Still don't believe in evolution? Try this!

[carolinajazz]

They are missing a lot about how much human input went into the compilation of the bible and writing and rewriting. The notion that there is no subjective human elements is simply historically incorrect.

Men did the actual writing of the Bible....however, this does not make what they wrote any less the Word of God. The Bible explains: “Men spoke from God as they were borne along by holy spirit.” (2*Peter 1:21) Just as God used his powerful holy spirit to create the heavens, the earth and all living things, he also used it to direct the writing of the Bible.

This means that the Bible has only one author. He used men to write the information down, much as a businessman uses a secretary to write a letter. The secretary writes the letter, but the letter contains the thoughts and ideas of the businessman. So it is his letter, not the secretary’s, even as the Bible is God’s Book, not the book of the men who were used to write it.

Since God created the mind, he surely did not find it hard to get in touch with the minds of his servants to provide them with the information to write. Even today a person can sit in his home and receive messages from a faraway place by means of a radio or a television set. The voices or pictures travel over long distances by the use of physical laws that God created. It is, therefore, easy to understand that from his place far away in the heavens, He could direct men to write down the information that he wanted the human family to know. Makes sense, no?

 

[Siro]

There is no need for a compelling comment when talking to religious folk

All I feel is pity that an adult would believe in something as ludicrous as 'god'

That's really uncalled for.

 

[babe]

No question. I've always found it funny how some believers can't help impose arbitrary restrictions on their God.

mirror exercise?

didactic biblical theorists are only a few generations removed, if that, from didactic "scientific"/ "secular humanist"/ "atheist"/"__________"(insert any class of human proponents of any human belief system) theorists.

you really think you're significantly different, somehow?

A fish with lungs might just be an accident of nature and in no way in the line of any evolutionary chain of ancestry leading to humans who can philosophically derive from authoritarianism yet imagine they are a new life form called "liberals" who somehow are viewed as superior, even though they pass more laws and impose more didactic morals on mankind than any religious bigot ever could manage.



uuuuhhhhhhh. . . . . here is where I just have to laugh, at myself and the world as well. . . . .

 

[One Brow]

Is it possible? Sure, philosophically speaking I can see that happening. Thats why I am in the agnostic camp.

Philosophically, I can see it happening. However, there is no evidence for it. That's why I am an atheist.

 

[carolinajazz]

So you don't believe that extinction is even possible? Do you believe that dinosaurs never existed or that they are still alive?

Yes, there are many species of bears in existence, which I think you understand, and I think you also understand that this is beside the point.

The point being: there are no brown bears in polar regions, where polar bears have adapted (not just whiteness, but a range of characteristics suited ideally to the environment). I'm not sure the creationist theory of how Polar bears got there.

Others say they adapted over millions of years as God himself manipulated their DNA.

If I understand your views, you seem to think that adaptation happens but it has some sort of limitation. It stops before a new species can be created. To this I ask, what is the constraint on adaptation? Why does it exist?

Of course I believe in Dinosaurs and there extinction! The Bible account in the first chapter of Genesis simply states the general order of creation. It allows for possibly thousands of millions of years for the formation of the earth and possibly the same in six creative eras, or “days,” to prepare the earth for human habitation.

Religious fundamentalists today distort the Bible when they insist that the earth was created in six 24-hour days. (Genesis 1:3-31) Such a view agrees neither with science nor with the Bible. In the Bible, as in everyday speech, the word “day” is a flexible term, expressing units of time of varying lengths. At Genesis 2:4, all six creative days are referred to as one all-embracing “day.” The Hebrew word translated “day” in the Bible can simply mean “a long time.” So, there is no Biblical reason to insist that the days of creation were 24 hours each.

Some dinosaurs (and pterosaurs) may indeed have been created in the fifth era listed in Genesis, when the Bible says that God made “flying creatures” and “great sea monsters.” Perhaps other types of dinosaurs were created in the sixth epoch. The vast array of dinosaurs with their huge appetites would have been appropriate considering the abundant vegetation that evidently existed in their time.—Genesis 1:20-24.

