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Antievolution.org Discussion Board > From the Panda's Thumb > After the Bar Closes... > AFDave's God Hypothesis

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steve_h Posts: 544 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 28 2006,15:44    Quote So, has anyone here come to believe in a 6,000 year old earth and accepted Jesus as their personal savior thanks to Afdave's devastating arguments? I almost did, but then I didn't. (Added quote)

afdave Posts: 1621 Joined: April 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 28 2006,17:06    Quote The real, original Bible, namely the Hebrew Bible, says nothing of the sort, EVEN IF INTERPRETED LITERALLY. You must have been reading some of those sloppy, inaccurate translations of the Hebrew Bible out there, such as the KJV. I have about 5 different Bible versions, a good friend who is a Hebrew scholar, and my dad is a linguist who knows Hebrew and Greek ... does that count for anything?  Or am I still misguided?  You are actually jumping ahead to Points 9 and 10 I think ... I will get to that soon.  Do you have any comments on Point 1? Quote This is what he learned in fundy school So is UT a fundy school now?  I graduated in '86 and it wasn't then ... hmmm ... maybe they changed ... -------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED. A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED. http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

normdoering Posts: 287 Joined: July 2005 (Permalink) Posted: April 28 2006,17:25    Quote (afdave @ April 28 2006,22:06) So is UT a fundy school now? If you learned about "the Global Flood of Noah" at UT, then UT is a fundy school. If you didn't learn about "the Global Flood of Noah" at UT, then you are a liar. A rational person who actually understood logic could use that first premise to positively conclude that you are a liar.  Do you know why?

orrg1 Posts: 4 Joined: April 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 28 2006,19:42    afdave, I'd have to believe by the effort that you've put into your hypothesis that you expected to have maybe a little more impact than you have. Maybe you could if you could bend your own mind a little and consider this. You say: Quote An Incredibly Powerful Being would be expected to build systems of mind-numbing size and power, such as a power generation system to supply power to all His innovative machines, maybe a lighting system so his creatures can see to navigate on the planet, perhaps a water supply and filtration system to provide clean water to His little creations, and so on.  Can we test this prediction?  Again, yes.  We find exactly what we predicted.  The sun is a massive power generation and lighting system which has every appearance of engineering brilliance.  Ditto for earth's hydrologic cycle which provides, filters and circulates water for all life on earth.  The sheer size and power of these systems stagger the human mind and are precisely what we would expect if there were such a thing as an Incredibly Powerful Being, such as God. . My reply, which I've made previously elsewhere, is in the form of an image worth in my mind more than a thousand words - The Hubble Ultra Deep Field image. Now consider that the distance to the nearest star is about 2,400,000,000,000 miles. I can maybe get my mind around that number. The fastest spacecraft that we have ever launched would take about 10,000 years to travel that far at a velocity greater than 8 miles per second. Yet this distance is far below resolvability in this image, where essentially all of the big and little blips are not stars but galaxies. And this image is only a tiny slice of the entire universe, only 10,000 galaxies. The small angle view has been compared to "observing the universe through a straw". All this was done for God's "little creations?". According to the Bible the earth is the center of the universe, yet we can see that it has less significance in this impossibly vast realm of time and space than a single grain of sand does sitting in pile made up of all the sand from all the beaches in the world. Don't you think the authors of the Bible would have changed Genesis if they could have seen this image? Why did God invest so much effort into this tiny dust speck,  but now interacts with the material world more weakly than a neutrino? You also say Quote we find this curious "Law of Right and Wrong" or "Law of Human Nature" at work in our every day experience.  If you examine it, you find that it is quite real and applies to all humans regardless of religious upbringing or lack thereof.  Lewis then argues that there necessarily has to be "Something Behind the Law" which caused it to be. How about the fact that human beings have been interacting socially since before the dawn of agriculture? Tens if not hundreds of thousands of years?  This knowledge was ancient before the Bible was ever written. Morality in fact is the way that humans have learned to tame the violent side of their nature and live and work together in groups. This argument is not academic. Science in the balance has eliminated a great deal of human suffering, and has permitted billions more souls to inhabit the planet than could ever have otherwise existed. In the name of religious authority and an overly literal view of the Bible, treatments that may at some point prevent untold further suffering are being blocked. Now you can comfort yourself thinking that those who suffer here will be compensated in the next life, so in the balance, it is all worth it. Unfortunately, some people piloting large planes at high speed into buildings on 9/11 thought exactly the same thing.

