Family Man

True, but where is the evidence that it comes from God? You've produced none, whereas a reality check strongly indicate that morality is a societal construct. In that case, an individual's opinion would be relatively weak compared to society's, as any prison inmate would tell you.

Charles Darwin

I checked out your webpage satire of "Over 300 Fulfilled Messianic Prophecies." The problem, in my view, is that "Over 300 Fulfilled Messianic Prophecies" is not an appropriate apologetic; rather, many of those prophecies are best suited for edification of believers. So I would argue you are making a strawman out of that page (note: I'm unaware of what the authors intended, I'm merely pointing out the obvious)

For you to seriously address the prophecies, you ought to take some of the best ones (ones that are actually appropriate for apologetics) and explain why they are bogus. For example, there is Psalm 22, where David writes:

7 All those who see Me ridicule Me;
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
8 "He trusted in the LORD, let Him rescue Him;
Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!"

9 But You are He who took Me out of the womb;
You made Me trust while on My mother's breasts.

�

14 I am poured out like water,
And all My bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
It has melted within Me.
15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And My tongue clings to My jaws;
You have brought Me to the dust of death.

16 For dogs have surrounded Me;
The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.
They pierced My hands and My feet;
17 I can count all My bones.
They look and stare at Me.
18 They divide My garments among them,
And for My clothing they cast lots.

Of course, Jesus referenced this Psalm before dying on the cross.

Charles Darwin

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Originally posted by Charles Darwin
Woe, hang on just a minute there. You've shoe-horned me into the CS Lewis position. Remember, I said I'm *not* arguing his position. I said that there is evidence for an absolute standard, not in mores held across the world, but in the strong personal judgements people make -- they don't say "Hitler was evil; but that's just my opinion."

The evidence (not proof) that is comes from God is in the conviction of the grieved. The stronger the conviction, the stronger the evidence that the inner sense of morality is not merely a social construct. And let's face it, we can all attest to this inner feeling. We all know what it is like to cast a righteous judgement upon what we see as evil. There is no post-modern feeling of relativism in our heart -- we suddenly *know* right vs wrong.

Charles Darwin

Forgive me for being a bit skeptical here, but I've yet to meet such Christians. Can you elaborate? Were they advocating making atheism illegal or something? I'll admit there are fringe thinkers (in every movement of course), but you say many Christians are of this intent.

Charles Darwin

Things that weren't prophecies ... Hmmm. I wonder how these scholars decided that Ps 22 doesn't qualify as a Messianic prophecy. Sorry, but it sounds like a convenient way of avoiding a rather obvious prophecy.

Look, if you don't want to believe, that's fine. But you're going far beyond that with your statements.

Charles Darwin

Actually the resurrection had several orders of magnitude more witnesses, and it created an huge movement practically overnight. There were literally tens of thousands of copies of the NT circulating at a time when those were big numbers. Opponents claimed things like : Jesus is of Satan, but they didn't generally, even in the non Christian literature where references to Him are scant, claim He did not work miracles.

As for the motives of early Christians, I'm not sure what the issue is. I think most people agree their motive was a sincere belief that Jesus is our Lord and Savior. They also advocated high moral living, including things like honesty.

What you are positing has got to be the most incredible conspiracy theory of all time. Somehow a hodge-podge group of disparate followers pulled of the biggest deception in history with a few cleverly written documents and managed to get themselves killed for it in the process.

lpetrich

Except that there are lots of counterexamples -- things often fall together in various orderly ways.

Look at crystal structure. Are there some little goblins who like to arrange the molecules into regular lattices?

lpetrich

Charles Darwin:
We know from science, and all of our empirical observations what a rare commodity complexity is.

That's demonstrably false, as I've pointed out earlier.

No matter how we configure our experiments, we can't build perpetual motion machines,

So what?

create a bacterium,

From its component elements? Actually, that's a very straightforward task, though an incredibly tedious one -- a similar task has recently been accomplished for a polio virus.

or show how echolocation could have arisen.

Easy. All you need is:

Hearing
The ability to make sounds
A brain that can make lots of inferences

So if hearing a loud echo of your chirp happens just before you hit a cave wall, then you learn to associate loud echoes with nearby walls. I've experienced similar learning with a pet cat my family once had. I had to keep her away from her food bowl when I filled it, because she would come rushing toward it when I opened a can of cat food.

It is our everyday experience, and it is codified in scientific laws: things don't tend to fall together.

Except that self-organization does happen.

But in spite of all this built up knowledge, we are to assume that the phenomenal complexity that we *do indeed* observe is a product of natural laws because, after all, the God hypothesis is a myth.

So what do you prefer: "Goddidit!"?

lpetrich

Except that this "inner feeling" tells different things to different people. For example, it tells strict Muslim fundamentalists that it is wrong for women to reveal any parts of their bodies in public.

Charles Darwin

Originally posted by Charles Darwin
... My problem with your story here is that we live in a universe where amazing levels of complexity don't just happen. Things don't tend to fall together in this universe, so why should we believe that the most complex things of all did?

Of course, there are g-zillions of examples of miniscule complexity. Look at every snowflake! So since snowflakes spontaneously arise, therefore the DNA code can too? [Hint: the answer isn't yes].