The Lies and Arrogance of Evolutionists

[rdean]

I wonder where "fossils" come from?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Occam's razor would not support the notion that a person was re-animated. That's the alternate explanation that is incredible.

It would be more simple to say that there was a vast conspiracy among Christ's followers to hide the body and concoct a conspiracy than to say that a body was dead for three days and suddenly was made to be alive.

And so goes the circular reasoning of the materialist, the same argument I anticipated in the above.

So William of Occam, an English Franciscan friar of the Roman Catholic faith would have held that his general rule or law of parsimony overthrew the historical testimony of his own faith? Do you ever tire of making absurd claims?

Occam's razor has nothing to with your presupposition of reality. It does not preemptively deny the existence of the supernatural or anything else. It is a general rule of methodology, nothing else, nothing other. You're confused.

By definition a supernatural miracle is an incredible or extraordinary event.

So all these people concocted a conspiracy? Were suddenly overcome with a sociopathic fit of depravity that lasted for decades? The same persons who were full of self-sacrificing charity and generosity for their fellow man? Traversed the world proclaiming the Gospel—from the Middle East to Asia Minor, to Europe, to Africa to the Far East? Were willing to be imprisoned or killed (and were) over something they themselves knew to be a lie? That's the psychological profile of a sociopath? These are the kind of people who would do the sort of thing you suggest?

And that observation is just one of many, many more. No. Occam's razor asserts that the simplest explanation that fits all the known facts and makes the least number of new assumptions is the best or is to be preferred.

Your charge is based on nothing more substantial than your metaphysical presupposition, which begs the question, a charge that belies commonsense and what we know today to be arguably true scientifically about the psychological profile of sociopaths.

You can't try and enter logic and reason into the matter.

I most certainly can and did; only fools assert that faith and logic are necessarily incompatible. They are not, and that is an objectively self-evident fact.

In religion, the miraculous occurs as a matter of course. It defies logic, which is why faith is the central tenant of all religion.

Nonsense. You're assertion defies logic. You are not talking about logic in and of itself. You're confused. You're equating logic with natural cause and effect. These things are not synonymous. Your analogy is false and irrational. You're merely reasserting the logic of materialism, once again, begging the question.

A supernatural miracle by definition constitutes an instance wherein the ordinary laws of nature are overridden, suspended or otherwise made to conform with the ultimate will of a higher law.

Major premise
Christ rose from the dead.

Minor premise
Such an event is inconsistent with the ordinary laws of nature.

Conclusion
Some other law or force other than that ordinarily followed by nature is the reason or the cause of Christ's resurrection.

The logic of that syllogism is perfectly sound; the conclusion follows from the premise.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Which one is The One True God? He certainly hasn't made it clear by . . . miracle. . . .

Stepping away from science. . . .

Well, I certainly wouldn't agree with that. I believe that Christ did rise from the dead and that this historical event is well-documented.

Dozens of persons claimed to have personally witnessed the resurrected Christ, and these persons claim that yet hundreds of others personally witnessed the resurrected Christ and His ascension. I think the argument that these people suffered from some form of mass hysteria is absurd, especially given the fact that they were mired in fear and despair just a few days before the alleged event. Yet suddenly, they were prepared to brave certain imprisonment or death as they bolding proclaimed . . . a lie?

What precisely was the substance of this sudden transformation?

A sudden death wish over nothing? A sudden pandemic of madness or sociopathlogy over something they didn't anticipate, never expected, in spite of the fact that scripture, written hundreds of years before, and Christ Himself told them the Messiah would suffer, be slain and rise again? They thought it was all metaphor! LOL!

Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is the best; the alternate explanation is incredible.

But that's just me.

Further, there are at least 456 prophecies in the Old Testament regarding the person and the life of the Messiah, with more than five dozen of them being quite specific—variously, regarding the place of birth, the time of birth, the lineage of birth, the circumstances surrounding the birth, specific events in the life of the Messiah, the manner of death and so on. Christ fulfilled them all. The mathematical probability of one person fulfilling just eight of these prophecies is one in 10^17. The probability of fulfilling 48 of them is one in 10^157. . . .

But, ultimately, each must make up his own mind about these things and many others.

But here's the thing. I knew nothing about these things before my conversion. I wasn't thinking about the probabilities of this or that, what made sense and what didn't. I was simply willing to know the truth. I read a passage regarding the claims made by Christ Himself . . . and suddenly I could "see" them and knew them to be true. And I knew that the moment I knocked on that door without any preconceived notions, beyond these fundamental claims, He would open it. And of course He did! None of this came to me from within. It all came to me from without.

