Synaesthesia

Your statement that we can only predict the way the majority of particles behave is erroneous. We can indeed produce a very exact, well verified, statistical prediction. Any individual particle can only be predicted statistically.

Current theories suggest that there is truly an element of randomness. You have not given any suggestion indicating that your opinion is substantiated in any way. However it is possible that an underlying order will be discerned in quantum events. Keep in mind, however that the behavior of quantum events is quite unlike any other statistical phenomenon; any refinement in our explanation is likely to be as counterintuitive as the existing framework of quantum mechanics.

There is only one known method to prevent macroevolution resulting from microevolution over time. That is genetically verifying that each offspring has not introduced any sort of mutation. Of course, to do that would stop microevolution. If you have 1 change and you add another, 2 changes will result. If you add one change to 2 changes, 3 will result. Your parents are different from their grandparents, you are different from your parents, your children will be different from you. Genetic changes are a legacy that cannot be undone- That is, unless an event as unlikely as tornadoes going through junkyards and producing commercial airliners occurs.

The existence of gaps in the fossil record is not due to evolution. There is not even enough room on surface of the earth to hold all the remains of all the animals that have lived. For the vast majority, their remains decompose, are consumed or otherwise destroyed before they can even fossilize. A very tiny number of creatures in the right circumstances will be fossilized, but you must understand that this is a rare process. Not only do we not know all stages of each species' developmental process, we haven’t found the remains of the vast majority of species that lived. We are fortunate, however, that some were so common, despite the spars

Now there seems to be some misconception regarding Punctuated Equilibrium. It is is not an explanation for the fact that not every single species that ever lived has not been fossilized. It is a theory that has been developed to account for specific trends in the (geological) longevity of various intermediate species. A site with a fossils 10,000 or so apart is a very rich find. That may not seem like many samples but keep in mind that in the 60,000,000 years since the dinosaurs, 10,000 years has passed 6,000 times.

Even with a very low resolution monster with many dysfunctional pixels, you can begin to extrapolate curves and shapes, change and equilibrium. Similarly the fossil record, although our conception of it is still developing, gives us a very good idea of the time scale of life’s evolution and the course it took.

Animal behavior goes past the movement of their limbs and face. I read an interesting passage from Chomsky paraphrased by Day Hauser:

“Here is this very little insect, tiny little brain, simple nervous system, that is capable of transmitting information about where it's been and what it's eaten to a colony and that information is sufficiently precise that the colony members can go find the food. We know that that kind of information is encoded in the signal because people in Denmark have created a robotic honey bee that you can plop in the middle of a colony, programmed to dance in a certain way, and the hive members will actually follow the information precisely to that location. Researchers have been able to understand the information processing system to this level, and consequently, can actually transmit it through the robot to other members of the hive. When you step back and say, what do we know about how the brain of a honeybee represents that information, the answer is: we know nothing.” (my emphasis

Human beings are not the only creatures capable of abstract reasoning in the sense of analogous thinking. That is integral in the development of visual perception in monkeys and is likely the genetic ancestor of some reasoning and perceptual facilities in humans. We are certainly the most abstract, and most recursive of animals. Our toolbox of heuristics and the size of our memory is what differentiates us. Analogies between animal brains and human brains are pervasive however, there is no sacred skill totally unique to human beings save our propensity towards incredibly destructive delusions.

Synaesthesia

Good luck with your God. Let’s hope either you’re right about the doctrine or you’re wrong about the temperament of his expression.

I don’t think that temporal non-linearity is necessarily incompatible with intelligence. It’s not an important point at any rate. Thanks for clarifying where you’re coming from, it really does help focus the discussion.

Any idea that gives that conclusion (I’m not sure I even understand your conclusion) is moral inference then? Seems like an explosively paradoxical method of inference if I understand you aright.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Synaethesia,
Most people think that only logical inferences can be drawn. But there is such thing, no pun intended, of metaphysical inferences. For example:

Plastic is a man-made material. So I may logically infer that I will find more of it where man is or was, not where man has not been (e.g., in cities rather than in deep dark jungles, bottom of the ocean, or Mars).

Plastic is made from petroleum. So I may metaphysically infer that it would share the nature of petroleum and therefore burn. Conversely, glass is made from sand. So I may metaphysically infer that it would share the nature of sand and therefore not burn.

You question what a moral inference is. It can derive from logic or metaphysics. For example:

If it is wrong to unjustly kill a man, I can logically infer that unjustly injuring a man is also morally wrong since killing is but a species of causing injury.

If the nature of nature is rational, I can metaphysically infer that acting irrationally is morally wrong and a crime against nature or the Natural Law. If warp and weave of reality is rationality I can metaphysically infer that acting irrationally makes me less real of a person. Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Ed

See my comment in part I.

