Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clutch · 06-12-2002, 01:12 AM

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the christian worldview teaches that the universe is orderly, objectively there, and that we can learn about God by studying it. And these teachings gave the impetus to develop modern experimental science. No other worldviews held to these truths that is why no other worldview came up with science.

No other worldview? Oh, for pete's sake. Were you home-schooled?

It was pretty crafty of Aristotle to hide his view that there is no natural order in the universe, and that nothing is objectively "there". All those causal categories, physical generalizations and biological taxonomies make for a cunning smokescreen, after all.

GunnerJ · 06-12-2002, 07:41 AM

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True but being indirectly responsible for something is very different from directly responsible for something, especially if it is allowed in order for a greater good to occur. A better analogy would be a rapist with an activated nuclear weapon strapped to him in a large city. He starts raping a woman but if you try to stop him millions could die, so you have to allow him to do it until a better way of getting rid of him can be discovered.

Ed unknowingly compares his monstrous, barbaric warrior/sky-daddy god to a rapist with a nuke! A rather valid analogy, I might add...

Ed · 06-12-2002, 07:14 PM

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Originally posted by MrDarwin:
<strong>

Ed, are you really and truly making the claim that an omniscient deity can do something that has unintended consequences?[/b]

No. See my post to lp above.

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MrD: Or are you perhaps claiming that this deity does not have free will, and was therefore unable to come up with another plan in which bad things, like the rebellion of Satan and the fall of man, did not happen?

No, he chose to create a universe that has beings with free will so bad things are always a possibility when free will beings involved. Why he created such a universe we dont know.

[b]

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MrD: Or are you suggesting that because things can happen that this deity does not want to happen, that there is a very real possibility that some really awful things that he/she/it does not want to happen, like the ultimate triumph of evil over good, will eventually happen?</strong>

No.

Ed · 06-13-2002, 08:16 PM

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Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>
Ed:
I don't know, some scientists think there was a vapor canopy.

lp: And what would have kept it in the gaseous state? The upper atmosphere does get very cold, and all that vapor would have condensed and rained down.[/b]

Read "The Waters Above" by John Whitcomb.

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Ed:
From the dimensions given in the scriptures there some evidence that the ark was more of floating box almost completely enclosed therefore it would have been able to withstand storms much better than modern ships.

lp: A boat bigger than the biggest wooden ships ever made -- which had had questionable seaworthiness. Simply think of the square-cube law and how stresses rise with size.

Actually a woman historian has found evidence that the Chinese in the Middle Ages built wooden ships as large as 450 feet long. The ark's rectangular shape made it stronger and more seaworthy than the regular ship shape.

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Ed:
One thing I have learned in studying living things, they are more resilient than humans often give them credit for. Other than that I have no answer. I have never claimed to have all the answers unlike most atheists.

lp: Like what resilience? I have some very unkind suggestions of ways for Ed to demonstrate his "resilience".

Look at Mount St. Helens, the plants and wildlife have made a much faster comeback than most scientists predicted.

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OC: 4. If this water did not come from the fountains of the deep, where did it this at least 8/10ths of a mile -- 2000 feet -- of water go afterwards?
Ed:
The land masses may have risen dramatically afterwards and maybe some became locked in Antarctic ice packs.

lp: Yet more of Ed's maybes.

See earlier posts about why I say maybe.

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Ed:
I did look at the molecular sequence evidence. Things designed by the same designer would have very similar blueprints, so such molecular similarities is predicted by having a creator.

lp: So why don't they all have the same sequences, despite having the same function? Why a treelike arrangement of differences in sequences of these workalike molecules? And why do the inferred family trees of different molecules tend to agree? And tend to agree with the family trees derived by examining macroscopic features?

It is similar to having a committee write your name and having you sign your name. Creation is to designed to point to one individual creator. If things were all nice and neat then it would appear to be a committee of creators but if there are little unique quirks like a signature then that implies that there is only one creator.