Occam's Aftershave Posts: 5287 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 28 2006,20:51    Hey AFDave, I'm late getting to the party today.  The observation I will make has already been made, but since you didn't address it I will say it again.  Every single event you listed in your Part 1 was a  POSTdiction, not a PREdiction. Stars with huge energy outputs were observed before you hypothesized "God would make big, powerful stars." Altruistic behavior was observed before you hypothesized "God would create right and wrong behavior" People heard voices in their head before you hypothesized "God will send messages to some people" All you are doing is making some ad hoc rationalizations after the fact.  You are providing absolutely nada in the way of a testable hypothesis or supporting data. I can spin that kind of argument any way I want too.  I can hypothesize "A Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being could create all necessary physical laws in the first femtosecond of existence, then just sit back and observe the results.  Therefore when I observe scientific data that says the universe is 14 Billion years old, and the Earth is 4.5 Billion years old, and that life has existed on Earth for over 3 billion years, and that life has evolved over that time by observed processes such as random mutations plus natural selection, I have just verified my hypothesis. Can you see any flaw in that reasoning? You're already flying into that fog bank and disregarding your instruments.  Still not too late to pull up and avoid the CFIT. -------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims." - Joke "Sharon" Gallien, world's dumbest YEC.

afdave Posts: 1621 Joined: April 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,02:32    AF Dave Explains Cain's Wife Many people ask the question, "If the the Book of Genesis is true, who did Cain marry?" It's a very good question and there is a very good, scientific answer.  Before I do that, let me say thanks for stopping by and if you want to hear more, check for other "AFDave" articles on this blog or on my own blog (airdave.blogspot.com).  I spend more time here, though. The short answer is that with no other information than what the Bible gives, we have to assume CAIN MARRIED ONE OF HIS SISTERS. This raises some obvious questions like "Huh??" and "Yuk!" and "What about biological deformities?" and the like ... My answer comes from (surprise! ... www.answersingenesis.com ... you can find the whole article here http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/tools/cains_wife.asp, but I will extract some of it for you ... Today, brothers and sisters (and half-brothers and half-sisters, etc.) are not permitted by law to marry because their children have an unacceptably high risk of being deformed. The more closely the parents are related, the more likely it is that any offspring will be deformed. There is a very sound genetic reason for such laws that is easy to understand. Every person has two sets of genes that specify how a person is put together and functions. Each person inherits one gene of each pair from each parent. Unfortunately, genes today contain many mistakes, and these mistakes show up in a variety of ways. For instance, some people let their hair grow over their ears to hide the fact that one ear is lower than the other—or perhaps someone’s nose is not quite in the middle of his or her face, or someone’s jaw is a little out of shape—and so on. Let’s face it, the main reason we call each other normal is because of our common agreement to do so! The more distantly related parents are, the more likely it is that they will have different mistakes in their genes. Children, inheriting one set of genes from each parent, are likely to end up with pairs of genes containing a maximum of one bad gene in each pair. The good gene tends to override the bad so that a deformity (a serious one, anyway) does not occur. Instead of having totally deformed ears, for instance, a person may only have crooked ones! (Overall, though, the human race is slowly degenerating as mistakes accumulate, generation after generation.) However, the more closely related two people are, the more likely it is that they will have similar mistakes in their genes, since these have been inherited from the same parents. Therefore, a brother and a sister are more likely to have similar mistakes in their genes. A child of a union between such siblings could inherit the same bad gene on the same gene pair from both, resulting in two bad copies of the gene and serious defects. However, Adam and Eve did not have accumulated genetic mistakes. When the first two people were created, they were physically perfect. Everything God made was ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31), so their genes were perfect—no mistakes! But, when sin entered the world (because of Adam—Genesis 3:6ff, Romans 5:12), God cursed the world so that the perfect creation then began to degenerate, that is, suffer death and decay (Romans 8:22). Over thousands of years, this degeneration has produced all sorts of genetic mistakes in living things. Cain was in the first generation of children ever born. He (as well as his brothers and sisters) would have received virtually no imperfect genes from Adam or Eve, since the effects of sin and the Curse would have been minimal to start with (it takes time for these copying errors to accumulate). In that situation, brother and sister could have married with God’s approval, without any potential to produce deformed offspring. By the time of Moses (a few thousand years later), degenerative mistakes would have built up in the human race to such an extent that it was necessary for God to forbid brother-sister (and close relative) marriage (Leviticus 18–20).12 (Also, there were plenty of people on the Earth by now, and there was no reason for close relations to marry.) -------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED. A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED. http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

hehe Posts: 59 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,03:36    Since it would be easy for "god" to create a partner for Cain, we should assume that there's nothing morally wrong with banging one's sister (or mother, or daughter) as long as deformed children are not born

Faid Posts: 1143 Joined: Mar. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,04:24    Once again, dave: your answer (although it's not yours, you're just parroting every known attempt to explain this) is, like I said, quite adequate- for religion. It is not, however, scientific. In a scientific hypothesis, you cannot explain the flaws in your assumptions by making even wilder (and unsupportable) assumptions: that makes the whole hypothesis a joke. So, you may argue about a supposed "genetic perfection" that would make incest possible then (although, if I may add, Cain was born after your entity put a "curse" upon the world, furious that its children- what? Ate an apple it said not to? Sheesh) But there is simply no way to scientifically support that. For the same reasons, I could explain how your selective reading of your inerrant book failed to see that Cain knew his wife after he fled to Nod, and also that he built a city for just him, his wife, and his son. Then, of course, you'd check your sites and come back with the pre-cut answers: that Cain was already married, and "knew" here means "had sex" (although his wife was never mentioned before) -and also that the Hebrew word translated here as "city" actually means "small town" that could hold as little as 100 people (which makes you wonder why these people, obviously brothers of Cain, were exiled with him- and, BTW, why don't they tell us what the ancient Hebrew word translated as "knew" in the case of Cain's wife actually meant, too?) You see, it's all pointless. Assumptions, assumptions, and then more assumptions to explain them- and, the more you make, the more impossible it is to relate them with observations of the real world. As a logical excercise that helps you defend your religious dogma, all this works fine- and, in fact, that's how it was meant to be used. As a scientific hypothesis, it totally sucks. Sorry. -------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty: "The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information" "...mutations can add information to a genome.  And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."

