lpetrich

LP:
So what? These could be imports.

LP:
According to all the archeological evidence, they had worshipped several deities before the single-god faction got really big in the time of the Babylonian Exile.

(stuff on Ed's defense of Book-of-Daniel vagueness...)

With imprecise language, it's much easier to find "proof". However, by doing so one ultimately violates the principle of falsifiability, which is that a hypothesis that can predict anything really predicts nothing. Ed, I suggest that you look at some of the "Biblical Errancy" pages in this site, like the "Skeptical Review" pages -- they have a lot of discussion of the Book of Daniel.

Oodles of evidence. In the large majority of cases, the superposition order of different fossil strata is completely consistent; the exceptions can be traced to overthrust faults and the like. Furthermore, the superposition order is completely consistent with the dating derived from radioisotopes -- and yes, different isotopes do agree.

I suggest that you go to some site like <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org</a> some time -- geologists are not the ignoramuses that you seem to believe they are, Ed.

If there was anything like Noah's Flood, it would have shown up as unmistakable sediment layers -- and a mass extinction. But there is zero evidence of such a flood.

I really wonder if Ed has done any serious research; the ecological-compatibility hypothesis has been tested by the import of exotic species, some of which have done well enough to become pests. There has also been the natural dispersion of those species easily capable of traveling long distances, like elephants and sea cows.

Find that article.

WHAT evidence? All we have is what had been written about him centuries later -- written by those who had considered him a founder figure. There is not a shred of independent documentation of him.

Here's a nice article on this question:

<a href="http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/price_20_1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/price_20_1.htm</a>

Robert Price suspects Moses, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and the Buddha of being at least partially mythical. In particular, RP suspects Moses of having originally been a sun god, and that he had been brought down to Earth by worshippers of a single god.

I'm sure that Muslims can say the same thing about Islam, that the laws of logic and of physics imply the existence of Allah and the truth of the Koran. Now when are you going to Mecca?

As can the followers of many other creeds.

spackulus

I think it is quite easily possible that we will develop the technology in the future which will allow us to retroactively create the universe in the past.

As proof, I offer the fact that the universe exist, and that this explanation is just about as reasonable and logical as any other. After all, who declared it some sort of universal law that cause must preceed effect, or that a cause could not be its own cause?

And if the universe exists right 'now', who says that we can't go forward a few million years and then invent a process to produce the universe in the past? If the universe exists, this explanation is not at all paradoxical. In other words, this is a rather outrageous example of a continuous timeline without any creation event. The universe is simply a timeless 4D (or 5D if you count general relativity) ring. There would be no need to explain 'why' the universe could be created by itself, as there would be no external timeline to justify using the term 'why?'.

spackulus

Amos,

I empathize with your passionate for the transcendental meaning of God and love, and realize that your beliefs in these things are based on that passion. These transcendent feelings probably feel to you like an overwhelmingly powerful witness to the truth of what you are saying.

Unfortunately, I don't feel so passionate about these things, and therefore they may be 'true' for you, but they certainly aren't true for me. I don't feel any particular transcendant passionate 'meaning' in "God" or "Love". I don't feel any sort of spirtual "connection" to life or feel any great "life force" at work here on this earth.

All I see are people similar to yourself which seem to be on some sort of unnatural chemical self induced high. This is what rationalists and other realists call 'touchy feely' thinking. Now wouldn't it make sense that if God were love, and if love was some sort of transcendant thing, shouldn't I be able to see it and feel it the same way you do without having to resort to brain injury or psychtropic drugs? You can see my scientific evidence for ordinary rational explanations for things, why is it that only you can feel that God is love, and I and others like me don't.

I think the best explanation for your certainty about the transcendant nature of 'love', etc. is that your brain is sending powerful signals to your mind that my brain does not send. Either that, or I'm hopelessly outside of God's grace, and have been since I was born. (Perhaps an epileptic seisure is in order after all?)

Ed

No, natural laws and laws of physics would still exist whether or not humans did. They are independent of us. Also molecules do not exhibit quantum behavior only subatomic particles do. It is not meaningless to speak of such a law just because we haven't discovered it yet. According to logic it should exist.

