Ed

No, persons, personal communication, and personal relationships are not made with dead matter. Living matter converts dead matter into living matter. Without living matter or in the case of humans personal living matter, persons cannot come into existence. Also, there is evidence that human life is more than a chemical construct.

Ed

See my posts to Jack. I did answer your other posts, see above.

Ed

Read Genesis 17:7. Also throughout the scriptures God calls them "His people".

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Ed: If the vice president was sent to Iraq and Hussein killed him, the reaction by the US would be much more severe than if you went over and got killed. ng: The point is that wiping out all Iraquis is strictly speaking an over-reaction. The punishment would simply not fit the crime. What would fit the crime is to arrest and put on trial all who participated in the crime. But to wipe all Iraquis is a genocide. YES the word is genocide, because not all participated in the crime which means that those who did not participate are being killed for just being Iraquis.

First of all wiping out all the Iraquis for killing the vice president would be an over reaction. But he only represents a nation, the israelites were representing the King and Creator of the Universe, this is much more serious crime. Also read my posts to Jack and read Romans 6:23 and Romans 3:9-23.

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ng: This is exactly analogous with the Amalekite situation. So in effect you admit that killing all of the Iraquis is an overreaction and therefore immoral. Ed, you are desperately avoiding the heart of the issue. You want to walk away from this and preserve the shameful position that you have taken intact. But I know that you fully understand what you are hidding from, here, in order to preserve your faith. A faith that has to take such shameful positions to hide the truth is not worth keeping.

Huh? What truth? I have told you the truth.

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ng: By the way, Ed, you did not respond to issue of David and his child which is another case of the child being killed for the actions of the father. In this case since the child was a babe you cannot accuse him of anything except being born.

No, see above.

Ed

I use the term "atheistic" evolution to differentiate it from "theistic" evolution which does not operate totally with impersonal processes and therefore is a more rational position.

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Ed: I would hardly call the existence and characteristics of the universe no evidence. Sue: True. It is evidence for the existence and characteristics of the universe. Your conclusion that those things are evidence of the existence of God isn't evidence, but rather a presumption that the universe could not exist in the absence of your deity. Your reasoning boils down to attributing anything that you can't explain to the existence of God, when it should only be attributed to one of the many things that humans currently do not fully understand. When you lose your t.v. remote, do you presume that God moved it?

No, my reasoning is based on basic laws of logic that are used everyday in science. The law of Causality and its corrollary the law of sufficient cause. The universe is plainly an effect based on most of the evidence from astrophysics and therefore needs a cause. Based on the characteristics of that effect, ie the universe, we can learn things about its cause. And most of the characteristics of the universe point to a cause that fits the Christian God perfectly.

lpetrich

(On the question of evidence of the existence of the Xian God...)

And I'm sure that someone has tape-recorded Mr. G. taking credit for all these actions.

lpetrich

I fail to see what evidence from astrophysics shows that the Universe is an effect.

And waving around some supposed Law of Causality is begging the question.

Except that if the Universe had a creator, that entity had plainly not have had much interest in humanity -- look at all the Universe gone to waste.

Ed

No, when you accuse someone of lying you are imputing on them a motive of deception. This is an attack on the person's character NOT the argument. You have engaged in several ad hominems of late. This generally means you are unable to refute your opponent's argument.

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jtb: Many times on this thread, you have made statements you know to be false. Even if you didn't initially know them to be false, you have repeated those statements after their falsehood has been exposed. That IS lying, Ed. You lied when you referred to Deuteronomy 22:23-24 as proof that the Hebrews wouldn't tolerate the rape of unmarried women.

You have yet to "expose" my statements as being false. Actually I was referring to Deut. 22:23-27. I explained to you that there were very few single adult women in ancient societies, so the law that applied to betrothed women also applied to single adult women. The OT judges did basically what modern judges do today, the laws do not cover every single scenario or case, they derived legal principles from cases explicit in the law and used them in cases not specifically mentioned in the hebrew law code.

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jtb: You lied when you claimed AGAIN that atheism is inferior to Christianity because it has "no rational basis" for morality (this is a lie because the evolutionary basis for morality, and the lack of any rational basis for WHY God should be good, have already been explained repeatedly).

You have yet to provide a rational reason why humans should be treated better or even differently than other species. As I stated earlier, why something has a characteristic is irrelevant to the rationality of that characteristic. See my analogy with ancient agriculturalists. It is also similar to an atheist asking WHY the universe exists, he may think he knows a rational method of how the universe came into existence but he doesnt know why. That doesnt make his theory of how the universe came to be irrational.

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jtb: You lied when you tried to pretend that the Amalekites were punished for what THEY had done, and not who they were. You lied when you tried to pretend that this is moral anyhow for all except governments.

Evidence I lied?

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jtb: You lied when you stated as fact your wild and ridiculous speculations made about Hebrew genealogies: speculations based, not on fact, but purely on a desire to move the date of Noah's Flood. You lied when you claimed this was a "correct translation" of the Bible.

These are hardly wild and ridiculuous, the ancient Egyptians also abbreviated their genealogies and I demonstrated several cases where the hebrews plainly purposely abbreviated some genealogies.