Quote:

Ed: What do you think the word "universe" means? The universe is made up galaxies (a unity) but there are many different types of galaxies (diversity), galaxies are made up of stars(a unity) but there are many different types of stars (diversity) and I could go all the way down to the atomic level. Now do you understand? Rim:What, all the things in the unverse can be grouped into taxonomical classes, and that is what a DinU means? Are Jesus, Yhwh, and the Holy Ghost all different gods within the unified "God" class? Are you sure you want to venture down this poorly-thought-out neo-Platonic path?

No, not classes, essences.

Quote:

Ed: Genesis teaches that the universe had a definite beginning at least 3000 years before cosmological evidence was discovered that pointed to the same truth. Rim:Wow. Just... wow. Where to begin? You say Genesis teaches a definite begining to the universe? I say so do a hundred other creation myths.

No, most other religions believe either that the universe is eternal or that there was a prior existing space-time continuum.

Quote:

Rim:You say that this is a "Truth?" I say it's a theory describing the growth of the Universe from its earliest point. I'm unsure of what scientists mean when they talk about "light cones," but I'm pretty sure that the Big Bang is described as the begining of our Universe because we have no observational way of confriming anythting outside of this Universe's dimentions, and the temporal dimention essentially began at the Big Bang. It is in no way an absolute truth that the Big Bang was the beginning, as we have no idea of what else may exist outside or before this Universe, which is what the BB is the start of. Please stop whoring the word "truth" by applying it to scientific theories.

Well maybe I should have said that most of the evidence points in that direction.

Quote:

Rim:You say Genesis is historical because it describes a starting point of this Universe? I say that's about it. Genetics, age of the Earth, sequence of life's development, the "Flood," origin of languages; Genesis is wrong on all these counts. Too bad for you.

The scriptures never mention genetics so how could they be wrong? As far as age of the earth, the scriptures actually don't give an age of the earth. See my earlier post about the sequence of life's development and the flood. Actually according to the great linguist Noam Chomsky there is evidence of one original language that later diversified fitting what the scriptures teach.

Quote:

Ed: Just recently Caiphas' tomb was found, he was the high priest that was at Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin. And there are many other examples. Rim: Great. A tomb lies in Isreal, so Jesus must have risen from the dead. We're looking for historical evidence of Jesus and the miracles he performed. This pithy example of the tomb of a person described in the Gospels proving the Gospels true is just another example of why extrodinary claims require extrodinary evidence.

I didn't say it proves it but is just a piece of the larger puzzle. There IS independent documentary evidence for Jesus and his miracles.

Quote:

Ed: What artificial distinction? The distinction is real, Rim:No, it isn't. You have yet to show that (morality/personality/life) cannot possibly come from (amorality/impersonality/non-life.) All you can do is sidetrack the argument by saying that this doesn't happen (a statement I disagree with, due to evolution.) Sorry, bub, but simply because something doesn't happen has does not mean that it cannot happen. THAT is how you are shifting the burden of proof, that is why your causal barrier is arbitrary and artificial.

Almost all biologists agree that the distinction between life and non-life is real so you are going against the majority of scientists. Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation 100 years ago. It may be theoretically possible for persons to come from the impersonal but such a theory is irrational that is my point.

Quote:

Ed: just as real as the distinction between life and non-life. Rim:AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Oh yeah, real good distinction there.

See above.

Quote:

Ed: You haven't demonstrated that the distinction is artificial. Rim:You haven't proven the distinction (actually, barrier) is real. I am under no obligation to disprove something that has not yet been proven, like a causal barrier between "personal" and "impersonal," or "life" and "non-life," or "moral" from "amoral," or "communication" from "non-communication." I see the evidence for these causal relationships and the possiblities you deny in evolution. Take any objections to this to the E&C forum. Your only proof for these barriers is "A" is different from "~A," Therefore, "A" could not arise from "~A." Pretty weak.

The difference is based on substance it is not just qualitative. No evolutionary sequence has given an adequate scenario of life developing from non-life or the impersonal developing into the personal.

[quote]Ed: But anyway, since that definition is not adequate to describe personal then there no rational basis for using it and since throughout all of human experience the personal has only come from persons such a definition is unfounded.

Rim: ::Smacks forehead:: Such a definition is the only thing that can logically validate such a causal barrier between "personal" and "impersonal." [quote]

Why?

Quote:

Ed: Ok, give an example of morality coming from amorality or some impersonal source. Rim NCE AGAIN you switch the burden of proof. It is not enough to be skeptical of such things as morality from amorality. You are trying to prove that your god exists by saying that a causal barrier between them must exist. YOU have to prove this causal barrier. You say that we've never seen such a thing happen, and that it therefore cannot. You say it cannot, I say it may, you say prove it does. Even if we don't know that it does, that doesn't prove it can't. Argument form ignorance. Got it?

