Posted on 04/05/2009 8:10:35 PM PDT by betty boop
SOMETHING GOOD, THAT IS... '-)
It has been a blessing throughout.
snip: LOL Yes through my senses I can observe reality. You on the other hand are insisting that you are aware of another reality not accessible by our senses. Can you say projection?
Spirited: There is no man...either dead or alive...who has not dreamed, fantasized, and remembered old memories. Yet these things cannot be sensed. They cannot be heard, smelled, touched, seen, or tasted. By your illogic, for ‘ill’ it is, if the brain were cut open, we ought to be able to detect by way of our senses words scrolling through our mind as we think, we should see and hear dreams, and literally be able to comb through the vaults of memory. None of this is possible.
Cognition remains a mystery, especially to materialists such as yourself who, because senses cannot account for the immaterial, find themselves in the insanity-producing situation of having to deny what every right-thinking person knows to be true.
Cognition is in truth, ‘another reality,’ to use your own words. Yet because you are an ideologue, you must conform yourself to incredibly stupid ideas cooked up by fools of an earlier time. Fools who yearned to no longer be ‘in the spiritual image’ of their Creator. Driven by Dionysian compulsions, they yearned to become part of nature in order to escape created and moral boundaries.
If materialism is paradoxically ‘true,’ then right now I am typing out a response to a soulless meat machine called “LeGrande” who used his free will to choose an ideology that denies free will. It is not LeGrande who ‘thinks’ and ‘speaks.” No, LeGrande is but a wooden-headed puppet through which Nature speaks its irrational ‘thoughts’ as it pulls Puppet-LeGrandes’ strings. That is what it logically means to be “fully caused and determined” by Nature.
Why do I waste time responding to a wooden-headed puppet? Because by use of my free will I chose our Creator, Who made each man in His spiritual image, which means that each one is endowed with spirit, mind, and free will. Hence, while you must logically deny the source of your humanity because you perversely chose an ideology that reduces you to a wooden-headed puppet, I-—who by choice am in possession of the source of my humanity-— see not a wooden-headed puppet but a person who has been duped and deceived by fools.
Sorry but I haven't.
By your illogic, for ‘ill’ it is, if the brain were cut open, we ought to be able to detect by way of our senses words scrolling through our mind as we think, we should see and hear dreams, and literally be able to comb through the vaults of memory. None of this is possible.
Wrong again, putting an electrical stimulus to various places will recreate the memories.
No, LeGrande is but a wooden-headed puppet through which Nature speaks its irrational ‘thoughts’ as it pulls Puppet-LeGrandes’ strings. That is what it logically means to be “fully caused and determined” by Nature.
I have free will, if for no other reason than the uncertainty principle.
Thank you so much dearest sister in Christ for your kind words of support!
Yet I imagine there may be people who do not feel that way. Possibly they think I'm dense, I don't see what they're getting at, I just don't get their point: that God made everything, and He made it in a way that science can grasp; and so if He chose to work mechanistically, or if He used Darwinian evolution as a tool to manifest biological life, then what's the problem? A Christian can be a scientist too. Just keep "God out of the picture."
I can see all that, and very largely agree with it. But that's not what I've been trying to get at. To me, the real question isn't whether or not to leave God in the picture. (That's not a scientific question.) I see a larger problem, and it goes straight to the epistemological root of contemporary science. And that is the Newtonian formalism has become the tail that wags the dog. So much so that it is inconceivable to many people nowadays that something could be "science" that isn't premised on this particular formalism. I.e., Newtonian Paradigm = Science.
What I have been arguing is the Newtonian Paradigm does not provide a model that can cope with living systems. Period. Increasingly people are aware of this, inside and outside the scientific community. But resistance to other ideas is amazingly strong — in academe, in the journals, in the popular science writers. Meanwhile, it has been observed that not only biology but physics itself is "in crisis."
Now that would be fun to discuss further. However I don't know the level of reader interest in this topic....
The Bible predicted that Israel would become a nation once more.
Would you care to quote chapter and verse?
Jeremiah 30:3 For, lo, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the LORD: and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it.
What I have been arguing is the Newtonian Paradigm does not provide a model that can cope with living systems. Period.
And I think it is extremely helpful to keep returning to that central point.
Also, I believe such a debate ought to be very open as this one has been because some of our correspondents "shut down" when a sidebar turns to philosophy; others, physics; others, math; others, theology.
Nevertheless, the central issue that the current paradigm is inadequate to investigate living systems can be seen from any of these perspectives.
Only one with fingers in his ears, humming, stomping, gritting his teeth and thus refusing all insights could possibly miss it.
Which is the normal state of atheists.