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Ed: Please read my posts more carefully, notice I was referring to the LAWS OF LOGIC, NOT just anything. Dat: But you give us no reason to discern between the laws of logic, the laws of physics, or anything else for that matter. It is only by your word that the laws of logic transcend our space-time; and that, of course, is only because it makes your theory plausible. Circular argument, wouldn't you say?

It is not by my word, my point is that it is a rational assumption given that we do it in other situations that we cannot empirically verify.

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Ed: Says the greek mythologizers. Galaxies are unified by their structure and substance. Animals are unified by their all being contructed of cells. Human emotions are unified are unified by their all being from humans. It depends on the entity what holds them together. Dat: No - your designations are made are designations which hinge on a commality between the objects - animals by cells, stars by chemical components. I don't see why I can't designate the Greek Gods by that very same description - i.e. they were Greek, and thus unified. That's the problem with your argument, really; the wide range of allowed connections makes it really simple to start creating ridiculous propositions.

No, the greek gods were different by essence. Mars is the war god. Venus is the love god and etc. Their very essence is different from each other. Their invention by the greeks does not make their essence the same.

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Ed:Without a unity within a diversity the theory of evolution would not have a leg to stand on. There would be no evidence of any type of ancestral relationships at all. I.e. if animals were not all made up of cells then you could not say they derived from an primordial one-celled organism. Dat: That is not "diversity within a unity" - that is what is commonly known as "grouping common terms", which as I said is a well documented psychological behavior in human thought. We tend to group things together when we find something in common with them; whether such groupings are actually meaningful is unknown. I'm not challenging the prospect that many things have similar and common properties; I'm challenging your proposition that such commonality is somehow derived from a higher being with this property.

No, those commonalities would exist whether there were humans thinking or not.

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Ed: I don't know if I would call the gaps so few in number, there is a pretty large number of classes and families. But I don't deny that microevolution occurs the problem is with macroevolution. PE is just an ad hoc attempt to explain away lack of evidence for Darwinian evolution in the fossil record. It basically is an attempt to make evolution unfalsifiable. Dat: Not with what I read on it. A quick search on Google brought up a few articles on the subject; the main point was that it fit well with the data given, that there were periods of no evolution followed by periods of rapid evolution. I do not see how this is ad hoc; science does not work by dishing out theories and then finding data to make them right, but by finding data and formulating theories from them.

But PE is based on LACK of data. Also there is evidence that Darwin specifically developed his theory to try to account for life without reference to a creator.

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Ed: Initially yes you could conclude that he may have evil in him but once you investigate that the only creator that is a diversity within a unity is the christian God then you look at his communication to us and find out how evil entered the universe. Theoretically persons could be produced from impersonal forces but logically it is not possible. Dat: Ah - now you're caught in a pickle. Spare all the dramatics, please - this is a logical contradiction, plain and simple. If it is not logically feasible, then it cannot be theoretically possible either.

Theoretically ANYTHING is possible. But it depends on whether the theory is logical or not. Many scientific theories are not logical so they are rejected and that should be the case with this one.

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Dat: If we apply the Law of Sufficient Cause to God, we conclude that he must have some part of evil in him, no matter how much we examine him. Take away the Trinity, take away his communication, and you still have the unresolved question of where evil would come from, if God indeed created everything. See, Ed, sometimes it's not good to make tons of assertions at once, especially when they don't agree with each other.

No, because the only cause of the universe that is a diversity within a unity (that is not an ad hoc explanation) is the christian God so to find out what his character is you have to have a communication from him. Because there is also good in the universe, where did that come from?

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Ed: That is the extrapolative theory, but all the empirical observations of stars being born at present require other stars gravity interacting with gases released from supernovae. Dat:???? Obviously, the BB and the first formulation of stars did not happen in the present, so what bearing do present observations have on previous events?

Everything. All the best theories use evidence from present processes to make conclusions about past events.

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Ed: Actually the AP demonstrates the very point I am trying to make! Dat:Are you sure? The scientific AP says that the reason we are here is because if the conditions were not perfect, then there'd be no way for us to be here, therefore it is meaningless to say "what if things were different..." It's a refutation of the Fine Tuning Argument, and it goes against any notion that these were special conditions in the first place.

No, it is like you are lined up to be executed by a firing squad and they all fire at you and yet you still are alive. So it is rational to assume that they purposely missed and that it was not just an accident of nature.


[b] Where?

