There are many scientific laws. I'm open to examples, but this isn't one.



Let's leave out the fact that this is an apples and oranges comparison.

1. You've got thousands of years of brilliant minds observing nature and coming to the conclusion that there is a Creator.

2. Even with current knowledge and technology you'll find many brilliant people making the same observations and coming to the same conclusion. It's simply two sets of people looking at the same set of data and coming to entirely different conclusions.

I've been intentionally trying to do this. As far as I can tell, I haven't referenced a single Bible verse and only referred to God as little as I can while still discussing a concept like creation (which requires a creator).

I can stay away from the "explain this" stuff also. I understand burden of proof.

No, I don't think you do.

There is no proof at all, apart from that written by the hand of man, that there is any sort of creator. That is my whole point.

You can't, ever, explain it to me without reference to something that has been written in the Bible by the hand of man and translated many many times through the ages. In referencing creation itself you are referencing the Bible. There is no evidence that creation is true, but plenty that it is false. It doesn't matter how you twist it, religious belief is not science, of any sort. It's a way to make the belief system more relevant to modern times, many people rely on the Church organisations for their way of life to survive, so it makes sense that belief system evolves with the society it's within (Old Testament, New Testament anyone???).

And just because people have done something for thousands of years does not make it fact.

I can totally understand how a total U-Turn of belief is almost impossible for most religious people, the social pressure they are under makes it that way. Words can be twisted and twisted but the hard truth of the matter is there is no proof, there never will be, because there is no truth to be found.

I'm not going to comment any more, as experience has shown me it will be fruitless. Unless that is we both concede that if each of us provides enough hard evidence for our way of thinking we would be willing to truly abandon our existing belief system in favour of the one with the most conclusive evidence. I'll let you go first...

Edit - I should point out that anything written in scripture is not hard evidence in this debate. If anything a story becomes less true over time, not more true.

Cheers

Cris

I so concede that if you can provide hard evidence that the earth was not created, I will abandon my beliefs and curse God.

Gotta babysit the kids... taking a break for a while.

Ummm, easy....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

Of course this is far from complete, the moment the process began is still being investigated. But all the hard evidence currently available all points to the fact that the world around us is part of an ongoing process of building blocks in our universe organising, and reorganising themselves. All build on a foundation of gaining better understanding through exploration of every avenue available.

Clearly, we don't yet know what came before the moment we currently call the big bang. But not knowing that doesn't make the belief that a creator must have done it any more valid than it was in fact my cat that did it.

Now if you can provide 10% of the evidence available for my way of thinking I'll be impressed.

Cheers

Cris

Excellent, Jason. You brightened my day.

But please don't interpret this as an indication that I am in your camp on this issue -- I am thoroughly on the opposite side.

I promised myself I would stay out of this discussion, but like Bitt [I presume] it is one of my hot buttons. But when you said the temptation to respond became overwhelming. Not just yet, I need to compose my thoughts, but stay tuned... Oh, and Jeff, are you going to jump in here, or are you going to abandon poor Jason to us heathen unbelievers to fend for himself?

tanstaafl.

Wow, what an old school thread I've missed . . . I have so much to say- sorry in advance for the wall of text.

First off, regarding quality of education and AP stuff, ect. I can tell you that the girl I was referring to earlier took AP tests this weekend and is likely going to be able to skip college courses. And I can also say this- her mother does not seem to be extraordinarily learned or brilliant. I assume that they made heavy use of co-ops and whatever, but I know she got a better education than I received.

Regarding Christian education, at some point it is impossible to provide an education without siding one way or another on fundamental issues. Studying history (and most other subjects) without the context of God's movement within it is vastly different than studying it with a belief in a Christian God. It is certainly not correct to subject non-believers (or believers of other faiths) to a state sponsored education which preaches Christianity, but it is equally incorrect (in my opinion) to deny a believer's viewpoint- there are some subjects in which your belief in God does impact what is taught. This is an impossible situation in a public school situation (because you have to pick a side- choosing to leave God out of it has ramifications), but private and home schools do offer options for believers.

Regarding Creationism, the argument for Creationism is a philosophical one (and in my opinion, pretty air tight), not scientific OR Biblical. The Bible gives almost no argument for the existence of God as a creator- it just assumes He did and tells how he did it. Evolution, if accepted as true, does not come close to denying a Creator. It states how life came to be as it is, but not how it got there in the first place. The philosophical argument is that every created thing must have a creator, which is a self evident statement. It logically follows that at some point, the stuff that makes up our existence must have been created by something that itself was not created. This is the argument for a creator, though not necessarily the creator who is personally involved in the creation and falls far short of establishing the creator is the God of the Bible.