LG has tried this before and has been provided with more than ample examples of fulfilled prophecy, which he promptly blows off as never having happened,...next please....
You’re wasting your time trying to convince someone who doesn’t WANT to believe that prophecy has actually been fulfilled.
Jeremiah 30:3 For, lo, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the LORD: and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it.
A little hard to claim that the people of Israel didn’t return to the land of their fathers.
Oh so true, dearest sister in Christ!
Perhaps part of the problem is the increasing specialization of science nowadays. Even the specialties have sub-specialties — all premised on the Newtonian Paradigm (because that's supposedly what science "is"). Everyone is trying to see through the peephole of his own specialization, and increasingly the big picture is lost from view. Because of the loss of the big-picture view, people do not see that contradictory to its claim, the Newtonian formalism is not the "largest model" of the universe, wherein physics is basic, and biology a "special case" of physics.
To turn that around, it seems to me that the "largest model" would not treat biology as a "special case." As relatively rare as biological organisms apparently are in the universe, they display unique behaviors — i.e., behaviors not found in the inorganic world — that any "largest model" would have to be able to "map to" Reality in order to be the "largest" model. Contemporary science hits the wall precisely here: The Newtonian formalism is no help in accounting for or explaining the organizational and functional behavior of living systems. That behavior does not reduce to particle motions alone. What is important is the relations obtaining between particles and with the systems they constitute. We are speaking of the intangible organizational principles (i.e., systems of causal entailment) at work in living systems. Newtonian science has no method for getting at this problem.... E.g., since the entire idea of final cause has been banished from "respectable" science, there is no logical way to explain what we even mean by "function." And that's just one problem with the status-quo thinking....
But since the 1930s, some really first-rate mathematicians cum physicists cum theoretical biologists (notice the multidisciplinary approach) have been working on it; e.g., Ervin Bauer, Nicolas Rashevsky, and most recently Robert Rosen. Mainly their work has not been much acknowledged, let alone appreciated, by most of their eminent contemporaries....
But that may be about to change. I notice that some theoretical biologists are beginning to "play with" some of Robert Rosen's ideas; e.g., the Kinemans.
Thank you so very much for your excellent essay/post, dearest sister in Christ!
Truly, the specialties have been all the more specialized - and the Newtonian "big picture" - often out of sight and mind - is no help in addressing functions.
Thank you oh so very much for your wonderful essay-post!
Yep. Mostly they do appear to be thoroughly indoctrinated. That is, they refuse to clarify the core reasons for their ersatz faith....
[[God made everything, and He made it in a way that science can grasp;]]
Science does grasp it: Information present in all species screams the need for an intelligence behind the design, and it’s a case where science can and indeed does come to a ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ conclusion based on the evidences present. IF nature isn’t chemicaly, or biologically able to produce the irreducible complexity, to move species informaiton beyond it’s parameters/limitations to produce NEW non species specific informaiton to create new non species specific organs, features, traits etc, then there must be another answer besides naturalism- mutaitons are credited by naturalists with miraculous supernatural capabilities that somehow beat all odds against it, and leapt over biological and chemical roadblocks as though it were superman, and supposedly ceated organs and features via mutaitons, which, as we know, can only work on info that is already present- it can’t create the necessary new non speices specific info needed for moving species beyond hteir own kinds.
Bottom line, not only is science able to scientifically grasp the need for an intelligence behind species, it can and does show it as well as show nature simply isn’t capable of creation- it’s only capable of modification, and modifications can not create the necessary new non species pseicific info-
[[LG has tried this before and has been provided with more than ample examples of fulfilled prophecy, which he promptly blows off as never having happened,...next please....]]
“Approximately 2500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter—no errors. (The remaining 500 or so reach into the future and may be seen unfolding as days go by.) Since the probability for any one of these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance averages less than one in ten (figured very conservatively) and since the prophecies are for the most part independent of one another, the odds for all these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance without error is less than one in 102000 (that is 1 with 2000 zeros written after it)!
(1) Some time before 500 B.C. the prophet Daniel proclaimed that Israel’s long-awaited Messiah would begin his public ministry 483 years after the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem (Daniel 9:25-26). He further predicted that the Messiah would be “cut off,” killed, and that this event would take place prior to a second destruction of Jerusalem. Abundant documentation shows that these prophecies were perfectly fulfilled in the life (and crucifixion) of Jesus Christ. The decree regarding the restoration of Jerusalem was issued by Persia’s King Artaxerxes to the Hebrew priest Ezra in 458 B.C., 483 years later the ministry of Jesus Christ began in Galilee. (Remember that due to calendar changes, the date for the start of Christ’s ministry is set by most historians at about 26 A.D. Also note that from 1 B.C. to 1 A.D. is just one year.) Jesus’ crucifixion occurred only a few years later, and about four decades later, in 70 A.D. came the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus.
