FAITH in a RELIGION for those who REFUSE FACTS.

Just to let you know...it has never been my intention to get you up against the ropes.

All I have been doing is posting FACTS...and it is my hope that you will understand that regardless of ones Faith or Religious Beliefs....FACTS ARE FACTS...and should never be ignored nor should a person or group attempt to either cover them up or attempt to back beliefs contrary to facts as all that does is bring us all down to a low level of Human Ignorance.

KNOWLEDGE is a GOOD THING. Understanding and Education of Scientific Facts or Scientific Theories that have a very high probability of being facts should not be considered a threat to ones Belief in a GOD.

Yet it would appear some feel it to be.

AboveAlpha

 

In the first link, the author quotes Denton where he concludes that evolution is reducable to a lottery, and that his saying so shows that he has a misunderstanding of evolution. Then he himself describes a lottery like hypothysis to defend his statement. See, that is where science losses credibility. And observations of mutaion in a laboratory under controlled scientific conditions in no way 'proves' that eveolution in the real world forming itself from absolutely nothing in infinate variety to become millions of different life forms in thousands of different environments and that they developed specializations particular to their environment so that they could cope with predators and evasions from predators or becoming predators with some riseing to the top while others were doomed to remain at the bottom with no chance of evolutuoinary mutations that would launch them to the top. And all this over millions of billions of years as if that extreme length of time proves that anything can happen.

Accepting evolution is an incredible leap of (pardon the expression) faith. And it is no less incredible than faith itself. Darwin described selection through breeding and husbandry with the purpose of breeding or growing species that were more suited to the needs of man instead of some incredible long lived process that we can not or do not observed now. Its as if all species are locked into the same time line of developement instead of what you might expect to see that some species are on a different evolutionary stream and would mutate within our observational window where we would see a verifyable change. Darwin, or more truthfully, others, extended the scientific metaphor to make purposeful selection and mutaion into the broader span of natural history. Evolution is nothimng more than a direct refutation to the creator God. And science has needed to contort itself to make this argument.

Ultimately, Darwin's theory implied that all evolution had come about by the interactions of two basic processes, random mutation and natural selection, and it meant that the ends arrived at were entirely the result of a succession of chance events. Evolution by natural selection is therefore, in essence, strictly analogous to problem solving by trial and error, and it leads to the immense claim that all the design in the biosphere is ultimately the fortuitous outcome of an entirely blind random process - a giant lottery. (Denton, 1987, p. 43)

This is clearly an incorrect way of looking at things. To illustrate, we will examine a modern variant of Cuvier's "animal space", a multi-dimensional space in which all possible phenotypes exist, and are arranged next to one another according to the amount of difference between their genotypes (this is a very high-dimensional space, as anyone familiar with the number of genes and number of alleles per gene in a typical organism well knows). Absolutely nonfunctional phenotypes - ones that will not survive in any environment - are represented as blank spaces. Now take a functional point A and a functional point B that are separated by a few hundred thousand points in this space. The probability of a macromutation, which is somewhat like making a lottery drawing (although not exactly), changing A to B is astronomically small. Likewise the probability of A changing stepwise to B through a series of random events, is astronomically small. Denton seems to think that stepwise evolution is like the latter. But this is not so. The rate of mutation in organisms, "one mutation per locus per 10^5 to 10^6 gametes"(Campbell, 1990, p. 445) is sufficient to give natural selection an immense amount of variation to work with at any functional starting point. It is probable that one mutant of A will be a functional point closer to B. If this descendant is selected for, it will have a large number of descendants, whose gametes will undergo the same rate of mutation, making it extremely likely that another functional point closer to B will be produced.

 

I agree. But using facts as a blugeon against faith becauses reason implies that faith can not be because of facts is in itself a kind of faith. Evolution is in no way a verifiable paradigm in which God does not exist as some would portray it such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens who used superficial observations of society and nature, both of which are in a less than perfect condition because of the fall, as proof that God is not, and never realizing that their arguements could be inverted and used against them to prove that evolution is false on the same plane, with all things being equal.

 

I do not see anyone bludgeoning religion, nor have I noted any purposeful attack on ones God. What I have noted has been a series of data points that have been requested and provided that indicate discrepancies in the biblical interpretation of events. It seems to me much of the problem in these debates boils down to one individual feeling slighted by the information provided, which is often requested or required when debating the issue in question.
Considering the thread title, perhaps this observation answers a question brought up by the topic. You can debunk the Bible(s) based on science, without dismissing God....they are after all written by people.

