Ok, so you've brought up the wonderfully current idea that maybe the gospel writers were actually being devious in their writing. And given the amount of historical fiction around today it would appear plausible to a cursory glance.
But modern historical fiction is almost unheard of if you go back more than a few hundred years. It's essentially a modern invention. The idea of writing everyday incidents and meaningless details into an account just so you will be deceived into thinking its real and then accepting that someone turned water into wine or rose from the dead as a result is an idea that only we today can use to explain the gospels away.
There was a lot of spiritual writing and myth written down in the ancient world and the gospels don't fit that determination. Even luke says at the beginning of his gospel that he is essentially just collating various accounts so his mate can know the truth.... While you may disagree that the accounts are real, there is precious little evidence that these guys were attempting to appeal to people credulity on the basis that you are suggesting.
To me it's not that complicated. Look around. I don't need a scientific study to tell me that my car was designed by an engineer, even though I may not know anything about that engineer. Likewise there are too many moving parts that mesh together in creation for it to have been an accident or random occurance and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.
If it is that simple, perhaps you can explain where God's genetics lab is located and why he/she/it won't share his amazing knowledge and technologies with human geneticists who would just love to know how to cure the genetic diseases which your cruel 'intelligent designer' simply refuses to do. I may not be a rocket scientist, but I can certainly ask plenty of very inconvenient questions like this. So if you don't buzz off and leave this thread to the discussion of interactive textbooks, I will embarrass you with a few more similarly inconvenient questions.
Ok, so you've brought up the wonderfully current idea that maybe the gospel writers were actually being devious in their writing. And given the amount of historical fiction around today it would appear plausible to a cursory glance.
But modern historical fiction is almost unheard of if you go back more than a few hundred years. It's essentially a modern invention. ...
No I haven't, and I'll admit that, being mainly science educated myself, if you are at all classically trained you will know far more than me in this area, however I did not say unheard of - I said almost unheard of, which I believe to be the case. I am seriously however open to instruction if you have a large list...
You're obfuscating the difference between science and religion. Science clearly shows that things happen for a reason. Cause and effect. This is the result of man's inability to accept change and/or lose a pinnacle position of power on an issue. There are rules that govern psychical actions. Science doesn't know everything, and many hypothesis are wrong, but the goal is to find answers, not simply saying this must be so without the ability to question it.
What makes you think that the vast majority of Christians are told to accept stuff without the ability to question it? Talk about obfuscation! This makes for a fine story for those who believe that being a Christian is akin to believing in fairy tales but has little bearing on reality. Not only that, but I have never heard a minister say you must accept something and never question it. And I have been to many churches and heard many sermons. Maybe you have heard them but this sounds like a myth to me. Can you back this up?
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
Organized religion takes the easy way by claiming there is an intelligent design to what we don't understand. There are unverifiable stories that are passed from generation to generation that explain basic right and wrong, and general rules about keeping societies functioning, but they also come with a lot of what seems like filler material of magical things that go against the known laws of the universe.
Such a paternalistic and patronizing view of organized religion. Again no doubt it's a helpful mantra to repeat for those who want nothing to do with that organized religion. Plus it's not the easy way out. You get abused as being unintelligent by others in western countries if you believe, and history is replete with people who have died for their belief in Jesus. The easy way would be to say that you can believe in whatever you want as long as it's true for you. Easy way indeed.
The idea that organized religion is the outworking of the primitive mind's response to the unknown doesn't square with what I've read in the Bible or the historical movement of Christianity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
It's designed to ignore what you know and instead to base the core of your existence on faith.
I don't know what religion you're talking about but this isn't true for Christianity. The most you can say is that Christianity says that you can't always trust what you know and you should question your motives, but to say that it's "designed to ignore what you know" is false. Where did people get this idea that faith means leaving your brain at the doorstep? I don't get it. I've never seen this myself in all my years of being a Christian.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
Often science is vilified because things that were canon are now undeniably in opposition to religion. The thing is real scientists don't care about how it affects a religion they care about the truth, and most scientists throughout history do seem to have a core faith.
Often? Not in my experience. I am science trained - I am back at university after years of being a science teacher, studying further in bioinformatics, genetics and biochemistry and I have never been vilified by religion. I guess it may happen but not in my experience.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
Now do you really think that organisms can't and don't change despite the very real efforts by man in agriculture, animal husbandry and mapping of genomes. We understand these things quite well which is why evolution as a theory — not a hypothesis — is as undeniable a truth as the sun will rise tomorrow morning from the same side of the sky.
