Topic: Dear Liberal, Here is why I'm so hostile

[RickZ]

Once science starts attempting to explain ANYTHING that is devoid of the scientific process (observable, testable, duplicable) they leave the realm of science and enter the realm of philosophy.

And that is exactly what religion is, a philosophy, not provable by any scientific method.  Remember, while there's no "I" in team, you can't believe without "lie" being a part of the mix.

ETA:  As far as your question, I honestly do not understand the comparison.  One picture is of rocks, one isn't.  Mt. Rushmore was designed, and that is provable.  As for babies, genes make the design.  Yeah, yeah, who makes the genes?  Why do small human embryos have a tail, which later devolves into nonexistence?  Is that not a holdover from our pre-human days?  Or something else?

[ToddF]

[Weisshaupt]

What you're saying, Pablo, is:  Whatever we don't understand about the natural world, god is responsible.  That's a cheap copout to me, and supports my argument about natural world mysteries being attributed to a god or gods.  Man's innate curiosity needs explanations and religious beliefs have provided many 'answers'.  Many wrong, of course, but many answers nonetheless.

This is a law of very large numbers problem. Coincidence might very well look like Divine intervention and vice versa. The systems around us are so complex it is very hard for me to believe they evolved by chance - but these are very large numbers, and therefore such a chance is possible, no matter how unlikely.  Science will never provide an answer because science - as a basic postulate, assumes that there no sentient 3rd party changing the rules as you experiment. Having accepted that postulate on faith.. and faith it is,  The Atheist Left take that one step further and then pronounce that God not only does not interfere in their experiments, but propose that he  does not interfere because there is no God. This belief is taken upon faith, as part of the dogma of the Religion of Science as the light the truth and the way . 

To an believer in Science!^TM the religion (as opposed to "science" , the little method we use to investigate the world around us in which NOTHING is ever  proven or settled)  there is no other explanation than Evolution - that, no matter how unlikely a given evolution or adaptation  is, no matter how complex a natural process is discovered to be,   that everything came from nothing. 

A Believer in God simply chooses to see those complexities and systems as works of an intelligent hand, thinking it too unlikely that such a system could have come into being entirely by chance, and without a guiding hand.

 That is is all the quote is saying. Even if the scientists can get evolution to occur in a lab setting and repeat it over and over- it would not disprove that an intelligent hand designed that system and set it in motion.  This simply comes down to what you choose to believe. Its a matter of faith and cannot every be proven one way or the other.

Background radiation is the same intensity no matter where we look in the sky.  If the Big Bag occurred, one portion of the universe should still be providing more intense emissions.  Hawking postulated an entirely new 4th dimension to explain it, because the simplest explanation is Earth is very near to the location of the Big Bang, and that just smacks of creationism doesn't it?  He could not accept the chances of Earth having formed near the actual center of the Universe, so he makes up a whole new dimension of time and space to explain it away- because Science!^TM

This was an interesting read for me and really opened by eyes to the blind spots I had being raised a  Scientist!^TM   - I don't accept it as gospel or anything, it just merely points out scientific ways ( and bolsteres it with Bible verse)  that the Bible could be literally true and the Earth be only 6000 years old in a universe Billions of years old.

[LadyVirginia]

excellent

need to keep this in reserve for the next time         

(...and this WILL be a next time...there always is  )

I don't see faith as something you can argue someone into or out of.  You can only answers questions based on what you believe.  Whatever your thoughts on faith happen to be they are still based on beliefs no matter how strong you perceive your arguments to be. Science may bolster your argument as you perceive it but it doesn't definitely prove it one way or the other.

[ChrstnHsbndFthr]

I like true science. Demonstrable. Repeatable. Provable. But, the denial of God is not provable.  The creation is not repeatable. It is not demonstrable. No "scientist," fake or otherwise, has ever demonstrated the creation of matter from the nothingness.  No scientist has demonstrated the creation of life from non-life. It does come down to faith. I am willing to admit my faith. The secular humanists are not. But, their faith is Demonstrable, Provable, and Repeatable. Denial of the facts accomplishes nothing. It merely is what it is.

