...it clearly states in the Bible that the world is flat...
The bible does not say any such thing. It does use phenomenological language as we all do (e.g.: sunrise) and it uses poetic language (e.g.: "ride on the clouds"), But its factual statements are all compatible with actual observations.
Your statement is typical of those who haven't read the bible and think they know about it.
The mediaeval church's hang-ups about science were because they adopted Aristotelian (Greek) thinking. If they had actually stuck to the bible they wouldn't have looked so silly.
...the simple fact of the matter is that religion is based on faith,
not science. An individual's beleif (or lack of beleif) in god should not
play any role in scientific research or observation.
This is itself a religious statement. You make a moral statement ("should not")
that is founded on atheistic humanism. You are using your atheistic worldview
to condemn my Christian one. You can hardly expect me to be impressed by such double standards.
In reality, there is no legitimate (i.e. testable, repeatable and falsafiable) evidence supporting the existence of god or creationism and the very fact it is impossible to prove (or disprove) god's existence shows that creationism is not science and can't be treated as such.
There is no testable, repeatable evidence of macro-evolution. (Micro-evolution -- that is variation within a kind -- and natural selection are not in dispute.)
All you have are many inferences which are needed to support your atheistic
worldview and in turn depend upon it. There is no way to test them, because no one has the length
of life necessary. There is certainly no way to repeat macro-evolution.
As for falsifiability, one would have thought that the insane violence done
to probability by the evolutionary hypotheses would be
sufficient, but since evolution is actually a religious dogma, that turns
out not to be the case.
On the other hand, ID is founded on the practice of many branches of
science, such as archaeology, cryptography, information theory,
criminology, and inded the SETI project. All of these assert that it
is possible to distinguish the action of intelligence from random
events. Why should biology and cosmology be exceptions?
If you don't agree I encourage you try to come up with an verifiable
and repeatable experiment which could prove (or disprove) either the
existence of god...
The existence of God is the first axiom of the Christian worldview. You do
not prove your axioms. By that token, I should require you to prove the truth of atheism. However I can offer a sure way of verifying God's existence. Rethink your life and surrender to him; put your trust in Jesus and you will know him and receive the Holy Spirit from him. That will be all the verification you could desire.
...or the biblical account of creation.
There can be no repeatable experiment to prove an historical event. The debate
between creation and evolution is between two historical accounts. All that
one can do is to examine the visible evidence in the light of each and
see which better fits the data. Our contention is that the data matches the
creation account much better than it does the evolutionary one.
There is no debate! There is no scientific evidence for creationism and
no legitimate scientists treats creationism as science.
Since you define science to exclude the possibility of
creation, that is true -- on your terms. However, that is a stupid way
to define science, since it means that one half of the possibilities are
excluded from your enquiry. If the right answer lies in the half you have
excluded, you will never find it.
One needs only to look at the parent post to notice that the only sources
of "evidence" for creation cited are Answers in Genesis and True Origins
which are political preasure groups founded with the express purpose of
trying to get creationism into public schools and funded by religious groups
and are not legitimate or scientific institutions.
True Origins is a personal website. This is
explicitly stated in
the FAQ, so I must presume you are speaking out of ignorant prejudice or
actual malice here. AiG is
an avowedly
Christian organisation. However, AiG has a
strong staff of scientists, qualified in a number of different fields and
therefore able to provide informed criticsm of the suppos
I do actually believe in a creator, just not intelligent design. That was all I was trying to attack although looking back I didn't voice myself very well.
I'm not sure you've succeeded any better now. The idea of a creator who is not an intelligent designer is a bit out of this world!
To keep the record straight I should say I don't believe much that's written in the bible either. I'm no Christian or Jew.
On what basis do you not believe it? What parts have you actually found to be untrue yourself as opposed to their being mocked or denied by materialists? Are you familiar with the 19th century European controversies? The biblical creation story was universally accepted until the so-called Enlightenment, which exalted human reason without recognising the limitations of human weakness and sin. In the 18th century deists were very common, who asserted that God created the world and then left it to itself. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Hutton and Lyell founded uniformitarian geology by constant denial of the biblical record. However they had no facts to base this on. Their uniformitarian theories are plainly inadequate to account for the geological data; neither did they disprove the biblical account, including the Flood - they merely denied it. However they spoke to a generation who sought an excuse for abandoning belief in God and therefore found an audience. The reason is that God holds men accountable to himself for their actions. Men who wish to ignore him feel more comfortable with some kind of excuse. Hutton, Lyell and their fellows provided that, however poor it may actually be.