I am not saying that it PROVES that such a thing is not possible only that it demonstrates that such a belief is not as rational as a personal cause.

Quote:

Rim:Further, you are digging yourself into a hole. By saying that norality must come from morality, you are saying that God is moral. But I thought the Xian god trancended morality (i.e., is amoral), which makes it ok for him to slaughter whole civilizations and condone the mass rape of their women and rip open pregnant womens' wombs and send she-bears to maul children to death and drown all living things because he screwed up his own creation and other such nasty things...

No, morality comes from God's objective moral character. All of these people were guilty of rebelling against the king of the universe.

Quote:

Ed: No, I am just trying to help you to understand what a person is. You are a person and therefore what makes you you is also what makes a person. Rim:Tautology. Please come up with a definition of personal that doesn't validate itself (i.e., one that actually means something.)

How is describing something with a mind, will, and conscience as a person a tautology?

Quote:

Ed: Propositional communication is communication using verbal statements either written, spoken, symbolic, typed, or etc. Now do you understand? Rim:Indeed I do. Why must this only come from "personal" things?

Because throughout all of human experience that is the only source of such things that has been observed. I am not saying they MUST come from such things but that that is the most rational assumption.

Quote:

Ed: But since helium and hydrogen are things that require energy and matter to exist and since energy and matter only exist in space then they are unlikely to exist outside the space-time universe, therefore it is unlikely to be part of the cause of the universe. Rim:You follow this up with... "The logical processes of science may not work outside the Universe, where your 'trancendant' First Cause supposedly exists." Ed:Yes that is a possibility but it is rational to assume that they do. The burden of proof is on those that say we should throw out logic. Rim:...outside the Universe. You betray your complete ignoracne of the concept of burden of proof by saying this, because evidence can only be observed within the Universe; the Universe is the limit of our observational ability. Please, PLEASE, don't try to lecture me on what the burden of proof means. It just makes you look more like an ass.

Yes evidence can only be observed in this universe but scientists make assumptions all the time about things that cannot be observed, ie the past.

Quote:

Rim:Further, I'd like you to reconcile this supposed "probability" of logic existing outside the universe with your statement above about hydrogen and helium are things that must exist in the Universe, therefore making it impossible for them to exist outside of the Universe. But logic is a contrivance of language, which is an invention of things in the universe. Why is it unlikely for H and He to exist outside the Universe, but likely for logic to also exist? How do you know? What authority do you have to make such pronouncements? Will you please argue by your own standards?

Laws of Logic are non-physical entities therefore they do not require a time-space continuum to exist.

Quote:

Ed: No, the biblical teaching of omnipotence does not mean that he can do absolutely anything. He is limited by his moral character and logic. And a basic law of logic is the law of sufficient cause therefore the cause of the universe must have what it takes to produce a diversity within a unity, and only the christian God has that characteristic therefore it is rational in conjunction with his other characteristics to assume that he is the cause of the universe. Rim:Complete and utter bullshit. You shot yourself in the foot by saying that the first cause must simply be capable of producing the things in the universe (hydrogen and helium.) That's what the "law of suffiecient cause" means. Nothing more. There is no logical reason why a DinU universe must be caused by a DinU god. your limiting of omniscience to logically possible things is thus rendered irrelevant. Further, you have not even demonstrated that the universe is a DinU, except by appealing to vague and meaningless terms like "essence." Even if you did, there is still no logical reason why a DinU universe can't be created by a "pure unity" or a "pure diversity" or a "Diversity not united by 'essence.'" This whole line of argument is therefore nothing but a HUGE, ugly, embarrasing non-sequitir.

I didnt say that the cause must only be able to produce helium and hydrogen, helium and hydrogen are inadequate to produce living things and personal beings. Therefore the cause must also be sufficient to produce those things also. Theoretically a pure unity could produce a diversity within a unity but it is not as rational an assumption than that the cause is also a diversity within a unity.

Quote:

Ed: No need for the condescending attitude. I think I have demonstrated the validity of my arguements. Rim:Yes. And if I "think" that I'm Gawd's gift to women, but am consistantly unable to get laid, what does that say about my opinion of myself as a ladies' man? Your initial argument was this: The First Cause argument can point to the Xian god for these reasons: -The universe contains personal beings, and only personal beings can create personal beings. The Xian god is a personal being, and therefore is the first cause. This has been shown to be a baldfaced assertion based only on the fallicious argument that because something doesn't happen, it can't. You thus set up an arbitrary, artificial causal barrier that can only be defended by perpetuating your earlier fallacy, or by employing circular reasoning. Not only that, but the status of personal God is not unique to Xianity. -The cause must be trancendant, and the Xian god is trancendant. This is more baseless assertion, and is particualrly weak because not only is it contradicted by the Bible, but it is in no way unique to the Xian god.

