... have all sorts of relational discoveries, which are so thoroughgoing that the subject matter, the terms of the relations, disappears. We do not know what matter is in which this or that happens. We know only the relations, and we have no matter aside from these relations, as for example in nuclear physics.

Once again, then, the subject which in physics is called matter is on the point of disappearance, if indeed it has not already disappeared (the more radical theories would say it is gone, and that we have only the relations.... [See the mathematical physicist N. Rashevsky for details — I think EV may have done so.]

Anyhoot, I LOVE Voegelin.... You might say I have been his student since 1985, the year of his death....

While at the same time, booting out all vestiges of "New-Age theology" from my consciousness. They were silly ideas anyway, supportable only by silly, that is to say unserious, people. I had something better to compare them to....

Mega-HUGS!!! dearest brother 'pipe! Thank you for being your usual, delightful self! And for writing!

1,205 posted on 11/15/2013 12:25:55 PM PST by betty boop
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To: betty boop
One presupposes that such people would readily tell you that matter bottoms out in atoms.

For what purpose would one construct such a presupposition?

1,206 posted on 11/15/2013 12:39:21 PM PST by tacticalogic
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To: tacticalogic

For what purpose would one construct such a presupposition?


Hubris.. let yer mouth form the “H”... now follow me..
H.U.B.R.I.S... now wasn’t that easy?..


1,207 posted on 11/15/2013 1:54:21 PM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
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To: hosepipe

That is one possibility.


1,208 posted on 11/15/2013 1:59:50 PM PST by tacticalogic
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To: betty boop

One presupposes that such people would readily tell you that matter bottoms out in atoms. [And then they’ll turn around and tell you that atomic matter is “smart enuf” to negotiate the next biological sea change, into life and mind. But that’s a problem for another day.]


What a concept.. Atoms deciding anything.. Like they were pre-programmed or something..
But what then of the programmer...

I’ve been a computer programmer since 1967 and have yet to see a bit or a byte decide anything..
I go to great lengths to make bits and bytes appear to be like magic.. to humans..

It’s a lot like the “atom” thingy.. Many scientists are quite “fooled”..
Like atoms have a holy spirit or something..
The entertainment never stops...

Eric was fearless.. outrageous... philosophical Porn..
Oh! to share a whiskey and pizza with that guy...


1,209 posted on 11/15/2013 2:07:55 PM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
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To: spirited irish; tacticalogic; BroJoeK; hosepipe; YHAOS; Alamo-Girl; metmom; marron
Tacticalogic wrote: So who besides Betty Boop does says that "all the really interesting, ground-breaking work in biology today is being conducted by physicists and mathematicians ". Is this a supportable statement of fact, or just a personal opinion presented as fact?

It is my "personal opinion" that if one is asking questions about the origin of life and mind, Darwin's theory holds no answers whatsoever. I do believe that even BroJoeK agrees with that.

It further appears to me that if one is asking questions of the order, "What is Life? What is Mind? How do they arise in Nature?" then Neo-Darwinism has precisely zero answers. And yet Neo-Darwinists seemingly have complete grip on the conduct of the biological sciences these days.

Whatever the case, BroJoeK keeps intoning the official mantra of Neo-Darwinism: All explanations of Nature must be predicated on "natural causes."

It doesn't ever seem to occur to him that "natural causes" can be downstream from a Cause that is not "natural" in the sense BroJoeK and his like-minded friends do not and cannot recognize, given their prior commitment — their epistemically prior commitment — to the theory of universal, reductionist materialism.

Can't explain anything about this sort of revolt against, not only God, but of human nature itself that I see on display here, from some of our correspondents, my very dear sister in Christ. Yet as you already know, I find the "mystery of iniquity" to be completely unfathomable by me....

1,210 posted on 11/15/2013 3:07:30 PM PST by betty boop
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To: betty boop
What questions you ask depends on what kind of problem you're trying to solve.

You and I cannot find agreement on the questions to be asked because we are not working on the same problem. You said earlier that it is not an intellectual problem, but a spiritual problem. This is your opinion and your perspective. You ask questions trying to solve a spiritual problem.

