Intelligent Design? Myth or Fact

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.

 

I assume that by the curious phrase "benefit of assumption" you're not referring to being taken bodily into heaven, but feeling free to make an assumption in the absence of evidence, something contrary to the idiom "benefit of the doubt". Since I've asked you at least four times to give me a single example of a scientific theory which fulfils your strict criteria and which you consider valid, I will claim the "benefit" of which you are so fond and assume that there is no scientific theory which fulfils the exacting criteria you've set out. Consequently I will assume that you are ideologically opposed to the possibility of evolution being a "valid scientific theory" and are knowingly setting impossibly high standards of evidence, standards quite inappropriate to science as it is currently practised.

If this assumption is wrong, please give me an example of a scientific theory which you consider to be valid.

 

For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals
Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination
We learned to talk

 

"He who does not carry the burden of proof carries the benefit of assumption, meaning he needs no evidence to support his claim".

Thas is as far as definition of "benefit of assumption goes".

And since you are the one who made the claim that theory of evolution is scientifically valid theory then ultimately you are the one who carries the burden of proof , one who has to come up with required evidence to support your claim about scientific validity of the theory (not evidence of sky fairies or what not).

I have set very straightforward and reasonable criteria to meet the standard of "scientific theory" (since you asked me what is the criteria differentiating wishful thinking from scientifically valid theory).

Now that I have given you reasonable criteria, you ask for an example of theory that meets it.

Once I give you an example of such theory, you will most likely set on endlessly arguing that it is just as short of meeting the set criteria for scientific validity as the theory you have nearly religious faith in.

In effect you are trying every possible venue to find an excuse and free yourself of necessity to prove your own claim and put the burden of entirely different subject matter claim on me,
which only tells me that you are in fact lacking the ability to sustain your own claim which is founded on no other but your strong and nearly religious faith in it.
This renders your claim moot and I consequently carry the benefit of the assumption.

 

And this is not what you're doing with the theory of evolution by failing to engage with the evidence I showed you and insisting that I demonstrate how all matter came to exist first?!

 

Of course not, I am not the one who made the claim so I am not the one who should prove it.

You made the claim that theory of evolution is scientifically valid theory.
Making such bold claim puts the burden of proof on you.
I don't have a burden of helping you to prove your claim.
That task belongs to you.

I provided you, per your request, a reasonable and straightforward criteria that you would need to meet to prove your claim about scientific validity of the theory you refer to.

Apparently and evidently you lack ability to prove your own claim, which renders it moot and gives me the benefit of the assumption.

 

The invitation remains: if you'd like to look at the evidence I have shown you presenting a prima facie case for the validity of the theory of evolution, please do so.

 

A good argument but, the bible is very specific as to how much god knows and how much he chooses to know. My previous scriptural quotes attest to that. As to your argument that the universe would be destroyed if God used his full power to create things. How do we know what his power truly is? In the world and mankinds experiance if a power is used to its full potential then it is often devastating, but there are many powers that are used today that when used to their fullest produce good things, such as the power of peace, the power of love, the power of forgivness. Why can't a god we can't even begin to comprehend be this way and more?

 

A "prima facie case"?
You must be joking, right? This can't be serious.

If few links to some mass media articles serve as "prima facie case", then following link must serve to beat any truly scinetific theory out there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm's_Fairy_Tales

 

Yes, this makes perfect logical sense. the Grimms' fiction is of equal scientific merit as reams of interlocking and mutually corroborating evidence from ethology, ontogeny, biochemistry, genetics, biogeography and the fossil record! And it's the sky fairies who push aeroplanes.

 

Sure, everything you claimed so far is in perfect agreement with what you wrote above.

 

Actually, No, they don’t.

Okay, let take a look at some of your proof. Here this is being said of Jesus, not God. Also although the scripture says: “you know all things” did Jesus really “know all things”? No, for Jesus himself said: “Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son (Jesus), but only the Father. (Matthew 24:36) You see, just quoting a bunch of scriptures out of context does not necessarily prove anything; you need to know what the rest of the Bible has to say about the subject.

When it comes to God being omniscient you insist that God has to know everything but now when it comes to God being omnipotent, you begin to quibble?

How do we know what his power really is?

It’s God omnipotence that allowed him to bring the universe in to existence, the trillions of stars of which our sun is only a minor one; “Raise YOUR eyes high up and see. Who has created these things? It is the One who is bringing forth the army of them even by number, all of whom he calls even by name. Due to the abundance of dynamic energy, he also being vigorous in power, not one [of them] is missing.” (Isaiah 40:26) and you ask what might happen if God brought his entire omnipotence to bear?

 

Right here you get into the parts of the bible and its teachings that don't match up. Elsewhere it is said that Jesus is God incarnate, as a matter of fact that is a strong staple of the christian faith, and yet in this verse Jesus seperates himself from God. Specifically refuting the previous statements that he himself made and the previous testaments of the writers of the gospels. For instance look at Mt:1:20-23, 11:27, 14:33, 16:16-17, 27:43, Mk: 8:29-30, Lk: 8:28, 10:22, Jn: 1:18, 3:35-36, 5:18-25, 6:40, 10:36, 11:4, 17:1, 19:7. All of these are scriptures where Jesus claims to be God's son.