How is it contradicted in the bible? The bible teaches the transcendence of God. I never said it was unique to christianity but with the additional evidence, it points to the christian God.

[b] His attributes are learned from his communication to us ie the bible. Since only the bible teaches that the cause of the universe is diversity within a unity. I dont think you have demonstrated your assertions. BTW, What is a dillhole? Is it the same as an a--hole? Either way such ad hominem attacks are a sign of very superficial thinking.

[ December 27, 2001: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

lpetrich

Ed: What do you mean supposed? Jesus' existence is better documented than Caesar's Gallic wars.

Rim:Bullshit. This is the hoary old argument that the Gospels have more copies than the accounts of the Gaelic wars. It's totally meaningless, for the following reasons:
-Ceaser's conquests were documented by the people he conquered

Ed:
Yes, and Jesus' life was documented by his enemies.

LP:
Only secondhand and some decades after he had lived -- unlike the case of Julius Caesar, where a book purportedly written by him has survived. Now did Jesus Christ ever write any books? Nobody's ever claimed to have found any book purportedly written by him.

Up-close documentation of Jesus Christ by his enemies would probably look like the only account of self-styled prophet Alexander of Abonutichus that survives; this document was written by skeptic Lucian of Samosata (an Internet Infidel centuries ahead of his time), and it makes A of A seem like a total charlatan -- like L. Ron Hubbard or Sai Baba.

Ed:
Unless you are omniscient you cannot rule out the veracity of a document for the sole reason that it reports supernatural events.

LP:
So does Ed take seriously the accounts of divine intervention in the Iliad and the Odyssey?

Rim: These three things are what differentiate Caeser's campaign in Gaul from the supposed life of Jesus: Independant, first-hand accounts; physical evidence; and a lack of supernatural elements (or, the doubt of supernatural events being real.)

Ed:
See above, there is similar evidence for Christ.

LP:
"Evidence" that simply does not exist, as many apologists indirectly concede by failing to point out such evidence? There is no account outside of the Gospels of someone who claims to have met Jesus Christ in person; Lucian of Samosata had claimed such an acquaintance with A of A, and there is archeological evidence of a cult that A of A had founded.

Ed: Genesis teaches that the universe had a definite beginning at least 3000 years before cosmological evidence was discovered that pointed to the same truth.

LP:
A "definite beginning" that may not have happened -- we don't know enough about quantum gravity to come to a definite conclusion about that. So while speculations like the ekpyrotic Universe may be fun, I'm not willing to endorse them.

Rim:Wow. Just... wow. Where to begin?
You say Genesis teaches a definite begining to the universe? I say so do a hundred other creation myths.

Ed:
No, most other religions believe either that the universe is eternal or that there was a prior existing space-time continuum.

LP:
However, the Bible does not state that there was no previous space-time continuum; it can be interpreted as God placing the heavens and the earth into empty space-time. In fact, Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, had taught that God had not created anything out of nothing, but had instead given form to formless matter.

Rim:You say Genesis is historical because it describes a starting point of this Universe? I say that's about it. Genetics, age of the Earth, sequence of life's development, the "Flood," origin of languages; Genesis is wrong on all these counts. Too bad for you.

Ed:
The scriptures never mention genetics so how could they be wrong?

LP:
There is a story of someone in Genesis making some solid-color cattle give birth to spotted and striped cattle by showing them sticks with striped painted on.

Ed:
As far as age of the earth, the scriptures actually don't give an age of the earth.

Ed:
See my earlier post about the sequence of life's development and the flood. Actually according to the great linguist Noam Chomsky there is evidence of one original language that later diversified fitting what the scriptures teach.

Ed: Just recently Caiphas' tomb was found, he was the high priest that was at Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin. And there are many other examples.

LP:
Does the existence of Troy in NW Turkey imply the existence of the Greek Gods?

As has been pointed out, historical-fiction writers like to get their background details straight, and Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate had been background details of the Gospels.

Ed:
There IS independent documentary evidence for Jesus and his miracles.

LP:
WHAT??? There is no primary source for them independent of his followers. I mean someone like Lucian of Samosata, who had clearly not been one of A of A's followers.

Ed:
Almost all biologists agree that the distinction between life and non-life is real so you are going against the majority of scientists.

LP:
Vitalism is an old theory that has failed a variety of experimental tests; the difference is a matter of organization, and I will concede that there is a big jump from prebiotic-chemistry experiments and even the simplest of primary-producer bacteria, those not dependent on complicated organic compounds.

Ed:
Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation 100 years ago.

LP:
No, he didn't. He simply found no evidence of it happening under certain carefully-controlled conditions.

Ed:
It may be theoretically possible for persons to come from the impersonal but such a theory is irrational that is my point.