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jtb: I could go on... But the big unanswered question is, WHY are you doing this? Why is it necessary to go to such extraordinary and deperate lengths to preserve your belief in the integrity of the primitive superstitions of Bronze Age flat-Earthers?

What extraodinary and desperate lengths? Everything I have stated is how almost all ancient documents are studied, ie understanding the historical and textual context.

Jack the Bodiless

Yes, you were defeated. Why bother to claim that "the thread still continues" when you're not posting there anymore? Your last post was nearly a week ago.
You are STILL contradicting yourself. "Spiritual DNA" is a fiction invented by you to justify the punishment of innocents for the crimes of others. It is an "explanation" of why there are no "innocents", why all of us supposedly have an "innate tendency to sin". This severely limits our free will. And it means that many of us are being punished for the consequences of something that is NOT our fault.

You can't have it both ways, Ed. If you now wish to pretend that we are punished entirely for our own sins, then you must discard "original sin" and the "spiritual DNA" mechanism that you invented to allow us to inherit it.

Why would God design "spiritual DNA"? Why would God not FIX our "spiritual DNA" if it got corrupted? You have never answered that question.
"Implied teachings"? That's bullshit. There are no such teachings. The early Christians certainly WANTED to force everyone to convert. Luke 19:27 "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me".

It is ludicrous to suggest that this is "freedom of conscience".
Irrelevant. ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE, those people were killed SPECIFICALLY for the sins of others.

Remember, Paul's own perverted morality was centuries in the future.
ANSWER MY POINT, ED.

NO "physical accounting" for the initial killing.

NO "physical accounting" for many subsequent generations "celebrating" it.

Why did you even bother to say that "from what we know about human nature they probably were celebrating", when it is SO VERY OBVIOUS that this could NOT have been a relevant factor?
False.
True. Which is what we've been saying all along.
False. It's equivalent to saying that "Without living matter or in the case of Americans, American living matter, Americans cannot come into existence".
Nope.
But I HAVE refuted your arguments. I have exposed the fact that many of them are lies. You are a liar BECAUSE you lie, Ed. Your motive of deception is evident FROM your use of lies.

I haven't said "You are a liar, therefore your arguments are wrong". I'm saying "Your arguments are lies, therefore you are a liar".
And you KNOW that this is not true. You KNOW that the rape of unmarried women wasn't punishable by death. You KNOW this, because the Bible says so, and we have PROVED that the Bible says so.

No matter how desperately you WANT to believe that rape carried the death penalty, you KNOW that it did not.

So you were LYING when you referred us to Deuteronomy, KNOWING that it did NOT support your position.
You KNOW that this is a subjective, EMOTIONAL judgement. You KNOW that there is no entirely "rational" reason why humans should be treated better or even differently than other species. You KNOW that Christianity doesn't provide a "rational" reason either. You KNOW that evolution DOES provide a rational reason for the existence of the EMOTION. You KNOW that Christianity does not.

You KNOW these things. But you wish to pretend that you do not. You don't want this line of argument to continue. Hence your FEIGNED ignorance, and your refusal to LISTEN anymore.
You stated that ON THIS THREAD (which you refuse to re-read), and then denied it.
Evidence that the ancient Egyptians also abbreviated their genealogies:
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And you didn't demonstrate ANY cases where the hebrews "plainly" purposely abbreviated some genealogies. You only cited more Biblical errors. But I was referring primarily to your ludicrous attempt to redefine the meaning of "became the ancestor of", which had absolutely no basis in historical fact, but purely on a desire to move the date of Noah's Flood. And you DID lie when you claimed that your claims about the Matthew genealogy were a "correct translation" of the Bible.
You have repeatedly ignored the historical and textual context. Why else would you quote Paul's ramblings, written centuries later, to "interpret" Old Testament passages?

But you still haven't explained WHY.

Ed

Fraid not, see my E/C thread.

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jtb: We have the same "junk DNA" and design DEFECTS, Ed. Ed: Those could be the result of later microevolution and similar impacts by mutations. jtb: It is ridiculously improbable that humans and apes would randomly acquire identical junk DNA and design defects. We ARE descended from apes. Get used to it.

No, if two organisms have a similar body and metabolism then they would be likely to have similar DNA functional or presently nonfunctional and similar mutations.

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jtb: If "similar creatures have similar DNA", then please explain why we are genetically CLOSER to ordinary fish (e.g. cod) than lampreys are. This is exactly the sort of counter-intuitive result that evolution predicts. As we are descended from fish, we have a more recent common ancestor with these fish than lampreys do: they branched off earlier. Ed: For one thing we both have bones, lampreys are cartilagenous fish. Humans and bony fish also have circulatory systems very different from lampreys and there are other examples. Similar DNA is needed to produce these things in common. jtb: Most DNA is junk DNA, Ed. This has nothing to do with design similarities. Ed: I am referring to the non-junk DNA. jtb: And I was referring to the OVERALL degree of genetic similarity, based on ALL the DNA. Bony fish are genetically closer to us than they are to lampreys, because they share a more recent common ancestor with us than with lampreys. Again, the FACT of common descent is undeniable.

