All the laws in the first five books of the Bible were just too much for us to handle therefor God handed down the simplified !0 Commandments which we still struggle with. 
*OFFICIAL Bamabake - blackumbrella SMACKDOWN THREAD*
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bayoutider said:All the laws in the first five books of the Bible were just too much for us to handle therefor God handed down the simplified !0 Commandments which we still struggle with.
Moses: "The Lord gives you these eleven...(drops one tablet) TEN...TEN commandments!" :tongue:
bat123
All-American
bat123
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BamaNation said:Nothing wrong with a good debate from all comers! Especially between those who firmly believe what they believe and generally know why they believe it.
It's what made us such a unique country over the last 200+ yrs.
The only thing I dislike is the way debates turn personal very quickly. I can agree to disagree on any number of issues, but despise condescension.
So, as long as we debate the issues and not our personal intelligence, I'm all for debate!
I couldn't agree more. Honest intellectual debate has often been the cornerstone of a solid education. Consider the Greek Gymnasium for reference.
Moses started out with 15 commandments (you know, 3x5). You've just got to have more respect for your cultural heritage. :biggrin2:IH8Orange said:
bamabake said:
Evolution, per se, is the best scientific argument for the origins of life, whether you believe in it or not. [and here, I am not talking about belief in a religious sense, as belief in true scientific theory is not governed by blind faith or adherence to dogma, but on the basis of supportable fact and observation].
'Intelligent design' or 'creationism' is not science, in any true meaning of the word. True science is built upon axioms and theory that is (1) never pretending to be complete, just accurate to within the limits of our knowledge and (2) expected to be mutable as new knowledge comes in. Science is built upon, not accepted as whole. And a true scientific theory does not fall apart if parts of it prove to be unreliable. That simply means that the parts that are unreliable must be addressed [by that, I do not mean in ad hoc fashion, as has most certainly occured in the discussion on the 'six days' of creation... and I caution you here. Unlike blackumbrella, I DO know Genesis quite while, and the history behind the ad hoc explanation on the length of "days" in the so-called first book of the Bible].
Intelligent design fails as a scientific theory for the following reasons:
(1) Centered upon ad hoc deliberations on the time period of creation. Theory cannot be ad hoc. Once the time period is questioned (and it has to be questioned, because there is more than ample evidence that the Universe formed over billions of years, not six days, and not 6000 years ago. Light from Andromeda has been travelling for 2 million years. Light didn't just appear from Andromeda 6000 light years away. Anyone who even suggests such a thing is going to be laughed out of any gathering of true intellectuals), the correct scientific response is to address the question, not 'create' (pardon the pun) explanations meant to support an unsupportable position.
(2) Accepted as full and complete as is. No true scientific theory arrogantly proclaims to be the end all and complete answer to ANY question. It is always accepted that theory is the best we can do now, not the final answer.
(3) Not based on any supportable evidence. The gist of intelligent design is an attack on evolution, not the development of self-supporting data, axioms and theory. Attacking one theory does not make another any more valid.
(4) It is Bible-based. While that is not, in and of itself, a reason to condemn intelligent design as science, the Bible is not a source of factual data on the origins of the Universe, but is a compendium of religious and philosophical thought based on two threads (Judaism and the Judaistic superset of Christianity) of a common religious following, and two, that I might add, are not even prevelant in world religion, anymore.
To finalize my thoughts on this matter, I will say that I do believe people within Christian communities have a right to religious education, if they so choose to impliment it in their schools. I don't have the least problem with faith-based initiatives. But I do have a serious problem with people pushing pseudoscience and expecting it to have the same level of respect in the scientific community as real science. Pure environmentalism comes from science. Gaistic environmentalism does not. That there are unexplained phenomena in the sky is provable by scientific investigation. To claim that UFO's have extraterrestrial origin is not. Evolution comes from science. Intelligent design does not.
It's that simple.
SexyBamaDr said:
I don't either. I know many religious people who are very strong and far from nerveless. In fact, I have seen positive results from people giving themselves over to a life of faith.
My problem is Bibilical literalism. I agree with bamabake to this extent: when Genesis says "day", the meaning is quite literally "day" (well, sort of... but it certainly shouldn't be confused with a thousand years). But there is zero way the world was formed in six literal days (though I fervently disagree with him that there was no intellectual dishonesty on the part of creationists over the issue). Six days? Never happened.
But I can believe in the Salvation of Christ, for instance, without believing the Genesis account of creation is literal. In fact, it makes sense that God would send his Son (or come as an incarnation in flesh), as is written. Just because I can believe that part of the Bible does not mean I believe the Bible, as a whole, is inerrant, for I do not.
Furthermore, going deeper in Genesis, an even stronger argument can be made that the Flood story is a carryover from Babylonian legends (resulting in the much older Epic of Gilgamesh's chapter on the Flood. I assure you that the writers of Gilgamesh were not Hebrews). There is a large preponderance of evidence that the Flood never occured (at least not worldwide), and the Ark, as described, could neither hold two of every animal, nor could it withstand traversing in deep water. It would have cracked in half and sank, almost from the time it was lifted off it's moorings.
bayoutider said:Ahhhhhh.........Lazarus is lifting this thread from the grave.
