Ed

Because in addition to nature, the Bible is also God's revelation to humans. So we have to interpret one with the help of the other.

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(On pathogenic microbes...) lp: (why doesn't it mention them?) Ed: That is not its purpose. lp: That's the old claim that one never lost because one was not in the race. Ed: Nevertheless a true claim in this case. lp: Very ingenious.

Thank you.

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(asking is various church authorities commissioned various sorts of pioneering scientific work...) Ed: Nevertheless, the christian worldview teaches that the universe is orderly, objectively there, and that we can learn about God by studying it. And these teachings gave the impetus to develop modern experimental science. No other worldviews held to these truths that is why no other worldview came up with science. lp: This is a very after-the-fact viewpoint, one that reminds me of Paul's comment about being all things to all people. Because for most of the history of Christianity, it's the miracle-working that had been emphasized.

No, this has been the understanding of the scriptures since the time of Job. Hardly after the fact.

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lp: Also, Ed's comments remind me of certain Muslim apologists who brag about Mohammed had supposedly worked no miracles.

Nevertheless, this is what the scriptures teach.

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lp: As to the development of science, it took up where ancient Greece had left off, and most of the ancient Greek scientists had never heard of Jesus Christ!

No, the greeks and Aristotle had a pantheistic view of nature. Planets, for example, were seen as having an inner intelligence that induced them to move. Christianity allowed for the development of the inductive method. Also in a pagan or polytheistic world saw its gods often engaged in jealous irrational behavior in a world that was nonrational, thereby making any systematic investigation of the world seem futile. The de-deification of nature was a crucial precondition for science.

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lp: Ed had made the comment that no other worldviews feature an objectively real and orderly universe. That comment suggests rather extreme ignorance of other worldviews on the part of Ed.

Maybe I should qualify it by saying no major worldview prior to the 15th century except Christianity. And the 16th and 17th centuries is when experimental science came into fullness.

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(Early scientists...) Ed: No, most of these men were also Christians in private, if you read their private journals and writings. ... lp: And how had these gentlemen agreed with Eddianity, as it might be called? Sir Francis Bacon's writings have a cover-one's-rear-end quality, Sir Isaac Newton believed in something that the Church of England considered gross heresy, Galileo claimed that the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go, etc.

And what might lp mean by cover ones rear end quality? Newton nevertheless believed the key aspects of Christianity that brought about science. And Galileo's claim is the same as mine and most evangelical Christians today, ie the bible is not a science text.


[b] Yes, and see above about the origin of science.

lpetrich

I don't give any special privileges to the Bible; I'm not afraid of concluding that it is in error.

A rewrite of history that would make a Stalinist proud. Jesus Christ was described as having worked numerous miracles -- and the same is true of essentially every saint. In fact, the Church only recognizes saints that have supposedly worked miracles. Furthermore, the Bible is not very good at recognizing natural law as a general principle.

How is that pantheism? Seems like Ed is bragging about what a godless, materialistic, mechanistic worldview he holds, in which Mr. G. is like someone who winds up a wind-up toy, with the Universe being that toy.

What brand of it? Ed, you would have been burned at the stake as a heretic during most of the centuries of Xianity.

Sort of like belief in miracle-working and sorcery.

But why did it take so long to happen? Why wasn't the New Testament filled with experiments and induction? Why didn't the Church Fathers carry on an active scientific-research program?

Protecting oneself. Sir Francis Bacon was suspected of being an atheist, and he felt compelled to deny that. And he could have gotten in deep trouble if he had publicly claimed to be an atheist -- he could have been imprisoned or compelled to recant or even burned at the stake.

But why did he keep his mouth shut in public about his theological beliefs, O Ed? Threatening to burn people at the stake for believing some supposed heresy, as was the case during much of Xianity's history, is not exactly in the spirit of open-minded inquiry.

So the early chapters of Genesis are NOT literal history?

Ed

No, the biblical understanding of omnipotence doesnt mean that He can do absolutely anything. For example, he cannot do evil, he cannot make a square circle, he cannot not exist, and etc. It may for some unknown to us reason, not be possible for a greater good to occur without something bad happening.

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OC: crossover diseases like SIV -> HIV Ed: That is because our morphologies are similar to apes and other animals due to being the result one designer. lp: Carefully created with the appearance of the appropriate amounts of genetic drift, of course. Philip Gosse rides again. ... Ed: Our resemblance to animals is to keep us humble and help us to realize that even though we are created in God's image we are still creatures and not the Creator. If we were totally different from other creatures, we may think of ourselves as gods. lp: Where in the Bible does it say that?

It is not explicitly taught in the scriptures but it is deduced from what we know about God in the scriptures and in his revelation from nature.

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lp: And claiming to be "in the image of God" is very much like claiming that one is a god

Not exactly but in a way we are like small gods, in that we control the destiny of living things on this planet.

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lp: Also, I'd rather be descended from an ape than some dirt (see Genesis 2). At least apes look almost human.

Actually science has confirmed that we are made of the same materials as the earth and in fact the rest of the universe. So this teaching has been confirmed by science.

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(parasites/pathogens...) Ed: Because there is no evidence that these creatures developed in a gradualistic manner from simpler organisms. lp: I wonder what Ed would consider acceptable evidence -- going back in time in a time machine? Microbes and tiny worms simply do not fossilize very well.

Maybe or could it be that is because the transitions never existed?

{b] Where did I not know the critical details? I usually know the critical details, I just dont know ALL the details in fields that I have not studied.

[b] Hardly, every text has a context.

lpetrich

Where in the Bible is the Biblical God described as being limited in these ways?

However, an omnipotent being could create Heaven, populate it, and be done with it.