Faid Posts: 1143 Joined: Mar. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,04:39    Quote (hehe @ April 29 2006,08:36) Since it would be easy for "god" to create a partner for Cain, we should assume that there's nothing morally wrong with banging one's sister (or mother, or daughter) as long as deformed children are not born   Yes, it seems that, in the universal and eternal moral codes this entity has set from the dawn of time, incest is just fine, as long as no offspring is produced nowadays. Now it's my mind that whirls with implications... -------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty: "The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information" "...mutations can add information to a genome.  And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."

Rilke's Granddaughter Posts: 311 Joined: Jan. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,04:41    Dave, are you quite sure you understand what a 'hypothesis' consists of?  And what 'predictions' consist of? Your predictions do not follow directly from your hypothesis; therefore they cannot be used to confirm your hypothesis. This matter of logic needs to be settled before we go into the details of why you are wrong.

Chris Hyland Posts: 705 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,04:44    Quote (a) A Super Intelligent Being would be expected to design highly sophisticated machines and systems.  So we would expect to find a vast number of wonderful innovations in the universe which at least appear to be designed. Subjective statements like this are hardly scientific, in my opinion you don't even need a good knowledge of biology to see that nature does not look intelligently designed at all, incompetently designed, or at least designed by Rube Goldberg. Quote Our awe of the wonders of nature has increased exponentially. There are three absolute "must reads" on this topic--"Darwin's Black Box" by Michael Behe, "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" and "Nature's Destiny" both by Michael Denton. I've read the first one. If that is a good example of the quailty of creationiist literature Ill give the others a pass thanks. Quote An Incredibly Powerful Being would be expected to build systems of mind-numbing size and power, such as a power generation system to supply power to all His innovative machines, maybe a lighting system so his creatures can see to navigate on the planet, perhaps a water supply and filtration system to provide clean water to His little creations, and so on. If I was an incredibly powerful being I would create creatures that could see in the dark and survive without water. Quote Basically, the argument is that we find this curious "Law of Right and Wrong" or "Law of Human Nature" at work in our every day experience.  If you examine it, you find that it is quite real and applies to all humans regardless of religious upbringing or lack thereof.  Lewis then argues that there necessarily has to be "Something Behind the Law" which caused it to be.  I think he makes his point very well and I agree with him.  Come on, guys, I read Dawkins' stuff, so you can read Lewis' stuff ... let's be fair. I read Narnia does that count, has Lewis written any science books, people read Dawkins because they want to learn about science, religion is not science. It could also be argued that certain behaivours may have been an evolutionary advantage. Quote If there is such a thing as a Being who can "speak" things into existence using advanced scientific principles which humans have not yet discovered If I was God I would speak things into existence using supernatural principles. As other people have pointed out you seem to have misunderstood what a prediction is. I imagine you are aware of the prediciton regarding the chromosome fusion in humans as compared to chimps. This was a prediction because we did not know the sequences or the mappings of chimp chromosomes. If we already had the sequences of chimp chromosomes 12 & 13 (Now 2A and 2B) we would already know how they matched up and it wouldn't be a prediction, it would be a retrodiction of a postdiction.