Yes, I'm totally open to the idea that a god, or even the Christian God created the earth/universe. I just can't have much respect for a theory (intelligent design) that doesn't seem to be interested in proof.
I don't understand what basis you have for saying that. As far as I understand ID theory, it asserts that design can be detected by methods that are familiar to us in normal life and also by the presence of "irreducible complexity". It also has respect for the laws of thermodynamics and of probability, with which evolutionism plays fast and loose. It seems to me to have more integrity than evolutionism, which, alone among the physical sciences, seems to think that hand-waving ("could have", "probably", "we can imagine") is an acceptable substitute for detailed explanations.
The bible will not constitute proof for most people until there is some evidence that the stories really do describe our history.
The usual approach to history is to accept the sources and try to reconcile them. In the event of difficulties, you may need to amend or reject one. When it comes to the bible, however, historians have been in the habit of rejecting everything unless it is confirmed by other sources. This is not an even-handed approach. In fact, it is a thoroughly mistaken one, and the more research is done, the more wrong it is shown to be.
The proper approach to the bible is to accept what it says unless it can be disproved. Only the adoption of materialist axioms, or adherence to some other religion which denies the bible (and materialism is, in fact, such a religion) can explain why the bible is not treated like that.
Atheism is not an axiom of evolutionary science. All that is required is that you disbelieve genesis and other select sections of the bible. Surely you accept this?
It is an axiom of materialism and most scientists are materialists, at least as far as their research goes. Therefore they are atheists for all practical purposes, never mind what they claim to believe. There is a proverb: actions speak louder than words.
However, I agree most scientists are morons. I should add I almost became a research scientist myself and have a masters in Chemistry. However when not pressurised by an "opposite-camp" I'd say most scientists inevitably question the axioms that exist in their field.
I can't give any creedence to any theory that decides that rather than follow the path of analysis back as far as possible, instead we'll just say "God did it".
We say that God did what he says he did; no more than that. That is as far back as it is possible to go.
Either the universe was created or it was not. To refuse to consider the possibility because it limits what you can inquire into is illogicality founded in blind pride. True science enquires into both possibilities and evaluates the evidence in the light of each.
At least science is always trying to answer all the questions. Even if electrons seem as unbelievable as a divine being, at least scientists never disregard the possiblity that electrons might not exist, and actually we got it all wrong.
In general scientists don't question their axioms. Atheism is an axiom of evolutionary science, and its basis is actually religious; just see how indignant evolutionists get when their beliefs are questioned.
In the creationist interpretation, most sedimentary (fossil-bearing) rocks are from the flood. The model (on the basis of biblical history) states that the earth is about 6000 years old. About 1500 years after the earth's creation God completedly devasted it with huge amounts of water from below the ground and from above; the hydro-dynamic forces ground existing rocks to sand and pebbles very quickly and completely destroyed the existing surface of the earth. In addition to that, the flood seems (from geological evidence) to have been accompanied by massive vulcanism and presumably earthquakes. The scale of the event is far beyond anything we have ever seen or can really imagine.
There is no logical premise upon which you are basing your logic.
It seems you don't understand deductive logic. The premises are taken as given. In mathematical terms, they are axioms. You cannot prove your axioms, because they are the basis for everything else. If they could be proved, something else would be the true basis of your thinking. The bible never attempts to prove that God exists. He is, and all else is dependent on him. Knowing that is wisdom.
I've got one for you: what's your view on scientology?
I don't know the details of it. As far as I am aware, it is a cult with the usual cultish aims of dominating and fleecing its adherents for the benefit of the leadership.
From my point of view, the conflicting worldview seems to be logic vs rejection of logic. For some real insight on how "materialists" view creationists, think about your feelings on astrology. It has many of the same building blocks as religion: a large user base, some pseudo-historical basis, mystical answers to questions not suitably relatable to said users, social indoctrination, etc. Yet, to any intelligent individual, it is utterly ridiculous because its basis is illogical.