One could come to that "conclusion" from most other creation stories. What's new here? Ed should get out of his ideological house some more.

A reasonable conclusion ONLY if one would reasonably expect fossils to be present. But lots of things simply do not fossilize very well.

Ed's studies and attentions have such convenient gaps.

However, Ed's comments are pure special pleading, since he complains that some suitably-manufactured "context" is absent. He ought to complain to the writers of the Bible, since they leave the story without the proper "context".

I call it special pleading, because he ignores how Genesis 2 has a a typical literary characteristic of fairy tales -- talking animals.

Ed

Hello Clutch. No, I was not homeschooled. I went to public school. While the greeks did do good with categories and logic, they saw the gods as intertwined with nature. Planets for example, were seen as having an inner intelligence that induced them to move. This prevented them from developing true modern science which is a systematic self correcting study of an objective universe. Only Christianity taught that there was an objective universe that operated according natural laws.

Ed

Ummmm.... Rim? Do you know how to understand analogies? Were you homeschooled? In the analogy the "you" is God. Now do you understand? And I thought you considered yourself some kind of intellectual

theyeti

You know Ed, Issac Newton thought that the planets were pushed by angels. This was due to his Christian religous beliefs (obviously). Of course, this one example doesn't make Christianity right or wrong, but it does show that the "only Christianity could have enabled science" view is pretty off base. The Arabs were doing quite good science while the Christians were still praticing flagellism. Where do you think the Christians got most of their knowledge from, including what was preserved from the Greeks and Romans?

theyeti

Edited to add: is this stupid thread still going on? Why don't we close this and start another thread for each of the eighty six topics addressed in this one?

[ August 28, 2002: Message edited by: theyeti ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

Just wondered that meself...

Because it's easier to archive when the time comes...?

Oolon

lpetrich

Actually, it was medieval astronomers who believed that planets move because they are pushed by angels. Sir Isaac Newton is best-known for coming up with an angel-free hypothesis of what causes their motions: their inertia combined with the force of gravity.

So either those angels carefully imitate Newton's laws of motion and law of gravity or they do not exist.

Ed

I dont remember, it has been about 20 years since I read that book. I think it has fallen out of favor with most creationists now however. I think most of the water came from under the crust and from supernatural creation.

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Ed: Actually a woman historian has found evidence that the Chinese in the Middle Ages built wooden ships as large as 450 feet long. The ark's rectangular shape made it stronger and more seaworthy than the regular ship shape. lp: However, I find it curious that nobody has ever tried to build a replica of the Ark.

There are more important things to spend money on. It wouldn't convince most ultraskeptics such as those on this site.

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Ed: molecular systems having shared designs... lp: So why don't they all have the same sequences, despite having the same function? Why a treelike arrangement of differences in sequences of these workalike molecules? And why do the inferred family trees of different molecules tend to agree? And tend to agree with the family trees derived by examining macroscopic features? Ed: It is similar to having a committee write your name and having you sign your name. Creation is to designed to point to one individual creator. If things were all nice and neat then it would appear to be a committee of creators but if there are little unique quirks like a signature then that implies that there is only one creator. lp: A total non sequitur. Looking all nice and neat would look like the work of a single creator or team of creators. Looking like a giant mess suggests a multitude of creators who had not communicated very well with each other. Which is what we see in.

No, if a committe wrote your name without seeing your actual signature it would look nearly perfect, but when you actually write your signature it has little quirks in it, that is how handwriting experts tell the difference between different handwritings. And if it was giant mess then Darwin would have never come up with the theory of evolution. Both evolution and creation are based on observed patterns, we just disagree what caused them.

[qoote]lp: And gene-sequence differences are not quirks but consistent patterns.[/quote]

No but when they go in unexpected directions like the panda's thumb, then they could be called quirks.

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Ed: No, it is you atheists that are wasting your time talking about the flood and believing that if they refute the evidence for the flood then they disprove God. This is backwards. lp: Ed, we claim no such thing. In fact, it seems to me that you are projecting a mirror image of your beliefs onto us.

No, go back and read some of yours and others earlier posts especially in the Noah's flood thread.

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lp: Presumably meaning that each new species was a special creation, meaning hundreds of millions of special creations over geological time. Ed: No, probably more like each new family. lp: Ed, why do you come to that conclusion? And I've yet to see any creationist come up with any reasonable strategy for recognizing which species are in each "created kind". Furthermore, that claim is a concession that speciation can happen.

I have never denied that speciation cannot happen. But there is no evidence of movement between higher taxa.

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lp: Actually, punctuated equilibrium has been tested by taking some large quantity of fossils and then measuring them. Sometimes it happens, and sometimes it does not. Ed: What kind of measuring? Your last statement makes it unfalsifiable. lp: It is falsifiable -- sometimes it simply does not happen. The way one tests PE is by finding lots of lots of fossils of some closely-related species at some place and time, measuring them, and then doing statistics on them. Do they fall into some well-defined clumps? Or do they fall on a continuum?

What continuum?

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(About Jesus Christ's prophesied coming of the Messiah...) Ed: No, as I explained earlier, he was referring to the fall of Jerusalem so some of them would have been alive. If there was evidence for it. lp: But he certainly didn't make his Second Coming at the time.

Because he never said it was his second coming at the time.

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Ed: ... The characteristics of the story of Noah fit historical narrative therefore it cannot be a metaphor or myth according to our understanding of Hebrew. lp: How, Ed, how??? Ed: Ask your local scholar in hebrew. lp: And how does one recognize myth from literary styling? It has to be something other than "I know it when I see it".

We covered this in another post.


[b] It only recognizes characteristics that the organism already has.