Can you appreciate the tremendous logical weight of Ron's arguments?
I don't think you can.
quote:And once you admit the necessity for an Intelligent Designer, there no longer is any need to contrive excuses for believing in vast age for the earth and universe.
Exactly! If we're talking intelligent designer, it necessarily means we're talking a timeframe of a few thousand years, tops. Nothing ridiculous like a million or more. Everybody knows gods can't work with numbers that big.
The existence of God as the creator of life necessarily means that timeframes don't work like that. Because, reasons.
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quote:How could "Natural Selection" have written meaningful genetic code that is not expressed?
At the heart of that question, Ron, is your use of the word "meaningful." What do you believe "meaningful" code actually is?
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Also, you have failed to answer my question regarding why God's preferred form of union is endangered by permitting homosexuals to legally form a union using a similar term.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: The objection is not to homosexuality, but to calling same-sex unions "Marriages," in defiance of the Creator's authority to define what Marriage originally consisted of. It is official defiance of divine authority that leads to the angels being told to "stand down" in their activity to protect earth from terminal disasters of all kinds.
quote: Mishnah Kiddushin 1:1 specifies that a woman is acquired (i.e., to be a wife) in three ways: through money, a contract, and sexual intercourse. Ordinarily, all three of these conditions are satisfied, although only one is necessary to effect a binding marriage.
No religion or priest needed.
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Ron, I hope you don't feel piled up on. I admire your faith in God.
What I worry about is that you're reducing God to the gaps in our knowledge: "God of the Gaps" is what that is called. I went through a crisis of faith, facing the fact that I was believing in God because creation proved God, because I would be able to use science to prove God.
My parents had taught me young earth creationism. I thought that, though good disciples, people who believed in deep time and evolution were following false doctrines.
But they also taught me to be honest. As I grew older, almost everything in that account of creation was stripped away. I hung on to it for a long time, because my belief in God was all wrapped up in it. Letting go of it would have meant letting go of God. But then, I realized, I didn't want to believe in a God that was smaller and smaller, only there to tweak the little things.
God needing to enforce the laws of nature suggests that he created them imperfectly in the first place and now has to keep tinkering with them so we can still have the universe and life.
But if the laws of nature are God's programming for the universe, unchangeable and in force no matter what, then God could have set those laws to generate us. God is not inefficient.
Since our belief in God shouldn't center around proof through creation, then what should it center around? Proof through testing what the Bible tells us to do. Read and study the scriptures, pray, obey to know God, rinse and repeat (repentance through Christ).
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No, Elison and Amka, a God who requires billions of years would be a very weak and ineffectual God, who could not create things the way He wanted them right away. A God who must rely upon chance to create any form of life has virtually no power at all.
Also a God who must utilize death to create life, where nature "red in tooth and claw" is the very inefficient, slow, and painful and horrible means of causing one species to morph into another, is a God who is utterly evil and unworthy of worship. Evolution, even if dressed up as "theistic" evolution, depicts God as having the villainous characteristics of Satan; not of an all-powerful, utterly just and fair Deity who intends for His universe to be governed by Love, where never again will sin rise up.
Satan would substitute selfish striving in the place of love, and brainwash us into believing that we can somehow evolve into godhood through this means. God allows nature to be corrupted now for our sakes, so that nature can be a lesson book to us, where we can see what the ultimate result of selfish striving must be. But God also promises that nature will be restored when man is restored to the original perfection He intended. As the Apostle Paul said, "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now." (Romans 8:20-22; NKJV)
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quote:A God who must rely upon chance to create any form of life has virtually no power at all.
An example of the contradictory nonsense-thinking this sort of literalism encourages. On any number of issues, we will hear about the impenetrable mysteries of God. We'll hear about he many mysterious ways in which God works. We'll even hear how an answer of 'God caused this' is a better answer than 'I don't know how it started' and this will somehow be offered as an even more meaningful argument-that God is responsible for something so unfathomable as creating the Universe.
None of these things, though, stops Ron from sneering at a deity that can 'only' set all of existence in motion such that without ongoing direct intervention, self-aware intelligent life will occur. This is somehow a trifle. It's easy. As though you could even begin to imagine how these things might be done by some sort of deity, Ron. It's as impossible for you to imagine how that sort of Creation might be achieved as it is for the one you believe happened.
This is a sign not that you respect God because God is so powerful and awe-inspiring, but that it actually stems from a much more self-centered place. It's not that you revere amazing acts of Creation-because you even reject that other equally impervious-to-understanding acts, if they were true, would be mighty acts worthy of awe if they happened. Nope. Instead, they require 'virtually no power at all'.