I do understand that; after all, I used to think the same way. However, the problem is not with logic; it is simply that you do not accept the premises of my logic any more than I accept the premises of yours. Both positions are logical on their own terms.
Also the bible... does not say that god didn't make mankind based on the ape.
That is not correct. Gen 2:7 - "then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." God did not use evolution in creating us.
There is no way to reconcile the bible with the materialist evolutionary account of origins.
What did the poor dog do not to be able to see in color?
Poor? Dogs weren't designed for colour vision, but instead seem to have a greater sensitivity in darkness (judging by their reflective retinas). Their eyes serve their designed purpose, and my dogs at least seem very happy with what they have got.
Which translation of the bible are you using?
Several different ones.
The King James version, which seems to be the most popular among creationists, some would say was to attempt to gain forgiveness for his taste in young boys.
There are many serious faults in that translation, of which the worst is that the King imposed the use of traditional language (such as "bishop") which were not a good translation of the original languages, but supported his desire to have a regulated hierarchy in religion. (That, incidentally, is what your First Amendment was really about; it is an invention of activist judges to have the state interfere in religious affairs to enforce atheism.)
The main advatage of the KJV is that it is so widely known and that there are so many tools (concordances, etc.) built on it. But it is unwise to use it as your sole source. It is best to read the Hebrew and Greek, if you can.
Evolution is the acknowledgement that the world changes. And in doing effects every living thing, they must adapt or die.
Of course no one disputes that. The problem is that evolution is a word that is often used in different ways in the same text. It is used to mean the normal observed variation within a kind - variation that can be quite wide in the case of bacteria. It is also used for the postulated but unobserved development of one kind of animal from another. Unfortunately, evolutionists use the word with both meanings at once; this is called equivocation.
Darwin was a well known and respected Christian and that is why he is buried in some of the most sacred ground in England. So it ironic how you think to believe in evolution is to ignore a god.
He lost his faith after the death of his daughter. It would seem that he never had a very great understanding of Christianity.
He proposed the idea of Natural Selection not evolution. Everyone before him could see that animals evolved just they were looking for the mechanism.
It wasn't his idea; he merely developed it into a story that attempted to account for the existence of life without creation.
To believe in Intelligent Design to believe in an angry god. One who doesn't care about individuals as it slowly destroys life everywhere.
The ID movement do not attempt to identify the creator; they limit their efforts to identifying design. Creationists think that this is a mistaken approach, since only a full understanding of the biblical record gives a firm foundation.
God is indeed angry at sin, but that is a far greater (and more terrifying) emotion than the peevishness that you imply. He created a perfect world - man rejected him and tried to make himself God. He became so grieved at the evil that men were continually doing that he devastated the entire planet and saved only one family out of it - within two generations men were back to their old ways. He himself suffered death for all of us, so as to provide a way for us to be reconciled to him and to receive a new nature from him, but most men reject him. He is soon going to return and his return will be preceded by a judgement of disasters that will wipe out more than two thirds of the world's population, but even in the midst of those disasters, most men will refuse to abandon their evil ways. And finally, when Jesus has restored his perfect creation and ruled it himself for a thousand years with perfect justice, men will rebel again, preferring to believe the lies of the devil rather than God.
Jesus, who is love, warned of hell more than any other person in the bible. When love is rejected, only wrath and judgment remain.
However, the issue is not really one of evidence but of conflicting world views. The same data are interpreted in radically different ways.
Materialists assume that there is no God and therefore no creator; therefore everything that exists must somehow have come into being on its own. It doesn't matter how much probability is strained, because for a materialist there is no other possibility.
Biblical creationists assume that God exists and that the bible contains his word to us. This word is reliable because it is given by God; in particular it is certified to us by Jesus whose own reliability is attested by his having been raised from the dead. Any scientific investigation is informed by the folowing certified history:
God created a perfect world
The first man disobeyed him; as a result, the whole creation is under a curse
Men's sin became so bad that God wiped out all air-breathing life on earth, with the exception of Noah's family and the animals he took on board
All data is interpreted in that context. Creationists assert that the data fit those assumptions better than they do materialist assumptions.