In my opinion, the issue with evolution and the Biblical account (if you accept the Bible as the rule of faith) is not one of the literal account (the John will probably disagree with me here). There are plenty of examples where our understanding of scripture has changed due to the findings of science- Galileo being a prime example. It is not that the Bible was was invalid- the scriptures that people were interpreting to disprove Galileo were being interpreted by flawed human beings and used against their intended (by God) purposes. When science and the Bible seem in conflict, it is not the fallibility of either that is in question; it is the result of flawed people interpreting either science or scripture. One big issue I have on both "sides" is that rather than approaching this stuff with humility it's easier to lob grenades at one another and hide behind assurance of superiority, either of understanding of science or faith.

Back to evolution, though, the reason that it is difficult for me to swallow as the way humans came about is a theological one. That is, for humans to have been evolved (even by God through theistic evolution), this requires that death exist within creation BEFORE the fall of man and the entry of sin into the world. For the redemptive story to make sense as presented in scripture, death is the result of sin and therefore there could be no death before the fall of man. This rules out evolution as a pre-condition for humans, but it does not rule out evolution in a fallen world.

My own personal opinion (not backed up by any theologian or deep thinker, and so probably not true!), is that we can probably tell next to nothing about what a pre-fallen universe looked like because the instant sin entered the world, the game changed completely. What we observe today is the natural world as the result of human sin, not the perfect world God created (that had no sin or death), and therefore any conclusions we might draw as to what happened before the fall is invalid. I have 0 issue accepting evolution is alive and at work today, but I do not think it was in operation before the fall of man and sin's entry into the world.

When it comes down to it, since I believe that a study of what happened before the fall of man from a scientific perspective is worse than useless, I do not want my child to expend time trying to make sense of teachings that do not line up with what he accepts as the truth, assuming he ends up sharing my faith (which I acknowledge, he may not). On the other hand, if someone does not accept the fall is what put us into our current state where death exists in the world, it makes all the sense in the world to explore beginnings, as impossible a task as I think that is. It's an impasse, though, and one that demonstrates how a public education system cannot help but take sides. It's not a great solution, but private education certainly allows everyone to get the education that makes sense for them.

All of what I'm saying here might be tainted by this next statement, but I always have been honest to a fault. You should know that right now I am going through a MASSIVE struggle of faith. The above is what I believe as best as I can state it, but the circumstances of my life are pressing me very hard right now. None of my faith struggle is related to the stuff we're discussing right now, but it may affect how passionately I defend my position in the next few weeks/months.

Why can't they teach both? I went to a public school that taught evolution like every other one does and in the same school there was also a class that studied the bible.

Because now you've only covered two opinions of the countless that are available. What about other faiths? How are Buddhists going to feel studying the Bible? We could reduce our schools to complete uselessness if we honestly try to address every faith option. Unfortunately, removal of all religions for many subjects is just as problematic as fixating on one- or at least, that's my opinion.

MY answer to the original question is that I don't really value my child's opportunity to "make up his mind". Now, I don't want to FORCE his belief (because that isn't really belief), but if he comes to faith in Christ after being exposed to it all of his life, I will count that as a successful handing down of the truth by myself, much as I would the acceptance of any other truth in which I believe. The difference with faith is that there are a lot of people out there who disagree, but their disagreement does not make it any less true. And if it IS true, I want my child to believe it so it can positively impact his life.

I know what you are saying studying the bible covers more than just one religion though. The class wasn't a religion class either it was studying the bible as a piece of literature.

This is why I always say getting rid of the public schools and finding a way where everyone could send their kid to whatever private school they wanted would be better.

Just to add to my post a bit, I think it's close to self evident that at some point, if you keep going back, eventually you have to find something that created but itself was not created. This, in broad terms, is a creator, though as I said before, is not necessarily the God of the Bible, or even a God who personally interacts with His creation. To get to that step is a far greater task, and at the least requires establishing the Bible as generally reliable, if not infallible. That is a completely different discussion, though would be important to establish for any education system that teaches Biblical Creationism.

I have heard idea that the universe is self created, which I personally see as a little grasping intellectually, but even if we accept the notion as reasonable, it does not preclude a creator, merely it makes the universe itself "God"' which would certainly appeal to some belief systems.

On the face of it, a privatized education system where everyone recieves an education but has options as to the type of education makes a lot of sense to me. I do not know if that kind of thing could work in practice, though.