You sound very religious and absolute in your statement that evolution as a theory is undeniable truth And I'd be careful in using the intelligent efforts of man to back up a theory of unintelligent chance events.
Plus, no scientist christian or otherwise, denies that change occurs. You are obfuscating the difference between change due to mixing, matching, deleting (through mutation) and duplicating of information already present in a genome and change due to the build up of information from a place where there was none to begin with. These are two very different things. One has been observed to occur all the time. I'm yet to hear of the second occurring.
You mean like web pages, which are now all heavy duty JS and CSS with jQuery and AJAX and PHP, SQL, etc. There is no simple web project these days.
iWeb was good for beginners and any WYSIWYG development tools made for iBooks will also be usable in a rudimentary way, but to do it professionally I think we will still need the programmers.
IMHO, "artists" who can't learn how to use what is currently the tools of their trade, be it stonecutting for cathedral-building or programming foriOS, need to be removed from the "art" field. Those "people" are suited to luxury salons talking, champagne drinking... not to serious creative processes.
I believe in a Da Vinci (not the code, the guy...) world where a great painter is also a chemist and an engineer (true of Rembrandt too...), where a great designer (think Steve Jobs) actually has an active hand in the patenting process of his company.
"I'm an artist, I wanna creaaaate from my guuuts, I'm not bothering with the tiny details of pigments, chemicals or code". Yeah, right. You mean you're a lazy ass.
"We still need the programmers/chemists/technicals". Yeah. Always will if you're a true creative, and actually need to understand the process. The Treaty of Color can only be written by Da Vinci or Goethe.
IMHO, "artists" who can't learn how to use what is currently the tools of their trade, be it stonecutting for cathedral-building or programming foriOS, need to be removed from the "art" field. Those "people" are suited to luxury salons talking, champagne drinking... not to serious creative processes.
I believe in a Da Vinci (not the code, the guy...) world where a great painter is also a chemist and an engineer (true of Rembrandt too...), where a great designer (think Steve Jobs) actually has an active hand in the patenting process of his company.
"I'm an artist, I wanna creaaaate from my guuuts, I'm not bothering with the tiny details of pigments, chemicals or code". Yeah, right. You mean you're a lazy ass.
"We still need the programmers/chemists/technicals". Yeah. Always will if you're a true creative, and actually need to understand the process. The Treaty of Color can only be written by Da Vinci or Goethe.
Taken to its logical extension, you are asserting that the creatives should be forced to render their art by putting together ones and zeros for the ARM and Intel processors -- or maybe designing and constructing the silicon chips, themselves.
Well done mate! You really derailed this thread, didn't you. So maybe my post to an earlier thread on this subject was very relevant?
I saw it as humorous from the first few lines. I think if it got derailed it was by those that started bashing Gore because of the content of the book. After that there was only spotty talk about the merits of epub versus Push Pop's use of native Cocoa versus the difficulty of using web publishing tools (PHP, JS, CSS, Ajax, etc).
It was a joke -- clearly so with some looking for a fight anytime AlGore is mentioned. Like his views or not, believe his science quotes or not, the product that was produced was a fantastic approach to making publishing hit a higher mark in both production and consumption.
If it is that simple, perhaps you can explain where God's genetics lab is located and why he/she/it won't share his amazing knowledge and technologies with human geneticists who would just love to know how to cure the genetic diseases which your cruel 'intelligent designer' simply refuses to do. I may not be a rocket scientist, but I can certainly ask plenty of very inconvenient questions like this. So if you don't buzz off and leave this thread to the discussion of interactive textbooks, I will embarrass you with a few more similarly inconvenient questions.
I didn't buzz off to avoid embarrassment but I do have to sleep some time. The thing that is simple is the truth that someone put this all here, there had to be a designer. That does not mean that life is simple or that there aren't problems. Maybe the problems are the results of the choices of people who were given free will to do good or evil. If we are given the freedom to choose then we will certainly reap the results of those choices and those results can be passed down from generation to generation. Perhaps it's not the creator who is the one who is "cruel."