Except when some atheist or agnostic comes forward and asks whether these things might have happened without any creator, you're back again to how impossible, how unthinkable it is that reality exists without some amazing act of creation.
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quote:Also a God who must utilize death to create life, where nature "red in tooth and claw" is the very inefficient, slow, and painful and horrible means of causing one species to morph into another, is a God who is utterly evil and unworthy of worship.
Explain to me why Jesus had to die for our sins, again?
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: No, Elison and Amka, a God who requires billions of years would be a very weak and ineffectual God, who could not create things the way He wanted them right away. A God who must rely upon chance to create any form of life has virtually no power at all.
Also a God who must utilize death to create life, where nature "red in tooth and claw" is the very inefficient, slow, and painful and horrible means of causing one species to morph into another, is a God who is utterly evil and unworthy of worship. Evolution, even if dressed up as "theistic" evolution, depicts God as having the villainous characteristics of Satan; not of an all-powerful, utterly just and fair Deity who intends for His universe to be governed by Love, where never again will sin rise up.
Satan would substitute selfish striving in the place of love, and brainwash us into believing that we can somehow evolve into godhood through this means. God allows nature to be corrupted now for our sakes, so that nature can be a lesson book to us, where we can see what the ultimate result of selfish striving must be. But God also promises that nature will be restored when man is restored to the original perfection He intended. As the Apostle Paul said, "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now." (Romans 8:20-22; NKJV)
Or maybe god exists, has perfect understanding of everything because that's what he is iirc, and because of that KNEW Humanity would 100% chance evolve on Earth that he ALSO knew would 100% form from the solar detritus and all of this is actually kinda supported by quantum mechanics in that observing something changes that something; and so created the universe with observable and empirically determinable laws that he KNEW would 100% result in Humans.
And your saying this is "ineffectual"? Why is billions of years even a big deal? Why should he perceive time at all? Maybe time has no meaning to him or her?
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"And once you admit the necessity for an Intelligent Designer, there no longer is any need to contrive excuses for believing in vast age for the earth and universe."
Samprimary -
"Exactly! If we're talking intelligent designer, it necessarily means we're talking a time frame of a few thousand years, tops."
Just one small problem, you are massively egocentric. You see yourself as absolutely right, but why?
Every culture in the world has its own creations myth. Why is yours better than theirs?
You quote the Bible, but why is your Holy Book any better than anyone else's? Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, the Teachings of Buddha, or the many animistic religions?
You believe in an Intelligent Designer, OK, I'll give you an Intelligent Designer.
Billions of years ago, Mars was a fruitful planet, lush grass, vast oceans, large forests, happy intelligent people. But there was a greedy faction that put momentary profits and environmental destruction above long term survival.
By the time they realized their planet was doomed, it was too late. So, the brilliant scientists did the only thing they could. They couldn't save the people, so they saved the essence of the people.
They sent a DNA Bomb to Earth to seed the Earth with the intelligent essence and the essential genetic code that would give rise to the unique creature called MAN (mankind; men and women).
But from seeds it take a long long time for mighty trees to grow, so by a process of evolution, man developed from a primitive seeding to the complex organism we know today.
Oddly, my Creation Myth is a lot closer to scientific truth than your Creation Myth. My Intelligent Design is far far more likely than yours.
Who are you to say that I am wrong? Who are you to challenge my belief in this reasonable explanation?
There is more rational behind what I believe than in what you believe.
So, there is your Intelligent Design and your Intelligent Designer.
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: No, Elison and Amka, a God who requires billions of years would be a very weak and ineffectual God, who could not create things the way He wanted them right away. A God who must rely upon chance to create any form of life has virtually no power at all.
Actually the actual age of the earth is no more than about 112 years. I don't know how weak and ineffectual your god is, but if you think that he's so weak and ineffectual as to require multiple thousands of years, that's quite an insult to our Creator.
You should really meditate on your hubris and apologetically pray to Him for salvation.
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Steve - I think that Samprimary was being sarcastic. He doesn't believe in YEC. But maybe I misunderstand you.
But, you did take us to an interesting place: panspermia. It is not an irrational solution to the problem that we appear to have had organisms with DNA already intact almost as soon as life was possible.
Ron is correct is saying that this is highly complex. I may even go so far as to say that it is more complex than anything else in life, once you break it all down to molecular machinations, and that the rate of change in the replication/messaging system of DNA itself is so slow that the few hundred million years it had to develop once the earth was cool enough is not enough.