[ToddF]

The creation is not repeatable.

That.  And if I may wade into it...  I don't take Genesis literally.  There wasn't even a word for billion, in 1500BC, when some nobody sat down in a desert and wrote a simplified version of...

The Big Bang.  Moses nailed it.  Who am I to say what a day is to God?  Moses stated the universe came out of nothing.  Scientists finally agreed only a few decades ago.  That's pretty close to actual observation, to me.

People try dating the earth from the bible.  There is no such date stated.  Some trace genealogy, fine.  All you're doing is tracing back to a time when something happened to humanity.  Whether the bible or archeology, something happened to humanity, moving from animal to civilized being.  Someone in that part of the world was "touched" to the point of putting some clothes on and setting up the beginnings of civilization.  Whether their names were Adam and Eve or not, Moses did come rather close writing about the beginnings of civilized time.  Again, quite the accomplishment for some nobody sitting in a desert, circa 1500 BC.

 

[Weisshaupt]

That.  And if I may wade into it...  I don't take Genesis literally.  There wasn't even a word for billion, in 1500BC, when some nobody sat down in a desert and wrote a simplified version of...

Read that Starlight and Time book I suggested.  Its actually not that far-fetched and just as plausible as wrapping the entire universe around the surface of a 4th dimensional hyper sphere  to explain why radiation is the same in all directions ( and maybe they proved this 4th dimension exists, but if so, I am not aware of it.)

[IronDioPriest]

The creation is not repeatable.

That.  And if I may wade into it...  I don't take Genesis literally.  There wasn't even a word for billion, in 1500BC, when some nobody sat down in a desert and wrote a simplified version of...

The Big Bang.  Moses nailed it.  Who am I to say what a day is to God?  Moses stated the universe came out of nothing.  Scientists finally agreed only a few decades ago.  That's pretty close to actual observation, to me.

People try dating the earth from the bible.  There is no such date stated.  Some trace genealogy, fine.  All you're doing is tracing back to a time when something happened to humanity.  Whether the bible or archeology, something happened to humanity, moving from animal to civilized being.  Someone in that part of the world was "touched" to the point of putting some clothes on and setting up the beginnings of civilization.  Whether their names were Adam and Eve or not, Moses did come rather close writing about the beginnings of civilized time.  Again, quite the accomplishment for some nobody sitting in a desert, circa 1500 BC.

 

My thoughts almost exactly, with one caveat. The more recent the Old Testament book, the more literally I take it. I believe that the historical aspects of the Old Testament "evolve" (there's that word) from myth, to myth with history mixed in, to a mix of myth and history, to history with myth mixed in, to history.

Some Christians would consider that blasphemy. I don't really give a sh*t what they think. I believe the bible is divinely inspired, and that it gives us the knowledge we need about the nature of God and His relationship with humankind. I am saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ never demands that I believe in Adam and Eve as literal people who lived 6000 years ago.

[Libertas]

I wouldn't argue with that (I'd be largely unarmed anyway), and nice close IDP!   

[ToddF]

I believe the bible is divinely inspired]I believe the bible is divinely inspired

I read a sci-fi story, years ago.  I don't remember who, I don't remember a title, but it was about an extremely higher intelligence trying to explain something to a species of extreme lesser intelligence.  Something in the story kind of gave a nod nod wink wink to make the reader think of God and Moses.  Not that the little brat who asked his Sunday School teacher who Cain and Able married  already didn't think along those lines, but that story solidified how I thought of Genesis.  If you God, how would you explain the beginning of the universe to Moses, a simple person of a simple time.  Genesis is how.

[IronDioPriest]

...If you [were] God, how would you explain the beginning of the universe to Moses, a simple person of a simple time.  Genesis is how.

My thought crystallized.

[Glock32]

These things, I view them as being in such completely different realms that it's generally a mistake to even try to interpret one through the lens of the other. I am not troubled in my belief in God by anything discovered or explained by science, mainly because I have never asserted to myself or others that my belief derives from anything testable by science. That's why they call it faith.