Unless I misunderstand your argument and premises, this is not true. Evolution does not require death. All it requires is that a genetically coded attribute be preferentially reproduced.

As an extreme example, assume an organism is born that has a genetic mutation that causes it to be unable to reproduce. It does not require this organism to die for it to fail to pass on that attribute.

In a less extreme example, assume "twin" anteaters are born. One has a significantly longer tongue than the other. The one with the shorter tongue isn't in danger of starving, but it does take him a lot longer to forage than his brother. While Shorty is still at the dinner table, Longo is out carousing with the lady anteaters, passing on his long tongue attribute. (Incidentally, the ladies really like his long tongue regardless of its ant-extracting abilities. This probably doesn't help Shorty out very much, either.) A few years go buy, and Longo is paying child support for a dozen kids, all from different mommas. Fortunately, Longo's ant-foraging abilities make him able to keep all those kids' tummies full. Meanwhile, Shorty has settled down with his one special lady and they have a kid together. A very nice little nuclear family. But the Longos outnumber them nearly a dozen to one. And in a generation, it will approach a gross to one, and keep expanding geometrically, even if none of them ever dies.

So: TL;DR summary: evolution functions on preferential passing on of genes, not the death of those with worse genes. Death is not required.

I think this is bang on the money, just this little sentence. I often think when I am photographing a wedding and listening to a ceremony of some sort, just who do we think we are anyway ??? If you step back from it all religions are a bit crazy and self important. They all presume that humans are something special, sure we are the dominant species on this planet, but maybe we just don't have the brain power to understand the world around us.

I suppose you could see the atheism as an evolutionary step forward of the human mind, willing to accept the unknown and explore all the possibilities. I'm not saying that as an atheist I am much smarter than a creationist, but maybe the fact that I am totally at ease with my place in the world (and my insignificance in the universe) and do not need the mental support a belief system offers is some kind of advancement to the next level of understanding ???



Again, this is just twisting things to make it fit. In my eyes having to move things around like they do just proves that they are just justifying their existence and soon the options will run out.

Cheers

Cris

I think you misunderstand my argument slightly, though I completely understand what you are saying. I don't have any issue at all with evolution, but I do have an issue with death without sin in the world. As a means of producing humans, the theory of evolution would certainly have worked through death before humans came about, and thus before sin entered the world. But my issue with evolution ends there. If, in Eden, evoltion was at work shaping animals and humans over time, I don't necessarily have an issue with that (though it sounds weird- but who really could know anything about the laws of nature in a world without death?).

Hang on, let me get this clear. Your belief is that if there were no sin in the world there would be no death ??? At all ???

Cheers

Cris

I actually agree with your questions, but not your conclusion. That is, the first thing form me is that, as mentioned, I do believe there had to have been at some point an uncaused cause. This I label as 'God' and go from there. The next step is figuring out whether this God is personally involved in His creation, and if so how he relates to us. The short answer is, I believe that the Bible is reliable enough to establish God IS the personally involved in His creation and the redemptive work of Christ is His most important interaction with us.

The thing is, I am not at all confident of my ability to understand and comprehend the world around me on my own. I require outside help if I am to truly get what this life is all about. While there are logical and intellectual reasons I trust in scripture, I do believe that it is only by the drawing of the Spirit that I have come to faith, and that faith is all about trusting in the Creator of all things and understanding His relationship to us.

I think this is an attitude many atheists take, but.I don't think it is that accurate. Looking back at the great philosophers in the last two thousand years there have been thinkers on both sides of the line, and it seems somewhat arbitrary who was in the faith and who was not. Often if you compare the intellectual prowse of the great thinkers they are equal in their levels of intelligence. The determining factor appears to be not the intelligence of man, but the drawing of the Spirit. I do think it is flawed to consider that existential humanism is the great evolution of thought of recent times. These issues have been wrestled with many times throughout the ages, and by people much smarter than you or I (in fact, the book of Ecclesiastes deals with the same concepts 19th century Existentialism would focus on centuries later).

As far as being at ease with your significance in the world, this is equally true of many believers. You see it as a step forward to not find you worth in an external being, but many believers would say exactly the opposite. Who is to say what is right?



Well first off, obviously the notion of the universe as god is not something I accept. But to your point, I do agree that the more shifting you have to do to make things fit, the more difficult it is to accept the system overall. However, I find that no matter what view of the world I take, I end up having to deal with pieces that don't seem to fit right. I admit this I true of a faith based on scripture, but it is also true when I consider a world where scripture is not true. I have experienced too many things that confirm the accuracy of scripture to feel denying it would be intellectually honest. I am not without my faith struggles, but at some point I have to move beyond what I can understand and trust in something, and the most honest thing for me to trust in based on my experience of this life is the teaching of scripture.