The big thing I hear from IDers is that the eye is too complex to have evolved by chance, and 'what good is half an eye,' or wing, etc...an eye really isn't too complex to have evolved gradually, and half an eye is really nice if your enemy is blind
But there is no evidence in the fossils or now of any creature with half an eye. Every creature found is perfectly adapted for its niche.
Secondly, an eye really isn't too complex to have evolved gradually...An organism evolves light-sensitive cells on its skin.
How? Its (highly complex) reproductive mechanism is designed to replicate DNA without errors. Even the simplest light-sensitive cell has got to have a gene-specified mechanism (again highly complex and coordinated) for making a light-sensitive protein. (DNA is like computer language; but no programmer ever saw a program improved by random changes.) At the same time as the organism develops a light-sensitive cell, it also has to develop a nervous system to transmit the light stimulus to the brain and also a neural mechanism for interpreting and acting on stimuli received. Finally it has to transmit all these changes to the next generation, which implies that they are carried in a dominant gene or that its mate has somehow produced the same alteration at just the same time. If all these things do not happen at once, there is nothing for natural selection to work on.
It is not enough to make up stories. You have also to describe, in detail, a credible mechanism. This evolutionists have never done.
This is good, because it can kind of sense when a bigger animal gets near it and moves out of the way. Then, those EM-sensitive cells evolve into a pit. Example: Pit vipers (true evidence that I am under the sway of the serpent!). Once you have a pit, you get not only a sense, but a vector. From there, it's not that hard to imagine a membrane forming over the top to protect it from infection as that pit gets deeper and deeper. Add a lens and you can focus the light to be sharpest at a particular distance, forming an image. Finally, you detach the parts a bit from one another so the whole apparatus can swivel, then you can look at different things without turning your head. Each variation has an advantage and a purpose.
This is all just story-telling. I emphasised it's not that hard to imagine because that is how evolutionism works. Make up a semi-plausible story and skate over all the inconvenient details.
Even if you observe the apple falling down from the tree a thousand times that will never proof that Newton and later Einstein was right.
Correct; this is called inductive logic and it relies on the idea that the world is consistent and that previously observed behaviour will be repeated. That is the foundation of the scientific method.
Where does that idea come from? It comes from biblical Christianity. Our first scientists knew that God is consistent in the way that he manages the world and that it was therefore worthwhile to investigate how it works. Without him, there is no foundation for science, because there would be no logical reason to expect the world to act consistently.
Incidentally, C14 dating is only good for 60,000 years or so, because of the short half-life of C14. None at all should be present in anything older than that. It is interesting that C14 is
apparently found in all carbon on earth, including coal deposits and even diamonds that are supposedly millions of years old.
Unfortunately, in speaking of the design of the human eye you don't actually understand how it works, any nore than the people you got this idea from. It is indeed true that the nerves go across the front of the retina, and the blood vessels are behind. If it were reversed, the huge blood supply needed to keep the eye operating at peak efficiency would block light to the receptors, whereas the nerves are almost transparent. The blind spot is 15 degrees off the focal point, which means that it has no practical effect on our vision. All design is a compromise between different objectives, and the design of the eye is similarly constrained, but it is as close to perfection as can be achieved.
Here is an interviews with Dr George Marshall, Sir Jules Thorn Lecturer in Ophthalmic Science at the University of Strathclyde, demolishing this particular anti-design idea and here is another by a retired consultant opthalmologist. Both these, incidentally, demonstrate that there are top-class scientists who do not accept Darwinism. They also demonstrate that creationists tend to produce facts whereas evolutionists tend to produce rhetoric.
Arguments about the perfection of design are irrelevant to the Intelligent Design theory, which does not attempt to identify the designer. The fact that something is designed does not necessitate that the design is perfect. If you tried to do it, the result would be a lot worse, wouldn't it? Nevertheless, what you produced would still be designed.
For a Christian, the imperfections in the world are the result of the curse that is on the whole creation as a result of sin. So again, problems in nature are not evidence of bad design but of the curse.