Science is a mechanistic system of inquiry. It can potentially explain everything about the material universe, but I believe the material universe is only a part rather than the whole. I spent a long time as basically an agnostic trending atheist trending deist depending on my mood. I have since come to accept the divinity of Christ. I look back now at some of the "gotchas" I used to espouse and see them as hubris, presuming to understand God as being bound by the same rules as myself.

I don't wade into these sorts of arguments because having lived as an unbeliever before I understand that you can't make someone believe, other than to say if you have a yearning God will answer you. Some people do not have a yearning, as I for some time did not, and to them I would only say to just keep your mind and heart open to the possibility that some day you might.

The important thing for everyone, believer and unbeliever, to remember is that we are all declared an enemy so long as we refuse to worship the State.

[Weisshaupt]

Science is a mechanistic system of inquiry. It can potentially explain everything about the material universe, but I believe the material universe is only a part rather than the whole

It can, as long as the fundamental premise holds true - that no one is messing with the rules - that the rules are constant and unchanging.   If Evolution is indeed done by design- where some external force ( and it could be space aliens , and not God for all I know..)  interferes with the genetic code, Science will never figure it out unless they actually catch the designer in the act, and even then it will only show that only the occurrence under observation happened that way.  Both random undesigned AND  designed mutations  could be happening through out history.  Simple Darwinian Adaptations being in the former category, and the development of individual species by the latter. Or its all design. Or none of it is and it works through something we don't understand.  Science is really a very limited tool. Also,  I am pretty sure the Duck Billed Platypus is the work of some genetic engineers in 2614 who got drunk one night and figured it would be hilarious to create that animal and send it back though time to mess with us.

"Dude I am so wasted!"

"Me too. And I am bored. What should we do?"

"I know, lets mess with that new time machine in the physics lab!"

"Okay, sounds fun,  but how?"

"How about we bio-engineer a unicorn as send it back to England in the Middle ages?"

"Nah, lets do a Dragon in China!"

"Yeah, they will mess those Cavemen Darwinists up!"

"Oh, man if you want to do that , we should do it right. Create a really messed up Animal. Like a Mammal with a duck bill and webbed feet! "

"Oh, man , thats great. lets have it lay eggs, and instead of teats, it will just secrete milk from its skin.. "

"Hey, lets make it poisonous too. like a Snake!"

"How are we going to get fangs into a duck bill? "

"Oh right. How about we put spurs on its legs!"

"Yeah! that will work.  Hey lets make it like a fish too- give it sensitivity to electro-magnetic fields."

"Oh man, I can't wait till those pre-humans find this thing! Okay, it all plugged into the genetic manipulator.  Hand me another Beer will ya?"

"uh oh. "

"what?"

"The computer says that the right ovary  is going to be a dud. "

"Don't worry about it man, its just a joke. The thing obviously isn't going to survive in the wild for very long.. give it here.. and lets get over to the Physics lab before  someone else beats us to it.."

"Oh wait..  I think I saw Jerry was working on something that hopped with a pouch just this afternoon!"


And that, is exactly how the Duck Bill Platypus came to be.  Just proof that not all  all designs are well done.. And that is not faith, its fact. What other possible conclusion could it be? And if you disagree you are a poopy head.

 

[Pandora]

LOL.

[robins111]

What truly angers this Canadian is that lib/progs believe themselves to be morally superior and much more intelligent that us redneck conservatives.  But when challenged and questioned, you find that they are invariably functional idiots, and have the morals of a cesspool dwelling rat...