All I can say is this: Stories passed from friend to acquaintance about a political hero who walked out of his grave... stories finally committed to paper 70+ years after the event to recruit resistance to Roman rule. Can you say "political spin"?

Considering what it takes to get a guy or girl to blow themselves up for a political cause today, let alone spin a story in a most favorable light, I find it totally plausible for lots of well written bullshit flying off the presses in the first and second centuries. Even to the point of back-tracking through The Old Testament and painting an AMAZING fulfillment of prophesy.

I'm not buying it any more than I buy the 'news' from Right Wing News or Democratic Underground

Besides, did you ever wonder that the 3 main religions on this wet rock are the first 3 written stories that survived to modern times?

No kidding, the Word was God. The written word to be exact... the written word that told a plausible theory of origins and which just happened to be associated with the winning 'civilization'.

Thanks anyway, but I'll hang my beliefs about origins on things like my own observations, proven history, fossil records and DNA testing.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Which one is The One True God? He certainly hasn't made it clear by . . . miracle. . . .

Stepping away from science. . . .

Well, I certainly wouldn't agree with that. I believe that Christ did rise from the dead and that this historical event is well-documented.

Dozens of persons claimed to have personally witnessed the resurrected Christ, and these persons claim that yet hundreds of others personally witnessed the resurrected Christ and His ascension. I think the argument that these people suffered from some form of mass hysteria is absurd, especially given the fact that they were mired in fear and despair just a few days before the alleged event. Yet suddenly, they were prepared to brave certain imprisonment or death as they bolding proclaimed . . . a lie?

What precisely was the substance of this sudden transformation?

A sudden death wish over nothing? A sudden pandemic of madness or sociopathlogy over something they didn't anticipate, never expected, in spite of the fact that scripture, written hundreds of years before, and Christ Himself told them the Messiah would suffer, be slain and rise again? They thought it was all metaphor! LOL!

Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is the best; the alternate explanation is incredible.

But that's just me.

Further, there are at least 456 prophecies in the Old Testament regarding the person and the life of the Messiah, with more than five dozen of them being quite specific—variously, regarding the place of birth, the time of birth, the lineage of birth, the circumstances surrounding the birth, specific events in the life of the Messiah, the manner of death and so on. Christ fulfilled them all. The mathematical probability of one person fulfilling just eight of these prophecies is one in 10^17. The probability of fulfilling 48 of them is one in 10^157. . . .

But, ultimately, each must make up his own mind about these things and many others.

But here's the thing. I knew nothing about these things before my conversion. I wasn't thinking about the probabilities of this or that, what made sense and what didn't. I was simply willing to know the truth. I read a passage regarding the claims made by Christ Himself . . . and suddenly I could "see" them and knew them to be true. And I knew that the moment I knocked on that door without any preconceived notions, beyond these fundamental claims, He would open it. And of course He did! None of this came to me from within. It all came to me from without.

And none of these prophesies could have been made up later?

The prophesies are legit... It's the fulfillment of those prophesies, in stories not written down until at least 70 years after the events that make me skeptical.

Fool me once...

 

[AVG-JOE]

Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is the best; the alternate explanation is incredible.

But that's just me.

Occam's razor would not support the notion that a person was re-animated. That's the alternate explanation that is incredible.

It would be more simple to say that there was a vast conspiracy among Christ's followers to hide the body and concoct a conspiracy than to say that a body was dead for three days and suddenly was made to be alive.

Not that I feel the need to argue the gospel, but if you choose to believe the gospel, you do so as an article of faith. You can't try and enter logic and reason into the matter.

It's the same with the virgin birth. In religion, the miraculous occurs as a matter of course. It defies logic, which is why faith is the central tenant of all religion.

The problem is that an encounter with God by whatever name is one of those human experiences that cannot be demonstrated to another. For instance you go outside and see your shadow. You go inside and announce to others that you saw your shadow outside. When they go outside it has clouded up and no shadows are visible. At that point you are operating from the certainty of experience. You know what you saw. You know what you experienced.

Everybody else has to take it on faith that you saw what you saw and experienced what you experienced. As positive and secure and certain as you are, you have absolutely no way to prove it. If they don't want to believe you, they won't. But it won't make what you experienced any less true.

So, it's like pornography? Can't describe it, but when you see it, you know it?

 

[AVG-JOE]

VERY curious: What truth led you back and solidified your belief in Jesus as The Christ?