(2) In approximately 700 B.C. the prophet Micah named the tiny village of Bethlehem as the birthplace of Israel’s Messiah (Micah 5:2). The fulfillment of this prophecy in the birth of Christ is one of the most widely known and widely celebrated facts in history.
(3) In the fifth century B.C. a prophet named Zechariah declared that the Messiah would be betrayed for the price of a slave—thirty pieces of silver, according to Jewish law-and also that this money would be used to buy a burial ground for Jerusalem’s poor foreigners (Zechariah 11:12-13). Bible writers and secular historians both record thirty pieces of silver as the sum paid to Judas Iscariot for betraying Jesus, and they indicate that the money went to purchase a “potter’s field,” used—just as predicted—for the burial of poor aliens (Matthew 27:3-10).
(4) Some 400 years before crucifixion was invented, both Israel’s King David and the prophet Zechariah described the Messiah’s death in words that perfectly depict that mode of execution. Further, they said that the body would be pierced and that none of the bones would be broken, contrary to customary procedure in cases of crucifixion (Psalm 22 and 34:20; Zechariah 12:10). Again, historians and New Testament writers confirm the fulfillment: Jesus of Nazareth died on a Roman cross, and his extraordinarily quick death eliminated the need for the usual breaking of bones. A spear was thrust into his side to verify that he was, indeed, dead.
(5) The prophet Isaiah foretold that a conqueror named Cyrus would destroy seemingly impregnable Babylon and subdue Egypt along with most of the rest of the known world. This same man, said Isaiah, would decide to let the Jewish exiles in his territory go free without any payment of ransom (Isaiah 44:28; 45:1; and 45:13). Isaiah made this prophecy 150 years before Cyrus was born, 180 years before Cyrus performed any of these feats (and he did, eventually, perform them all), and 80 years before the Jews were taken into exile.
(6) Mighty Babylon, 196 miles square, was enclosed not only by a moat, but also by a double wall 330 feet high, each part 90 feet thick. It was said by unanimous popular opinion to be indestructible, yet two Bible prophets declared its doom. These prophets further claimed that the ruins would be avoided by travelers, that the city would never again be inhabited, and that its stones would not even be moved for use as building material (Isaiah 13:17-22 and Jeremiah 51:26, 43). Their description is, in fact, the well-documented history of the famous citadel.”
http://www.reasons.org/fulfilled-prophecy-evidence-reliability-bible
Etc etc etc- There is more than enough VERY specific prophecies that have come true that anyone arguing otherwise simply isn’t interested in arguing in an intellectually honest manner
and just for hte record, I do NOT subscribe to Hugh Ross’s views on old earth age, or some of his more bizzarre comments, however, he has documented the reliability of prophecy, and this wasn’t based on his opinion, but rather on documented fact, and stands as trustworthy
Comming soon to a country near you:
In Hosea 5 we read a prophecy that mentions Israel, Ephraim and Judah: “The pride of Israel testifies to his face; therefore Israel and Ephraim stumble in their iniquity; Judah also stumbles with them” (verse 5). The prophecy continues: “With their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find Him; He has withdrawn Himself from them. They have dealt treacherously with the Lord, for they have begotten pagan children. Now a New Moon shall devour them and their heritage” (verses 6-7).
Ephraim, the lost tribe of Israel, refers to we gentiles, incliding Brittain and the U.S, who become great with hte help of God Almighty, but who forget God, and stumble because God has turned His face from us because of our sins against Him.
This must come to pass before the end time, and Obama and the extreme left are leading us straight down that path with an apparent gusto and desire for us to join the EU- which incidently, has already been made up of hte 10 great nations which make up the last great Babylon, just before her destruction.
“Here then is a prophecy regarding all three nations—the United States, Britain and Israel (Judah). According to this prophecy, it appears that all three will fall within the span of a month. Verse 6 shows these nations turning back to God, but finding it’s too late. Because of their sins, He will let them suffer defeat and collapse.”
http://www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn74/sevenprophecies.htm
We may be witnessing our own defeat and collapse- which Christ said would happen ‘within one generation’ when the signs begin to be fulfilled! Obama being the cheerleader- the Pied-piper whom the masses will follow and worhip gleefully.
“Lest the idea seem outlandish, consider that Israel and the United States are perhaps the most maligned and criticized nations on earth. Among Muslim hard-liners, America is commonly called “the great Satan” and Israel and Britain “the little Satans.”
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