As for vitamin C, we are designed to eat fruit (Gen 1:29) and our present omnivorous diet is a later change (Gen 9). Still, no one suffers scurvy unless for some reason they are deprived of greens, either by misfortune or by poor diet, which is usually the result of ignorance or oppression. So this problem is a result of the curse combined with human actions or misfortune.
Finally, there is a huge amount of supporting evidence for creationism. It is just the same data that evolutionists use to support evolution. However, since your world view excludes God you cannot interpret it correctly. There is no profitable argument between world views; all that can be done is to compare them fully and then decide which makes better sense. That is the reason for presenting both sides of the debate in school and elsewhere.
In that culture, the obligations of hospitality were sacred. When forced to choose between protecting his guest or his family he had to choose the former.
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It would be interesting to see a reference to this supposed refutation. In the absence of one, I can only say it seems most unlikely.
The bible does not say any such thing. It does use phenomenological language as we all do (e.g.: sunrise) and it uses poetic language (e.g.: "ride on the clouds"), But its factual statements are all compatible with actual observations.
Your statement is typical of those who haven't read the bible and think they know about it.
The mediaeval church's hang-ups about science were because they adopted Aristotelian (Greek) thinking. If they had actually stuck to the bible they wouldn't have looked so silly.
This is itself a religious statement. You make a moral statement ("should not") that is founded on atheistic humanism. You are using your atheistic worldview to condemn my Christian one. You can hardly expect me to be impressed by such double standards.
In reality, there is no legitimate (i.e. testable, repeatable and falsafiable) evidence supporting the existence of god or creationism and the very fact it is impossible to prove (or disprove) god's existence shows that creationism is not science and can't be treated as such.
There is no testable, repeatable evidence of macro-evolution. (Micro-evolution -- that is variation within a kind -- and natural selection are not in dispute.) All you have are many inferences which are needed to support your atheistic worldview and in turn depend upon it. There is no way to test them, because no one has the length of life necessary. There is certainly no way to repeat macro-evolution.
As for falsifiability, one would have thought that the insane violence done to probability by the evolutionary hypotheses would be sufficient, but since evolution is actually a religious dogma, that turns out not to be the case.
On the other hand, ID is founded on the practice of many branches of science, such as archaeology, cryptography, information theory, criminology, and inded the SETI project. All of these assert that it is possible to distinguish the action of intelligence from random events. Why should biology and cosmology be exceptions?
If you don't agree I encourage you try to come up with an verifiable and repeatable experiment which could prove (or disprove) either the existence of god...
The existence of God is the first axiom of the Christian worldview. You do not prove your axioms. By that token, I should require you to prove the truth of atheism. However I can offer a sure way of verifying God's existence. Rethink your life and surrender to him; put your trust in Jesus and you will know him and receive the Holy Spirit from him. That will be all the verification you could desire.
There can be no repeatable experiment to prove an historical event. The debate between creation and evolution is between two historical accounts. All that one can do is to examine the visible evidence in the light of each and see which better fits the data. Our contention is that the data matches the creation account much better than it does the evolutionary one.
There is no debate! There is no scientific evidence for creationism and no legitimate scientists treats creationism as science.
Since you define science to exclude the possibility of creation, that is true -- on your terms. However, that is a stupid way to define science, since it means that one half of the possibilities are excluded from your enquiry. If the right answer lies in the half you have excluded, you will never find it.
One needs only to look at the parent post to notice that the only sources of "evidence" for creation cited are Answers in Genesis and True Origins which are political preasure groups founded with the express purpose of trying to get creationism into public schools and funded by religious groups and are not legitimate or scientific institutions.
True Origins is a personal website. This is explicitly stated in the FAQ, so I must presume you are speaking out of ignorant prejudice or actual malice here. AiG is an avowedly Christian organisation. However, AiG has a strong staff of scientists, qualified in a number of different fields and therefore able to provide informed criticsm of the suppos
I'm not sure you've succeeded any better now. The idea of a creator who is not an intelligent designer is a bit out of this world!
To keep the record straight I should say I don't believe much that's written in the bible either. I'm no Christian or Jew.