orrg1 Posts: 4 Joined: April 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,04:59    Forgive me for a moment for descending into amateur philosophizing, but you may be repelled by the picture I describe in my previous post. Most creationists would take from my words that if this were reality, our Earth is nothing but an invisible speck, its inhabitants created by accident, leading lives devoid of hope or significance. Because of this, their actions have no meaning. Whether good or evil, they are ultimately unimportant in the whole scope of things. But this is such an oversimplified, cartoonish view that it is completely incorrect. There is the important fact that we are a sentient life form, and have to date found no evidence of any others. Surely some exist, but they may be rare enough that given the vast distances between them, they might as well all be single creations. So effectively we alone may have the intelligence to probe the truths of our universe. To explore and learn more. This makes human life more precious than ever envisioned in the Bible, while at the same time our toehold in the universe is much more fragile than we have ever believed. Our morality in this case is not handed down from an infinitely wise being, but the product of thousands upon thousands of years of cultural evolution. Sure, human civilization has been a history of warfare, enslavement, and subjugation, but underlying that, in people's day to day relations there was always empathy and altruism. A group who's every social interaction was defined by the law of the jungle surely could not form an agricultural society, and survive to pass on their violent ways. The moral area that we have evolved the least is in our interaction between rather than within groups. We still have a distinct tribal nature.  The United States is the greatest example on the planet of overcoming this legacy, but it is obvious that we still have far to go.   So why bother? Simply for the reason that we always have bothered, so that our children, grandchildren, and generations yet untold may use our progress as a starting point, and far exceed it. There are still so many fascinating things to learn, and places to explore. The first step is that we need to learn to accommodate the ultimate number of people that will exist on Earth, without destabilizing the environment and making the planet uninhabitable by humans. At the same time, we need to avoid committing mass suicide (really mass murder by the few with the means) by use of nuclear and/or biological weapons. Then we need to learn how to set up self sufficient colonies on planets and moons in our solar system, so that our tenuous existence cannot be wiped out by a random asteroid, or to find some means to defend against them. Ultimately, we may be able to spread humanity to nearby stars, and at that point, you can't tell me "so what, what is it all for?" It is our distant descendents who will know the answer. What scares me are not the unbelievers, but the true believers who think that the Earth is ours to exploit at our whim. That it is ok that nuclear proliferation is now rapidly picking up speed. So what, it can only hasten the Rapture, or the return of the Mahdi, when all of the "good" will be taken up into heaven. That there are some at high levels of power, or who are "super-empowering" themselves, as Tom Friedman says, that truly believe this, is what I worry about. If such people had been in charge during the Cuban Missile Crisis, you can read "Hiroshima" by John Hershey or look at Paul Fusco's online multimedia presentation on Chernobyl to get a small feel for what life would have been like.  I worry that our little spark of self-awareness, our intelligence that is strong enough to wrestle deep secrets from nature, that has come into being only after billions of years of development, will be snuffed out. There will be only eternal darkness in our corner of the galaxy, our lost race the victim of ancient superstitions. Now you may say, wait a minute, won't it have been science who created the weapons of our own destruction?  Science is nothing more than the systematic pursuit of knowledge, and there is no good and bad knowledge. If we did not pursue knowledge, we would not be human. Yes, you may say it would have been better if we had sufficient knowledge to overcome our superstitions before we gained the knowledge enabling our self destruction, but this was not to be. It's in our hands now.

Faid Posts: 1143 Joined: Mar. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,05:27    Hey Dave, here's another who thinks life on Earth has no "top of the heap". Don't be surprised: There's actually quite a few of us- especially if you look into that "intelligent, educated segment of the culture". -------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty: "The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information" "...mutations can add information to a genome.  And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."