[warpmine]

Five or more decades ago, some one postulated the Big Bang theory and said it all happened 15 billion years ago. Years later they said perhaps it was 20 billion. Years after that they said it was going to continue to expand until everything is dark and cold. Years after that they said the universe would stop expanding and then begin to contract until it winds up in a ball of hyper energy or whatever. Next up,  they postulated that there isn't enough matter theoretically to bring it all back together again. A decade ago, someone postulated that something called dark matter could be the balancing factor for the contraction "theory"(Of course nobody has proof it exists but they have FAITH that it does.) Still not done screwing with everyone, the galaxies are running away from each other at great speeds. The aforementioned theory is axed and we're back to ever expanding but why if dark matter exists then why. Not to be out postulated, they now say a new energy, calling it dark energy is pushing everything apart(a racial thing, I'm sure of it). Meanwhile, galaxies are actually clustered together and are likely to collide forming up super galaxies. M-31(Andromeda) and the Milky Way are on a collision course via gravity(I thought dark energy was pushing everything apart, whatever). Don't panic they say, the stars are to far apart so they won't collide as if that statement was gospel. Never mind, that it will take tens of billions of years for that to occur and well, our star will become a red giant star which will spell the end of the Earth. Serious global warming will occur on that day, Al Gore will not respond even if he lived that long.

Even if our species lives a few more billion years(yeah right) can we live beyond our solar system outside of the protection of our star's influential magnetic field? I don't see it folks. The people living on this planet are history's most ignorant. Many can't put down the hand held devices and video game consoles long enough to smell the socialism rammed down their throats.
Half our population looking to to freeze or starve themselves to death because of some outlandish statements made by a few people looking to get wealthy off ignorant bastards not paying attention to what's going on around them.

Theoreticians and their theories are a dime a dozen but none of them will spend enough time engineering something that will benefit man. The origins of the universe? who cares at this point...we have a government looking to enslave us simply becasue they believe they know what's best for me. Nature's God exists for me until someone proves he doesn't. I'm not holding my breath in the mean time.

Bottom line, liberal progs suck and we all can agree on that issue and what we'd like to do to them.

[Magnum]

I without apology take the account of Genesis literally. But what I do not know is how long a day is to God or was there any creation before what He revels in the Bible. Since God is, was and ever will be I have no idea what He created in eternity past. 

I am not science naive either. I graduated with a degree from the University of Mn in Molecular  Biology and Generics, with a minor in Biochemistry and graduated summa cum laude and a few years ago I finished and earned my Masters in Physiology and Bio-mechanics.............. 

I feel what God told Moses to write in Genesis was to show us that God's power is infinite and is beyond anything we can imagine. God stared off His account with Genesis to show He is ruler and the final authority over all. To imagine with a spoken word all creation appeared is beyond comprehension to me. It reveals to me God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. So if I can believe God can create all this then I can believe God can intervene in our lives personally as He says thorough the Holy Spirit  and help guide and direct us to His will for our lives.

[IronDioPriest]

I without apology take the account of Genesis literally...

And I absolutely respect that view, even though I differ with it somewhat. I cannot prove whether Adam and Eve are literal or myth, and so it would be foolish of me to stake a claim that they were not real human beings.

I absolutely believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob creating everything. In that, we do not differ. I just see Adam and Eve as some of God's parables - as I said earlier, exactly what he wants us to know about Him, His nature, and our relationship to Him. I may be dead wrong. But that is where my faith leads me at this time.

[IronDioPriest]

... and how in the HECK did a thread about enumerating all the justifications for increasing conservative hostility towards the Left turn into a thread about Adam and Eve anyway?

 

(That doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't, I'm just making note)

[Magnum]

I without apology take the account of Genesis literally...

And I absolutely respect that view, even though I differ with it somewhat. I cannot prove whether Adam and Eve are literal or myth, and so it would be foolish of me to stake a claim that they were not real human beings.

I absolutely believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob creating everything. In that, we do not differ. I just see Adam and Eve as some of God's parables - as I said earlier, exactly what he wants us to know about Him, His nature, and our relationship to Him. I may be dead wrong. But that is where my faith leads me at this time.

And I too IDP respect your view. I have learned as I have gotten older not to get upset and combative with a fellow believer or believers over non salvation issues. I know you are a Born Again Believer and a fellow Christian Brother and while it maybe helpful to discuss these issues in no way will I ever let it ruin my fellowship with a fellow brother.....................