On what basis do you not believe it? What parts have you actually found to be untrue yourself as opposed to their being mocked or denied by materialists? Are you familiar with the 19th century European controversies? The biblical creation story was universally accepted until the so-called Enlightenment, which exalted human reason without recognising the limitations of human weakness and sin. In the 18th century deists were very common, who asserted that God created the world and then left it to itself. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Hutton and Lyell founded uniformitarian geology by constant denial of the biblical record. However they had no facts to base this on. Their uniformitarian theories are plainly inadequate to account for the geological data; neither did they disprove the biblical account, including the Flood - they merely denied it. However they spoke to a generation who sought an excuse for abandoning belief in God and therefore found an audience. The reason is that God holds men accountable to himself for their actions. Men who wish to ignore him feel more comfortable with some kind of excuse. Hutton, Lyell and their fellows provided that, however poor it may actually be.
Yes, I'm totally open to the idea that a god, or even the Christian God created the earth/universe. I just can't have much respect for a theory (intelligent design) that doesn't seem to be interested in proof.
I don't understand what basis you have for saying that. As far as I understand ID theory, it asserts that design can be detected by methods that are familiar to us in normal life and also by the presence of "irreducible complexity". It also has respect for the laws of thermodynamics and of probability, with which evolutionism plays fast and loose. It seems to me to have more integrity than evolutionism, which, alone among the physical sciences, seems to think that hand-waving ("could have", "probably", "we can imagine") is an acceptable substitute for detailed explanations.
The bible will not constitute proof for most people until there is some evidence that the stories really do describe our history.
The usual approach to history is to accept the sources and try to reconcile them. In the event of difficulties, you may need to amend or reject one. When it comes to the bible, however, historians have been in the habit of rejecting everything unless it is confirmed by other sources. This is not an even-handed approach. In fact, it is a thoroughly mistaken one, and the more research is done, the more wrong it is shown to be.
The proper approach to the bible is to accept what it says unless it can be disproved. Only the adoption of materialist axioms, or adherence to some other religion which denies the bible (and materialism is, in fact, such a religion) can explain why the bible is not treated like that.
Atheism is not an axiom of evolutionary science. All that is required is that you disbelieve genesis and other select sections of the bible. Surely you accept this?
It is an axiom of materialism and most scientists are materialists, at least as far as their research goes. Therefore they are atheists for all practical purposes, never mind what they claim to believe. There is a proverb: actions speak louder than words.
However, I agree most scientists are morons. I should add I almost became a research scientist myself and have a masters in Chemistry. However when not pressurised by an "opposite-camp" I'd say most scientists inevitably question the axioms that exist in their field.
We say that God did what he says he did; no more than that. That is as far back as it is possible to go.
Either the universe was created or it was not. To refuse to consider the possibility because it limits what you can inquire into is illogicality founded in blind pride. True science enquires into both possibilities and evaluates the evidence in the light of each.
At least science is always trying to answer all the questions. Even if electrons seem as unbelievable as a divine being, at least scientists never disregard the possiblity that electrons might not exist, and actually we got it all wrong.
In general scientists don't question their axioms. Atheism is an axiom of evolutionary science, and its basis is actually religious; just see how indignant evolutionists get when their beliefs are questioned.
The AiG website includes this page of links to articles about it. Walt Brown proposes this hypothesis for how it was triggered and all its effects.
It seems you don't understand deductive logic. The premises are taken as given. In mathematical terms, they are axioms. You cannot prove your axioms, because they are the basis for everything else. If they could be proved, something else would be the true basis of your thinking. The bible never attempts to prove that God exists. He is, and all else is dependent on him. Knowing that is wisdom.
I've got one for you: what's your view on scientology?
I don't know the details of it. As far as I am aware, it is a cult with the usual cultish aims of dominating and fleecing its adherents for the benefit of the leadership.
I do understand that; after all, I used to think the same way. However, the problem is not with logic; it is simply that you do not accept the premises of my logic any more than I accept the premises of yours. Both positions are logical on their own terms.
That is not correct. Gen 2:7 - "then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." God did not use evolution in creating us.
There is no way to reconcile the bible with the materialist evolutionary account of origins.
The horror of it!.