From my perspective (and I suspect BroJoeK's) it is an intellectual problem, so I ask different questions.

1,211 posted on 11/15/2013 3:15:47 PM PST by tacticalogic
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To: hosepipe
hosepipe: "Attacking your ideas is an attack on you personally?.."

No, if you attack my ideas, I'll respond by defending them and, perhaps, saying something unkind about your ideas.

If you attack me personally, I'll respond with some remark which is intended to gently, but firmly, "return to sender".
When you then stop with the personal attacks, I'll go back to discussing the ideas which brought us here in the first place.

Is that unreasonable in your eyes?

1,212 posted on 11/15/2013 4:56:02 PM PST by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective....)
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To: betty boop; YHAOS; Alamo-Girl; hosepipe; metmom

betty: Can’t explain anything about this sort of revolt against, not only God, but of human nature itself that I see on display here, from some of our correspondents, my very dear sister in Christ

Spirited: The following excerpts from “Bus Ride from Hell” may help shed some light.

Bus Ride from Hell
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kimball/120904

Early on Lewis understood that Cosmic and Secular Humanism were merely two sides of the same revival of pagan monism. Thus he argued, Cosmic and Secular Humanism are not enemies in principle but rather cooperating philosophies of naturalism united against the Creator Who exists outside of the time-space universe, His Revelation to mankind, Original Sin, His moral law, Christian theism, and Christian-based civilization.

During Lewis’s lifetime, cosmic and secular humanist ideas and philosophical systems were growing in acceptance and popularity throughout academia, within seminaries, universities and among the masses.

Among common points of departure for both types of humanism are the following ideas:

1. Rejection of the living God Who dwells outside the time-space universe with special antipathy directed against Jesus Christ God incarnate in favor of “only this world” naturalism; no God, a distant God or pantheist conceptions of God, and Jesus Christ as a mortal teacher such as Buddha, the angelic brother of Lucifer, or perhaps a highly evolved Transcended Master or spirit guide.

2. Rejection of the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo in favor of ‘this-worldly’ mechanical evolutionary processes

3. Rejection of physical eternal life in either Paradise (renewed earth) or hell in favor of no afterlife whatsoever or wholly spiritual conceptions such as man’s ghost forever wandering about in the aerial realm of spirits or perhaps living a phantom existence on a planet

4. Humanity as deity.

5. Subjectivism: No right way, no wrong way, all directions lead to the same place.

The dangers of holding erroneous views are profound and in his book, “The Great Divorce,” Lewis attempted to address them by presenting us with a masterful study of the psychology of the hell-bound versus the psychology of the Paradise-bound.

As Lewis fleshes out his view of hell, he relies in part on his mentor George MacDonald, a Scottish preacher and writer who believed there might be a final opportunity for the unrepentant on earth to repent after their death. Building off this idea, Lewis depicts the damned as taking a bus ride from hell to heaven, where they come in contact with “real” reality.

Heaven is a place of matter, of weight and mass and the blessed inhabitants are the beautiful “bright solid people” as opposed to the self-idolizing dirty shades without mass, or matter. N.T. Wright explains,

“...there will be a new mode of physicality, which stands in relation to our present body as our present body does to a ghost....a Christian in the present life is a mere shadow of his or her future self, the self that person will be when the body that God has waiting in his heavenly storeroom is brought out...and put on...over the self that will still exist after bodily death.” (Eternal Perspectives, Randy Alcorn, p. 154-155)

The bus finally arrives in heaven having arisen from what turns out to be a mere crack in the ground for Lewis sees all Hell as,

“....smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.” (The Great Divorce, An Essay, Allen Adams, cslewis.drzeus.net)

As the hell-bound depart the bus they are shocked by the realization that not only are they dirty ghosts but they cannot abide the matter, the fleshiness of heaven because in life, like the pagan sages, the Gnostic Arnobius and contemporary secular and cosmic transhumanists, they were dissatisfied with their own bodies and created condition as either male or female for example, as well as with the finiteness of their own minds. In “Adversus nationes” (2.37) Arnobius complains,

“If souls were of the Lord’s race...They would never come to these terrestrial places (and) inhabit opaque bodies and (be) mixed with humors and blood, in receptacles of excrement, in vases of urine.” (The Pagan Temptation, Thomas Molnar, p. 27)