When the dinosaurs had fulfilled their purpose, God ended their life. But the Bible is silent on how he did that or when. We can be sure that dinosaurs were created for a purpose, even if we do not fully understand that purpose at this time. They were no mistake, no product of evolution. That they suddenly appear in the fossil record unconnected to any fossil ancestors, and also disappear without leaving connecting fossil links, is evidence against the view that such animals gradually evolved over millions of years of time. The fossil record does not support the evolution theory. Instead, it harmonizes with the Bible’s view of creative acts of God.

Yes, adaptation does occur and happen.....but as you correctly pointed out, it has some sort of limitation. The "constraint" on adaptation seems to be what the Genesis account calls "kind". Were these original “kinds” of plants and animals programmed with the ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions? What defines the boundary of a “kind”? The Bible does not say. However, it does state that living creatures “swarmed forth according to their kinds.” (Genesis 1:21) This statement implies that there is a limit to the amount of variation that can occur within a “kind.”
And both the fossil record and modern research support the idea that the fundamental categories of plants and animals have changed little over vast periods of time!

 

[One Brow]

Does it seem reasonable to believe that they happened by chance alone?

No, but evolution does not rely on chance alone.

Are these not the kind of intricate designs that experience teaches can only be the product of a brilliant designer?

No, designers make things as simple as they can to get the job done.

 

[Siro]

mirror exercise?

didactic biblical theorists are only a few generations removed, if that, from didactic "scientific"/ "secular humanist"/ "atheist"/"__________"(insert any class of human proponents of any human belief system) theorists.

you really think you're significantly different, somehow?

A fish with lungs might just be an accident of nature and in no way in the line of any evolutionary chain of ancestry leading to humans who can philosophically derive from authoritarianism yet imagine they are a new life form called "liberals" who somehow are viewed as superior, even though they pass more laws and impose more didactic morals on mankind than any religious bigot ever could manage.



uuuuhhhhhhh. . . . . here is where I just have to laugh, at myself and the world as well. . . . .

Oh I'm sure religious people can manage it. After all, we've had thousands of years of religion-inspired laws and morals imposed on us. I don't understand why you're so opposed to secular mores that attempt to maximize human benefit and minimize harm. At least they leave you to believe what you want.

 

[babe]

why he can't make atheists like me to start believing in God?

uuuhhhhhhhhhh.

Perhaps in your thrashings about, you need to review a little production of the Veggie Tales outfit, entitled "A Snoodles' Tale". If not for the overwhelming dose of intellectual exhibitionism, just for the one little snippet where the little snoodle, having been mocked outta Snoodleville, climbs the mountain and finds God, and asks the same question about
"Why?" God can't make people do other good stuff, like not mock kids.

God's reply is to the effect that He has given us all our gifts, and what we choose to do is in effect our own gift to Him: "A gift that's demanded is no gift at all".

The idea of a God like that just looks to me a whole lot more intellectually evolved than an agnostic, or an atheist, who without evidence to sustain that opinion, nevertheless is willing to seize control of classrooms the world over and dogmatically insist no one can speak of "God". The worst aspect of human nature is our willingness to impose ideological belief systems, under the force of government authority, on the human mind.

Progressive socialists with professed secular humanist ideals are the worst yet iteration of that ignorance.

 

[One Brow]

0.14% of scientists in relevant fields don't believe in evolution? As tiny as this number is, it is still very hard to believe. You'd pretty much have to be demented.

Some people join the field to attack it from within, or in their view, make sure their viewpoint is expressed by someone with credentials.

 

[One Brow]

...and a fish with lungs.....never becomes a human being!

Human beings are fish with lungs.