What did the poor dog do not to be able to see in color?
Poor? Dogs weren't designed for colour vision, but instead seem to have a greater sensitivity in darkness (judging by their reflective retinas). Their eyes serve their designed purpose, and my dogs at least seem very happy with what they have got.
Which translation of the bible are you using?
Several different ones.
The King James version, which seems to be the most popular among creationists, some would say was to attempt to gain forgiveness for his taste in young boys.
There are many serious faults in that translation, of which the worst is that the King imposed the use of traditional language (such as "bishop") which were not a good translation of the original languages, but supported his desire to have a regulated hierarchy in religion. (That, incidentally, is what your First Amendment was really about; it is an invention of activist judges to have the state interfere in religious affairs to enforce atheism.)
The main advatage of the KJV is that it is so widely known and that there are so many tools (concordances, etc.) built on it. But it is unwise to use it as your sole source. It is best to read the Hebrew and Greek, if you can.
Evolution is the acknowledgement that the world changes. And in doing effects every living thing, they must adapt or die.
Of course no one disputes that. The problem is that evolution is a word that is often used in different ways in the same text. It is used to mean the normal observed variation within a kind - variation that can be quite wide in the case of bacteria. It is also used for the postulated but unobserved development of one kind of animal from another. Unfortunately, evolutionists use the word with both meanings at once; this is called equivocation.
Darwin was a well known and respected Christian and that is why he is buried in some of the most sacred ground in England. So it ironic how you think to believe in evolution is to ignore a god.
He lost his faith after the death of his daughter. It would seem that he never had a very great understanding of Christianity.
He proposed the idea of Natural Selection not evolution. Everyone before him could see that animals evolved just they were looking for the mechanism.
It wasn't his idea; he merely developed it into a story that attempted to account for the existence of life without creation.
To believe in Intelligent Design to believe in an angry god. One who doesn't care about individuals as it slowly destroys life everywhere.
The ID movement do not attempt to identify the creator; they limit their efforts to identifying design. Creationists think that this is a mistaken approach, since only a full understanding of the biblical record gives a firm foundation.
God is indeed angry at sin, but that is a far greater (and more terrifying) emotion than the peevishness that you imply. He created a perfect world - man rejected him and tried to make himself God. He became so grieved at the evil that men were continually doing that he devastated the entire planet and saved only one family out of it - within two generations men were back to their old ways. He himself suffered death for all of us, so as to provide a way for us to be reconciled to him and to receive a new nature from him, but most men reject him. He is soon going to return and his return will be preceded by a judgement of disasters that will wipe out more than two thirds of the world's population, but even in the midst of those disasters, most men will refuse to abandon their evil ways. And finally, when Jesus has restored his perfect creation and ruled it himself for a thousand years with perfect justice, men will rebel again, preferring to believe the lies of the devil rather than God.
Jesus, who is love, warned of hell more than any other person in the bible. When love is rejected, only wrath and judgment remain.
However, the issue is not really one of evidence but of conflicting world views. The same data are interpreted in radically different ways.
Materialists assume that there is no God and therefore no creator; therefore everything that exists must somehow have come into being on its own. It doesn't matter how much probability is strained, because for a materialist there is no other possibility.
Biblical creationists assume that God exists and that the bible contains his word to us. This word is reliable because it is given by God; in particular it is certified to us by Jesus whose own reliability is attested by his having been raised from the dead. Any scientific investigation is informed by the folowing certified history:
- God created a perfect world
- The first man disobeyed him; as a result, the whole creation is under a curse
- Men's sin became so bad that God wiped out all air-breathing life on earth, with the exception of Noah's family and the animals he took on board
All data is interpreted in that context. Creationists assert that the data fit those assumptions better than they do materialist assumptions.But there is no evidence in the fossils or now of any creature with half an eye. Every creature found is perfectly adapted for its niche.
Secondly, an eye really isn't too complex to have evolved gradually...An organism evolves light-sensitive cells on its skin.