Ed

Everyone makes assumptions, including you. And you have not refuted any of mine.

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Ed: My last animal behavior course was almost 20 years ago so I am afraid you are going to have to go to your local library. There are some excellent books that can answer your questions about animal behavior and which behaviors represent certain kinds of mental abilities. I never said that intelligence was only a human asset, I said abstract reasoning is only a human characteristic. There are some animals that are fairly intelligent but humans are a magnitude greater than even the most intelligent animals. Dat: I am not asking questions out of ignorance - those were meant to be rhetorical questions! I'm asking you how you come to know so much about animal thoughts when even the top zoologists do not claim such a detailed knowledge of the animal brain; you make a lot of ad ignoratum assumptions, as I have said many times, and you don't even try to respond to those accusations. Almost in every discussion, you manage to end on a completely baseless and unsupported claim, which warrants reasons on my part to disprove...this is being rather tedious and boring. So, unless you have sources to back up your outrageous assertions, I will promptly ignore them from now on.

My knowledge comes from those books I mention above. Actually many zoologists and brain experts claim to know even more than I have mentioned but some of their claims I don't think are supported by the evidence.

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Ed: Given that complex language requires abstract reasoning, I think it is a rational assumption to rule out such thinking for dogs. I am not saying we know exactly what is going on a dog's head but we can safely assume that their minds are much more limited than human minds. Dat:You do not know dogs do not process abstract reasoning. You cannot prove it. You cannot safely assume anything.

Well if they do possess abstract reasoning they sure don't use it. Have you ever owned a dog? I have, and you quickly learn what their intellectual limitations are.

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Ed: They may not explain how these things occur, nevertheless they are true statements that you have not refuted. Check any dictionary for their meaning. Dat:Exactly how am I to refute a tautology? I am refuting the idea that you are trying to make some meaning from this...that "persons must come from the personal" is obvious - that the implication that persons are the only abstract thinkers in the Universe, and that abstract thinking must come from more abstract thinking is highly debatable. The statement itself is true, but not with the definitions, meanings, and hidden implications that you have tacked onto it.

There is a way to refute it. Provide empirical evidence of impersonal processes producing persons.

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Ed: Please explain how we can DIRECTLY test events of the past. Dat:What is a result, Ed? It's the causal aftermath of an event. Therefore, we can test for their existence in verification of their legitimacy. For example, we can test whether the Big Bang actually occurred by testing for whether the expected residual radiation exists - it does, therefore such evidence suggests that the BB did happen.

You are extrapolating the radiation into the past, you are not DIRECTLY testing the big bang.

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Ed: Huh? We do have a result, ie the universe. Dat: Do you even have a clue on what we're talking about? I was telling you that it is impossible to test anything outside our Universe. "Anything outside our Universe" does not result in our Universe.

It is also impossible to directly test anything in the distant past and yet we still assume the laws of logic apply.

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Ed:They believe they are making a rational assumption(although I dont agree) but my assumption is definitely rational. The multiple universe theory has some other problems with it. But it is definitely rational to assume that all effects have causes including the universe. Dat:How is it rational? Reason dictates that any assumption be based on some prior evidence, some trend that we may extrapolate upon to give the assumption some sense of validity. Our Universe is a good example of how that operates - we may assume, with reason from the evidence gathered, that the laws of physics operate within its domain. By definition, we cannot gather anything from beyond the Universe; therefore, it is not rational to assume anything of it.

We cannot directly gather anything from the past either and yet we still assume logic applies.


[b] I think your first definition definitely is applicable to what I am doing. We observe the universe and identify and describe the most logical cause of the universe.

Datheron

Ed,

Hm....hey Ed, is there a particular reason why my replies are always the last ones typed out? I notice that LP's conversations with you, for example, seem to be higher on your "priority queue".

But as I said, it is meaningless for us to talk of them when we know nothing of them, when we cannot know anything of them. Regarding to the discussion at hand, you do not know whether the Universe is actually ordered underneath the randomness that we see, the randomness that we must see in order to make an observation (evidence) by which a hypothesis/theory/law must come about. The law of logic saids nothing of some underlying unifying law, or anything that requires order. Then again, you once again assume that the "laws of logic" (remember what I wrote above, that human laws are merely approximations - the bane of logic lies in paradoxes) are ultimate and indestructible. Must I remind you that they themselves were conceived by empirical evidence as well?