 

[babe]

Oh I'm sure religious people can manage it. After all, we've had thousands of years of religion-inspired laws and morals imposed on us. I don't understand why you're so opposed to secular mores that attempt to maximize human benefit and minimize harm. At least they leave you to believe what you want.

No they don't. Courts sit on issues and decide what can and can not be said, in public or inside homes. Social work professionals prepare home evaluations for government agencies with their own armed "police" and their own "courts" that can do anything they want, ultimately, because no one in the whole progressive socialist movement is going to fight for anything different. Public schools are constrained in multiple ways to shape professional standards that reduce anyone's right to think down to some sort of workfoce training suitable for Corporate culture. Being different is viewed as "antisocial" and "dysfunctional" behavior that merits applying psychoactive pharmaceuticals to help manage the offending "student".

Pretty typical, Siro. People who have planted their stakes in our progressive social system are going to defend it like the worst religious zealot who ever died for his particular "faith".

Some "religious" folks make it out that their way is the "true freedom" just like you do with yours.

take a better look in that mirror.

 

[One Brow]

No they don't. Courts sit on issues and decide what can and can not be said, in public or inside homes.

Not in the US. You'd find Siro and would condemn any such government just as strongly as you. Can you be more specific?

 

[babe]

Not in the US. You'd find Siro and would condemn any such government just as strongly as you. Can you be more specific?

I assume you meant to put an "I" between "and" and "would" there. . . . .

A fine legal distinction, just as fine as some court rulings are worked out. I have assumed your belief in the courts is right, and been dismayed to see the ideal trashed many times, always with some "good" reason.

If a child is sitting in a public school, say in your classroom, and says "the no-threshold response curve to radiation exposures is a deliberate public policy lie without scientific basis" you're going to contradict him/her and say "we have hundreds of scientific studies and a scientific professional community consensus that prove it". The class will squirm and snicker, and whisper "conspiracy theorist". If you run into the same obstructionism to your educational standards in a test, you'll mark the kid wrong and deduct from his score. If his parents object, and take you to court, they will lose their battle for the truth because the court will invoke the theory that you, and the scientists you cite, are to be given carte blanch within your professional expertise.

The fact that when you actually read the scientific literature it is commonplace to recognize a non-zero "threshold" for observable radiation effects doesn't count. The fact that there are known biological responses to low-level radiation that induce expression for genes coding for effective DNA repair systems and metabolizers for free radicals is just simply ignored. To get "published" you, as a researcher, have just got to invoke the no-threshold model for your report, whether it helps in the interpretation of the data, or not.

So, I drew an example from a subject not generally connected in the public mind to evolution, but the same sort of thing goes on in a lot of other research areas, including those that are cited in "proofs" of "evolution".

And our courts have ruled that "evolutionary science" is good science in much the same way. Ruled that a broad theory is the standard for classroom instruction, while ruling that people cannot bring their Bibles into the class or discuss "God" on public premises. . . . and especially that teachers cannot do that.

The way I look at it, "evolution" as a "theory of everything" is just about as vague as "God". It is a hindrance to actual education to reduce public education to the level of taking one side or another on this subject.

What is needed is a conclusionless and moral-less treatment of competing concepts with equal reference to "authority" on both sides of the question, such as that "authority" might be. . . . , with liberal encouragement to the students imagination and freedom to form their own happy little delusions of understanding or belief.

The "God" I "believe" in is well beyond my expertise or demonstrative powers. I would consider the probability of developments favoring "life" extending not only through the 15 billion years of earth history, but across the far expanse of space back through more than one "Big Bang" or whatever event you might imagine as a "beginning". I think a place-holder term that is essentially undefinable, and used imaginatively to produce simplistic explanations of unknowable things, is just fine. In any classroom.

Just as acceptable as a reference to "Evolution" which is still enhanced with just as much imagination to produce simplistic explanations of unknowable things.

 

[GVC]

Can you be more specific?

One Brow, meet babe, the king of obfuscation. More specific/transparent/direct? Why in the world would he do that?