For me it was trusting in the 'Divine' inspiration of The Bible - You said yourself that, in spite of ALL religions containing truths, ALL religions get some of it wrong.

For any book to be Divinely inspired, wouldn't a prerequisite be 100% 'not wrong'?

If The Bible isn't Divinely inspired, what's the point of viewing the stories as anything more than a collection of literature that fills the spectrum from boring to fascinating?

Couple that with the understanding that the stories of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth were first committed to paper no less than 70 years after his death, and the bullshit that history proves people are willing to write down as 'gospel' to make their political point, and I call bullshit on the whole thing.

Now, that's just the humble opinion of this average American Joe. I understand your passion and I defend your right to believe whatever it is that you choose to believe in. I simply am just as passionate about spreading what I consider to be the truth about that period in history.

The pivotal point for me was being willing to let go of ALL preconceived notions about what God is, what God isn't, what the Bible is, what the Bible isn't, what the Christ is, what the Christ isn't etc. and just invite a larger intelligence to make itself known however and whenver it should choose to do that. There is no way to adequately explain what a personal encounter/experience with the Divine Intelligence is like, but it pretty well solidifies its own reality once experienced. And once experienced I could no longer explain away that reality or deny what I finally came to know and understand at least on a limited basis.

The whole key to understanding the divine inspiration of the Bible is to do the really difficult and intense study necessary to read the words through the eyes of those who wrote them. I do believe it was divinely inspired and that is why it remains the No. #1 best selling book of all time since the first manuscripts were produced to the present. And that's after millenia of effort to distort it, snuff it out, deny it to the people. But even more than that, it is observance of those who read the words through the eyes of those who wrote it who come to know the Divine Presence in the process.

Trying to read and interpret the Bible with 21st Century perspective and experience alone is a fool's folly. But competent Bible study does wonders to give us a fresh perspective and understanding and experience of an ancient people and what importance that has for us now.

Again it requires an open mind and a willingness to set aside all our biases and prejudices and any preconceived notions of how it is supposed to be. And that also opens the mind to many possibilities of Intelligent Design and why that makes as much sense as anything we understand of formal religion or science.

I wonder if any of us can truly set aside all our biases. Just the idea that there is A god, rather than gods, is a bias.

But you are correct that spiritual belief is a personal thing that cannot be directly shared with or proven to another, at least at this time. That's why so often religious/spiritual arguments are fun but pointless.

The God one chooses is a direct result of the choices available and allowed when and where one lives and the personal preferences of the chooser. Just like shopping for shoes.

I can say that because there is no other compelling reason to choose one god over another. No miracles this side of unprovable and no wars that were won by one god over another.

 

[AVG-JOE]

The pivotal point for me was being willing to let go of ALL preconceived notions about what God is, what God isn't, what the Bible is, what the Bible isn't, what the Christ is, what the Christ isn't etc. and just invite a larger intelligence to make itself known however and whenver it should choose to do that. There is no way to adequately explain what a personal encounter/experience with the Divine Intelligence is like, but it pretty well solidifies its own reality once experienced. And once experienced I could no longer explain away that reality or deny what I finally came to know and understand at least on a limited basis.

The whole key to understanding the divine inspiration of the Bible is to do the really difficult and intense study necessary to read the words through the eyes of those who wrote them. I do believe it was divinely inspired and that is why it remains the No. #1 best selling book of all time since the first manuscripts were produced to the present. And that's after millenia of effort to distort it, snuff it out, deny it to the people. But even more than that, it is observance of those who read the words through the eyes of those who wrote it who come to know the Divine Presence in the process.

Trying to read and interpret the Bible with 21st Century perspective and experience alone is a fool's folly. But competent Bible study does wonders to give us a fresh perspective and understanding and experience of an ancient people and what importance that has for us now.

Again it requires an open mind and a willingness to set aside all our biases and prejudices and any preconceived notions of how it is supposed to be. And that also opens the mind to many possibilities of Intelligent Design and why that makes as much sense as anything we understand of formal religion or science.

I wonder if any of us can truly set aside all our biases. Just the idea that there is A god, rather than gods, is a bias.

But you are correct that spiritual belief is a personal thing that cannot be directly shared with or proven to another, at least at this time. That's why so often religious/spiritual arguments are fun but pointless.

Pointless perhaps except as an exercise in logic and rational concepts. It requires every bit as much faith to declare there is no God as it does to choose to believe in a God that you have not (yet) personally experienced.

It takes every bit as much faith to declare that all happened purely by chance or by random selection as it does to declare that the universe is guided by some sort of intelligent design.