Why? Empirical verification, or the possibility of verification, is what makes extrapolation rational and reasonable. Then again, I can easily claim that as we have explained everything via naturalistic means, we can extend this to cut out God completely. &lt;shrugs&gt; It's a horrible argument either way.

Ed, your definition of "essence" is whatever is convienient at the moment to make sense of the situation according to you. Let's take, for example, your idea that stars in galaxies are a "diversity within a unity". What is their "essence"? What unities them into a galaxy other than physical locality? As a matter of fact, what non-living thing as this "essence", if we look at the example that you give above?

I've already admitted to that. What I'm debating is whether this actually means anything. We notice, for example, that there is a great diversity of plants. Is this then any surprise if we theorize that they came from a common ancestor, and evolved through time in different environments? We don't need some mystical explanation muddled in some "law of sufficient cause".

.....and that is invalid because...? A theory on the decay of protons was made in physics a while ago; experiments were conducted, but its empirical validity was not observed, so the theory had to be discarded and a new one formulated based on the lack of proton decay. And whether it is specifically targeted against theism or not does not determine whether it's fallacious or otherwise. Its intent is independent of its logic.

Ed, stop going around in circles. A lot of theories are logically possible - that is the least of its requirements. A better requirement is that it is consistent with reality and observation...and this theory is consistent as it builds from observation. Until you can find something empirically that contradicts this, the theory is valid.

What?! The law of sufficient cause, as far as I can tell, applies to everything; you certainly have made it apply to everything, and it's a bit too late to take that claim back. I'm not saying that God isn't good - just that he is not wholly good, with no trace of evil. According to your presumptions, that is logically impossible.

Exactly. And the rapid expansion of the Universe, coupled with the ratios of stars (different types) and background radiation quickly confirm that the BB is true. Of course, we also notice that the only element required for stars and stellar fusion is hydrogen, and that heavier elements are merely masses of added atoms. The BB details how the first element was formed, and how fusion itself created heavier elements. Please review how it works...you seem to be completely lost on the issue.

Would you please tell me where these analogies come from? For they're quite faulty. The AP tells that the fact that we're alive is self-explanatory - you cannot assume that there was a firing squad in the first place unless you give good reasons as to why it has to be there.

Look up.

Ed

I stand corrected. But I do think there is truly an element of non-randomness, but we have just not discovered it yet.

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Ed: But I don't deny that microevolution occurs the problem is with macroevolution. Syn: 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.

There is something that prevents macroevolution, ie built in blocks in genetic variation. For hundreds of years dog breeders have tried to make dogs larger than the wolfhound and smaller than the chiuauhua. And they have not been able to do it. BTW, your analogy fails, 99.9% of the differences between parent and child are NOT mutations. In addition, genetic studies with bacteria and ancestral studies with cats have shown that all mutations so far studied result in a LOSS of information. If every time a mutation occurs there is a loss of information, macroevolution becomes impossible.

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Ed E is just an ad hoc attempt to explain away lack of evidence for Darwinian evolution in the fossil record. It basically is an attempt to make evolution unfalsifiable. Syn:The existence of gaps in the fossil record is not due to evolution.

Hey we agree on something!

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Syn: 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

I am afraid Stephen Gould would disagree with you, he says the gaps are due to more rapid periods of evolution. Leaps as it were.

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Syn: 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.

See above about Mr. Gould.

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Syn: 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.

Possibly, but it also fits the effects of a global flood as it successively sampled from a biogeographically zoned distribution of organisms.

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Ed: My last animal behavior course was almost 20 years ago so I am afraid you are going to have to go to your local library. There are some excellent books that can answer your questions about animal behavior and which behaviors represent certain kinds of mental abilities. Syn: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

We may not know how a honeybee brain represents that information, but we are talking about the retrieval and communication of navigational information, this hardly takes abstract reasoning. And in fact the evidence points to it occuring by instinct (programmed) using temperature and light sensors.

[b] You just contradicted your little honeybee scenario. You say that even an insect brain is beyond our understanding and yet next you say that a much more complex organ, ie a monkey brain, has definite analogies to the human mind. How do you know this given that we can't even say anything definite about how the honeybee thinks(according to you)? Actually, there are definitely some things that animal minds can not do. They cannot reason abstractly, and they do not have a true will or a moral conscience.