We also have the difficulty of not having predecessors running on a substantially less complex version of RNA or DNA. But in life, at least a handful of primitive species continue without evolving much because they are already successful enough. Cockroaches are older than dinosaurs.
My hubby and I were pillow talking this. We decided there were three possibilities, maybe two:
1. panspermia - it evolved somewhere else and got here somehow. In this scenario, we now have 10 billion more years for things to evolve.
2. There are simply pieces of the puzzle we don't have which would explain how DNA evolved so quickly on Earth.
3.Perhaps this is a direct manifestation of intelligent tinkering. But this could involve either 1 or 2. This is not set forth as a proof of God, simply a reasonable possibility in a universe where God exists. But if one imagines that God's first command of "multiply and replenish" was given not to organisms but to the elements themselves, how would the stuff of stars "contrive" to do that. Don't think of this command as one intelligently understood, but more as a law of nature: the elements will naturally combine to create things which are more and more complex until intelligence is achieved.
In any one of these scenarios, we must still have an evolution of RNA/DNA somehwere and somehow.
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At least on a state and national level, common sense appears to be prevailing.
quote: A quick refresher: In 2008, school board members voted 5-0 to fire Freshwater, a Mount Vernon Middle School science teacher, after learning that he had preached Creationism to the students, handed out flyers in class urging kids to attend a presentation by the “Answers in Genesis” ministry, left the Bible out on his desk during class even after being told to stop, hung a Ten Commandments sign in his classroom, offered extra credit to students who watched the Ben Stein pro-Intelligent Design movie Expelled, and burned a student in the arm with a Tesla coil… in the shape of a cross:
Freshwater not only ignored the school district’s directive, he defied it. After he was directed to remove the items, Freshwater deliberately added to them, incorporating the Oxford Bible and Jesus of Nazareth into the classroom. He then refused to remove his personal Bible from his desk, and refused to remove a depiction of former President George W. Bush and Colin Powell and others in prayer from his wall. … Freshwater is fully entitled to an ardent faith in Jesus Christ and to interpret Biblical passages according to his faith. But he was not entitled to ignore direct, lawful edicts of his superiors while in the workplace.
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Blue Wizard, you asked: "You quote the Bible, but why is your Holy Book any better than anyone else's?"
Because the Bible is validated by prophecies that when interpreted using objective means--including allowing the Bible to define all its own prophetic symbols and allowing context to indicate the time when prophecies are to be applied--accurately outline world history from 600 B.C. clear up to the present. Since only the God who is beyond time could know "the end from the beginning," as claimed in the Bible, this means all the writings in the Bible along with these prophecies should be taken as having great weight. No other literary work in all of human history has this validation.
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If it were anything else, you would likely correctly note the huge (crippling, unavoidable, pervasive) problems with the idea of asserting an 'objective' analysis of textual media when you have to include terms like 'let it define its own terms' (that sound objective) and insisting on a correct reliance on 'context'.
Even someone strongly committed to objectivity-which you are not-would be extremely vulnerable to confirmation bias in making such an analysis. You may try all you like, but don't expect to ever get a free pass on hand-waving all of those problems away anymore.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Blue Wizard, you asked: "You quote the Bible, but why is your Holy Book any better than anyone else's?"
Because the Bible is validated by prophecies that when interpreted using objective means--including allowing the Bible to define all its own prophetic symbols and allowing context to indicate the time when prophecies are to be applied--accurately outline world history from 600 B.C. clear up to the present. Since only the God who is beyond time could know "the end from the beginning," as claimed in the Bible, this means all the writings in the Bible along with these prophecies should be taken as having great weight. No other literary work in all of human history has this validation.
Except the Messiah hasn't arrived yet, just ask the Jews.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Blue Wizard, you asked: "You quote the Bible, but why is your Holy Book any better than anyone else's?"
Because the Bible is validated by prophecies that when interpreted using objective means--including allowing the Bible to define all its own prophetic symbols and allowing context to indicate the time when prophecies are to be applied--accurately outline world history from 600 B.C. clear up to the present. Since only the God who is beyond time could know "the end from the beginning," as claimed in the Bible, this means all the writings in the Bible along with these prophecies should be taken as having great weight. No other literary work in all of human history has this validation.
I'm a Christian and I really hate this argument about all of it being validated through prophecies.
At the time of Christ's life, there were a lot of people going around claiming to be the Messiah. Not only that, but some of those prophecies were very much up to interpretation. I remember one of them said something like the Messiah was going to free the Jews, so the Christians look at Jesus as spiritually freeing them. Obviously, that's just one interpretation. Then you have the whole "He'll be the descendant of David". That's fine, except that in two of the four gospels, there are different lineage accounts that don't really match up.