afdave Posts: 1621 Joined: April 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,05:27    Thanks for all the good input ... I do enjoy posting on this site (as opposed to an ID or YEC site) precisely because most people here DO NOT agree with me ... I have yet to find one that does ... my thought is ... why put sugar into lemonade that's already sweet? I enjoy reading, thinking, writing and debating, and trying to persuade people to adopt the right ideas.  I love living in the USA because more than anything else, the USA is an IDEA for whom our founders risked everything.  At our capitol building in Missouri, it has a saying posted prominently something to the effect of "Ideas are Incredibly Powerful" and they are.  My BIG IDEA is that the USA is the most successful nation ever in the history of the planet precisely BECAUSE it was founded squarely upon a literal interpretation of by far the best, most accurate (scientifically and historically) and valuable collection of writings ever written--the Christian Scriptures.  For this reason, I am very politically involved, I make financial contributions to Christian activist organizations, and I am actively working to employ several strategies to ensure to continued dominance of the General Christian worldview throughout our government.  By the way, I'm full time now at non-profit activities such as this, so I'm really starting to have fun.  Not to worry, though.  We're not planning on taking America back to medieval Europe when the supposedly Christian popes ruled like tyrants.  No ... my vision is simply to restore the Protestant Christian principles into all levels of government which have proven themselves to be so successful for making happy citizens and allowing all people to enjoy the freedom to practice whatever religion they choose:  Atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Evolutionists and all other religions are all quite welcome in this country.  We Protestant Christians won't execute you if you don't want to practice Protestant Christianity.  Also, whether we like what is IN the Christian Scriptures or not, the fact is that skeptics have tried for centuries to  do precisely what some people on this blog are trying to do and they have failed.  The Bible DOES in fact appear to be literally true, when one examines it honestly. Now to answer some objections ... Occam's Aftershave ... first, you dodged my response to your first objection and now you are bringing up a second.  That's fine, but I would like to hear your answer to my first response.  To respond to your second ... the fact that we observed all these things you mention BEFORE I proposed my hypothesis means nothing.  Remember, we are hypothesizing about something we have never seen.  Someone on this thread said that "we have to explain the phenomenon (God) in terms of other phenomena that are well-understood, and simpler than the phenomenon we are purporting to explain."  He is correct in my view and I think I have done that in my predictions. Further, the Great Founders of Modern Science made many of their great discoveries by doing precisely what I have done in, for example, my Testable Prediction A.  Newton hypothesized that there was an Intelligent Creator and he made the prediction that because of this, we should expect to find order in the Universe.  He then set about to try to support his hypothesis and I would say he was successful, wouldn't you? Had he or others observed order in the universe BEFORE he made this prediction?  Of course, but this did not invalidate his hypothesis or his predictions.  Does this help?  One other thing to keep in mind as we proceed through my Hypothesis ... many modern scientists have basically "booted out" many previously well accepted "Rules for Science" and have erected some of their own rules.  I understand, they haven't booted everything ... I agree that modern scientists have and will continue to do extremely useful work ... I'm all for this ... my business, my health, my food ... many things have benefited from this process.  But this idea of "Science is not science if it even mentions the possibility of a 'god'" is just foolish.  Theology actually used to be called "The Queen of Sciences" in the Western world and I predict that it will soon go full circle and ascend the throne once more.  Michael Denton's fascinating conclusion to his book, "Nature's Destiny" makes this prediction.  Lastly, I invite you to do two things (a) go ahead and propose your own hypothesis and try to defend it as you have suggested and (b) imagine for a minute IF THERE REALLY WAS a God as described in the Bible and there REALLY IS the possibility of Heaven and He11 and all those other things ... I think you at least have to admit that it's LOGICALLY possible that it's true.  This being said, why would anyone simply make statements like "Well, it can't be true" (I hear this alot here at PT) or the converse "It's in the Bible so it has to be true" (I'm accused of this some in spite of the fact that I don't say this) without any attempt at verification whatsoever?  Both statements seem like utter foolishness to me. To me, it is the Evolution Dogmatists that are flying in the fog bank and leading many unsuspecting young students to think like they do.  I am trying to lead those students into some clear air before it's too late. Quote Utter rubbish Don't know how to respond unless you get more specific. Quote My Flood is nonsense (even before seeing my evidence) Another quite original response similar to the one above--I'll show you plenty of evidence in good time -- Points 5 & 6 of my Hypothesis -- we're only on Point 1 right now Quote Cain's wife A very common question and a good one ... I give my answer here ... http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....;t=1956 Quote "Speaks" is a temporal act Unfortunately, humans are limited with a finite number of words and I am further limiting myself to a subset of all possible words called the English language.  Of course, I don't mean that God spoke the world into existence in the human sense of the word.  If you have a suggestion for a better way to propose that piece of my hypothesis, I am open to it. Quote Have I ever read a book on evolution? Yes ... many of them.  How can I NOT?  They are EVERYWHERE!  I have to work real hard to find my kids some science books that DON'T have some form of the Evolution Religion worked in.  By the way ... I have trouble finding museums for my kids that don't preach "Evolution and Millions of Years" also, but that's about to change!  See this link ... http://www.answersingenesis.org/museum/ Quote Further, it completely abuses the principle of parsimony, which leads us to accept for consideration the hypothesis that asks us to make the fewest and the best supported assumptions. I think I have observed this principle well ... how have I not?  Can you be specific? Quote Beliefs such as yours cannot be BOTH honest and rational; attempting to pretend to rationality only undermines your honesty while adding nothing rational to your beliefs. Is this what you really want? If modern Dogmatists of the Evolution Religion are the ones setting the rules for what is rational and what is not, then, of course, it follows that they would think people like me are NOT rational or logical.  If however, we return to some of the Pre-Darwin principles of science which in my opinion have been WRONGLY booted out, then I think I would be considered to be both rational and logical. Quote I don't anticipate that you'll get much traction here with the evidence you present and I can't imagine you expect to; nor, however, do I expect this will deter you. So, before the ritualized but necessary debunking begins, That's a very good description -- "Ritualized Debunking" -- it almost conjures up images from Dan Brown's novel of Sophie's grandfather and his secret ritual dance.  Obviously, that would be a stretch, but it interesting to watch some of the same "rituals" we saw in organized religion--the medieval Roman Catholic Church--being carried out today by another bastion of power--Acedemia. Quote Please don't try to present evidence for a young earth or a global flood, it's not funny any more. I will soon, but you don't have to listen if you don't want to. Quote Why oh why does anything about god matter in even the slightest bit to humans? Funny isn't it?  There were almost 500 responses to "The God Meter" thread on the main PT site.  People love to talk about God and I think I know why!  I would like to officially propose to the moderators of PT that they start many more "God" topics. Quote Looks pretty ad hoc to me.  Wonderful.  How and why? Quote The Old Testament was passed down orally through generations. The four Gospels were all written long after the death of Jesus, differ in details. No. THIS is the oral tradition that has now been thoroughly debunked.  Go read Josh McDowell's "Evidence That Demands a Verdict, vol 2" and his "New Evidence That Demands a Verdict" and Lee Strobel's "The Case For ..." books.  No one has ever found any JEDP documents and writing is now known to have occurred LONG before Moses, which was the basis for the Documentary Hypothesis in the first place.  Dan Brown is actually doing Christian apologists a HUGE favor by getting people to examine many of the lame assertions such as this which have been put forward by skeptics then debunked for centuries. Quote Also, how well does your hypothesis survive this test: if the various religious texts are indeed the Word of God, wouldn't we expect them to largely agree with each other? No. We must critically examine each of them as they arise.  Many Christian apologists have done this through the centuries.  I'll try to give you some reading sources for this soon. Quote If I were creating a hypothesis about how the universe came to exist, the last thing I would predict would be personal greeting cards from its creator to individual humans.  Really?  Why not?  Can you imagine you and your wife (or husband) having some kids, then giving them some greeting cards at Christmas and at Birthdays? Quote Most engineers I know try to design simple systems.  Really?  So you think an Boeing 777 is simple?  Is the Space Shuttle simple?  How about a Pentium chip?  Simple?  Hmmmm ... don't follow you there ...   Quote Would an all-powerful entity, that made an entire universe for one species, waste so much space and energy for nothing? If the sun is an amazing power plant created for us alone, why are there so many others (billionz and billionz of them, as that late evil atheist would say), larger and more efficient, that burn in vain?  I would not say they are all in vain.  For example, I think all those stars and galaxies are beautiful, don't you?  Is it in vain that my wife likes to decorate my house with pretty things? Quote Also, where do you see this sense of "right and wrong" in the universe outside ourselves? Where exactly are these "laws" written in the universe? in the stars? the earth? where? Good question.  Others had this question also.  I will do a separate post with some explanation of this.  Look for "AF Dave Explains CS Lewis' Morality Laws" soon. Quote afdave, I'd say you'd have more fun posting on umcommon descent where people who think like you tend to gravitate See my "Sugar in Lemonade" remark above. Quote Oh and I have read Lewis, he doesn't bring anything new to the table either.  If you have read one Christian apologist you have read them all.  They all play by a different set of "logic" rules, make stuff up as they go along, make extreemly subjective and unproveable claims, all of which kills any chance of a meaningful discussion. Yes.  They play by rules that we "underlings" with smaller, less-evolved brains can actually understand.  Sometimes modern "intellectual elites" speak in such erudite terms that I sometimes wonder if THEY UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN STATEMENTS THEMSELVES! Quote Here is an introductory lesson in critical thinking for you: 1) The fact that many people make the same claim, and have done so for a very long time, is not evidence that their claims are true.  An idea's popularity is not an indication of its validity. Did I say that my hypothesis is valid because it's popular?  Where did I say that? Quote Oh my, wild assertions person meet wild assertions person. You'd think I was hypothesizing that the moon was made of green cheese.  These aren't wild assertions.  There's a lot of reasonable people (many of them got their PH.D's in secular universities, then rejected Evolutionism because it didn't make any sense to them) who not only have put forward these same assertions, but they have arrived at them independently from their own research. Quote Don't you think the authors of the Bible would have changed Genesis if they could have seen this image? No.  The idea that early humans were somehow dumb and didn't know anything about science is an invention of modern skeptics.  There is now all kinds of good evidence that there was a vast amount of scientific understanding back to 3000BC and before. Quote Why did God invest so much effort into this tiny dust speck,  but now interacts with the material world more weakly than a neutrino? Why would you and your spouse invest so much time and effort into having a tiny baby who screams and yells and totally rearranges your life? One word.  LOVE.  I could give you the Bible verse if you like, but if you are anything like Arlen Chatfield, you probably know it already. Quote In the name of religious authority and an overly literal view of the Bible, treatments that may at some point prevent untold further suffering are being blocked. Can you elaborate? OK ... fire away again! -------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED. A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED. http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