You're obfuscating the difference between science and religion. Science clearly shows that things happen for a reason. Cause and effect. This is the result of man's inability to accept change and/or lose a pinnacle position of power on an issue. There are rules that govern psychical actions. Science doesn't know everything, and many hypothesis are wrong, but the goal is to find answers, not simply saying this must be so without the ability to question it.
I never said that things can not or should not be questioned, indeed they should. Even the Bible says that we should test all things and not just believe anything that comes down the pike. I don't believe God has a problem with honest questions. To me it's not a question of science or religion but of truth. If a thing is true then it is true whether it was discovered by science or revealed by God.
You point about cause and effect is what I'm saying about the world we live in. When you see design in something then logic would tell you that there must have been a designer. I realize that there are different ideas about how it all came about but I think the most plausible explanation is that there is someone who created it.
The thing that is simple is the truth that someone put this all here, there had to be a designer. That does not mean that life is simple or that there aren't problems. Maybe the problems are the results of the choices of people who were given free will to do good or evil. If we are given the freedom to choose then we will certainly reap the results of those choices and those results can be passed down from generation to generation. Perhaps it's not the creator who is the one who is "cruel."
Wow what a load of ideological crap which lacks ANY scientific basis whatsoever! Are you suggesting that a benevolent 'designer' causes specific mutations leading to congenital genetic disease being propagated as punishment for specific sins of one's ancestors? Perhaps you have a table which says which sins cause which genetic disorders? Or are you suggesting that genetic disorders can be cured by specific acts, like prayer or giving all your money to some celebrity church leader? Perhaps you have a table which says which 'good acts' cure which genetic disorders?
What a con! What is the scientific evidence for this, and what is the suggested mechanism that causes acts of 'free will' to cause specific genetic mutations? And people like you get to decide who will be the next President of the USA? May your God, or any god for that matter, save the rest of the world from ignorant fools like you. Now go back to sleep!
Wow what a load of ideological crap which lacks ANY scientific basis whatsoever! Are you suggesting that a benevolent 'designer' causes specific mutations leading to congenital genetic disease being propagated as punishment for specific sins of one's ancestors? Perhaps you have a table which says which sins cause which genetic disorders? Or are you suggesting that genetic disorders can be cured by specific acts, like prayer or giving all your money to some celebrity church leader? Perhaps you have a table which says which 'good acts' cure which genetic disorders?
What a con! What is the scientific evidence for this, and what is the suggested mechanism that causes acts of 'free will' to cause specific genetic mutations? And people like you get to decide who will be the next President of the USA? May your God, or any god for that matter, save the rest of the world from ignorant fools like you. Now go back to sleep!
I tried to limit my prior posts merely to the idea of the existence of God based on a cause and effect argument related to the complexity of the creation. But since you want to discuss the question of suffering then I'll need to go into some theology. Ultimatley all evil and disease came from the fall in the Garden of Eden because when sin entered the world it brought a curse on all humankind. Before the fall, the scripture says that all creation was very good, there was no suffering. When our first parents sinned then that affected all of their offspring, i.e. the whole race. This is what I was referring to when I talked about the problems coming from people who were given the choice to do good or evil. Humans by nature have been tainted ever since the fall in the garden, which means we have good and evil within us. We can choose to do good but none of us are without sin.
The result of all of that is that we now live in a world that is full of unjust suffering. Think about it. Is there starvation in the world because the earth can't produce enough food to sustain the population or is there starvation in the world because some people oppress others and keep them from the resources they need? Or refuse to help those in need? All of the genectic defects that you refer to, and even worse than that, are the result of sin entering the world through our first parents. However the problem is much deeper than genetics but strkes at the very heart of our essence which is our soul. The problem of evil and suffering will require something bigger than science to resolve. The core cause of evil and suffering lies in the heart (in the spiritual sense) of humans. We can not fix the evil that is within us by our own goodness, resolve, or scientific knowledge.
You say that God refuses to do anything about it but he has done something about it. God sent Christ died to redeem us from the curse brought about by the fall. That does not mean that those who believe in God will not suffer in this life, because eveybody suffers. But it does mean that he is with them through their sufferings and that they can begin to reverse the effects of sin by inviting God to live in them. They also have the hope of something better beyond this life.
God invites us all to get a new heart and a new life by putting our faith and trust in him. Science can not fix this problem. The problem I'm talking about is not just the physical diseases and such that we deal with in this world. Yes science has accomplished wonderful things in that realm. But the problem I'm talking about is the root of all human suffering; which was the unleashing of sin in this world and it's effects on the human soul. God is the only one who is able to give us the ultimate solution to the suffering in this life.