Point is, you'll never know, so just believe whatever you want to believe and stop arguing about your religion with other people.
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Allowing the bible to define it's symbols... not sure what you mean by that, but... days are clearly metaphorical and God's time is clearly not our own.
Psalms 90:4-5
4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
5 Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
6 In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
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Elison and Jeff, all you have to do is carefully trace the time prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27 through history. This prophecy pinpoints the year and even the time of year when the Messiah would appear and be annointed, and how long his ministry would last before He is sacrificed.
Here is the text in the NKJV:
quote:24 "Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city, To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, And to anoint the Most Holy. 25 "Know therefore and understand, That from the going forth of the command To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; The street shall be built again, and the wall, Even in troublesome times. 26 "And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; And the people of the prince who is to come Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood, And till the end of the war desolations are determined. 27 Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, Even until the consummation, which is determined, Is poured out on the desolate.
The original text actually says "seventy sevens." Weeks were inferred by the translators. 70 times 7 is 490. There are examples in Bible prophecy where a day of prophetic time represents a literal year. Ezekiel 4:6 and Numbers 14:34 are texts which specify that each prophetic day was to represent an actual year. In the writings of the Qumran community, their commentary on this passage in Daniel 9:24 calls it "ten Jubilees." The Jubilee cycle was 49 years, with the following year being the Jubilee. Every seventh year the Israelites were to let the land rest and lie fallow, and every seventh seventh (or 49th) year, the land was to rest, and all debts were to be forgiven, and all slaves were to be freed, and any ancestral land that had been sold was to be returned to the family or clan that originally owned it.
The beginning of the 490 years was to be indicated thusly: "...from the going forth of the command To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks"
When Ezra returned from Persia to Jerusalem with the decree of King Artaxerxes of Persia to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, he left in the spring on a journey that typically took six months, so would have arrived in the Autumn, and then was able to publish the king's decree throughout the land. This took place in the fall of 457 B.C.
So the 490 years that was decreed to remain for the Jews extended from 457 B.C. to the fall of 34 A.D. (remembering that there was no year zero--you go from 1 B.C. to 1 A.D.)
Verse 25 specifies that after 7 weeks and 62 weeks (69 weeks or 483 years total) "Messiah the Prince" would appear. Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan and annointed by the Holy Spirit when He "began to be about thirty years of age" (Luke 3:23). Since the Gregorian calendar was in error, and Jesus was actually born in 4 B.C., this means that the Messiah was prophesied to begin His ministry in about 27 A.D. This was the end of the 483 years.
That leaves seven days (7 years). Verse 26 says that after this time "Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself;" (Cut off means killed.) Another detail is given in verse 27 about when the Messiah would be killed: "But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering." The middle of seven years would be three and one half years. Since the 490 years was to end in the fall of 34 A.D., this means that three and one-half years earlier would be the spring of 31 A.D. This is when Jesus Christ was crucified on the Cross, for the divine purpose of paying for the sins of all humanity. (He was "cut off, but not for Himself.") Making "an end of sacrifice and offering" refers to the fact that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the sacrifices and offerings of the Old Testament. They were but types that pointed forward to the one True Offering for Sin, who alone had the power to take away sins. So when Jesus Christ (Yeshua Messiah) gave His life on Calvary, that was the end of the significance of the sacrificial system. Any further continuance of the sacrificial system would constitute acts of unbelief in the Salvation that God had provided once and for all. This was why at the moment that Christ died, "the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom." (see Mark 15:38; NKJV)
When Jesus began His public preaching, He began His sermons by saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel." (Mark 1:15) When He said "the time is fulfilled," He was referring to the time prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27.
This was the original foundation of the Christian faith.
[ November 21, 2013, 01:03 AM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
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That's all very helpful! I'm glad to know a storybook can be read to have predicted other parts of itself, according to itself. This is the most stunning evidence of how biology and geology work, ever.
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One of my favorite parts of Lord of the Rings was when, as the White Council planned, destroying the One Ring broke the power of Sauron and purged him from the world. Just as predicted!