afdave Posts: 1621 Joined: April 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,06:18    Well Faid, as I said on another thread, there are many people coming over to the AIG position, many of them who earned PH.D's at secular universities and were also skeptics like yourself.  Maybe you should talk with them.  And if this does not convince you, maybe you should set up your own "Ministry" to convince people of you and your fellow skeptics beliefs.  Maybe you could get invitations to churches if you were convincing enough.  Rent a sports stadium and have big conferences and promote your view in a big way!  This is America ... go for it! -------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED. A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED. http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

Faid Posts: 1143 Joined: Mar. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,06:23    Dave, what we've patiently explained to you is that you cannot propose a "scientific" hypothesis where the very observations you try to explain are also used as testable predictions. Your, quite lengthy, reply, basically boils down to "Nuh-huh". Imagine if Newton had said: -I observe that things fall down -I propose that it's God's Omnipresent Hand that pushes them down -I predict that, if God's Omnipresent Hand exists, it will push things down everywhere in the world -I examine the world -I see that things fall down -I conclude that my testable predictions have been confirmed, and God's Omnipresent Hand exists. Do you really think that, in that case, anyone would think of him today as anything more than a crackpot? I'm afraid I can't put it in a plainer way. Your arguments belong in theology, not science. You may try to display some honesty yourself and admit that, before you start implying that we are not "honest" when we read the bible and fail to see how it's literally true. At least, please try and do some reading on the scientific method, to understand what it is. That's not much to ask... -------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty: "The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information" "...mutations can add information to a genome.  And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."

Faid Posts: 1143 Joined: Mar. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,06:40    Also, regarding your response to me... Here's something that might help you understand why all this you've been saying is not science: If the "prediction" from your "hypothesis" is that "God would create a unique and mostly efficient power plant just for us", how is that verified in a Universe of billions of galaxies? If the prediction actually is "God would create a unique, special power plant just for us... and then, create a bajillion larger, more efficient and durable ones just because they're pretty", then how on earth does this "prediction" derive from your hypothesis? (other that trying to explain what you already see, of course... ) ...You had "mysterious ways" at the tip of your tongue just now, dint'ya?   -------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty: "The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information" "...mutations can add information to a genome.  And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."

improvius Posts: 807 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,06:55    I don't want to waste too much time on this nonsense, but I'll dismantle one of your predictions on the incredibly off chance it will help you. Quote (d) We would expect that IF there were such a thing as a Supernatural Being like  my "God" persona, we would expect there to be many claims that people have received Written Messages from Him.  Can we test this prediction?  Again, yes.  There are many ... the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Koran to name a few. Let's look at just ONE major assumptions this involves: It is impossible for such a Supernatural Being to exist unless that Being sends written messages. Now, does this actually make sense to you? -------------- Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37) Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.