Ultimatley all evil and disease came from the fall in the Garden of Eden because when sin entered the world it brought a curse on all humankind. Before the fall, the scripture says that all creation was very good, there was no suffering. When our first parents sinned then that affected all of their offspring, i.e. the whole race.
I just can't wait to see how this fiction gets presented in an interactive textbook, or interactive Bible! Particularly the bit where it explains how that event in the 'Garden of Eden' caused all the genetic mutations which now produce nasty diseases like cystic fibrosis and cancer, even in people who existed on other continents well before Adam was 'created' from dust and Eve was created from one of his ribs. By the way, that was a neat bit of chemistry and human genetics - DNA and proteins from silicon dioxide, and replacing all the Y-chromosomes in Adam's rib with extra X-chromosomes! That should be easy to explain with interactive graphics - pity it can't be explained with 21st Century science?
Perhaps the chapter on the creation of the universe in '7 days' will be equally illuminating? Or the one on Noah's flood will explain where all the water came from and then went to? Then maybe there will be the chapter on angels, the location of the gates of heaven, and the tooth fairy. And the one that explains how drug resistant bacteria get created by the sadistic (but intelligent) designer just to keep us all in fear and suffering, and believing in your religious propaganda. Is it any wonder that America now rates 32nd in the world on the basis of scientific knowledge, and has now almost completely lost credibility in an increasing well educated world?
Is it any wonder that America now rates 32nd in the world on the basis of scientific knowledge, and has now almost completely lost credibility in an increasing well educated world?
Mate, given the content of your posts in this thread there isn't any wonder whatsoever
Is there a reason behind your aggression towards Christianity?
I'm thinking maybe you were savaged by a rabid creationist when you were a kid?
Just kidding - but is this thread worth taking further?
Comments
Ok, so you've brought up the wonderfully current idea that maybe the gospel writers were actually being devious in their writing. And given the amount of historical fiction around today it would appear plausible to a cursory glance.
But modern historical fiction is almost unheard of if you go back more than a few hundred years. It's essentially a modern invention. The idea of writing everyday incidents and meaningless details into an account just so you will be deceived into thinking its real and then accepting that someone turned water into wine or rose from the dead as a result is an idea that only we today can use to explain the gospels away.
There was a lot of spiritual writing and myth written down in the ancient world and the gospels don't fit that determination. Even luke says at the beginning of his gospel that he is essentially just collating various accounts so his mate can know the truth.... While you may disagree that the accounts are real, there is precious little evidence that these guys were attempting to appeal to people credulity on the basis that you are suggesting.
1) No I didn't.
2) No it's not.
Ok my excuse is I am typing on an iPad but as a rebuttal is well ... You need to come up with something more substantive.
Don't underestimate your iPad ... rick's argument looks pretty hieratic to me.
To me it's not that complicated. Look around. I don't need a scientific study to tell me that my car was designed by an engineer, even though I may not know anything about that engineer. Likewise there are too many moving parts that mesh together in creation for it to have been an accident or random occurance and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.
If it is that simple, perhaps you can explain where God's genetics lab is located and why he/she/it won't share his amazing knowledge and technologies with human geneticists who would just love to know how to cure the genetic diseases which your cruel 'intelligent designer' simply refuses to do. I may not be a rocket scientist, but I can certainly ask plenty of very inconvenient questions like this. So if you don't buzz off and leave this thread to the discussion of interactive textbooks, I will embarrass you with a few more similarly inconvenient questions.
1) No I didn't.
2) No it's not.
Then,
1) what were you saying and why?
2) why not?
Ok, so you've brought up the wonderfully current idea that maybe the gospel writers were actually being devious in their writing. And given the amount of historical fiction around today it would appear plausible to a cursory glance.
But modern historical fiction is almost unheard of if you go back more than a few hundred years. It's essentially a modern invention. ...
So you've never read Ovid?
So you've never read Ovid?
No I haven't, and I'll admit that, being mainly science educated myself, if you are at all classically trained you will know far more than me in this area, however I did not say unheard of - I said almost unheard of, which I believe to be the case. I am seriously however open to instruction if you have a large list...
