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Post by rickolsen on Aug 19, 2018 2:04:02 GMT -5
If I tell you I believe in fairies, trolls, and cyclops you will say I am insane. If I tell you I believe in talking snakes and talking donkeys and a God who loves me so much he will torture me forever unless I say "Dear Lord Jesus come into my heart" you will say smart man.
Hate to break it to you but there is no difference between them. They are both insanity.
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Post by agog on Aug 19, 2018 6:04:25 GMT -5
Hate to break it back to you Rick O, but it's almost the exact opposite.
If I say the material universe just popped into existence, out of nothing, for no reason, and toward no purpose, the educated people of this world will say: "You're scientific and smart."
If I say the resulting non-living matter from this "Big bang," just happened to flop into a certain intricately specific organisation (a root word of organism) that allowed for cell walls that have openings that give entry to proteins for assimilation and minerals for catalysts and nothing else,(contaminants) and I say there are other portals to expel the waste from the assimilative processes and nothing else (constituents) and if I say within that complex cell wall there is a DNA helix that if stretched out would be thousands of times longer than the cell's diameter, all carefully folded so as to allow it to unzip forming two half helixes which somehow migrate to opposite internal sides of the cell, unite with a newly generated complimentary half copy, check itself for copy exactness, and refold itself carefully into a new untangled package to become two separate complete helixes while at the same time the cell wall decouples itself at two points to arc around on itself forming two cells out of one, all directed by a biological software that is not binary as our computers are but is base four (AGTH) that is DNA) (the educated of this world will say: "My, you are a clever boy! You can perhaps become one of us. Maybe you can wear a robe like us and dangle your tassle on this side of your mortarboard and flatulate in the 'distinguished chair of such and such' and vote for who gets an award (and guess who gets the award, That's right, those of us who vote.) Or maybe you will stay an average 'normie' who says I'm a bright boy because I BELIEVE without understanding, whatever Professor So-and So says because he's really really smart, and by association so am I.
SIDE BAR: Your assignment in advanced grammar is to diagram the impossible run on sentence above. It will count for thirty percent of your grade.
I won't even get into how the incredibly complex single cells, for no reason whatsoever, began organizing themselves into differentiated tissues that have no stand alone purpose and would not be viable without a biological relationship to other, wildly different tissues to form organs that would have no viability without other complex organs forming systems (limbic, circulatory, nervous, digestive, skeletal etc etc) which would have no viability without being incorporated with each other, ALL of each other. Take one out, anywhere along the line, and everything fails.
The case for intelligent design, and therefore a designer, is overwhelming. The case for "It just happened for no reason, by pure happenstance," is mathematical and logical insanity.
Every human has faith. The Bible says God has given every person a measure of faith. You can place your measure in a creator or you can place your measure in 'smart' men, or perhaps in other categories, but you will place it somewhere.
I do not have enough faith to be an atheist.
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Post by rickolsen on Aug 19, 2018 9:26:51 GMT -5
First, Agog, I am an intelligent and rational man. I am not an Atheist. Atheism is religion in reverse. One believes in "No God." One believes in various gods or godesses. I am Agnostic. I say I don't know. The universe is a big place. I have not been everywhere in it.
There have been tens of thousands of gods and goddesses over tens of thousands of years. Most are long forgotten. Do you think the ancient Greeks ever would have believed that one day Zeus would be forgotten? Likewise I guarantee you in five thousand years Jesus and Allah will be footnotes in history under Ancient Myths.
Nature goes merrily along whether we believe in it or not. Nature has order and laws and there is no need of a creator. There is no emperical evidence that a creator exists. I never believed in Santa Claus because logic and reasoning clearly showed he doesn't exist. Really, a fat man sliding down our six inch chimney into our gas burning furnace with a bag of goodies. Even some kids are too smart for that.
I moved these posts for you. Any typos or mistakes I apologize. My cat wouldn't leave me alone. there were many, and I proofread, but I might have missed something. |
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Post by rickolsen on Aug 19, 2018 9:43:51 GMT -5
First, let me say that we don't reproduce, we produce. To reproduce means to make an exact copy. Anyway, a sperm and ovum unite. Cell division begins. Eventually a new creature is born. This is true whether it is a human, or a dog, or a grasshopper. It was a purely natural process. No God was needed.
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Post by Socal Fan on Aug 19, 2018 14:49:14 GMT -5
If I say the material universe just popped into existence ... The case for intelligent design, and therefore a designer, is overwhelming. The problem with intelligent design is trying to explain the origin and existence of the designer. If we can accept that the designer "just popped into existence", then it is just as easy to accept that the universe "just popped into existence". Actually, the universe is easier to accept since the designer is more powerful and therefore more complex than the universe. |
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Post by Socal Fan on Aug 19, 2018 14:52:47 GMT -5
I do not have enough faith to be an atheist. I am neither. I am nonreligious. |
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Post by richard on Aug 19, 2018 16:04:50 GMT -5
I do not have enough faith to be an atheist. I am neither. I am nonreligious. I would say I am nonreligious but do believe there is some type of creator involved.
I don't believe in ghost but I still wouldn't sleep in a grave yard at night.