LP:
What are "personal" and "impersonal"?

Rim: ... a causal barrier between "personal" and "impersonal," or "life" and "non-life," or "moral" from "amoral," or "communication" from "non-communication." ...

Ed:
The difference is based on substance it is not just qualitative. No evolutionary sequence has given an adequate scenario of life developing from non-life or the impersonal developing into the personal.

LP:
So there is some special "life substance" that living things have and nonliving things don't? If such a substance exists, then it would likely have been isolated by now. Imagine some microbiologists disassembling Escherichia coli bacteria in their test tubes and sorting out a "life substance" with their ultracentrifuges and chromatographs and their other analytic tools. However, there is not a shred of evidence for such a substance; you get an Escherichia coli bacterium by assembling nonliving molecules in a certain very complicated fashion.

Ed: Ok, give an example of morality coming from amorality or some impersonal source.

Rim ONCE AGAIN you switch the burden of proof. ...

LP:
Evolution of social behavior has been the subject of an abundance of research; this may be described as the evolution of morality, since social animals are generally not indiscriminately wicked toward each other. Bees in a hive don't try to sting each other, except in certain special cases, and wolves don't try to have each other for dinner.

Rim:Further, you are digging yourself into a hole. By saying that norality must come from morality, you are saying that God is moral. But I thought the Xian god trancended morality (i.e., is amoral), which makes it ok for him to slaughter whole civilizations and condone the mass rape of their women and rip open pregnant womens' wombs and send she-bears to maul children to death and drown all living things because he screwed up his own creation and other such nasty things...

Ed:
No, morality comes from God's objective moral character. All of these people were guilty of rebelling against the king of the universe.

LP:
As opposed to reforming those supposedly wicked people; it makes no sense to allow something to happen and then to complain about it happening.

Ed:
How is describing something with a mind, will, and conscience as a person a tautology?

LP:
So what you are claiming is that mind cannot come from non-mind? In a way, it does, since fertilized egg cells show little evidence of having minds.

Ed: Propositional communication is communication using verbal statements either written, spoken, symbolic, typed, or etc. Now do you understand?

Rim:Indeed I do. Why must this only come from "personal" things?

Ed:
Because throughout all of human experience that is the only source of such things that has been observed. I am not saying they MUST come from such things but that that is the most rational assumption.

LP:
However, how much direct experience do we have?

Ed: But since helium and hydrogen are things that require energy and matter to exist and since energy and matter only exist in space then they are unlikely to exist outside the space-time universe, therefore it is unlikely to be part of the cause of the universe.

LP:
So what? Hydrogen and helium had been formed in the Big Bang from free nucleons and electrons.

Ed:
I didnt say that the cause must only be able to produce helium and hydrogen, helium and hydrogen are inadequate to produce living things and personal beings.

LP:
So there must also be some special "life substance" and some special "mind substance"? There is zero evidence for either, and plausible ways in which life can come from nonlife and mind from nonmind.

GunnerJ

(Hey, LP, muscling in on my turf, are you? )

Well, (Mr.) Ed, in appears that, rather than getting answers straight from the horse's mouth, I'm getting them from the other end! Let's see how I shovel this manure you call an argument:

Oh, no need, indeed, no mater how much it is deserved.

Baldfaced assertion backed up by triple arguments ad populum, ad actoritam and ad famam. (For the Latin impared, that's three appeals, to popularity, to authority, and to tradition, respectively).

On what authority to do state that their version is wrong?

Oh, I see, more appeals to authority. Can't say I'm surprised.

Again, on what authority do you state that his beliefs are erroneous? There were traditions in the early church that disputed the "fully god/fully man" theology. Why were they wrong?

Non sequitir.

Yeah, I guess that solves it. The arogant are always wrong! Scientists, chuck those laws of gravitation and motion out the window, they were the product of an arrogant mind! (Gasp, horror!) Lets hope this is the last argument ad hominem, eh?

Most? Proof, please. Why not all, if it's such a fundemental property of God?

Oh. here we go with this schtick again.

You see, folks, the uber-caste of cult member called an "apologist" knows that the Scriptures are flawed, erroneous, contradictory, and show the signs of tampering to fit the needs of society. Therefore, he must formulate an absurd god-concept that involves their god lying (and let's face it, people, failing to tell an important part of the truth is a lie of omission) to them about the fundemental nature of things, and "miraculously" "revealing" to them all the parts of their current theology piecewise, with a little being added on over time, almost like the work of finate, fallible humans changing the theology around over time to suit their current needs. But it's not, the cult apologist assures us, it's god's "progressive revelation," indistinguishable from a flawed work of humans minds in a developing culture, all done for some "divine purpose" which is also witheld from us. He then finishes it up with a statement like, "you are to (dumb/weak/immoral) to question god, so just accept it!" sometimes veiled in friendlier forms, like, "That is what is expected if he is the real God, he doesn't do things the way we would expect him to. He can't be tamed."