You're obfuscating the difference between science and religion. Science clearly shows that things happen for a reason. Cause and effect. This is the result of man's inability to accept change and/or lose a pinnacle position of power on an issue. There are rules that govern psychical actions. Science doesn't know everything, and many hypothesis are wrong, but the goal is to find answers, not simply saying this must be so without the ability to question it.
What makes you think that the vast majority of Christians are told to accept stuff without the ability to question it? Talk about obfuscation! This makes for a fine story for those who believe that being a Christian is akin to believing in fairy tales but has little bearing on reality. Not only that, but I have never heard a minister say you must accept something and never question it. And I have been to many churches and heard many sermons. Maybe you have heard them but this sounds like a myth to me. Can you back this up?
Organized religion takes the easy way by claiming there is an intelligent design to what we don't understand. There are unverifiable stories that are passed from generation to generation that explain basic right and wrong, and general rules about keeping societies functioning, but they also come with a lot of what seems like filler material of magical things that go against the known laws of the universe.
Such a paternalistic and patronizing view of organized religion. Again no doubt it's a helpful mantra to repeat for those who want nothing to do with that organized religion. Plus it's not the easy way out. You get abused as being unintelligent by others in western countries if you believe, and history is replete with people who have died for their belief in Jesus. The easy way would be to say that you can believe in whatever you want as long as it's true for you. Easy way indeed.
The idea that organized religion is the outworking of the primitive mind's response to the unknown doesn't square with what I've read in the Bible or the historical movement of Christianity.
It's designed to ignore what you know and instead to base the core of your existence on faith.
I don't know what religion you're talking about but this isn't true for Christianity. The most you can say is that Christianity says that you can't always trust what you know and you should question your motives, but to say that it's "designed to ignore what you know" is false. Where did people get this idea that faith means leaving your brain at the doorstep? I don't get it. I've never seen this myself in all my years of being a Christian.
Often science is vilified because things that were canon are now undeniably in opposition to religion. The thing is real scientists don't care about how it affects a religion they care about the truth, and most scientists throughout history do seem to have a core faith.
Often? Not in my experience. I am science trained - I am back at university after years of being a science teacher, studying further in bioinformatics, genetics and biochemistry and I have never been vilified by religion. I guess it may happen but not in my experience.
Now do you really think that organisms can't and don't change despite the very real efforts by man in agriculture, animal husbandry and mapping of genomes. We understand these things quite well which is why evolution as a theory — not a hypothesis — is as undeniable a truth as the sun will rise tomorrow morning from the same side of the sky.
You sound very religious and absolute in your statement that evolution as a theory is undeniable truth
Plus, no scientist christian or otherwise, denies that change occurs. You are obfuscating the difference between change due to mixing, matching, deleting (through mutation) and duplicating of information already present in a genome and change due to the build up of information from a place where there was none to begin with. These are two very different things. One has been observed to occur all the time. I'm yet to hear of the second occurring.
You mean like web pages, which are now all heavy duty JS and CSS with jQuery and AJAX and PHP, SQL, etc. There is no simple web project these days.
iWeb was good for beginners and any WYSIWYG development tools made for iBooks will also be usable in a rudimentary way, but to do it professionally I think we will still need the programmers.
IMHO, "artists" who can't learn how to use what is currently the tools of their trade, be it stonecutting for cathedral-building or programming foriOS, need to be removed from the "art" field. Those "people" are suited to luxury salons talking, champagne drinking... not to serious creative processes.
I believe in a Da Vinci (not the code, the guy...) world where a great painter is also a chemist and an engineer (true of Rembrandt too...), where a great designer (think Steve Jobs) actually has an active hand in the patenting process of his company.
"I'm an artist, I wanna creaaaate from my guuuts, I'm not bothering with the tiny details of pigments, chemicals or code". Yeah, right. You mean you're a lazy ass.
"We still need the programmers/chemists/technicals". Yeah. Always will if you're a true creative, and actually need to understand the process. The Treaty of Color can only be written by Da Vinci or Goethe.
IMHO, "artists" who can't learn how to use what is currently the tools of their trade, be it stonecutting for cathedral-building or programming foriOS, need to be removed from the "art" field. Those "people" are suited to luxury salons talking, champagne drinking... not to serious creative processes.
I believe in a Da Vinci (not the code, the guy...) world where a great painter is also a chemist and an engineer (true of Rembrandt too...), where a great designer (think Steve Jobs) actually has an active hand in the patenting process of his company.