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Post by agog on Aug 19, 2018 16:23:00 GMT -5
The problem with intelligent design is trying to explain the origin and existence of the designer. If we can accept that the designer "just popped into existence", then it is just as easy to accept that the universe "just popped into existence". Actually, the universe is easier to accept since the designer is more powerful and therefore more complex than the universe. Explaining the origin and existence of the designer is totally separate from the easily observed conclusion that there IS a designer. Human curiosity being what it is, it's natural to wonder about the designer. It's quite easy to conclude that He is powerful and intelligent. Much information beyond those two basic attributes would require the designer to reveal himself. Every culture has a creation story involving a deity of one sort or the other because it's clear that this intricate order could not have popped out of nothing without any agency. |
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Post by agog on Aug 19, 2018 17:13:45 GMT -5
First, let me say that we don't reproduce, we produce. To reproduce means to make an exact copy. Anyway, a sperm and ovum unite. Cell division begins. Eventually a new creature is born. This is true whether it is a human, or a dog, or a grasshopper. It was a purely natural process. No God was needed. "To produce means to make an exact copy." First,that's semantics Rick. You inserted the qualifier "exact" into a general definition. It's semantics because you'd need to go through many definitions in many dictionaries to find one that defined the word reproduction as meaning to make an EXACT copy. I doubt you'd find it even as the fifth or sixth definition in any of the top twenty-five dictionaries. Meanwhile you'd be skipping over the first or second or third definition in all of them, which would say to have babies or living offspring. Second, there is no such thing as an exact copy of anything we can observe in the universe. There's no two exact copies of new automobiles fresh off the same assembly lines. There are no two exact copies of fingerprints or iris's. So an EXACT copy would be a unique and esoteric thing. Reproduce is a commonly used and understood word in English. Don't make it esoteric. "Anyway, a sperm and ovum unite." You're jumping into the well developed stages of living processes with that statement Rick. Unless you're saying a sperm and ovum was the first things in existence. (Wouldn't a womb be necessary for them to develop?) Of course I know you're not saying that but the issue under discussion is how living organisms, even the spectacularly complex "simple" ones, can spontaneously generate from non living matter. "It was a purely natural process, No God was needed." That is an IMMENSE statement Rick. You made the assertion, and nothing else, now defend it with intelligence, logic and reason. |
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Post by Socal Fan on Aug 19, 2018 17:48:45 GMT -5
Explaining the origin and existence of the designer is totally separate from the easily observed conclusion that there IS a designer. That's the problem with the intelligent design theory. It simply replaces one unanswered question (where did the universe come from?) and another (where did the designer come from?). Actually, we are even worse off since we know something about the universe but even less about the designer. |
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Post by agog on Aug 19, 2018 18:29:29 GMT -5
That's the problem with the intelligent design theory. It simply replaces one unanswered question (where did the universe come from?) and another (where did the designer come from?). Actually, we are even worse off since we know something about the universe but even less about That's twice you've conflated the question of a designed universe with the question of the nature of the designer. Maybe that's the best you can do. Read this again. Try it a few times till you get what it says. Explaining the origin and existence of the designer is totally separate from the easily observed conclusion that there IS a designer.Scf, it like we are discussing the importance of good fuel mileage in long distance racing cars but one guy keeps saying drag racers do not pay a bit of attention to specific fuel consumption. He's not in the conversation. |
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Post by rickolsen on Aug 19, 2018 20:50:29 GMT -5
Intelligent Design was made a laughingstock in the Dover trial. Michael Behe's Irriducible Complexity was proved to be a total fraud. Intelligent Design replaced the word Creationism in Of Pandas And People the main Creationism textbook when the Supreme Court ruled that Creationism can't be taught in public schools in 1987.
The short of it is that Creationism (Intelligent Design) goes against all of the scientific evidence. They have a Creationism Museum in Kentucky about Noah's flood with saddled dinosaurs. Creationists base their beliefs on a 3.5 thousand year old book of mythology and nonsense most of which was stolen from the Babylonians during the Jewish captivity. Even the book of Genesis has two creation stories. Which is supposedly the "True" one.
Crap! The first two paragraphs of my post didn't post.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2018 20:55:49 GMT -5
If a person has never experienced love, he may not believe in it. So one might say that love's existence
cannot be proven until it is experienced.
Likewise, those who have yet to experience God in some way, especially His love, may not believe God
exists. Hence, we can describe a non-believer as someone who has not yet felt the love of God.
Those who identify as 'agnostic' are admitting that they do not know God. I suspect that is true because
they too have never felt the love of God, or, have never had any experience with God that
they are aware of---yet.
However, there are many individuals who do know God through personal experience, i.e., gnosis.
Non-believers, atheists, and agnostics may question such knowledge for the lack of intellectual
logic, or, other reasons, and so deny such certitude.
But such doubt is worthy of a reply: How do you know that I do not know?
Blessings to all!
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Post by Socal Fan on Aug 19, 2018 21:51:22 GMT -5
the easily observed conclusion that there IS a designer. You observe that the universe is a very complex place and conclude that such complexity could have arisen only from the acts of an intelligent designer. I agree about the complexity of the universe but believe that such complexity arose simply from the laws of nature without the necessity of an intelligent designer. Where you observe the acts of a designer, I observe the results of the laws of nature after 13.8 billions years from the moment of the big bang. |
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Post by agog on Aug 19, 2018 22:03:18 GMT -5
Where you observe the acts of a designer, I observe the results of the laws of nature after 13.8 billions years from the moment of the big bang. On what do you base your assertion that the universe is 13.8 billion years old? On what do you base your assertion of a Big Bang which all matter and energy simply appeared out of nothing? You have great faith. |
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