You see, the cult member's mind is riddled with a plauge called "cognitive dissonence," where he must constantly juggle many diametrically opposed facts in his mind, sometimes errecting complex argumentative machinery called "apologetics" to justify them, and sometimes, simply killing people they dissagree with so no one questions their absurd thought paterns. What we see here today is the first variety, much safer than the second, but also infinately more annoying.

Luckily, we have no need of such ridiculous looking mental gymnastics. We have a handy-dandy tool called Occam's Razor. This tool allows us to cut away all the unnessisay, overly-complex and meaningless elements in an explaination and cut right to the simplist explaination that fits the evidence. For example, on the subject of why the Trinity isn't very strongly stressed in the Bible, not at all in the Old Testament, and only by vague, questionable inferrence from the New, we have two explainations:

1) The Bible is the work of fallible humans who adapt older theology to support their current one.
2) God really wrote the whole Bible, but he "progressively" revealed himelf in it, omitting important facts in the begining and implying them towards the end, for a mysterious divine purpose, which we are too dumb to be let in on.

For comaprison, let's add a third:

3) Aliens are playing a sick practical joke on humanity by giving us false and missleading scriptures, just to see what happens.

Now, let me unsheath my razor and see what I can do. The Third one, while amusing, assumes alien contact for which there is no evidence, and thus introduces unnessisary complexity. The Second... well, where to begin! First, it assumes an unproven god, then it assumes a mysterious purpose, two entities we know nothing about. Quite complex for such a simple problem! Now, on to the First. If we shave off all the fat and gristle around explainations Two and Three, we're left with something like number one. Let's look at it. We do see a flawed Bible, and it's an historical fact that religions and "sacred" texts do get twisted to serve the purpose of those in power. We know about all the elements in it! Pass!

That will be all for today's demonstration, call now to place your order for this unique, sanity-saving device! Sorry, no C.O.D.s!

What, in the Talmud? That was written even later than the Gospels! Caeser has people in his own lifetime who opposed him chronicling his actions. I heard an analogy about the Xian religion, it went something like this: If you were told that a Civil War soldier was killed in battle, but miraculously rose from the dead, and the only proof you were given was a set of conflicting religious tracts written in the 1930's, you'd be insane to believe this. After Ed's reply, we can add proof to this claim of a Civil War ressurection: a rebuttle tract written in the 80s!

No, sir, his "followers" composed, decades after the supposed life of Jesus, a set of conflicting biographies. This is nowhere near the caliber of proof for Caeser's Gaulic campaign; as LP noted, Caeser at least wrote something himself.

I suppose you think the Oddysey is an historical account? Let us pray to Oddyseus, the slayer of the Cyclops!(Great minds think alike, LP!)

Substituting a meaningless term for one with meaning is not going to help your case.

LOL! The ignorance is maddening! You have a lot to learn.

BTW, you say most of the other religious traditions teach a eternal universe? Then you have no argument, because unless you can show that ALL other religious traditions besides the Judeo-Christian have an enternal universe, then your religious cosmology is not unique. Plus, you'd have to deal with LP's insightful analysis that the Bible may not teach a definate beginning. This is not so much a problem for reality as it is for standard Xian theology.

And you'd be wrong; all the evidence points to the Big Bang being the limit of our historical analysis of the universe; it makes no definative statements about what came "before." (Barring the speculations of String Theory, whcih, while interesting, are somewhat tenuous.)

They also say "Love thy neighbor" so how could they be wrong?, Well, tons of ways, since being partially correct doesn't validate the whole. LP's example of the Bible's advice on how to breed striped cows is one example of how it could be wrong. I'd like to see some relevant passages in the Bible to genetics.

Unless you're willing to postulate day-age creation with two-billion-year-long days, it sure as hell (ahem ) rules out a 15 billion year old universe.

Please direct me to it.

Notice the little weasle word: "diversify." So vague it could support almost anything, from an evolutionary paradign of language origin to the "special creations" of languages taught in the Bible. It's well know that students of language development think that all languages developed from a "common ancestor," less frequently heard is the idea that all the modern languages were developed as a punishment for building a tower, which, despite your vague whitewashing, is what the Scripture teaches. Unless you're a "micro-evolutionist" when it comes to language. I have half a mind to write Mr. Choamsky about how his ideas are being misrepresented here.

PUT UP OR SHUT UP.