"I'm an artist, I wanna creaaaate from my guuuts, I'm not bothering with the tiny details of pigments, chemicals or code". Yeah, right. You mean you're a lazy ass.
"We still need the programmers/chemists/technicals". Yeah. Always will if you're a true creative, and actually need to understand the process. The Treaty of Color can only be written by Da Vinci or Goethe.
Taken to its logical extension, you are asserting that the creatives should be forced to render their art by putting together ones and zeros for the ARM and Intel processors -- or maybe designing and constructing the silicon chips, themselves.
Well done mate! You really derailed this thread, didn't you. So maybe my post to an earlier thread on this subject was very relevant?
I saw it as humorous from the first few lines. I think if it got derailed it was by those that started bashing Gore because of the content of the book. After that there was only spotty talk about the merits of epub versus Push Pop's use of native Cocoa versus the difficulty of using web publishing tools (PHP, JS, CSS, Ajax, etc).
It was a joke -- clearly so with some looking for a fight anytime AlGore is mentioned. Like his views or not, believe his science quotes or not, the product that was produced was a fantastic approach to making publishing hit a higher mark in both production and consumption.
And, BTW I laughed my as off when I read it!
If it is that simple, perhaps you can explain where God's genetics lab is located and why he/she/it won't share his amazing knowledge and technologies with human geneticists who would just love to know how to cure the genetic diseases which your cruel 'intelligent designer' simply refuses to do. I may not be a rocket scientist, but I can certainly ask plenty of very inconvenient questions like this. So if you don't buzz off and leave this thread to the discussion of interactive textbooks, I will embarrass you with a few more similarly inconvenient questions.
I didn't buzz off to avoid embarrassment but I do have to sleep some time. The thing that is simple is the truth that someone put this all here, there had to be a designer. That does not mean that life is simple or that there aren't problems. Maybe the problems are the results of the choices of people who were given free will to do good or evil. If we are given the freedom to choose then we will certainly reap the results of those choices and those results can be passed down from generation to generation. Perhaps it's not the creator who is the one who is "cruel."
I keep searching the MAS for iBooks, but it's not up yet (if it's going to be).
It isn't. iBooks Author is for OS X. iBooks is for iPad/iPhone and the textbooks are iPad-only.
You're obfuscating the difference between science and religion. Science clearly shows that things happen for a reason. Cause and effect. This is the result of man's inability to accept change and/or lose a pinnacle position of power on an issue. There are rules that govern psychical actions. Science doesn't know everything, and many hypothesis are wrong, but the goal is to find answers, not simply saying this must be so without the ability to question it.
I never said that things can not or should not be questioned, indeed they should. Even the Bible says that we should test all things and not just believe anything that comes down the pike. I don't believe God has a problem with honest questions. To me it's not a question of science or religion but of truth. If a thing is true then it is true whether it was discovered by science or revealed by God.
You point about cause and effect is what I'm saying about the world we live in. When you see design in something then logic would tell you that there must have been a designer. I realize that there are different ideas about how it all came about but I think the most plausible explanation is that there is someone who created it.
The thing that is simple is the truth that someone put this all here, there had to be a designer. That does not mean that life is simple or that there aren't problems. Maybe the problems are the results of the choices of people who were given free will to do good or evil. If we are given the freedom to choose then we will certainly reap the results of those choices and those results can be passed down from generation to generation. Perhaps it's not the creator who is the one who is "cruel."
Wow what a load of ideological crap which lacks ANY scientific basis whatsoever! Are you suggesting that a benevolent 'designer' causes specific mutations leading to congenital genetic disease being propagated as punishment for specific sins of one's ancestors? Perhaps you have a table which says which sins cause which genetic disorders? Or are you suggesting that genetic disorders can be cured by specific acts, like prayer or giving all your money to some celebrity church leader? Perhaps you have a table which says which 'good acts' cure which genetic disorders?
What a con! What is the scientific evidence for this, and what is the suggested mechanism that causes acts of 'free will' to cause specific genetic mutations? And people like you get to decide who will be the next President of the USA? May your God, or any god for that matter, save the rest of the world from ignorant fools like you. Now go back to sleep!