And those most logical leave open the door for either or both to be possible and continue to allow searching for clues that will increase the body of knowledge of science, however insignificant that is when compared to all the science there is likely still to learn.

How about a mug like me that chooses to walk away, knowing enough about what you perceive as 'God' to have a special place in hell set aside, ass-u-me-ing of course that you're right?

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

In any event…

We’ve established that scientists studying evolution are not ‘liars’ or ‘arrogant,’ that they explore the history of life on Earth in objective good faith.

We’ve also established that creationism/ID is religion per the law and has no place in schools being taught as ‘science.’

Otherwise, carry on.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

This requires special treatment.

What you think about this instance is so large that you couldn't even begin to design a study to support it. People who have tried (i.e. Behe's "Irreducible Complexity") have been made to look like fools (by lawyers, and not scientists, no less).

Nonsense. ID theorists have established both a premise and a methodology of study. There's no try about it. The issue in the Dover case was or should have been over the question of whether or not the Constitution permits the government to exclusively impose your metaphysical apriority on science in the classroom against the fundamental liberties of the people.

The answer is no, and the fascist freak dance of the legal eagles in that case, including that of the court's political hack of a judge, do not change the fact of their tyranny, their depraved indifference to a higher truth and the higher calling of their profession.

As for Behe's rendition of irreducible complexity: Straw man.

The following is from a debate I had with an evolutionary scientist, no less . . . who started out talking to me like I was a retard, but soon discovered that the old evolutionist's song-and-dance, the typical slogan speak that stems from the evolutionist's metaphysical presupposition, can be refuted after all.

Of course there are certainly some proponents who are anti-religious: championed by the likes of Richard Dawkins, but their science is impeccable and elegant. —Labsci

There's nothing “impeccable and elegant” about the prospects of abiogenesis to which he must necessarily appeal.


You say that evolutionists play games with words and categories. . . . —Labsci

They do, at least with respect to the fossil record and the politics of education. As for the latter, they behave like rabid fundamentalists with little regard for the liberty-sustaining prohibitions of natural law. To my mind, whether they be ultimately right or wrong, that makes them a seriously dangerous threat to civil society, and this is especially true of the atheists among them given their tribal predilection for statism in history.

And evolutionists are playing a game of conceptual hide-and-seek when they claim that the classical construct of irreducible complexity in and of itself has been debunked. Refuting Behe’s ill-considered application of it to biochemistry—a half-baked version that fails to anticipate the obvious possibility of degraded systems or their isolated components performing less efficient or alternate functions—is of no consequence. (Incidentally, I wrote him about that possibility back in ’96 after reading his book. Sure enough, well, you know the rest. . . .) Properly rendered, irreducible complexity does not dispute the plausibility of diminished systems; it illustrates the implausibility of complex systems arising by blind luck. That has not been debunked by anyone. Behe should have paid more attention to the essential quality of Paley’s formulation and the prerequisites of Kant’s.

In other words, in the classical tradition, irreducible complexity obtains to the rise of organization from chaos, not to any potential degradation of function. The former entails an uphill battle in the midst of a chaotic collection of precursors vying against conservation. It has to do with the problem of anticipatorily formulating the overarching function of an interdependent system of discretely oriented parts, each contributing to the sum of a whole that could not have orchestrated its own composition from the ground up.

Further, and now comes the slight-of-hand that impresses no one but bleating sheep, evolutionists themselves do not refute Behe’s straw man with the paper biochemistry of evolutionary theory, they cynically refute it with the logic of the classical rendition of irreducible complexity itself. The theoretical mechanism of natural selection does not compose complex machines by systematically stripping them of their parts, instead it must build them without a blueprint and do so in a sea of competing precursors, once again, vying against conservation. It’s not the other way around. Miller can illustrate the alternate functions of degraded mousetraps all he wants, that does not demonstrate that the mechanisms of evolutionary theory are the cause of the comprehensive functions of complex integrated systems.

But the sheep go “bah, bah, bah.”

Debunked?

What kind of scientific term is that anyway? The matter cannot be resolved syllogistically or analogously. It’s a matter of experimentation and falsification.

Now you see it. Now you don’t.

In other words, ultimately, it’s not even a matter of morphology. It’s a matter of accumulating information, not only against a tidal wave of difficulties that rebuff conservation, but against the whims of a genetic material whose sequences are not arranged by any chemically preordained bonding affinity, but by extraneous forces. And to mind that means nothing of particular interest could arise in the first place without the intervention of an intelligent being. I trust that we at least agree on that point, given that you are an theistic evolutionist. Why would you recommend the prattle of an atheist savant who must necessarily override the putative distinction between the vagaries of abiogenesis and the calculi of evolutionary theory?​

EDIT

I dare say that had Paley or Kant, or even Dembski, Sarfati or Berlinski been sitting in the witness chair, the lawyers would have had their asses hand to them.