Occam's Aftershave Posts: 5287 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,07:01    Hi AFDave, Quote ... first, you dodged my response to your first objection and now you are bringing up a second.  That's fine, but I would like to hear your answer to my first response.  To respond to your second ... the fact that we observed all these things you mention BEFORE I proposed my hypothesis means nothing.   My objection WAS my answer to your first response.  You can name 10,000 observations after the fact, but none of those observations are predictions that logically follow from your hypothesis. "A God with a sense of esthetics would make a beautiful blue sky.  WOW!  Look at that, the sky is blue!" Why not green, or purple?  If the sky was green, you'd claim it as evidence for God too, wouldn't you? "A God with a sense of humor would create a group of goofballs that choose to be willfully ignorant of 150+ years of verified and cross-correlating scientific evidence!" OK, you got me on that one Then there's always the flip side that you avoid "A kind, loving God would protect and nurture his children." Gee, there's ebola, and cancer, and tsunamis in the Pacific that kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Oops. And speaking of dodging responses, I asked you Quote I can spin that kind of argument any way I want too.  I can hypothesize "A Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being could create all necessary physical laws in the first femtosecond of existence, then just sit back and observe the results.  Therefore when I observe scientific data that says the universe is 14 Billion years old, and the Earth is 4.5 Billion years old, and that life has existed on Earth for over 3 billion years, and that life has evolved over that time by observed processes such as random mutations plus natural selection, I have just verified my hypothesis. Can you see any flaw in that reasoning? Well? A couple of final point (for today) First:  You were fairly warned that if you try to BS your way through the technical details of the sciences involved in discussing the ToE, or a 6000 year old Earth, etc. you are going to get your ass handed to you on a plate, and you most deservedly will.  Getting your scientific understanding from a Christian Apologetic site like AIG is like trying to understand a hundred years of aircraft history and design by reading Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  If you are serious about understanding, you must go to the primary scientific literature (many scientific papers are available at PubMed), or at a minimum sites that reference the primary scientific literature.  There are many good "neutral" sites on the web, like the U.C. Berkeley Museum of Paleontology, for example. Second:  With all due respects, trying to "prove" the existence of God by examining the physical world is a fool's errand.  Religion is a matter of individual faith, and trying to "prove" that your particular flavor of religion is the only *correct* is not only foolhardy, it's an insult to the intelligence of people who have already formed their own individual ideas based on knowledge that you lack. Have a good weekend, chat more soon. -------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims." - Joke "Sharon" Gallien, world's dumbest YEC.

Faid Posts: 1143 Joined: Mar. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,07:12    Why so jumpy alluva sudden? What happened to your thick skin? Quote Well Faid, as I said on another thread, there are many people coming over to the AIG position, many of them who earned PH.D's at secular universities and were also skeptics like yourself.  Maybe you should talk with them. Maybe I should... But now I'm talking with you. Quote And if this does not convince you A stand-alone Argumentum ad Verecundiam (especially a highly disputable one) never convinces me. Quote maybe you should set up your own "Ministry" to convince people of you and your fellow skeptics beliefs. Indoctrination is not my thing, thanks. Quote Maybe you could get invitations to churches if you were convincing enough.  Rent a sports stadium and have big conferences and promote your view in a big way!  This is America ... go for it! ... ...Um, you are aware that you're babbling now, right? Relax, man. Like I said, I have no problem with you using all these arguments to defend your dogma in theological discussions. That's why they were made. Just don't try to pass it off as science. That's all I'm saying. -------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty: "The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information" "...mutations can add information to a genome.  And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."

normdoering Posts: 287 Joined: July 2005 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,07:52    Quote (improvius @ April 29 2006,11:55) I don't want to waste too much time on this nonsense, but I'll dismantle one of your predictions on the incredibly off chance it will help you. Quote (d) We would expect that IF there were such a thing as a Supernatural Being like  my "God" persona, we would expect there to be many claims that people have received Written Messages from Him.  Can we test this prediction?  Again, yes.  There are many ... the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Koran to name a few. Let's look at just ONE major assumptions this involves: It is impossible for such a Supernatural Being to exist unless that Being sends written messages. Now, does this actually make sense to you? And what about the fact that the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Koran to name a few, don't agree with each other? Can't God keep his story straight? Why does he tell people different stories and watch them kill each other over who has the true one? If he wants us to know what he thinks, why didn't he write it in the sky with Adam's language? Or every human language? Why do his words have to be transcribed by human hands. Are we to believe that he can kill every first born in  Egypt and turn  Lot's wife into salt but he can't write a message in the sky?

dhogaza Posts: 525 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,09:46    Quote When the first two people were created, they were physically perfect. I could swear that I read somewhere that Adam was missing a rib ...