Yes. This is actually a pretty fundamental Christian belief.

So does this just apply to Humans ??? Or are single cell organisms also committing sin ???

Or is it that we humans are so important to God, that because we sin everything suffers ???

Cheers

Cris

Again, this is a pretty failed argument, used a lot my many belief systems. Just because it's old doesn't make it right. For years people thought the earth was flat you know. But they were wrong.

For years our society was poorly educated and needed structure, balance and moral guidance for the members of that group. Churches were formed to do that, as well as collect tax! But now we can (almost) see we don't need that anymore. So "God" becomes less and less relevant, just as Thor and many many other mythical Gods of years gone by.

As for trying to solve the problem of who created God, which is the big tumbling block of any creation theory, by saying he created himself! Are you being serious, or just attempting to wind me up ???

Cheers

Cris

The last statement is true. Christianity is without a doubt a human centric belief system. Whether death only entered for humans verses all of creation-I do not know if there is a differing of opinion on that point, though I believe most Christians hold that when man fell, all of creation fell as well.. Scripture teaches that death is the result of sin, but there may be Christians who only hold this to be true where humans are concerned. Only humans sin, however- I've never hear of anyone who would think a dog or cat could sin.

So the ageing process then death is the result of the sin of human beings ???

In your belief system then, if there no sin at what age would stay at forever ??? I am of course assuming that if sin went away then so would death. Or are we all paying the price for the first ever sin committed by the first ever man ??? And we can never correct that ???

What I am struggling to understand is that how someone with even the most simple reasoning could think this would all be true.

Cheers

Cris

My argument is NOT that everything every brilliant person has said is correct- in fact I directly stated that I think a lot of these people were wrong. However, we ought not to pretend that all great thought has sprung up unaided in the last 20 years. Are you going to argue that Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, Freidrich Neitzsche, Aurrelus Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas were not great thinkers and that we are not today massively influenced by what these men said and believed?

What I AM saying is that there is nothing new under the sun. We have not evolved into greater thought that does away with the need for God. The things you are saying are thousands of years old and philosophers have been wrestling with them for centuries. Brilliant men have argued on both sides, Christians and non-Christians; Atheists and believers.

You are standing on the shoulders of Neitzsche when you make this argument (whether you realize it or not) and I doubt he was the first to argue such. My point is that such thinking is not evolved or new- it is the re-engaging of ideas that believers and non-believers having been throwing about for as long as people have held beliefs about God.

I did not say God created Himself- I said He was uncreated, which is a huge difference. And I did not arrive at this by saying "God exists and is the Creator, therefore He himself is uncreated." Instead I (or rather Aristotle, who historically first made this argument) started with the law of causality, that every effect must have a cause. Mill argued, as I believe you are, that God must have a cause if everything has a cause, but this is not quite the law of causality. The law of causality does NOT state that everything must have a cause; rather it states "every effect must have a cause", a statement which is self-evidently true. However, it does NOT say that everything is caused. For the world we live in to make sense, there must exist something that is not an effect- something that was not caused. This thing is not self-causing- it was never caused at all. While everything that surrounds us is an effect from some cause, we cannot go back indefinitely and expect to find every cause to also be an effect. At some point, we must reach an cause that was not an effect, and that is truly the beginning. That is also what we label the Creator, whether that is the God of scripture or a strange eternally existent singularity from which all that exists sprung.

So my logic is "There must have, at some point, been an uncreated being to explain how all the created stuff got here, and that is God". This has been debated through the ages, but I've not read a single convincing argument against the law of causality and the existence of an uncaused cause.

Regarding your last statement, many, MANY very smart people have believed this to be true. The concept of the fall of man and the restoration through Christ is front and center in scripture. The book of Romans goes through this very logically, clearly, and methodically (though is certainly not the only scripture to deal with these ideas). No great thinker who has accepted Christiantiy has accepted it without accepting the concepts of sin that we are talking about.