Molnar explains that from Plato to Plotinus, it was held as axiomatic that from being as one with or an aspect of the Divine Substance souls had inexplicably fallen into the material realm, a place of misery, suffering and binary, which means for example, two distinct sexes rather than a two-in-one, the androgynous being called ‘gay’ in modern terminology. Salvation was secured through the mystery cults which,

“...afforded their devotees the opportunity to erase the curse of mortality by direct encounter with the patron deity or in many instances by actually undergoing an apotheosis, a transfiguration of human into divine. The process of ‘initiation’ in the mystery religions, therefore, had as its objective the liberation of the soul from its earthly...chains” (C.K. Barrett cited in “The Interruption of Eternity,” Carl A. Raschke, p. 28)

Carl Teichrib, author of “The Rise of Techno-Gods: The Merging of Transhumanism and Spirituality” writes that transhumanists believe they are on the verge of evolving into deity. They are no longer mere humans but post-humans. Theirs is the technical quest for the Holy Grail, ascension through engineering. Transhumanism is modern-day alchemy and magic, the contemporary manifestation of the Secret Doctrine of Hermes Trismegistus Thoth: “All is One, and that One is Divinity.”

Transhumanist Mark Pesce, a co-inventor of 3-D interfacing for the worldwide web and a panelist and judge on ABC’s show The New Inventors, puts it this way,

“.... we seek... a transcendence of transience, translation to incorruptible form. An escape if you will, a stop to the wheel. We seek, therefore, to bless ourselves with perfect knowledge and perfect will; To become as gods, take the universe in hand, and transform it in our image — for our own delight. As it is on Earth, so it shall be in the heavens. There is no God but Man.” (Carl Teichrib, www.forcingchange.org)

At the root of the rejection of the living God by the hell-bound is the rebellious assertion that man has not been created by Him, that he is not dependent upon Him for his own life, thus he is not created in His spiritual image. He is not dependent upon the living God but is rather a man-god, the creator of God, and the master of time, being, and the world who through his own powers will save himself.

Blaming the true God for their misery the hell-bound say to Him, “you are not my father:”

“I am I, I come out of myself, and in choice and action I make myself.” (Daniel Bell, quoted by Herbert Schlossberg in “Idols for Destruction,” p. 43)


1,213 posted on 11/15/2013 4:56:18 PM PST by spirited irish
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To: betty boop; tacticalogic; 1010RD
betty boop: "Whatever the case, BroJoeK keeps intoning the official mantra of Neo-Darwinism: All explanations of Nature must be predicated on 'natural causes.'

"It doesn't ever seem to occur to him that 'natural causes' can be downstream from a Cause that is not 'natural' in the sense BroJoeK and his like-minded friends do not and cannot recognize, given their prior commitment — their epistemically prior commitment — to the theory of universal, reductionist materialism."

To Ms. Boop: I've posted my response to your allegations now several times, most recently in #1,196 above, to which you might also note 1010RD's response in #1,201.

Ms Boop, the issue here is not the epistemic definition of reality, since that includes (as was noted by St. Thomas Aquinas) both natural and super-natural realms.
It's only the definition of science, which since the time of Aquinas has meant only the natural realm.

For investigations into the super-natural realm you must go outside of science, into some other branch of philosophy or religion.

So please tell us how such a simple concept can be so difficult for you to grasp?

1,214 posted on 11/15/2013 5:12:20 PM PST by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective....)
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To: spirited irish
1. Rejection of the living God Who dwells outside the time-space universe with special antipathy directed against Jesus Christ

As far as I know, that disqualified everyone on this thread. And that's just the first half of the first item. Are you sure you got the right list?

1,215 posted on 11/15/2013 6:27:21 PM PST by tacticalogic
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To: tacticalogic; betty boop; Alamo-Girl; YHAOS; metmom

Are you sure you got the right list?

Spirited: Yes. Our age witnesses the still unfolding fall away from the supernatural Triune God that emerged out of the Renaissance. What did they fall into? Ancient Egyptian Hermeticism, Mystery Religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, karma and reincarnation. Accompanying all of this was evolution, the result of adding vast amounts of time to ancient Cosmic Tree conceptions.