stephenWells Posts: 127 Joined: April 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,09:58    Here's a neat prediction based on evolutionary theory: Land vertebrates are descended from sea vertebrates. The transition occured in the late Devonian (appearance of first amphibians in the fossil record). Transitional forms would be fish-like creatures living in shallow water, whose fins have weight-bearing adaptations (e.g. digits). Therefore, if we look in rocks that were laid down in the late Devonian from shallow-water (river delta) sediments, we should find transitional forms. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Tiktaalik. Now, what does AFDave's "hypothesis" have to say on the subject? If this creator God known how to make land creatures, sea creatures, and amphibians, each according to their kind, then no transitional form should exist. Tiktaalik exists. Dave's hypothesis is falsified. Go, and sin no more

stephenWells Posts: 127 Joined: April 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,10:11    Since the book of Genesis is not true, the question is entirely moot. AFDave, haven't you noticed, that Genesis 2 4:25 is a different creation story, which contradicts the one in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 1:3? In Genesis 1, God creates all the animals ( verses 24-25 ) and then creates man and woman (vv 26-27). In Genesis 2, God creates a man (v 7), then creates all the animals afterwards (18-20) and finally creates a woman from the man's rib (21-22). So Dave, did God create the animals before or after man? Have fun trying to explain that one Keywords: P-document, J-document. BTW Dave, have you read the Epic of Gilgamesh? Or the Eddas? There are other fun myths out there as well, you don't have to stick to just one.

hehe Posts: 59 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,11:16    Quote Yes, it seems that, in the universal and eternal moral codes this entity has set from the dawn of time, incest is just fine, as long as no offspring is produced nowadays. Yes, of course. Moreover, since this "god" was supposed to forbid incest later, it either proves that she is a moral relativist, or the Bible is not inerrant

afdave Posts: 1621 Joined: April 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,11:32    Excellent ... keep 'em coming ... I'll be doing a single mass rebuttal on Monday morning ... And who knows ... maybe even a retraction or two if your arguments are good enough ... I'm an open-minded guy! -------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED. A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED. http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

MidnightVoice Posts: 380 Joined: Aug. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,11:46    I've met God!  And She's black!! -------------- If I fly the coop some time And take nothing but a grip With the few good books that really count It's a necessary trip I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket The girl with the pearl-driller's hands

afdave Posts: 1621 Joined: April 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,11:48    Yes, I've read many of the myths and they help confirm my theory that the Christian Bible is inerrant ... we'll cover that under Point 9 of my "Creator God Hypothesis".  I have also studied the different sections of Genesis and, as you can probably guess, have a different theory than you which I believe has excellent support. You make a good point, however, that I should add some more information into my hypothesis between Points 2 & 3 which specifically addresses the Cain's wife issue.  I did mention that my hypothesis is a draft and I am open to additions and changes as they become necessary. Faid, don't be offended by my joke about starting your own "ministry" ... by the way, I do have your detailed questions from yesterday (?) saved and will answer them as I have time. I appreciate all the comments ... see you Monday! -------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED. A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED. http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

Jay Ray Posts: 92 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,12:04    Biblical literalism is transparently illogical and ultimately boring as actual debate.  Why has AFDave come here to parrot the AiG script to us?  Is it a ministry of some sort?   As someone arguing as a supernaturalist, Avocationist was much more interesting.  Too bad she fled AtBC.

UnMark Posts: 97 Joined: Mar. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: April 29 2006,12:49    Dave, this seems to be your hypothesis: I believe in God.  God made "stuff."  "Stuff" exists.  Therefore God exists.  That's all.  Thanks for wasting my time hoping you'd have something new or creative while presenting only the same old banal canards. I read Strobel's Case for Christ.  Before reading it, I was a skeptical "Christmas and Easter" Christian.  After reading it, I'm an atheist.  Anyone with some functioning gray matter should have been able to see just how abysmal it is.  I wrote this on another forum: Quote Strobel spent the first half of the book using straw man, special pleading, begging the question, bifurcation, and a few other fallacious arguments to attempt to prove the Gospels accurate and reliable. It failed miserably to answer any questions or provide any solid evidence to bolster its case, and I spent a good portion of the book either yelling at or laughing at the author, his "experts," and their inanity. The second half of the book then proceeded to use it's "proven to to be accurate reliable" Gospels as the only source of evidence regarding the existence ot Christ. After reading what was hearlded as one of the best Christian apologetics books I was convinced only of the intellectual dishonesty of Strobel, his experts, and the rest of the Christian Apologetics movement. [quote="afdave"] Quote Have you ever read a book on evolution? Yes ... many of them.  How can I NOT?  They are EVERYWHERE!  I have to work real hard to find my kids some science books that DON'T have some form of the Evolution Religion worked in.  By the way ... I have trouble finding museums for my kids that don't preach "Evolution and Millions of Years"....[/quote] I've never quite come up with a suitable response when someone says stuff like this.  I finally read one in an editorial some months ago...  Dave, I thank you for deliberately making your kids as stupid as possible.  I thank you because no matter how "normal" my children turn out to be, they will undoubtably be better educated than yours.  I also note the deep hypocracy - you all demand that we teach "both sides of the issue," but refuse to do so with your own children! Dave, how do you explain away the mountains of radiometric datings that prove the earth is some 4.5 billion years old?

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