 

[carolinajazz]

yeah Carolinajazz, keep quoting passages from a 2000 year old book written by goat herding, iron age peasants who thought the earth was flat and the sun revolved around the earth


Brilliant stuff

....obviously, you have never read even parts of the Bible or you would not have come to those conclusions....and then spread the WRONG conclusions you came to!

“All the streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place from which the streams flow, there they return so as to flow again.” Ecclesiastes 1:7

The oldest surviving non-Biblical references to this cycle are from the fourth century B.C.E. However, Biblical statements predate that by hundreds of years. For example, in the 11th century B.C.E., King Solomon of Israel wrote: “All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place from which the rivers come, to there and from there they return again.”—Ecclesiastes 1:7, The Amplified Bible.

Likewise, about 800 B.C.E. the prophet Amos, a humble shepherd and farm worker, wrote that there is “the One calling for the waters of the sea, that he may pour them out upon the surface of the earth.” (Amos 5:8) Without using complex, technical language, both Solomon and Amos accurately described the water cycle, each from a slightly different perspective.

The Bible also speaks of God as “hanging the earth upon nothing,” or he “suspends earth in the void,” according to The New English Bible. (Job 26:7) In view of the knowledge available in 1600 B.C.E., roughly when those words were spoken, it would have taken a remarkable man to assert that a solid object can remain suspended in space without any physical support.

...and then we have THIS: “There is One who dwells above the circle of the earth.”
Isaiah 40:22

In the eighth century B.C.E., when the prevailing view was that the earth was flat, centuries before Greek philosophers theorized that the earth likely was spherical, and thousands of years before humans saw the earth as a globe from space, the Hebrew prophet Isaiah stated with remarkable simplicity: “There is One who is dwelling above the circle of the earth.” (Isaiah 40:22) The Hebrew word chugh, here translated “circle,” may also be rendered “sphere.” Other Bible translations read, “the globe of the earth” (Douay Version) and “the round earth.”—Moffatt.

...and as far as the Bible teaching that the sun revolved around the earth, that's simply not true! For centuries, religious leaders taught mythical legends and erroneous dogmas that are at odds with modern scientific findings and not based on inspired Scripture. For example, the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo because he concluded, correctly, that the earth revolves around the sun. Galileo’s view in no way contradicted the Bible, but it was contrary to what the church taught at the time.

 

[Siro]

No they don't. Courts sit on issues and decide what can and can not be said, in public or inside homes. Social work professionals prepare home evaluations for government agencies with their own armed "police" and their own "courts" that can do anything they want, ultimately, because no one in the whole progressive socialist movement is going to fight for anything different. Public schools are constrained in multiple ways to shape professional standards that reduce anyone's right to think down to some sort of workfoce training suitable for Corporate culture. Being different is viewed as "antisocial" and "dysfunctional" behavior that merits applying psychoactive pharmaceuticals to help manage the offending "student".

Pretty typical, Siro. People who have planted their stakes in our progressive social system are going to defend it like the worst religious zealot who ever died for his particular "faith".

Some "religious" folks make it out that their way is the "true freedom" just like you do with yours.

take a better look in that mirror.

Do you have a problem with courts putting limits on free speech? I know of no country on earth that has looser limits on that than the US. Are you opposed to free speech limitations on things like yelling FIRE in a crowded place in order to incite panic? Such limitations are perfectly within reason. I'm not aware of any instance where the court made it illegal to talk about anything inside homes.

Social work professionals who try to rescue human beings from abuse bother you? If society gave any more rights to parents over their children, we might as well change the term from parenthood to ownership. As long as they're not subjected to great physical harm, or sexual abuse, it's pretty much fair game. Even those parents who isolate their children from society and information in order to brainwash them into remaining within the fold of their archaic, and dying, religions are allowed to do so. What exactly it is you want?