 

[jillian]

so many words to spout such absolute nonsense...

 

[rdean]

Where do fossils come from?

 

[AVG-JOE]

I wonder where "fossils" come from?

Well, a mommy fossil and a daddy fossil - first they get married...

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

In any event…

We’ve established that scientists studying evolution are not ‘liars’ or ‘arrogant,’ that they explore the history of life on Earth in objective good faith.

We’ve also established that creationism/ID is religion per the law and has no place in schools being taught as ‘science.’

Otherwise, carry on.

On the contrary. We've established that the theory of evolution is ultimately predicated on a metaphysical or absolute naturalism, and that evolutionists lie about that fact as they lie about the nature of ID theory all the time and do so as casually as a dog licks its genitals. We've also established that they are political fascists who rely on a perversion of Constitutional law to exclusively impose their metaphysical apriority on science in the schools.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I wonder where "fossils" come from?

Well, a mommy fossil and a daddy fossil - first they get married...

 

[AVG-JOE]

In any event…

We’ve established that scientists studying evolution are not ‘liars’ or ‘arrogant,’ that they explore the history of life on Earth in objective good faith.

We’ve also established that creationism/ID is religion per the law and has no place in schools being taught as ‘science.’

Otherwise, carry on.

On the contrary. We've established that the theory of evolution is ultimately predicated on a metaphysical or absolute naturalism, and that evolutionists lie about that fact as they lie about the nature of ID theory all the time and do so as casually as a dog licks its genitals. We've also established that they are political fascists who rely on a perversion of Constitutional law to exclusively impose their metaphysical apriority on science in the schools.

We have?



I guess I missed the point of this thread.... must have been the title. still, it's been a good discussion for the most part....

Damn glad I played along!

 

[edthecynic]

In any event…

We’ve established that scientists studying evolution are not ‘liars’ or ‘arrogant,’ that they explore the history of life on Earth in objective good faith.

We’ve also established that creationism/ID is religion per the law and has no place in schools being taught as ‘science.’

Otherwise, carry on.

On the contrary. We've established that the theory of evolution is ultimately predicated on a metaphysical or absolute naturalism, and that evolutionists lie about that fact as they lie about the nature of ID theory all the time and do so as casually as a dog licks its genitals. We've also established that they are political fascists who rely on a perversion of Constitutional law to exclusively impose their metaphysical apriority on science in the schools.

No, we've established that you are completely delusional.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

In any event…

We’ve established that scientists studying evolution are not ‘liars’ or ‘arrogant,’ that they explore the history of life on Earth in objective good faith.

We’ve also established that creationism/ID is religion per the law and has no place in schools being taught as ‘science.’

Otherwise, carry on.

On the contrary. We've established that the theory of evolution is ultimately predicated on a metaphysical or absolute naturalism, and that evolutionists lie about that fact as they lie about the nature of ID theory all the time and do so as casually as a dog licks its genitals. We've also established that they are political fascists who rely on a perversion of Constitutional law to exclusively impose their metaphysical apriority on science in the schools.

We have?



I guess I missed the point of this thread.... must have been the title. still, it's been a good discussion for the most part....

Damn glad I played along!

Correction: most evolutionists in my experience. And yes the original point of the thread went to that.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

so many words to spout such absolute nonsense...

So few words and even less sense to go along with them.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

No, we've established that you are completely delusional.

Now if you could only frame a real argument against my demonstration regarding the self-evident fact of science's metaphysics, which you stupidly deny, my exposition of the absurdity of konradv's scientifically illiterate challenge, geauxtohell's ignorance regarding the nature of Occam's law of parsimony and the utter irrationality of his analogy that logic and natural cause-and-effect are categorically synonymous . . . you might make your lie come true.


Here's another thread, by the way, where the asinine logic of you materialists was handed its ass: http://www.usmessageboard.com/religion-and-ethics/170838-challenge-to-creationists-iders.html

 

[Montrovant]

I have 2 questions for you M.D.

First, what is the premise and methodology of study established by ID theorists? If this requires too long an answer, I'd appreciate a link or perhaps the names of some websites I can find the information at.

Second, are you saying that science should concern itself with the supernatural, even if that means the unobservable?