How? Its (highly complex) reproductive mechanism is designed to replicate DNA without errors. Even the simplest light-sensitive cell has got to have a gene-specified mechanism (again highly complex and coordinated) for making a light-sensitive protein. (DNA is like computer language; but no programmer ever saw a program improved by random changes.) At the same time as the organism develops a light-sensitive cell, it also has to develop a nervous system to transmit the light stimulus to the brain and also a neural mechanism for interpreting and acting on stimuli received. Finally it has to transmit all these changes to the next generation, which implies that they are carried in a dominant gene or that its mate has somehow produced the same alteration at just the same time. If all these things do not happen at once, there is nothing for natural selection to work on.
It is not enough to make up stories. You have also to describe, in detail, a credible mechanism. This evolutionists have never done.
This is good, because it can kind of sense when a bigger animal gets near it and moves out of the way. Then, those EM-sensitive cells evolve into a pit. Example: Pit vipers (true evidence that I am under the sway of the serpent!). Once you have a pit, you get not only a sense, but a vector. From there, it's not that hard to imagine a membrane forming over the top to protect it from infection as that pit gets deeper and deeper. Add a lens and you can focus the light to be sharpest at a particular distance, forming an image. Finally, you detach the parts a bit from one another so the whole apparatus can swivel, then you can look at different things without turning your head. Each variation has an advantage and a purpose.
This is all just story-telling. I emphasised it's not that hard to imagine because that is how evolutionism works. Make up a semi-plausible story and skate over all the inconvenient details.
Correct; this is called inductive logic and it relies on the idea that the world is consistent and that previously observed behaviour will be repeated. That is the foundation of the scientific method.
Where does that idea come from? It comes from biblical Christianity. Our first scientists knew that God is consistent in the way that he manages the world and that it was therefore worthwhile to investigate how it works. Without him, there is no foundation for science, because there would be no logical reason to expect the world to act consistently.
Incidentally, C14 dating is only good for 60,000 years or so, because of the short half-life of C14. None at all should be present in anything older than that. It is interesting that C14 is apparently found in all carbon on earth, including coal deposits and even diamonds that are supposedly millions of years old.
Unfortunately, in speaking of the design of the human eye you don't actually understand how it works, any nore than the people you got this idea from. It is indeed true that the nerves go across the front of the retina, and the blood vessels are behind. If it were reversed, the huge blood supply needed to keep the eye operating at peak efficiency would block light to the receptors, whereas the nerves are almost transparent. The blind spot is 15 degrees off the focal point, which means that it has no practical effect on our vision. All design is a compromise between different objectives, and the design of the eye is similarly constrained, but it is as close to perfection as can be achieved.
Here is an interviews with Dr George Marshall, Sir Jules Thorn Lecturer in Ophthalmic Science at the University of Strathclyde, demolishing this particular anti-design idea and here is another by a retired consultant opthalmologist. Both these, incidentally, demonstrate that there are top-class scientists who do not accept Darwinism. They also demonstrate that creationists tend to produce facts whereas evolutionists tend to produce rhetoric.
Arguments about the perfection of design are irrelevant to the Intelligent Design theory, which does not attempt to identify the designer. The fact that something is designed does not necessitate that the design is perfect. If you tried to do it, the result would be a lot worse, wouldn't it? Nevertheless, what you produced would still be designed.
For a Christian, the imperfections in the world are the result of the curse that is on the whole creation as a result of sin. So again, problems in nature are not evidence of bad design but of the curse.
As for vitamin C, we are designed to eat fruit (Gen 1:29) and our present omnivorous diet is a later change (Gen 9). Still, no one suffers scurvy unless for some reason they are deprived of greens, either by misfortune or by poor diet, which is usually the result of ignorance or oppression. So this problem is a result of the curse combined with human actions or misfortune.
Finally, there is a huge amount of supporting evidence for creationism. It is just the same data that evolutionists use to support evolution. However, since your world view excludes God you cannot interpret it correctly. There is no profitable argument between world views; all that can be done is to compare them fully and then decide which makes better sense. That is the reason for presenting both sides of the debate in school and elsewhere.
So have the rules of moral behaviour changed, or is that how we're still supposed to behave?
I'm not sure that either is true. The scripture does not say that Lot made the right decision.
In that culture, the obligations of hospitality were sacred. When forced to choose between protecting his guest or his family he had to choose the former.