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The Lord of the Rings was fiction, and the whole thing was written only about 60 years ago. The book of Daniel was written in 600 B.C. and was in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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"Rather they were quilty of too much belief in a story they were told. Most people are able to hold the most stories they're told in abeyance, to keep a little distance between the story - and for you, Qing-Jao - the terrible lie has become the self-story, the tale that you must believe if you are to retain yourself. How can I blame you for wanting us all to die? You are so filled with the largeness of the Gods, how can you have compassion for such small concerns are the lived of three species of Ramen? I know you, Qing-Jao, and I expect you to behave no differently from they way you do. Perhaps someday, confronted by the consequences of your own actions, you might change, but I doubt it. Few who are captured by such a powerful story are ever able to win free of it."
Xenocide - Chapter 11 - Orson Scott Card.
"Perhaps someday, confronted by the consequences of your own actions, you might change, but I doubt it. Few who are captured by such a powerful story are ever able to win free of it."
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: The Lord of the Rings was fiction, and the whole thing was written only about 60 years ago. The book of Daniel was written in 600 B.C. and was in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Then why aren't you a Jew? If the OT's long-term consistency is what matters, that is. Or will we hear more about the proper 'objective' evaluation of the Bible?
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It is pretty easy to write a book decades after something happened and make it look like it was predicted.
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Rakeesh, I am a Jew. I accept the continuation of Judaism in Christianity--which is the fulfillment of Judaism. As the Apostle Paul put it in Galatians 3:29: "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." He reasoned thus because as he showed, the promise to Abraham was that in His Seed all nations would be blessed. Therefore the true inheritance of Abraham is faith in God's provision for the blessing of humanity. Those who have faith to receive this promised Seed are the true Jews in this modern world, for they have the true faith of Abraham.
I do have to add that most Christians are wrong in changing from observance of the seventh-day Sabbath to venerating the pagan "Day of the Sun." Seventh-day Adventists are a 17 million-member Christian denomination which continues to keep the seventh-day Sabbath, as the Bible specifies, from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday.
But even this attempt to change God's Law was predicted in Daniel 7:25--speaking of the persecuting religious power that would arise from the foundation of the Roman Empire, the prophecy says: "And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time."
[ November 21, 2013, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
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Strephan, the book of Daniel, which predicts the year, time of year, and purpose for the appearance of the Messiah and when He would be sacrificed for the blessing of humanity, was written in 600 B.C. That means "Before Christ." The book of Daniel, including the prophecy I cited, was in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which no one disputes dated from at least 100 years before the birth of Christ. It was also in the Septuagint version of the Bible (quoted from in the New Testament), which is believed to have been produced around 250 B.C.
Notice also that the prophetic outlines of history given in Daniel 2, 7, and 8-9 predict that after Babylon's rule of the Middle East would rise Medo-Persia, and after Medo-Persia, Greece (which was then divided into four parts after the death of Alexander, when the Grecian Empire was divided among his four generals), and then Rome. Rome would have a dual nature--begining as a secular empire, and then morphing into a religion-based empire (the "Holy Roman Empire"). Following that would not be another world empire, but rather a division of Rome into a multitude of nations--which is what happened when the Barbarians who overthrew Rome went on to establish the nations of modern Europe. All these things were predicted in writing that dates from 600 B.C.
Thus the God of the Bible challenges doubters when He says, "Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, 'My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure';" (Isaiah 46:9, 10; NASB)
This is the power of the Creator God of whom it is said: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host....For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." (Psalms 33:6, 9; NASB)
[ November 21, 2013, 12:22 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
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Oh I have no doubt the Book of Daniel was written before the year 0. That is fact. No dispute there. I am talking about the myth of Jesus being written many years afterwards to fit prophecy, with the only proof being a contradictory bible and a questionable brief blurb from Josephus (who was not actually there).
Yeah, I know, that topic has been covered ad-naseum, and your mind is not going to be changed, so let us agree to disagree on that one.
I do have a question for a bible literalist that has never been answered before. And Ron, I really hope you answer it. It probably won't change my mind, but I truly and respectfully want to hear your perspective on this.
The Tower of Babel.
That story in my mind has always, even as a child in Hebrew school, been problematic. You have this tower that sounds remarkably like all the other towers the Babylonians built, whom the early Jews spent quite a bit of time with. It reads just like the Jews were telling their children why the Babylonians are so evil. But even besides that, we have gone much further into the sky then they ever did in that story. You would think if the Judeo-Christian god had a problem with building gigantic towers into the heavens, that he would have a severe problem with us now. No stopping us from building gigantic skyscrapers, let alone the moon landing. Any take on that?
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Got into another argument with my roommate last night about Young Earth Creationism. I asked him about the speed of light and why is it we can see light from billions of light years away (implying that those stars existed that long ago). His response was simply, God put the light in the sky for us to see, so it was already here.
