>> If you define him in that manner, you will never know if he is real or
>> ficticious.
>
> No, you make a standard error. Â Just because He is outside of our
> medium of experience, does not mean that when He does break into
> time and history to reveal Himself, that that revelation has to be
> exhaustive. Â Revelation can be absolutely true despite being finite.
If your magical being breaks into time and history, there will be
traces of it. Something can't interact with the natural world without
affecting it, all your handwaving to the contrary.
There *is* no evidence of any divine revelation, cupcake. Suck it up
and get used to the fact.
>
>>Â And it seems obvious that many other people have many
>> definitions that are very different from yours.
>
> No they don't. Â They may have other "gods" but all men have
> known that there is an Absolute, Infinite God which hold them
> accountable for their deeds. Â All men know this but not all
> men admit to it or have made themselves callous to that
> reality over time.
Actually, that's not true. There are African tribes that clearly had
no superstitions or forms of worship until such practices were taught
to them by outsiders.
As for the prevalence of superstition elsewhere in the world, it's
quite easily explained. Pick up a copy of Daniel Dennett's _Breaking
the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon_. Dennett uses known
psychological phenomena to explain the ubiquitousness of superstition,
without for a moment resorting to supernaturalism.
So, there is a non-supernatural explanation for these superstitious
convictions. Since that's the more parsimonious explanation, it's
probably the correct one.
>
>>Â An untestable theory will
>> remain unproven. Â And you seem to shoot yourself in the foot by claiming
>> that your concept is untestable. Â You cannot convince rational people with
>> these sorts of claims.
>
> Ah! Â But you confuse rationalism with being rational. Â Pure
> rationalism
> is a non-reality. Â In truth, however, reason underlies all faith while
> an
> activity of faith underlies all knowledge.
No. That's a purty bit of speechifyin', but it's substantively crap.
"Faith" means "belief without evidence." Rationalism is the exact
opposite of that. The underpinnings of rationalism is *confidence*,
not faith - confidence that the natural world will continue to work as
expected, because there's evidence that it always *has* worked that
way. When I drop a rock, I don't have "faith" that it won't fall up,
I have *confidence* that it won't fall up - because nothing ever *has*
fallen up before.
> Â Think it through. Â For
> reason
> in its final analysis rests on authority which is beyond itself.
> Belief/
> faith is the primary condition of reason  - not reason being the
> ultimate basis for faith.
No. Belief doesn't rest on "authority" for most of us. It rests on
evidence. And, as I demonstrated to you in the evolution discussion,
*you* haven't got any. Therefore, there's no reason for us to listen
to your bald assertions.
>
>>> This is the argument of Paul before the philosophers on Mars
>>> Hill, later written down in the most masterful book ever written,
>>> Romans. On Mars Hill he was interrupted. Â In Romans he
>>> documents both the natural and the spiritual aspects of man
>>> in his relationship with the Infinite-Personal.
>>> "because that which IS known about God is evident *within*
>>> them; for God made it evident to them." Â 1:19
>
>> What I know about that stuff could have been caused by any number of
>> things
>
> None of the great thinkers talk this way any more. Â This is
> easily evidenced by some of the published comments of
> Sir Fredric Hoyle who no longer accepts the big bang
> theory nor the standard, strictly  atheistic model of
> evolution.
Sir Fredric Hoyle is dead, lambchop, as I pointed out to you in
another thread. He no longer accepts anything, because he's
deceased. He's an ex-thinker.
*Do* try to keep up with current events, won't you please?
> The complexity of a single gene has led him and
> other to state that there simply isn't enough time in the
> universe for probability being the causality of this complex
> yet ordered universe.
Hoyle was an astronomer, not a geneticist, and he didn't know fuck
about genes. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, his opinions on
genetic complexity matter exactly as much as my greengrocer's do,
which is to say, not at all.
People who actually *work in the field of genetics* have a very good
handle on how genetic complexity develops; there are, as it turns out,
quite a number of different ways. Don't fall prey to the bogus
arithmetic that says genetic complexity can't have arisen in the time
available; such computations are based on starting over from scratch
with every try. In fact, living things can fix [in the sense of
"stabilize"] changes that occur to the genetic sequence. This changes
the arithmetic completely. (See Daniel Dennett's _Darwin's Dangerous
Idea_ for an exhaustive explanation of this concept.)
>Â Leon Ledderman, an atheistic
> Jew, and yet another Nobel laureate, had to concede to
> there being some kind of "God Particle," that being the
> title of his book.
Yes, indeed, but the particle he is talking about is nether
supernatural nor sentient. The Higgs boson is a particle that gives
us insight to another level of physic. If Ledderman actually
thought the particle was supernatural and pointed to a god, then
Ledderman wouldn't continue to be an atheist, would he?
>
>> ; it is no evidence of your transcendent god. The arguement fails.
>> It assumes an unproven cause (this is called "begging the question"),
>> and uses evidence which could point anywhere.
>
> It's not that there is no evidence, rather its not being able to
> see the forest for all those blasted trees. Â The whole of modern
> science is founded upon the principle that HE is there.
No, in fact, it is not. The whole of modern science is founded on the
principle that the material world is observable. It doesn't address
the supernatural in any way, shape, or form, because the supernatural,
if it exists, cannot be observed or tested.
You get a lot of this science stuff wrong, you know - like your
statement that humans suffered a genetic bottleneck six thousand years
ago, when in fact the bottlenect occurred seventy thousand years ago.