Another dual set of arguments ad populum and ad actoritam. Erroneous ones, in this case, as this statement is a flat-out lie. Look into virology, to see what I mean. The distinction is nowhere near as fine as you present it. For a more clear demonstration, define "life" for us. You can't draw distinctions without definitions. Many definitions of life are flawed as either to exclusive or to broad, and all are arbitrary and parochial. Here's an interesting article: <a href="http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a971212.html" target="_blank">Is fire alive? What is Life?</a>

Point please? And please count LP's commentary on this as my own.

It is not a point at all, as this "irrationality" is unproven. If it is theoretically possible, then that strikes your causal/developmental barrier down. You have no point, no argument, to stand on.

Elaborate please.

Yes, that's what abiogenesis is for. Not evolution. Try to get your terms straight, it makes you look slightly less like an ass.

But your distinction between "personal" and "impersonal" seems fundamentally flawed. You have agreed yourself that certain animals have aspects of the peronality. It seems, then, that the delineation between "personal" and "impersonal" is scalar, not binary. This is exactly what we'd expect from an evolutionary development of "personal" aspects.

THEN YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT. Everything else is a distraction. You need to prove your causal/developmental barrier before I have to knock it down.

You're free to say that, even though it's completely false.

So god is beyond morals? Right, he's amoral. But how can that be? Morality doesn't come from amorality, right?

It's this type of half-assed thinking that cultism germinates. Even the babies ripped from their mothers' wombs? They rebeled against god? Every pregnant woman was in open revolt against god? Every woman taken by Hebrew soldiers as personal playthings after their families were slaughtered was a god-hater? Those little kids joking about the prophet's bald head were in such revolt against god that they deserved to be mauled to death by bears? And all the animals and plants destroyed in the flood? They, too, were part of the revolution? Such horseshit. There are simple, humane solutions to these problems well within the grasp of an omnipotent being. But, then again, that's what we'd expect from an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being, and as you said, god's full of surprises. Your god chose to be a cruel, heartless motherfucker. What a pisser, that god it! He had me fooled. Please, please stop thinking with your ass, if you can't avoid talking out of it.

Stop avoiding the issue. You defined personal as what makes me a person. If you can't see that that's a tautology, then I can't help you.

See LP.

And until you do, and start backing it up, YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT.

Bullshit! Inferences made about the past are beased on evidence from the past! Do a little brainwork before you type things up on the screen, ok?

[b]Incorrect[/i] Laws of Logic are linguistic conventions based on our need to define and convey abstract thoughts.

RED HERRING. Neither did I. Please carefully re-read my post. H and He were examples.

More assertion based on unproven premises. This is getting embarrasing for you, Ed.

Then, once again, YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT WHATSOEVER.

Bullshit! By this logic it would be irrational to assume that I can make a UBB post because it doesn't have my properties (6'4", brown hair, brown eyes, composed of moslty water and some carbon and hydrogen). Can you please pull that head of yours out from between your asscheecks at try using some logic? I'm not (just) making fun of you, I am trying to pull you out of this illogical circle you're trying to goad me into running.

The various reference to god as a "heavenly father." The word heaven meant in ancient times the sky. God, appearently, lived in the upper atmosphere. High-altitude test flights seem unimpeeded by this. Various passages talk about God having a face, and at one point in the Bible, God instructs someone not to look at his face, but his "backside" where it's safer. I've also seen some advice in the Bible for armies on campaign: Take a shovel with you to cover up your latrine, as God is walking with you, and he doesn't like the smell. Moses's escape from the Pharoh was assisted by God blowing his nose to part the Red Sea. Hardly qualities of a trancendant god.

No, it really doesn't, just to a personal, DinU, trancendant god. This could be the Xian god, but it could be others we have no knowledge of. And since your "additional evidence" is absurd, you are still without a case.

Haven't we been down this road before? Stop this ad nauseum argumentation and come up with some facts. That is, if you actually have another strategy besides endlessly repeating flawed arguments.

More arguing from an unproven premise.

Quite talking to yourself, kid, it's YOU have have to prove yours. And again, your opinion is irrelevant.

No.

Hey, at least I'm not arguing from them.

Actually, most of your posts on this thread are a good example of that. Unless you can pull yourself from the mire of logical fallacy you sling mud from, you shouldn't expect anything more than mild condescension and deserved scorn.

lpetrich

Rimstalker:
(Hey, LP, muscling in on my turf, are you?)

LP:
I'm flattered.

Ed:
[The Trinity] It plainly is implied and has been derived for the last 1600 years by the majority of biblical scholars that accept the authority of the scriptures.

Rim:
Baldfaced assertion ...

LP:
Even worse: this was something decided by various official Church Councils, and there would be some nasty squabbles over such things as whether the Father and the Son have the same essence (homoousia) or similar essences (homoiousia).

Ed:
JWs use a erroneously modified bible, ie their own made up version.

Rim:
On what authority to do state that their version is wrong?

LP:
More likely, they have their own interpretations.