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Ed:
No, a more critical question is if the Christian God exists, if he does then everything else will fall into place including the flood.

lp: Then, Ed, you are wasting your time talking about Noah's Flood.

No, it is you atheists that are wasting your time talking about the flood and believing that if they refute the evidence for the flood then they disprove God. This is backwards.

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Ed:
... Ie, if there are not enough transitional fossils for a group then they say it happened too quickly for the transitions to be fossilized, "punctuated equilibrium". ...

lp: Presumably meaning that each new species was a special creation, meaning hundreds of millions of special creations over geological time.

No, probably more like each new family.

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lp: Actually, punctuated equilibrium has been tested by taking some large quantity of fossils and then measuring them. Sometimes it happens, and sometimes it does not.

What kind of measuring? Your last statement makes it unfalsifiable.

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ED: I have not decided on which view of the flood is correct.
OC: Have you included ‘it didn’t happen’ in your consideration?

Ed: No not anymore, Christ taught that it occured. I have found out that Christ cannot be mistaken.

lp: Such as saying that his listeners would live to see his Second Coming? Ed, what would make you conclude that Jesus Christ had made mistakes?

No, as I explained earlier, he was referring to the fall of Jerusalem so some of them would have been alive. If there was evidence for it.

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Ed:
... The characteristics of the story of Noah fit historical narrative therefore it cannot be a metaphor or myth according to our understanding of Hebrew.

lp: How, Ed, how???

Ask your local scholar in hebrew.

[b]

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Ed:
Actually cladistics points more toward created kinds then macroevolution.

lp: How so???

</strong>

It doesnt recognize characters that the organism is lacking.

lpetrich · 06-13-2002, 09:06 PM

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Ed:
I don't know, some scientists think there was a vapor canopy.

lp: And what would have kept it in the gaseous state? The upper atmosphere does get very cold, and all that vapor would have condensed and rained down.
Ed:
Read "The Waters Above" by John Whitcomb.

And how does he resolve that conundrum?

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Ed:
Actually a woman historian has found evidence that the Chinese in the Middle Ages built wooden ships as large as 450 feet long. The ark's rectangular shape made it stronger and more seaworthy than the regular ship shape.

However, I find it curious that nobody has ever tried to build a replica of the Ark.

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Ed: molecular systems having shared designs...
lp: So why don't they all have the same sequences, despite having the same function? Why a treelike arrangement of differences in sequences of these workalike molecules? And why do the inferred family trees of different molecules tend to agree? And tend to agree with the family trees derived by examining macroscopic features?
Ed:
It is similar to having a committee write your name and having you sign your name. Creation is to designed to point to one individual creator. If things were all nice and neat then it would appear to be a committee of creators but if there are little unique quirks like a signature then that implies that there is only one creator.

A total non sequitur. Looking all nice and neat would look like the work of a single creator or team of creators. Looking like a giant mess suggests a multitude of creators who had not communicated very well with each other. Which is what we see in.

And gene-sequence differences are not quirks but consistent patterns.

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Ed:
No, it is you atheists that are wasting your time talking about the flood and believing that if they refute the evidence for the flood then they disprove God. This is backwards.

Ed, we claim no such thing. In fact, it seems to me that you are projecting a mirror image of your beliefs onto us.

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lp: Presumably meaning that each new species was a special creation, meaning hundreds of millions of special creations over geological time.
Ed:
No, probably more like each new family.

Ed, why do you come to that conclusion? And I've yet to see any creationist come up with any reasonable strategy for recognizing which species are in each "created kind".

Furthermore, that claim is a concession that speciation can happen.

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lp: Actually, punctuated equilibrium has been tested by taking some large quantity of fossils and then measuring them. Sometimes it happens, and sometimes it does not.
Ed:
What kind of measuring? Your last statement makes it unfalsifiable.

It is falsifiable -- sometimes it simply does not happen. The way one tests PE is by finding lots of lots of fossils of some closely-related species at some place and time, measuring them, and then doing statistics on them. Do they fall into some well-defined clumps? Or do they fall on a continuum?