I'm done. I can't argue with that. It's too illogical and stupid. It is impossible to argue with someone who doesn't use factual data and who's main answer is simply "God did it".
Oh, and the best part, when I brought up that there was a mountain of evidence that supported the age of the universe and that the Earth was indeed much older than ten thousand years, and that the Big Bang theory was the most widely accepted scientific origin story out there, he scoffed and said "Jeff, they disproved the Big Bang theory in the 90s". I vehemently argued with him about it and insisted he was wrong, but he just said "Yeah okay Jeff" and laughed at me and walked away.
It makes me so angry because he does that every time. He did the same thing when I suggested that birds were related to dinosaurs (again, according to him, this was also disproven in the 90s...), and then when I suggested that there were thousands of different dinosaurs (he claims there are only about 30). Each time, he does not present any proof or evidence or sources, and then he just laughs at me. I am so sick of it and it is really annoying. It's like living with a small child.
The man was raised in a christian school, by the way, which explains a lot. Those schools are evil and they teach terrible information to children. I went to one for four years and it took me a decade to get over the brainwashing. You can't call it science class when all you are doing is teaching against science. I can't believe it is legal.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Rakeesh, I am a Jew. I accept the continuation of Judaism in Christianity--which is the fulfillment of Judaism. As the Apostle Paul put it in Galatians 3:29: "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." He reasoned thus because as he showed, the promise to Abraham was that in His Seed all nations would be blessed. Therefore the true inheritance of Abraham is faith in God's provision for the blessing of humanity. Those who have faith to receive this promised Seed are the true Jews in this modern world, for they have the true faith of Abraham.
I do have to add that most Christians are wrong in changing from observance of the seventh-day Sabbath to venerating the pagan "Day of the Sun." Seventh-day Adventists are a 17 million-member Christian denomination which continues to keep the seventh-day Sabbath, as the Bible specifies, from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday.
But even this attempt to change God's Law was predicted in Daniel 7:25--speaking of the persecuting religious power that would arise from the foundation of the Roman Empire, the prophecy says: "And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time."
Given that you're writing off all non-Christian (of the correct sect) Jews in the modern world as false, I hope we won't be hearing any talk about people being disrespectful towards Christianity or Christians.
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Stephan, I am certainly no expert but it's my understanding that it was not so much the tower itself God did not like but the common language and unity of the people which the tower was a symbol of. I don't think airplanes and skyscrapers fall into the same category though perhaps you could make a case for the World Trade Center if you were so inclined.
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quote:Originally posted by Wingracer: Stephan, I am certainly no expert but it's my understanding that it was not so much the tower itself God did not like but the common language and unity of the people which the tower was a symbol of. I don't think airplanes and skyscrapers fall into the same category though perhaps you could make a case for the World Trade Center if you were so inclined.
If that is true, than anyone who accepts that as true history should be terrified of the internet. Talk about something creating a united people under one tongue.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Wingracer: Stephan, I am certainly no expert but it's my understanding that it was not so much the tower itself God did not like but the common language and unity of the people which the tower was a symbol of. I don't think airplanes and skyscrapers fall into the same category though perhaps you could make a case for the World Trade Center if you were so inclined.
If that is true, than anyone who accepts that as true history should be terrified of the internet. Talk about something creating a united people under one tongue.
Yeah, I've never understood the reasoning behind the Tower of Babel. If humans all spoke the same language and lived together in harmony and worked toward a common goal, why would God separate them? It's not like that tower would ever actually reach Heaven. Besides, if God dwells in a spiritual place and he supposedly created the Universe for Man, then what's the harm in letting humans explore it to the hearts' content? Certainly it's far crueler and more twisted to separate people into groups that can't understand one another so they end up killing and slaughtering each other over nothing. Wars erupt, bombs are dropped, millions die. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.
I'm tossing Babel into the same bin as the worldwide Flood and the six day creation myth. That is, it's a metaphor and didn't actually happen.
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Jeff - I'm sorry your roommate is arguing like a jerk. While I agree (to some extent) with some of his arguments, that's certainly an extremely obnoxious way of relating to someone.
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Babel I think was more of a story about Raistlin levels of hubris; I think there was a distinction in motivation, the humans in that story I don't think wanted to explore for explorations sake, they wanted to stand above god.
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And all that is fine if you look at it as a metaphor, no different than Greek myths explaining the natural world. In this case just a bed time story about why we have different languages.
But if you truly accept it has part of our history, that it truly happened, it just doesn't mesh with our level of technology today.