[ January 02, 2002: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

Jack the Bodiless

Ed:
There are no "built-in blocks to genetic variation". What you seem to be referring to is the fact that there is a limit to the amount of variation present in a species gene pool excluding mutation. Breeders can only go so far with the genes available, then they must simply wait for a suitable mutation to show up (as, until recently, they didn't know how to generate mutations). Many modern plant and animal breeds stem from a specific mutated individual.
ALL differences between parent and child are the result of mutations, as mutations are ultimately responsible for all genetic variation. It is true that most of these mutations happened in earlier generations, but each person has (on average) six new mutations in active (non-"junk") DNA. In a population of 6 billion humans, that's 36 billion mutations per generation.
This is simply not true, mutations can indeed increase information. But the Evolution/Creation forum is the best place to discuss that.
No, it does not. It is absolutely impossible for a single "Great Flood" to produce the observed fossil record. It is easy to calculate that the odds against such a sequence occurring by any means other than common descent are truly astronomical, vastly greater than (for instance) the estimated number of atoms in the Universe.
And yet humans evolved from apes, which evolved from monkeylike critters, which evolved from critters resembling modern lemurs, which evolved from critters resembling rodents (yes, we have the fossils, and the DNA analyses showing how the modern examples are related to each other). Therefore your statement that "only persons can produce the personal" is false.

Jack the Bodiless

And I agree with Datheron that your definitions are deliberately skewed to support your predetermined conclusion.

For instance, Allah (if he existed) would have to be a "diversity within a unity". This is because he is considered to be sentient. Any thinking creature needs to be able to handle multiple concepts, and this requires multiple brain-cells or equivalents. Furthermore, Islam includes belief in angels. Allah is far from being a "pure unity": an omnipotent being capable of complex thoughts and assisted by a host of angels is surely capable of producing a multitude of things.

You also seem confused about Hinduism. In Hinduism, the "personal" gods are the minor ones (and some Hindus don't even believe they exist). The higher gods are considered to be increasingly impersonal and alien, anthropomorphic representations of cosmic forces and principles. The Brahman is more like a nonsentient "essence" in which gods exist rather like objects exist in the "spacetime continuum" of modern physics. All Hindu gods share the same "essence", but not the same "mind", because the fundamental unity transcends the level of "mind" as understood by humans. Hence, diversity within a unity.

Ed

No, actually there is evidence for some first hand accounts. Matthew and John.

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lp: 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.

No, it looks more like Josephus, Cornelius Tacitus, Lucian of Samosata, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Thallus, Phelogon, amd Mara Bar-Serapion.

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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?

No, but there are more open minded approaches to determine their accuracy such as literary characteristics and etc.

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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.

The apostle Paul. And there is archaeological evidence of the church that Christ founded.

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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.

Well you are going against most cosmologists, most cosmologists believe that the universe had a definite beginning.

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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.

No, given that the term "heavens and earth" in hebrew means "everything that physically exists", my interpretation is the most accurate. Physical objects require a space-time continuum. Spiritual beings do not, God is a spiritual being and only he existed prior to the universe.

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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.

That was a supernatural event not a lesson in genetics.

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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?

Nevertheless, that is the common procedure among historians studying ancient documents. If the document is found to be accurate in areas where it can be tested then it is considered to be most likely accurate in areas where it cannot be tested.

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ip: 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.

Historical fiction was not invented until the 18th century, so your analogy fails.

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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.

They may not be a primary source but they are independent, see above.

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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.

Who said anything about vitalism? In addition to organization there are other characteristics that differentiate life from non-life.

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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.

Thats right by carefully controlled all he did was prevent living organisms from corrupting his experiment which proved the Law of Biogenesis, ie life comes only from life.

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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"?

See my earlier post to Rim.

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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.

By substance, I mean substantial. There are significant characteristics that differentiate between life and non-life and personal and impersonal.

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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.

See earlier post.

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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.

God wants to have free will beings in his universe not automatons. So we must face the consequences of our moral choices. That is the price of freedom.

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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.

No, but the blueprint (DNA) inside them that builds a mind does.

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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?

Depends on how long you think humans have been around.

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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.

True and your point is....?

[b] No, but there IS evidence for a pre-existing living personal creator.