Simply put, here is Christian belief about sin and death:
1. When man was originally created, it was in a sinless state in which there was no death. Humans would not get old and die, nor would they die for any reason. They were created to be in a perfect love relationship with God forever.
2. Man was given a choice to choose self over God, and this choice man did make. The result was that sin entered the world and creation fell. People got old, sick, and died. Violence entered into the world, not as part of God's original intent, but as a result of man's sin.
3. Every human since Adam has followed in his footsteps, commiting sin and earning death. We could perhaps assume that if someone were to live a sinless life they would not die, but no man has, or can, achive this, as we all partake in our spiritual heritage of sin (Jesus would have been the exception, in fact, except that he chose to give his life in exchange for ours). As you say, we cannot correct this because we are all, in the final analysis, selfish beings that choose ourselves over God.
4. We are lost in physical and spiritual death because of our sin, destined to remain separated from God forever. We have no hope of overcoming sin and defeating death because all have chosen emnity with God.
5. Jesus lived a sinless life (He is God and was able to achive what fallen man could not) and offered himself as atonement for sin.
6. As a result of sin, man must still experience physical death, but spiritual death is overcome through the redemptive work of Christ. Those who accept the atonment of Christ will live forever in a love relationship with God.

This is about as core to Christianity as it gets- the central theme of the Bible is man's fall through Adam and the restoration through Christ.

That is very interesting. Not something I can say I see any sense in, but interesting non the less.

The Bible and any scripture and be put to one side as been written by the hand of man, so does not for part of any evidence of this. Can you provide any evidence for this at all apart from what is written in the Bible ???

That is why I couldn't take this any more seriously than any other tale, fable or story I've ever been told. In the course of my current job I have the chance to ask questions of a few faiths, they are all the same, they basically say "It's written here, it has been for thousands of years, so it's true" It just isn't. Sorry.

Cheers

Cris

We had a huge thread on our internal news server at work on how schools changed because of the 'No Child Left Behind' program. If I have children, I don't think I would have any choice other than to send them to private schools and supplement that with home schooling in subjects we, as parents, would be able to.

Edit: I went to private schools from third grade on. That was mainly because we went through several zoning changes on base, so I was with a different group of kids each year from K-2 and my parents had enough. They wanted some semblence of stability, especially since we were projected to move every three years on top of it. After that, I went to a private college. I have no first hand knowledge of public schools other than K-2 and some classes at a local university (where I thought the professors were absolutely horrible compared to what I had for my undergraduate courses).

I would rather send my children to private schools than home school them. I don't see how I could objectively teach them in subjects I don't like or agree with. For instnace, I can't stand literature. As my mom once said, 'How in the hell do they know what the author meant? Sometimes a river really is just a damn river and a bridge really is just a damn bridge'.

That might be okay, just keep the religious philosophies away from the science curriculum, and openly name them as "Religious Studies: Buddhism", "Religious Studies: Waging Jihad", etc..

When I went to school, we studied the usual secular stuff for five days a week. On Sundays, I then spent another three hours at the church, learning religious topics. Eventually I was (surprise!) headmaster of the Sunday School.

There's nothing to prevent western societies from continuing with such an approach today.

Err, no, I don't believe so.
It may be a particular fundamental tenant of a specific brand of fanatacism, but it has little to do with Christianity. God, the Bible, perhaps, but not Christ.

Cheers

It depends on what question you are asking. If you are asking about arguing for a Creator (uncaused cause), then you will note that not once have I appealed to scripture, for in fact scripture assumes a Creator and gives little to no evidence for God's existence. My arguments for a creator mainly come from philosophy, and not necessarily the philosophy of Christians.

Regarding my understanding of the nature of sin and the fall, I am unashamedly appealing to scripture. While some truth of God's story of redemption can be acquired through natural law, I think the Bible is the end all be all of such understanding. In "Mere Christianity", for example, C.S. Lewis makes arguments appealing to human's innate sense of rightness (and our non-adherence to it) to give evidence for the idea that we fall short of our Creator, but this is only a portion of what the scripture argues regarding sin and redemption.

In fact, the Bible itself claims to be the sole authority on the question of God's plan for and relationship to humanity. I do not think this is unreasonable- to understand God's interaction with His creation, religious text seems to be the appropriate place to go. The question to be answered is how you get to the Bible as being the correct text by which to know God, if such a text in fact even exists. The short answer is you determine whether the Bible is generally reliable (I believe it is and this is evident if viewed objectively) and then you move from there to the question of whether or not it is, as it claims to be, the word of God and infallible for understanding God's interaction with humanity. The even shorter answer is the conviction of the Holy Spirit brings us to faith in Christ and the Bible, but I do not believe that it ends there- that is, faith in scripture is logical and reasonable, even if arrived at by the drawing of the spirit.

That being said, I think the challenge of Christianity is "Do you believe you have a sin problem, and if so, what are you doing to deal with it?" If the answer to this question bothers us, the Bible provides answers we may choose to consider. If not, the Bible probably isn't going to say much to us that is compelling.