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To: spirited irish
Your analysis is a non-starter, because Popper recanted those views on natural selection. Like the claim that "Einstein was devout," creationists love to use statements out of context or from uncertain or evolving places in the careers of particular scientists as testimonies against interest. Einstein was not "devout" in any meaningful sense, and Popper did not reject science as an undertaking.

Creationists continue, nevertheless, to haul out these [mis-]quotes long after they've been refuted hundreds or thousands of times. If there was any value to Creationism, creationists would not need to lie so transparently, or so often.

As for all of the rest, it is nonsense. These are simply regurgitations of various heresies -- both religious and scientific -- that have been circulating since the beginning of civilization. They were summarized a great deal more succinctly by George Berkeley, to be sure, but they are nonsense all the same.

The human condition has materially improved tremendously since The Resurrection, and nearly all of that improvement can be attributed to science; almost none of it to religion. The reason for that success is that despite your tl;dr mumbo-jumbo, scientific investigation makes sense of the world and produces useful results, which leads to more investigation, and more useful results, and so on...

In contrast, the argument you are advancing, that scientific knowledge is merely an illusion of the mind, was best refuted by Ben Johnson, who, was asked how he could possibly refute Bishop Berkeley's claim that the world was nothing more than a creation of the imagination replied: "I refute it by putting my boot in his ass."

Science will continue to improve the human condition without your approval, and your literalist interpretation of Scripture will continue to go nowhere.

133 posted on 05/31/2017 9:34:54 AM PDT by FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Fifth Avenue to be born?)
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To: FredZarguna

>>The reason for that success is...


...the sociobiological cultural fitness manifested by reading the manual that came with the species and following the instructions before the (Romans chapter 1) oil light becomes illuminated on the dash.

 

Mark 10:6-9

6 "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'a 7 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,b 8 and the two will become one flesh.'c So they are no longer two, but one. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

NIV

Not surprisingly, cultures who follow the instructions given by the Creator of Natural Law - also enjoy historically high levels of reproductive competitive sociobiological FITNESS; and cultures who don't... are described in Romans chapter 1.

 



134 posted on 05/31/2017 10:13:05 AM PDT by HLPhat (It takes a Republic TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS - not a populist Tyranny of the Majority)
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To: FredZarguna; HLPhat
In contending against the two most influential nature schools of thought, Greek Epicureans or Atomists (materialists) and Stoics (mystical pantheists), the Apostle Paul set the resurrection of Jesus Christ the Word Incarnate in the context of the sovereign decree of the God of Revelation and the inescapable fact of God's judgment on sin. The reaction of pagan sages was either to scoff and mock Paul or to brush him off with, "We will hear thee again of this matter." Acts 17:32 (The Word of Flux, Rousas John Rushdoony, p. 48)

By challenging the pagans concept of the unknown god in relation to the gods (idols of the mind) they claimed to know and by asserting the sovereignty of the revealed God of Scripture (Acts 17:22-31) Pauls' challenge seriously threatened their corpus of nature science, evolutionary cosmogony, and philosophy. This threat was taken seriously for Paul had in effect declared that if there exists an unknown god of the gods (idols of the mind) which pagans claim to know yet which is wholly unknown despite exercising influence for good or evil on that which they say and know, do they really know anything at all? If this unknown god of gods exists then why not destroy all the altars to the gods pagans claim to know since they are inventions of men’s creative imaginations, absurd idols, useless for salvation, the work of man’s hands:

"They have mouths, but they cannot speak; They have eyes, but they cannot see; They have ears, but they cannot hear; They have noses, but they cannot smell; They have hands, but they cannot feel; They have feet, but they cannot walk; They cannot make a sound with their throat. Those who make them will become like them..." Psalm 115:4-8

In other words, men who worship the idols of their own minds and inert, unknowing things of creation (i.e., matter, energy and/or evolution, time, space) become ignorant, absurd and stupid, unable to account for either the origin of life or man's thought-life, will, and conscience.

By contrast St. Augustine (AD 354-430), an ardent defender of creation ex nihilo, easily affirmed that as all men are the spiritual image-bearers of the transcendent Triune God of life and creation then it logically follows that each person is a trinity of being, — of body, soul and its citadel spirit (thought-life, will, conscience):

"The essence of the human is not the body, but the soul. It is the soul alone that God made in his own image and the soul that he loves....For the sake of the soul...the Son of God came into the world...." (Incomplete Work on Matthew, Homily 25, Ancient Christian Devotional, Oden and Crosby, p. 153) In Christian thought, a person is a spirit and personality is the total individuality of the spirit. Without spirit there is no person.

The key to individual liberty in the temporal sphere is man's spiritual liberty contrasted against a genetically programmed animal-like orientation. Animals do not have spirits, which are linked to intelligence, imagination, sensitivity, self-consciousness, reflection and the capacity for truth and moral goodness.

A human being is uniquely free because his inner person can spiritually transcend matter to access the supernatural dimension as Paul affirms:

"Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor. 3:17)

Cornelius Van Til, the most profound writer in apologetics in the twentieth century points out that on the basis of evolutionary naturalism (idols of mind) it is impossible to know anything unless everything can be known, and since it is impossible to know everything then the whole of nature religion, empirical science, and evolutionary philosophy is irrational because it cannot account for life, man's soul/spirit, objective truth and moral law. Therefore evolutionary naturalism is of ignorance,

"...of ignorance far deeper than (naturalists) are willing and able on (their assumptions) to own." On the basis of naturalism, "there is no knowledge at all; there is nothing but ignorance." (ibid, p. 48)

135 posted on 05/31/2017 11:50:14 AM PDT by spirited irish
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