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(About Jesus Christ's prophesied coming of the Messiah...)
Ed:
No, as I explained earlier, he was referring to the fall of Jerusalem so some of them would have been alive. If there was evidence for it.

But he certainly didn't make his Second Coming at the time.

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Ed:
... The characteristics of the story of Noah fit historical narrative therefore it cannot be a metaphor or myth according to our understanding of Hebrew.

lp: How, Ed, how???
Ed:
Ask your local scholar in hebrew.

And how does one recognize myth from literary styling? It has to be something other than "I know it when I see it".

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Ed:
Actually cladistics points more toward created kinds then macroevolution.

lp: How so???
Ed:
It doesnt recognize characters that the organism is lacking.

I don't see how that is supposed to be the case.

Cladistics is designed around the concept of biological evolution. If reasonable cladograms could not be made despite heroic efforts, that would cause trouble for the idea of evolution. But they can be.

Duvenoy · 06-14-2002, 03:20 AM

Actually a woman historian has found evidence that the Chinese in the Middle Ages built wooden ships as large as 450 feet long. The ark's rectangular shape made it stronger and more seaworthy than the regular ship shape."

Documentation, please. I would like to look this up. I've never heard of it.

??

doov

GunnerJ · 06-14-2002, 05:24 AM

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No, as I explained earlier, he was referring to the fall of Jerusalem so some of them would have been alive.

Ed obviously has never read any of the Pauline epistles, or he would have realized that Christ's statements are most certainly not about the fall of jerusalem, but were, in fact, about the end of the world. If he read them had, he would have noted how Paul expected the end to come "very soon," so soon, in fact, that he advised men not to marry, as they would have no tome to enjoy married life... the rapture would come just that quickly.

Camaban · 06-14-2002, 05:42 AM

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Actually a woman historian has found evidence that the Chinese in the Middle Ages built wooden ships as large as 450 feet long. The ark's rectangular shape made it stronger and more seaworthy than the regular ship shape."
Documentation, please. I would like to look this up. I've never heard of it.

Watched a documentary on the Captain/Admiral (his rank was one or the other) in charge of that ship.

very advanced, using the same ideas to stop it sinking (the multiple compartments) as Titanic. Stopped once the Emperor's advisors convinced him that the outside world had nothing to offer and that it should be abandoned. pretty much all documentation on him was burnt soon after.

although, going by the design, I'm thinking that packing as many animals as were supposed to be in the Ark just wasn't happening.

(Sorry, can't remember the name of the person)

Camaban · 06-14-2002, 05:53 AM

The Ship
<a href="http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/journey2001/greatship/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/journey2001/greatship/index.html</a>

Admiral Zheng
<a href="http://www.oceansonline.com/zheng.htm" target="_blank">http://www.oceansonline.com/zheng.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/journey2001/intro.html" target="_blank">http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/journey2001/intro.html</a>

Rather interesting.

Duvenoy · 06-14-2002, 08:07 AM

Many thanks, Cam. I'll check it out.

doov

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06-14-2002, 03:20 AM	#436
Duvenoy Veteran Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Just another hick from the sticks. Posts: 1,108	Actually a woman historian has found evidence that the Chinese in the Middle Ages built wooden ships as large as 450 feet long. The ark's rectangular shape made it stronger and more seaworthy than the regular ship shape." Documentation, please. I would like to look this up. I've never heard of it. ?? doov

06-14-2002, 05:53 AM	#439
Camaban Regular Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Australia Posts: 473	The Ship <a href="http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/journey2001/greatship/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/journey2001/greatship/index.html</a> Admiral Zheng <a href="http://www.oceansonline.com/zheng.htm" target="_blank">http://www.oceansonline.com/zheng.htm</a> <a href="http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/journey2001/intro.html" target="_blank">http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/journey2001/intro.html</a> Rather interesting.

06-14-2002, 08:07 AM	#440
Duvenoy Veteran Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Just another hick from the sticks. Posts: 1,108	Many thanks, Cam. I'll check it out. doov

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