Salvation at its finest.
Sorry about that!
Truth is, this thread probably BELONGS in a hole. :biggrin2:
Okay - if a person believes in God and in Jesus as the Son of God, then that person also has to believe in God's limitless power.lazarus said:
If God is, in fact, God, He could have created the universe in 6 days. Period. If you do not believe Him capable of this, you do not believe in God - you believe in some other higher being.
As for the evidence pointing to billions of years of evolution - God could have put that all there to test our faith. Did He? I don't know - and neither do you...
Here, I agree - the problem - how do we decide what to accept and what to question? IMO, it is best to let your heart tell you how to interpret the Bible, rather than science...lazarus said:
NYBamaFan said:
True, but also irrelevant, as you'll see.
He could have. I'm not disputing that. But He didn't. If He did, there would be plenty of physical evidence to support the contention. If the universe were created in six days, there would be indelible physical signs of it.
Six day models have been tried and do not fit. It's that simple. Therefore, the universe and the world were not 'created' in six days.
I do believe Him capable. There is simply no evidence to support it. Your last contention is baseless and unsupportable. You are trying, as the Intelligent Design supporters are doing with evolution, a well-established scientific theory with a rich history, by proving a 'truth' by the absence of something else, which is a logical fallacy.
You are talking about faith. I'm talking about scientific evidence. They are two different things. As I've already stated, the purpose of science is to paint the best possible picture of the mechanics of reality, as best we know it. It is irrelevant the purpose of billions of years of evolutionary evidence. It simply exists. Absent any evidence of design, science cannot conclude design exists. And there is no evidence of design. Sorry.
As I said before, religion and science have very important roles in human endeavor, but they are very different roles. The issue of design is one of metaphysics, and belongs in philosophy and religion, not in science.
The issue of the Bible and science are separate and distinct ones. I'm not talking about interpreting the Bible. I'm talking about what qualifies as science and what does not. Intelligent design (ID) opperates on a thesis that cannot, as yet, be supported by science, and hence, is not science. Everything intelligent designers throw out can be easily debunked. Not one scientist anywhere on earth has used ID arguments in one single refereed journal. And there's a reason: it's not science. Evolution may not be the answer to the mechanics of the origins of life, but it does fit the required models, and is the best answer we have, for now. That is why evolution is science, and design is not.
Let me add something here. Evolutionists and other scientists are not the enemies of religion. At no point do cosmologists (studying the mechanics of the universe and universe structure formations), geologists (studying the mechanics of the earth, and earth structure formations) and evolutionists (studying the mechanics of the formation of living structures) say that God did not design and set it all in motion. We're simply saying that no one has been able to definitively show that He did. Scientists do not operate on things that cannot be demonstrated, but on things that can. The models of such mechanics as the fields considered do not require outside, supernatural influences to operate. Absent them, the models are assumed not to have them.
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I made no argument for or against ID. I simply said that you can't choose to "support" certain portions of the Bible and discard others because they do not fit with scientific evidence. You cannot truly believe in God and discard the possibility that He created the universe in 6 days. You say that you do not discard that possibility, but you then do just that when you accept scientific data over the Bible.
If God "could have" created the universe in 6 days, and God "could have" created all of the evidence that would make it look like it took billions of years instead of 6 days, then maybe He did.
My point - sometimes it is better to let your heart be your guide and forget science. This is not meant to be a debate over ID vs. Evolution - that issue is secondary to faith and trust in God and His power to do all things - even things that we neither see nor understand...
If God "could have" created the universe in 6 days, and God "could have" created all of the evidence that would make it look like it took billions of years instead of 6 days, then maybe He did.
My point - sometimes it is better to let your heart be your guide and forget science. This is not meant to be a debate over ID vs. Evolution - that issue is secondary to faith and trust in God and His power to do all things - even things that we neither see nor understand...
Actually, science is just beginning to guess what goes on at the sub-atomic level. What forces are in play, and what governs those forces? They do not see the words "Made by God", so they see no evidence of his envolvement.
After all, "The models of such mechanics as the fields considered do not require outside, supernatural influences to operate". My question - how do we know that they do not require any outside influence when we do not understand the forces in play?
Science can only carry us as far as our ability to observe the world around us and interpret those observations. Many things are unobservable, at least now. And, even if we were able to observe the tiniest particle and force in action, we would still be limited by our ability to unserstand those observations.
Scientists may yet find absolute proof of God's existence, but they will overlook it, so sure are they that God has no place in science...