Public schools training people to function in the modern world is also a baffling objection. Sure you can argue for better approaches to education (and I've heard so many suggestions). But in the end, if education doesn't prepare you for modern life, then what's the point of it at all?

Your gripe seems to be mainly with the government-corporates framework. I agree that corporatism and the emerging police state are serious and related problems, but the hierarchy of conspirators you created is without any basis. In your worldview, evil atheist socialists force their will on helpless Christian children through the use of propaganda and pharmaceuticals in order to create an army of unthinking drones to support the status quo. You're upset the modern world doesn't reflect whatever ideal paradigm you think life should follow, and you're making all kinds of irrational connections in order to justify that sentiment.

 

[babe]

One Brow, meet babe, the king of obfuscation. More specific/transparent/direct? Why in the world would he do that?

yah, I was going to go do some real work, but leaving that question hanging for a week or two, if not longer, just got to me somehow.

I should probably write a book to give it the answer it deserves. Maybe research the legal cases which have already consumed thousands of years of lawyer time, at lawyer rates. Maybe sift through just as much metaphysical, religious, and scientific literature.

When done, OB will find some hair of evidence to throw it all out and start a new trial.

The reason scientists and public policy makers, and courts, are going to be dealing with this for years to come, is just because people don't like government horning into their personal lives, their bedrooms, or their minds. The only way out is for us all to get our government, and our little grade schools, out of it.

 

[One Brow]

And our courts have ruled that "evolutionary science" is good science in much the same way. Ruled that a broad theory is the standard for classroom instruction, while ruling that people cannot bring their Bibles into the class or discuss "God" on public premises. . . . and especially that teachers cannot do that.

Individuals who are not representatives of the government can bring the Bibles into classrooms and discuss God, as long as it does not disrupt class. Teachers, who are representatives of the government, can not. I'm surprised that you think it would be a good thing to allow government representatives to personally propagandize individuals.

The way I look at it, "evolution" as a "theory of everything" is just about as vague as "God". It is a hindrance to actual education to reduce public education to the level of taking one side or another on this subject.

Worded like that, I agree. I disagree that your wording represents what texts actually say.

What is needed is a conclusionless and moral-less treatment of competing concepts with equal reference to "authority" on both sides of the question, such as that "authority" might be. . . . , with liberal encouragement to the students imagination and freedom to form their own happy little delusions of understanding or belief.

As long as that doesn't mean schools represent beliefs in leprechauns and unicorns as being scientifically justifiable positions.

 

[babe]

One Brow, meet babe, the king of obfuscation. More specific/transparent/direct? Why in the world would he do that?

so you didn't get this charge lodged before I blew it out of the water, right above where you're standing. . . . .

ah, but anything you can't understand will still look like obfuscation. . . . and miss the mark in your own mind.

Lucidity, like beauty, is in the eye and mind of the beholder. . . . .

Now, I do have work to do.

 

[babe]

[

QUOTE=One Brow;898044]Individuals who are not representatives of the government can bring the Bibles into classrooms and discuss God, as long as it does not disrupt class. Teachers, who are representatives of the government, can not. I'm surprised that you think it would be a good thing to allow government representatives to personally propagandize individuals.

actually, I'd like it a whole lot better if teachers were not "government representatives" but people standing on their own merits. Ah, the future I dream of. . . . on-line education with many, many choice in competing resources, available at prices any one can afford, free. A few "ads" ought to pay the freight.

Worded like that, I agree. I disagree that your wording represents what texts actually say.

I'd have to look at the current texts to know what they are trending in their treatments on the subject.

As long as that doesn't mean schools represent beliefs in leprechauns and unicorns as being scientifically justifiable positions.

[/QUOTE]

leprechauns and unicorns might be good for a laugh, and anybody who has some explanation of their origins in our lore might make some interesting reading. . . . but "beliefs" like those, and magic, and "change" mediated by one president, are definitely not on my list of valuable "education".