Wow what a load of ideological crap which lacks ANY scientific basis whatsoever! Are you suggesting that a benevolent 'designer' causes specific mutations leading to congenital genetic disease being propagated as punishment for specific sins of one's ancestors? Perhaps you have a table which says which sins cause which genetic disorders? Or are you suggesting that genetic disorders can be cured by specific acts, like prayer or giving all your money to some celebrity church leader? Perhaps you have a table which says which 'good acts' cure which genetic disorders?
What a con! What is the scientific evidence for this, and what is the suggested mechanism that causes acts of 'free will' to cause specific genetic mutations? And people like you get to decide who will be the next President of the USA? May your God, or any god for that matter, save the rest of the world from ignorant fools like you. Now go back to sleep!
I tried to limit my prior posts merely to the idea of the existence of God based on a cause and effect argument related to the complexity of the creation. But since you want to discuss the question of suffering then I'll need to go into some theology. Ultimatley all evil and disease came from the fall in the Garden of Eden because when sin entered the world it brought a curse on all humankind. Before the fall, the scripture says that all creation was very good, there was no suffering. When our first parents sinned then that affected all of their offspring, i.e. the whole race. This is what I was referring to when I talked about the problems coming from people who were given the choice to do good or evil. Humans by nature have been tainted ever since the fall in the garden, which means we have good and evil within us. We can choose to do good but none of us are without sin.
The result of all of that is that we now live in a world that is full of unjust suffering. Think about it. Is there starvation in the world because the earth can't produce enough food to sustain the population or is there starvation in the world because some people oppress others and keep them from the resources they need? Or refuse to help those in need? All of the genectic defects that you refer to, and even worse than that, are the result of sin entering the world through our first parents. However the problem is much deeper than genetics but strkes at the very heart of our essence which is our soul. The problem of evil and suffering will require something bigger than science to resolve. The core cause of evil and suffering lies in the heart (in the spiritual sense) of humans. We can not fix the evil that is within us by our own goodness, resolve, or scientific knowledge.
You say that God refuses to do anything about it but he has done something about it. God sent Christ died to redeem us from the curse brought about by the fall. That does not mean that those who believe in God will not suffer in this life, because eveybody suffers. But it does mean that he is with them through their sufferings and that they can begin to reverse the effects of sin by inviting God to live in them. They also have the hope of something better beyond this life.
God invites us all to get a new heart and a new life by putting our faith and trust in him. Science can not fix this problem. The problem I'm talking about is not just the physical diseases and such that we deal with in this world. Yes science has accomplished wonderful things in that realm. But the problem I'm talking about is the root of all human suffering; which was the unleashing of sin in this world and it's effects on the human soul. God is the only one who is able to give us the ultimate solution to the suffering in this life.
I will fear no evil: For I am the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley.
Ultimatley all evil and disease came from the fall in the Garden of Eden because when sin entered the world it brought a curse on all humankind. Before the fall, the scripture says that all creation was very good, there was no suffering. When our first parents sinned then that affected all of their offspring, i.e. the whole race.
I just can't wait to see how this fiction gets presented in an interactive textbook, or interactive Bible! Particularly the bit where it explains how that event in the 'Garden of Eden' caused all the genetic mutations which now produce nasty diseases like cystic fibrosis and cancer, even in people who existed on other continents well before Adam was 'created' from dust and Eve was created from one of his ribs. By the way, that was a neat bit of chemistry and human genetics - DNA and proteins from silicon dioxide, and replacing all the Y-chromosomes in Adam's rib with extra X-chromosomes! That should be easy to explain with interactive graphics - pity it can't be explained with 21st Century science?
Perhaps the chapter on the creation of the universe in '7 days' will be equally illuminating? Or the one on Noah's flood will explain where all the water came from and then went to? Then maybe there will be the chapter on angels, the location of the gates of heaven, and the tooth fairy. And the one that explains how drug resistant bacteria get created by the sadistic (but intelligent) designer just to keep us all in fear and suffering, and believing in your religious propaganda. Is it any wonder that America now rates 32nd in the world on the basis of scientific knowledge, and has now almost completely lost credibility in an increasing well educated world?
Is it any wonder that America now rates 32nd in the world on the basis of scientific knowledge, and has now almost completely lost credibility in an increasing well educated world?
Mate, given the content of your posts in this thread there isn't any wonder whatsoever
Is there a reason behind your aggression towards Christianity?
I'm thinking maybe you were savaged by a rabid creationist when you were a kid?
Just kidding - but is this thread worth taking further?