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NYBamaFan said:
Of course I can choose to support portions of the Bible as fact and not others, because we're not talking about faith, we're talking about fact. There is no model of an 'instant universe' (six days) that works. None produce the universe we live in, in any simulation you can try. I can accept portions as figurative speech, as poetry, as parable or as the best descriptive writing of something the writer did not really understand. If I am forced to choose between a literal, inerrant and complete Bible or not accepting the Bible, then I'd be forced not to accept it. But I'm not forced into that frame of reference, simply because you think I am (you're still operating on a logical fallacy, BTW). After all, we have seems like a gazillion denominations, because it seems no one can completely agree on what is believed (articles of faith), let alone what can be demonstrated scientifically. If the Bible were inerrant, complete and literal, there would be no Catholic/Protestant split, and no 'gazillion' denominations, because all Christians would believe the same thing. I choose, as does any free-willed individual, what to believe as fact and what to accept by faith.
I know where you're going, because I've heard these arguments before. You're not making a scientific argument. You're making a metaphysical one. I'm asking you to frame your thesis within the realm of science, not metaphysics. 'Maybe He did', but there is no way, at this time to demonstrate it. Therefore, there is no way to prove it. But there are valid and accepted models that do work and help explain the natural processes without supernatural influence, so science doesn't incorporate the supernatural as an explanation.
For the sake of argument, however, let's look at this question from the perspective of science. If God created the universe, he created the physical makeup OF the universe, including the properties and 'laws' that govern it. These laws and properties were established from the beginning of the universe, and only change to the extent that the universe cooled and expanded (and we know that expansion occured over a VERY LONG TIME). There are objects, like Andromeda, that are far away. Light travels at a certain velocity, and that velocity is the same in all frames of reference, because of the curvature of spacetime (Einstein's Special Theory, written in 1905 and still going strong, with numerous physical proofs of its validity). Andromeda is 2 million light years away. That means that Andromeda was formed no less than 2 million years ago. The light didn't just 'appear' 6000 light years from earth (if it had, we'd know that, too).
Now, you may ask, metaphysically, why God couldn't just cook the books, so to speak, for the sake of the faithful? Why is it impossible for him to make it "look" like he created the universe over billions of years when in fact it only took six days. It's because He'd had to have dramatically altered the makeup of spacetime to do it, once the universe were made, and the properties that allow us to live would have been different than the world He created. Furthermore, the presence of that creation would still be evident, even if well hidden. The only way to hide it to where we couldn't find evidence of it would be if He hid it behind the beginning of time, and that would defeat the purpose of the six day creation.
So, scientifically, my point is that God could have taken any timespan he wanted to create the Universe. Six days, one day, 200 billion years. But the properties that comes with that creation are carried over from the moment of creation. Evidence indicates, from the best possible models, is that the universe is (1) very old and (2) formed over a very long time. Therefore, the six day model just doesn't hold.
But you're missing MY point. This thread IS a debate between evolutionary theory and intelligent design. Intelligent design is an argument well-suited for metaphysics and philosophy, and I'd have no problem with someone teaching it in that realm. It's just not science, and has no place in science classrooms.
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NYBamaFan said:
I assure you that if scientists find evidence of intelligent control behind the forces of the universe, they will write many, many papers on it. However, quantum physics currently does not require an intelligent control to remain an operational theory. It works fine without intelligent control, and absent evidence of such control, we cannot assume it exists.
Because the quantum models work without the introduction of outside influence. Absent evidence of outside influence, it cannot be assumed. The key issue you need to remember here is that science operates only on that which can be demonstrated. That which cannot be demonstrated is neither assumed nor added to the model.
The question about the existence of outside forces (especially those that cannot be demonstrated) is one for metaphysics, not science.
I think I made the point from the beginning that science is largely about the best answer we can make, at this moment on the processes and mechanics of the physical universe. Science answers questions, to the best it can, within the realm of what is demonstratable. We do not assume that which cannot be demonstrated, because science is the realm of fact, not faith; data, not dogma. It is not what we believe, but what we can prove. Theory is about the process of explaining phenomena in a demonstrably logical fashion. Are there things science cannot explain or answer completely? Sure, but that's not the point. Many things CAN be explained, to within acceptable reason. Faith is not needed for factual evidence. That is the realm of science.
Sadly, this is a viewpoint that many evangelicals hold, but not one that is borne out in reality. While there are many atheists and agnostics in science, there are equally many who are faithful, but perhaps not in the way evangelicals would like. If God ever shows up in research, and the way points to God as the ultimate mover (that He's the necessary component of reality), then I can assure you that true science would not ignore it, and models of reality would begin to bear that out.
The reason is that science is not about faith, but fact, and if the facts point that way, it will not destroy science.
On the flip side, I think many evangelicals attack science, when it points away from established religious belief, because of the fear that science is attacking faith, which is nonsense. Science is not about faith, and never was. Christians believed the world was flat, and did not die when science proved that false. Christians belived the earth was at the center of the universe, and did not die when science proved that false. And Christianity will still flourish even if it is proven conclusively that evolution is the only answer to life's origins, because evolution still couldn't prove God isn't the architech of evolution. The worst they could say is that they can't find evidence of it.
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lazarus said:Sorry about that!
lazarus, here is thy caricature
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