No, my first statement still applies about body similarities. Actually there is evidence that junk DNA may not have always been nonfunctional.

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jtb: There is no reason to assume that God ACTUALLY IS good. And there is no reason why God SHOULD be good. Therefore you have no support of ANY sort for your belief that God is good. Therefore the belief that God is good is irrational. Ed: No, you learn he is good by experience. jtb: Already addressed, several times. This is another form of lying, Ed: bringing up old arguments and blatantly ignoring posts that have already addressed them.

None of them have been addressed adequately. See my atheist analogy above.

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Ed: Your poorly written description of the experiment threw me off. And more ad hominems are making you look inept. I will need to learn more about the experiment, reference please? jtb: I read about it years ago, not on the Net. But it referred to experiments by Premack and Woodruff, 1978: "Does the Chimpanzee have a Theory of Mind?".

Well maybe I will check it out sometime, but it could be just another case of the Clever Hans Phenomena. Intelligent animals are a highly observant. The experimenter may have been unwittingly sending subtle cues to the chimp about what was going on.

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jtb: Macroevolution and microevolution are the same process, Ed. Any observation of microevolution is also an observation of ongoing macroevolution. Certainly no creationist has ever succeeded in defining "macroevolution" as a different process that has never been observed! Speciation has been observed, information increase has been observed, and so forth. If you believe that macroevolution has never been observed in a human lifespan: that's another "lie of convenience", Ed. Ed: No, macroevolution (the transition between orders, families and genera) has never been observed and is an unwarranted historical extrapolation of microevolution. jtb: Speciation has been observed. Transitions between orders, families and genera are not a separate process from speciation. The relationships between orders, families and genera are clear from structural similarities, the fossil record, and genetics. The claim that this is "an unwarranted historical extrapolation" is ludicrous nonsense: like arguing that the existence of the planet Mars is an "unwarranted" assumption from a pattern of light in a telescope. No sane scientist would describe macroevolution as an "unwarranted assumption" when thousands of pieces of evidence ALL point to this conclusion and NO evidence contradicts it.

No, your example is not analogous. Light coming from Mars is a real time event. Historical extrapolations are just that, educated guesses on long past events. Of course, the question is whether that "education" is warranted by the empirical evidence and in the case of macroevolution I believe it is not.

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jtb: And many animals can pass information from one generation to the next. Elephants teaching their young where to find water, for instance. In other words: the principle that "only humans can transmit information over generations" is like the principle that "only persons can produce the personal". It is pure invented garbage, with absolutely no relevance to the real world. Ed: No, you claimed that they passed on complex information about their origin, ie evolving from another species. No ape such as australopithecus could do such a thing. jtb: No, I did not. I merely pointed out that your claim that such a change has "never been observed" was factually incorrect: you deny the existence of the observers. I also pointed out that YOUR claim that "only humans can transfer information between generations" was another fabrication: an attempt to arbitrarily decree a "law" into existence.

How can a creature observe it's own evolution? There are no known macroevolutionary changes that can occur within a human or ape lifespan. If there is, please enlighten me. We were talking about information regarding origins, only humans can do that. Only now do you backpedal and try to twist that discussion into another direction.

Jack the Bodiless

I did. You failed to provide ANY evidence against evolution. Now you seem to have given up. When challenged to support your assertion that "there is no fossil C", you didn't even attempt to provide ONE actual example of a gap in the fossil record.

So you're lying again.
Nonsense. A lot of mutations are due to radioactivity. Are you claiming that radioactive particles would hit the DNA strands in exactly the same places every time? This is obviously not true.
There is evidence that SOME junk DNA may not always have been nonfunctional.

This evidence includes retroviral DNA that has found its way into the genome and now shows up in all species descended from the infected organism, and the dormant DNA in birds which codes for reptilian characteristics such as teeth, claws and scales. More powerful evidence for common descent.
...Huh???
You think they wouldn't have tried to eliminate that?
Actually, light from Mars is NOT a real-time event (lightspeed lag). And light from distant stars and gallaxies can take thousands or millions of years to get here.

But the study of fossils IS a real-time event (the fossils exist in the present), the study of genetics happens in the present with presently-existing species, and so on.

No sane scientist denies common descent. Only religious fundamentalists do, because they can't handle it.
I was merely attempting to head off an apparent attempt to introduce a new "scientific law": that human evolution couldn't have happened because it wasn't observed. A repeat of your "only persons can produce the personal" BS.

However, speciation is certainly a macroevolutionary event that can occur within a human lifespan.

The terms refer to evolution within a species, and evolution above the species level. Speciation, and subsequent divergence, is therefore a macroevolutionary event.

Your attempt to redefine macroevolution as referring ONLY to higher-level changes is a blatant attempt at deception. You are seeking to claim that "macroevolution, defined by me as referring ONLY to changes too great to observe within a human lifetime, has never been observed within a human lifetime. Therefore macroevolution is false".

In other words: you're lying again.

But you still haven't explained WHY.