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quote:Originally posted by Stephan: And all that is fine if you look at it as a metaphor, no different than Greek myths explaining the natural world. In this case just a bed time story about why we have different languages.
But if you truly accept it has part of our history, that it truly happened, it just doesn't mesh with our level of technology today.
It doesn't help that there is zero archaeological evidence to support the idea. The only evidence we have is that it's in the Bible.
Personally, I would love to see them uncover the real Tower of Babel just like they did Troy, but until that happens I have to accept it as just a story and nothing more. Same goes for a worldwide flood.
[ November 21, 2013, 02:48 PM: Message edited by: Jeff C. ]
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That's the great thing about science and research. It is completely agnostic and does not require a belief in any one god. You can believe whatever you want, but the research is factual and unbiased. The people who disregard the growing piles of evidence are baffling to me.
Here is a serious question for those who believe in young earth creationism. If evolution isn't true, why do we continue to find more and more evidence that supports it? Logic says that if we have two options, and we go out and gather evidence, eventually the evidence will favor one over the other, right? So then why is evolution wrong? I seriously want to know. My roommate is an idiot and knows nothing about it, even though he likes to argue it, and he can't present any proof or evidence, so I'm asking here:
Why is evolution wrong? And why should we ignore all the evidence that supports it?
Seriously, I'm not trolling. I really want to know, because from every person I have talked to in real life, none of them actually have a good answer.
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Stephen, the real offense of the Tower of Babel was that it came soon after the global Flood, and was intended to reach higher than the highest limit the flood waters reached. This in effect was an act of defiance against God. Such organized, determined opposition to God had to be checked. There will come a time when organized, determined human opposition to the authority of God will be tolerated for a time--during the "Time of the End" spoken of in Daniel and Revelation. Then the final test will come home to every human, where they will be compelled to make their final, unalterable choice to trust in the goodness and authority of the Creator God, or to show loyalty to the creature.
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quote:1. Now the entire earth was of one language and uniform words. א. וַיְהִי כָל הָאָרֶץ שָׂפָה אֶחָת וּדְבָרִים אֲחָדִים: 2. And it came to pass when they traveled from the east, that they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. ב. וַיְהִי בְּנָסְעָם מִקֶּדֶם וַיִּמְצְאוּ בִקְעָה בְּאֶרֶץ שִׁנְעָר וַיֵּשְׁבוּ שָׁם: 3. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly"; so the bricks were to them for stones, and the clay was to them for mortar. ג. וַיֹּאמְרוּ אִישׁ אֶל רֵעֵהוּ הָבָה נִלְבְּנָה לְבֵנִים וְנִשְׂרְפָה לִשְׂרֵפָה וַתְּהִי לָהֶם הַלְּבֵנָה לְאָבֶן וְהַחֵמָר הָיָה לָהֶם לַחֹמֶר: 4. And they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered upon the face of the entire earth." ד. וַיֹּאמְרוּ הָבָה | נִבְנֶה לָּנוּ עִיר וּמִגְדָּל וְרֹאשׁוֹ בַשָּׁמַיִם וְנַעֲשֶׂה לָּנוּ שֵׁם פֶּן נָפוּץ עַל פְּנֵי כָל הָאָרֶץ: 5. And the Lord descended to see the city and the tower that the sons of man had built. ה. וַיֵּרֶד יְהֹוָה לִרְאֹת אֶת הָעִיר וְאֶת הַמִּגְדָּל אֲשֶׁר בָּנוּ בְּנֵי הָאָדָם: 6. And the Lord said, "Lo! [they are] one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they have commenced to do. Now, will it not be withheld from them, all that they have planned to do? ו. וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה הֵן עַם אֶחָד וְשָׂפָה אַחַת לְכֻלָּם וְזֶה הַחִלָּם לַעֲשׂוֹת וְעַתָּה לֹא יִבָּצֵר מֵהֶם כֹּל אֲשֶׁר יָזְמוּ לַעֲשׂוֹת: 7. Come, let us descend and confuse their language, so that one will not understand the language of his companion." ז. הָבָה נֵרְדָה וְנָבְלָה שָׁם שְׂפָתָם אֲשֶׁר לֹא יִשְׁמְעוּ אִישׁ שְׂפַת רֵעֵהוּ: 8. And the Lord scattered them from there upon the face of the entire earth, and they ceased building the city. ח. וַיָּפֶץ יְהֹוָה אֹתָם מִשָּׁם עַל פְּנֵי כָל הָאָרֶץ וַיַּחְדְּלוּ לִבְנֹת הָעִיר: 9. Therefore, He named it Babel, for there the Lord confused the language of the entire earth, and from there the Lord scattered them upon the face of the entire earth.