The point I’m driving at is this: those who fell away, mainly theologians and humanists, stripped the Bible of miracles and historical and literal elements in order to pave the way for the introduction into Scripture of pagan elements, primarily evolution.

This being the case, when Al Gore for instance, speaks of God or Christ he means something else. As he embraces New Age evolutionary pantheism his god is something akin to the Void and Christ a mere mortal akin to Buddha.

The New Physics views God as the Quantum Void and Christ as a higher emanation existing on an astral plane. For Jung, God was Abraxas, a Gnostic pagan conception of the Void or Brahman.

Nietzsche saw himself as Christ’s replacement. Nazified Christians equated Hitler to Christ. Today, Christ is a Transcended Master, an angel whose brother is Lucifer, a mystical coin (Nimi Wariboko)and so on.

Over on the evolutionarychristian website, Michael Dowd calls himself the evangelist of evolution. Evolutionary Christians are a ‘new’ type of Christian. Some are eminent scientists, others theologians. All of them embrace natural science and evolutionary pantheism, thus according to Dowd, God is the void,material dimension by one name or another.

All individuals who embrace any form of evolutionary materialism or its counterpart, evolutionary pantheism, reject resurrection in favor of reincarnation, absorption (annihilation) or apotheosis via the Magic Way.

All such Westerners and Americans are the subject of Bus Ride from Hell.


1,216 posted on 11/16/2013 3:18:04 AM PST by spirited irish
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To: spirited irish
All individuals who embrace any form of evolutionary materialism or its counterpart, evolutionary pantheism, reject resurrection in favor of reincarnation

First of all, I don't believe you are telepathic and capable of reading everyone else's mind to be able to know this. Second, I can tell you that while I cannot speak for "all individuals", I can speak for myself and tell you that my own beliefs are enough to know that you are wrong.

1,217 posted on 11/16/2013 3:41:19 AM PST by tacticalogic
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To: tacticalogic

Telepathy has nothing to do with my conclusion but rather the internal logic within worldview systems. Richard Weaver understood this as well, which is why he called his book, “Ideas have Consequences.”

Whether you like it or not, critical analysis reveals that the insertion of evolution into the book of beginnings, Genesis, immediately produces certain changes that unmake the meaning and intent of Genesis. One consequence is that reincarnation will supplant resurrection.

If Genesis is pure clean water, then inserting evolution is tantamount to dripping Indian ink into it.

What you personally believe with regard to evolution has no bearing whatsoever to the consequences briefly delineated above.


1,218 posted on 11/16/2013 9:30:33 AM PST by spirited irish
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To: spirited irish
Whether you like it or not, critical analysis reveals that the insertion of evolution into the book of beginnings, Genesis, immediately produces certain changes that unmake the meaning and intent of Genesis. One consequence is that reincarnation will supplant resurrection.

That's the nice thing about "freedom of religion". I don't have to follow your rules, and I don't have to believe what you tell me I have to believe. Whether you like it or not, your "analysis" doesn't change my beliefs.

1,219 posted on 11/16/2013 9:34:24 AM PST by tacticalogic
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To: tacticalogic; spirited irish; betty boop; Alamo-Girl; YHAOS; metmom; Whosoever

As far as I know, that disqualified everyone on this thread. And that’s just the first half of the first item. Are you sure you got the right list?


Didn’t disqualify ME.......

For if there is a God (in christian terms) “IT” must be outside the space time continuum..
otherwise how could “IT” pull off what it is reported to have pulled off as far as the Lore describes.?...

Having animus toward “invisible friends”.. seems to be a handicap..
No matter,, what is .. “IS”.. and what ain’t...... AIN’T..

Conversely.. “what might be”... is not the same as “what ain’t”..
Ain’t faith grand?... no wonder it’s the currency described in “the LORE”..
It takes a certain BOLDNESS to have faith... even courage..

WHich I give to the Evo’s.. because it takes faith to believe in such as that..
Not all are true believers but some are..


1,220 posted on 11/16/2013 5:11:14 PM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
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