Don't you think you should go back to school and catch up on *actual*
science, rather than try to put a fundie spin on everything?
Silly question. Of course you don't.
> Â The problem of unity/diversity,
Not sure what you mean by "unity," but diversity is not a problem for
science/evolution.
> of "where did the order come from"
This is also not a problem for science. Order appears if there is
sufficient energy input to enable it. Matter, it seems, is self-
organizing because chemistry works predictably.
> and "why is man different from non-man"
Uh, I hate to be the one to bust your bubble and bruise your ego, but
man is *not* especially "different" than non-man. The more we study
animals, the more clearly we realize that the "big gulf" we thought
separated us from our non-human relatives is pretty much a product of
our imaginations and our ego. I suggest you include a couple courses
in animal behaviorism in that education you need so badly to be
getting.
> The problem with modern epistimology is that it beats to
> death the Answer to overwhelming questions of "how" and
> "why" without having anything to put in its place.
The "how" answer is the proper concern of science, not theology.
"Why" is a personal question. Personally, I believe there is no
"why," and I'm perfectly comfortable with that. That the natural
world and its life forms exist is a wonderful thing. I am a part of
that natural world - and that means that the earth (and indeed, the
universe) is my rightful home, and all life forms I encounter are my
relatives, although some are more distant than others.
Whereas *you*, you pitiful being, have been brainwashed to believe
that you're the specially created pet of an unevidenced supernatural
being, and that your life here on earth is nothing but a test to see
if your consciousness will gain admittance to a special supernatural
place after your body dies. Man, that's pathetic.
> Â Is it
> any wonder that we've had two world wars and third on
> its way?
Oh, we've had more than two world wars, snookums. The first took
place during the American Revolution, when France sided with the U.S.
against the British and fought them from Massachusetts to Madagascar.
And that was in an age when most people were some form of
creationist! Imagine that! Your precious philosophy does not prevent
world wards. Who'd a-thunk it?
> Â Is it any wonder that we have such a moral
> dilemma in the West where we have been telling children
> from birth that they are descended from animals
Children are not only descended from animals, they *are* animals. And
so are adults. So are *you*. You are a primate, a hominid, and you
share most of your DNA with chimpanzees. There's a lovely little
artifact in your very own DNA, a copy of a primate retrovirus which
humans do not get sick from, but chimps do. It appears at *exactly*
the same place in your DNA sequence that it does on chimp DNA, and is
a smoking-gun clue that at one point in time, we shared a common
ancestor with chimps, and that the common ancestor had contracted that
retrovirus.
Sorry, sugarpie. When it comes to evidence, it's all on the side of
science - and evolution.
At any rate, the mountains of evidence aside, it is a logical fallacy
to argue a point from consequences: argumentum ad consequentiam. You
can't argue a particular premise is true because you think there will
be bad consequences if it is found to be false.
*Please* update your education. Include a logic course.
> and that
> there is no accountability to an all knowing, all powerful
> God?
Please provide evidence that *any* god exists. Put it here:
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Can't do it, can you? That's because there isn't any.
> Is it any wonder when these same kids walk into
> their schools on Hitler's birthday wearing Natural Selection
> t-shirts to blast away without any thought of eternal
> accountability?
Yes, I can think of a whole slew of reasons, none of which have
anything to do with evolution.
Unfortunately, bubbe, there's not the slightest shred of evidence that
any part of human consciousness survives after death. All of our
accountability and punishment must be accomplished in *this* life,
because there isn't any other.
And besides - teaching children that they should be good because
they'll be punished if they don't is very bad parenting. Being good
has a host of its own rewards. It's far more moral to be good because
there's a positive outcome for yourself and others than it is to be
good selfishly, merely because you think you'll be punished if you're
not.
Holy crap, I hope you don't have children. People with your beliefs
are a good argument for not allowing *just anybody* to breed.
> Is it any wonder, after Eisenhower mandated that evolution
> be taught in public schools that teenage pregnancy, drug
> abuse, date rape and even murder have escalated the
> further away society get from its Christian origins?
Like it or not, evolution is a *fact*. Modern biology wouldn't exist
without it - it would amount to nothing more than sitting around
drawing birds and lampreys.
And honeylamb, I hate to tell you, but if you're an American, then the
society you live in doesn't have christian origins - it's a secular
nation, where one faith (or faith in general) is not to be held in
more esteem than any other faith (or no faith). That's the genius of
the American system.
Teen pregnancy, drug abuse, and other social ills can't be traced back
to evolution, because these things were taking place long, *long*
before evolution became established. There's a host of reasons - the
breakdown of the extended family among them - why social mores have
changed. Evolution is *not* one of them.
>>> Not ONE star has ever been recorded being born.
>
>> I think that this statement is mistaken. Â And even if it were true, what
>> would that prove?
>
> No it is not mistaken. Â It proves that there is NO
> evidence for one of the fundamentals of modern science and
> it's uniformitarian presuppositionalism because there is no
> evidence for stellar/planetary evolution. Â There isn't one
> shred of evidence for cosmic, chemical, stellar, organic,
> or macro evolution. Â It's all taken on "faith."
In fact, the Hubble telescope has taken pictures of star nurseries,
and we *have* seen stars being born. Yet another scientific fact that
you are either ignorant of, or refuse to acknowledge.
Brenda Nelson, A.A.#34
BAAWA Knight
EAC Professor of Feline Thermometrics and Cat-Herding
skyeyes nine at cox dot net