No mention of the flood. No real reason given at all. In fact go back to Chapter 10, and you get a whole hell of a lot of generations between the flood and the Tower of Babel. There would need to be many years, enough of a population to warrant a city. You don't go from restarting the world with a nuclear family to cities with towers in just a century or two.
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Jeff C, I presented several scientific objections to the supposed proof of a vastly old universe based on the speed of light and the apparent distances involved. Some of them were in the article by Dr. Russell Humphreys I quoted.
There are nebulae where dust and gas and other debris in a nova or supernova clearly came from a central star, the remnants of which still exists, and in no case do we find that any such nebulae have been expanding for more than 12,000 years.
Dr. Humphreys mentioned the fact that there should be many more nebulae in our region of the galaxy, if it is as old as some claim.
I also asked why it is that no astronomer has ever reported seeing sections of space that were blank, and then stars and galaxies slowly began to appear as light from them finally reached earth. We may increase the resolving power of our telescopes, but we have never found the limit where light from distant stellar objects is just now reaching us.
If you accept the logical necessity for an Intelligent Designer--such as I argued for on the basis of alternative characteristics already existing in the genomes of many species (which negates the possibility that natural selection could be involved, because genetic code that is not expressed cannot be acted on by natural selection)--then you have to take into account the announced purpose of the Creator, which is that first of all He wanted the universe to be a place of light ("Let there be light"), and not darkness, where it is necessary to wait for millions and billions of years for light from distant stellar objects to reach earth. Just as God created mature trees in the Garden of Eden, which seemed to be hundreds of years old, because that is what He wanted, so He could create a universe with apparent age as well, because that is what He wanted. You should not so cavalierly dismiss what your roommate said. You are making assumptions that are not necessarily valid.
As for why some people CLAIM that they keep on finding more and more evidence supporting evolution, all their evidence from the beginning has been bogus, based on false assumptions, so they are merely multiplying poor conjectures and invalid conclusions based on wrong assumptions. You can adduce endless support for circular reasoning, but it is still circular reasoning. All evolutionists are wrong. Period. Evolution is impossible, and the presence of alternate genetic code that is not expressed in the genome proves it is wrong.
[ November 21, 2013, 04:02 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
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Stephan, some things can be logically inferred. According to Biblical chronology, which is more reliable than the fantastic fantasies of archeologists trying to disprove the Biblical account, the Tower of Babel was only a few hundred years after the Flood. This is not such a great time as it seems today, because people still lived to be several hundred years old for some time after the Flood. Shem, one of the sons of Noah who was on the ark, lived to the time of Abraham. Some people suggest that Shem may have been the "King of Salem," to whom Abraham paid tithes. And the Tower of Babel was built before Abraham came on the scene.
So the great context of everyone's lives was the still relatively recent global Flood.
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Most junk DNA is now believed to have been inserted into the genome by viruses.
Also, a study recently indicated that junk DNA accounts for developing different facial features in mice.
It's not crazy to imagine that viruses occasionally adding and changing DNA in gametes has served as massive boon to life on earth, increasing it's ability to adapt as necessary. After all, a lot of gene modification research revolves around using a tailored virus to alter someone's reproductive cells.
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Is it really reasonable to believe that virus-administered junk DNA is responsible for Collies and Great Danes and Cocker Spaniels arising from Wolves? Or Jaguars arising from Lions? Is this what produced edible almonds from bitter almoinds, and blue roses from red? This amounts to making viruses the Intelligent Designer. How much blind stupidity will otherwise intelligent people buy into, before they will admit the utter falsity of the theory of life origins that has been promulgated by people who are only motivated by a desire to prove God is not necessary, so they won't have to face His judgment?
What I said before stands. Let gene mapping advance to the point where we can see beyond a doubt that all the characteristics of the Cocker Spaniel are already present in the Wolf, and the point will be proven, that only an Intelligent Designer could have done this.
But even before we reach that point, look at the success of selective breeding in producing desirable "modifications" in thousands of species. How can it be denied that many alternate characteristics already exist in the genome of many species?
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Fascinating. So the majority of biologists in the world today-they don't actually believe what their research continuously points towards, they only claim to because they're scurrying fearfully away from the truth of God's judgment?
If you get to say that, then I certainly get to say that you don't actually believe all this hogwash, rather you simply seek the ego-flattering comfort of a divine yoke to avoid what you think is the deadly fear of what you imagine would be a pointless life.
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