Now let us look at claims where he specifically called himself LORD, Mk:5:19, Jn: 13:13-14, 20:29-29. In jewish law to call yourself Lord was to declare yourself equal with God, as was to call yourself his son. In claiming to be the messiah Jesus was saying "Look I am he, the one that brought you up out of Egypt, gave unto you these lands, and has supported you with my right hand all of your days! Behold I AM who I AM!" There is even a verse in the bible, tho I can't recall if it is translated this way in the NIV, where Jesus claims I AM who I AM. Thus making himself equal with God The Father.

I am not quibbling with his omnipotence I am simply showing that our carnal human knowledge of such things is limited to our common experiances. We cannot and should not presume to fit a being as powerful as it into our petty terms.

Ok so God has this power to create and to destroy. Thus you have refuted your own previous statements about his power being to much that he would have to occasionally turn a blind eye. If the power to create works on all things then it is not too much for him to know all and still create us and know all we will do. No where in the bible does it say God chooses not to know.

IH

 

Hartshorne argues that omnipotence and omniscience each have two meanings, and a lot of confusion comes from accepting the wrong ones. He agrees that being all powerful conveys having "the highest conceivable form of power" and being more powerful than all others. He disagrees that this means God has the power to determine every detail of what happens in the universe. The latter concept produces logical pitfalls that have tripped up even such nimble theologians as Saint Thomas Aquinas. Traditional theologians have acknowledged that God's omnipotence does not extend to being able to do things which are inconsistent with logic or His nature. God can't make black whiteness, nor do evil. Judeo-Christians also recognize that God can limit His own power by granting "free will". Hartshorne argues that granting freedom can apply not just to humans but to all nature down to the subatomic quantum level. It would only be nonsense to say that an omnipotent being could do this if we take "omnipotence" to mean the ability to do any conceivable thing instead of everything that can be done. "Omniscience" presents similar problems. One meaning is knowing everything that can be known. Another is knowing everything. If God has truly given freedom to His creations, the latter meaning of omniscience is precluded, Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin to the contrary.

 

A very insightful post Okie, I'll need some time to ponder this before I go into any real depth. But here's a lil bit of initial response. IF God truly gave us free will then why does that free will cause us to be punished so severly when we go against his wishes? Also if God truly gave us free will then why are we under the curse of Adam and his folly according to biblical myth. I myself did not disobey God by taking the fruit of the tree of knowledge. I am simply reaping the consequences millenia later. I do not consider choices where there is an enternal punishment to be truly free. Its like saying, well you can go ahead and choose to kiss my wife but if you do I'll make certain to put a bullet in your head. See my point?

IH

 

I do. Here's where my heresy comes through. I don't share the fundamentalist concepts of original sin and hell. I think Genesis provides metaphors for understanding a fundamental aspect of the human condition. Two people are in Paradise, and are they happy? No, because there's that fruit that could give them the knowledge of good and evil, and then they'd be like gods. To me, this is saying what the Buddha said in different words. It's about attachments and karma. The story has a temporal dimension, about two people in the distant past, but it's about us now, and I don't think our natures have changed that much. I think of hell in a similar way--not some fate that awaits us after death, but as a very real potential in our existence here and now. Hell is a bad attitude, or more accurately, a potential condition resulting from bad attitudinal tendencies that are all too common in the human species (See discussion of original sin supra). It is what would happen if people are left to the unfettered pursuit of their appetites for wealth, status, power, and pleasure--in the words of Thomas Hobbes, "a war of all against all, in which life is brutal, nasty and short." I read about it every day in the newspapers--weapons of mass destruction, suicide bombers, torture at Guantanamo, the Madoff swindle, the Blagoijevich scandal, the Home Mortgage Crisis, the banking collapse, etc. To use Johnathan Edwards' vivid metaphor, we dangle like loathesome spiders over the flames. And we don't seem to have the insight to get ourselves out. We keep doing the same things and expecting different results--the definition of insanity.

 

Very well put. I'm glad to see someone thinking outside the box like this. Do you consider yourself a christian or not tho?

 

Yes, I do. Thousands wouldn't. I'm a Christian in the same sense Marcus Borg and other Progressive Christians are, in the seminaries of mainline Protestant churches: "the Bible is to be taken seriously but not literally." I could even claim being "born again", since the strange ideas I outlined above came to me rather abruptly in an intense religious experience (moment of clarity; psychotic break?) that caused me to see reality in a very different way than I had viewed it previously, and to accept Jesus as our ticket out of hell (as I defined it in the previous post). We could make it, if more people would just take his teachings and example seriously. Love is the answer. "The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out everywhere around us, and people do not see it." Gospel of Thomas

 

If Chrisitanity in general weren't so stuck up and hard nosed I'd be ok with it and its followers. But I've seen first hand the horrors that Christianity can cause. No offense to those of you who aren't that way.

 

God Incarnate? what have you been smoking? Yes, Jesus is God's son but he never said that he was Almighty God.

Surely you're not going to bring up this old cobbled up I AM thing, most trinitarians don't even use that anymore.

And yet you think you know all about his omniscience, interesting.

You seem to be confusing omnipotence with omniscience. My argument is that God has the right and ability to use either his omnipotence or omniscience in any way he wants. If he wanted he could have not restrict his omniscience at all and made us automatons without free will but God did give us free will and so restricted his omniscience so we could have it.