Ed:
Yes, and Jesus' life was documented by his enemies.

Rim:
What, in the Talmud? That was written even later than the Gospels! Caeser has people in his own lifetime who opposed him chronicling his actions. ...

LP:
The Talmud states that Jesus Christ's father had been a Roman soldier named Panthera (Pantera, Pandira); does Ed believe that? This story may have been invented to explain away the virgin-birth story as a coverup of JC's true paternity; the putative father's name is a pun on the Greek word for virgin (parthenos).

Ed:
Jesus left behind followers that documented his teachings and lived according to them.

Rim:
No, sir, his "followers" composed, decades after the supposed life of Jesus, a set of conflicting biographies. This is nowhere near the caliber of proof for Caeser's Gaulic campaign; as LP noted, Caeser at least wrote something himself.

LP:
Biographies that might better be described as hagiographies, something like Parson Weems's biography of George Washington, which had contained the first mention of him and the cherry tree and similar stories. Furthermore, there is abundant evidence of plagiarism (Mark and "Q" -&gt; Matthew and Luke), and some implausibilities involved in the Crucifixion story. In that story, Pontius Pilate is described as weak-willed, contrary to more sober historians' picture of him as tough and ruthless. It's almost as if the Gospel writers wanted to get JC subjected to a Roman style of punishment, crucifixion (the Jews preferred stoning), while letting the Roman authorities off the hook and blaming the Jews.

Ed:
Unless you are omniscient you cannot rule out the veracity of a document for the sole reason that it reports supernatural events.

Rim:
I suppose you think the Oddysey is an historical account? Let us pray to Oddyseus, the slayer of the Cyclops!(Great minds think alike, LP!)

LP:
Actually, he didn't kill Polyphemus, that Cyclops who had captured him and his men; he poked Polyphemus's single eye out, and sneaked out of Polyphemus's cave by hanging beneath the belly of one of Polyphemus's livestock. Translations and plot summaries of Homer's Odyssey are readily available online; consult your favorite search engine.

There is some interesting "historical" support -- the trunk hole of an elephant skull looks something like the socket for a single eye, so stories about one-eyed giants may have been invented to account for those skulls.

Ed:
Actually according to the great linguist Noam Chomsky there is evidence of one original language that later diversified fitting what the scriptures teach.

LP:
Noam Chomsky claimed no such thing; he claimed that human languages have a shared "deep structure".

Rim:
Notice the little weasle word: "diversify." So vague it could support almost anything, from an evolutionary paradign of language origin to the "special creations" of languages taught in the Bible. It's well know that students of language development think that all languages developed from a "common ancestor," ...

LP:
Actually, that's something that the more reputable linguists prefer to avoid speculating about, at least in public. However, it's certainly possible that our species's original population had had some single language; according to Punctuated Equilibrium, evolution happens in bursts in small populations, and our ancestral population would likely have been small enough to have a single language. It is worth noting that spoken language is a human universal -- there is no full-scale society that lacks it, and some parts of our brains are adapted for working with language. Which suggests that language is as old as our species.

Ed

Hello lp. No, Allah is a pure unity so he is unlikely to be the cause of the universe. I am not referring to the process that produced persons but rather the ultimate cause.

Ed

Yes, but the type of software betrays its purpose. This software's purpose is to develop artificial life, there was no such purpose in the actual origin of life according to the evolutionary scenario. Also, algorithms are inadequate to produce specified complexity which is what DNA has.

Ed

Personal is not SUPPOSED to be anything, it is what it is.

Quote:

Ed: Because morality cannot come from amorality. LP: Check out research into the evolution of cooperation. Such cooperation does produce something like "morality". Bees in a hive don't sting each other (queens do sting rival queens, but that's the only exception), and wolves in a pack don't try to have each other for dinner. Could their behavior represent a sort of "morality"?

No, these behaviors are instinctive there was no decision made. Bees don't decide whether to sting or not to sting each other. Wolves don't decide whether to eat each other. Morality requires free agency.

Quote:

lp:Also, put some liquid water into your refrigerator's freezer. Check again a day later -- it will have become ice. Now if solidness can only come from solidness, how could this have happened???

No, the cause of ice is water and low temperatures, that is what it takes to cause solidness of water. So the law of sufficient cause is not violated by your example.

Quote:

Ed:No, the trinity is an implied doctrine derived from the scriptures which was understood in an early form in the middle of the 1st century but was formalized in greater detail in the 4th century by the biblical scholar Athanasius. LP: It's more of a projection onto the Bible, which explicitly states no such thing.

No, it is not a projection and it is not explicitly stated but it IS explictly taught that God the father is God, and that Jesus is God, and that the Holy spirit is God and is a person. Therefore the trinity was derived from these explicit teachings.

This is the end of part I of my response.