 

First of all I am not an Atheist....I am an Agnostic.

Secondly this topic is not about attempting to prove or disprove the existence of a GOD as no one can provide actual proof either way.

The same thing goes for a person having a soul or spirit because again...no proof can be provided either way.

What is central to this topic is FACTS.

I personally don't care if a person believes or does not believe in a GOD nor do I care what religion a person might be a member of or believe.

What I DO care about is how certain Highly Religious People of Faith will seem to be so threatened by another person or in this case member talking about and posting Scientific Facts that they will go to such extremes as to present false data or information to disprove them or angrily place aggressive posts in any way or manner necessary to either stop a person from posting such facts or use false information to discredit another.

Now I am not one to be intimidated but I have seen in the past how upon a certain topic be it evolution or a social issue specific to a religious ideology several religious members will actually gang up on another member and aggressively and systematically do whatever it takes to wear such a member down.

Now this has not happened to me but I have seen it happen to other members.

Even for myself I have had several members post in an irritated manner as they have attempted to discredit factual information I have posted here. I did expect this and I have provided links and sources to my stated factual information which only seems to irritate such religious members to a greater extent...which I also expected.

It is that reaction from those who are Religious that I am exploring in this topic.

AboveAlpha

 

I am not slighted in the least. I question the limitation of reason to end at atheism. And I question that science and scientific investigations are supposed to preclude God. The Bible is not a scientific text, but a redemptive one. The only gaps are those of misunderstanding because of an absence of knowledge of God. Science and its discoveries reinforce my beliefs because I know that God is creator. Its a basic truth.

 

I have read what Denton has specified as far as what you post above and I have provided links to several Scientific overviews of his work which detail Denton is attempting to use aspects of the cytochrome C structure species comparison to validate his claims.

This has been rejected by a vast number of Scientists as purely an attempt to use scientific facts in a non-scientific manner to attempt to disprove evolution.

AboveAlpha

 

Yes. I saw that. I would have to investigate that to know what was really said and what cytochrome C is. Yes, I claim ignorence and prefere to comment after I know more. I made different observation here. What say you about that?

 

I didn't say "you" were an atheist. I was simply stating the similarity between theists and atheists. Agnostics recognize it can't be proven either way and go on their merry way.

As for "FACTS", there are none. There is no proof our consciousness transcends death, of what happened before the Big Bang or what, if anything, is outside of the Natural Universe, whether or not there is an all-encompassing power that unites us all. People can post their beliefs, but they can't prove those beliefs are true.

Getting back to my point about the difference between dogma and faith, yes, we can disprove dogma, but not the precepts of faith about the aforementioned subject areas.

 

Dogma exists in religion and science. How do you disprove dogma, because you say so? Thats dogma.

 

That is fine, and I am pleased you are not slighted. Many however. also question the reasoning that ends at God, largely because they are asked to accept the biblical interpretation in order to do so. This does not preclude a God, it simply means the one claimed in these texts does not meet even basic levels of logical reasoning. This is not meant as an attack on belief, as everyone gets to believe whatever they wish...it does however effect opinion.

Opinion is not truth...it is simply what we humans do with information.

My opinion does not allow for the God portrayed in the Bible(s), as there is absolutely nothing to support it beyond the books that say it does.

 

You sound open minded, give this a go...

http://www.truthortradition.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=179

 

I am very happy to read a post such as this.

Than You.

AboveAlpha

 

I agree with everything you have stated here.

Yes we can disprove Dogma as well as disprove certain fallacies that were written by ancient man and now placed in the Bible.

AboveAlpha

 

interesting article...though heavily slanted by ideology.

then there is this:
"If, time after time, archaeology substantiates statements the Bible makes about the past, it would be logical to conclude that because the Bible is reliable historically, it must be reliable when it speaks of salvation, the coming of Christ, the Judgment, and everlasting life."

Firstly, there are far more aspects of history disproven by archaeology that supported by it, and most of those that are do not deal with the God of the bible(s), but places that existed. Secondly, there is nothing logical about assuming unobserved properties of a thing based on observations unrelated to the assumed property. Otherwise we could assume everything that swims must have scales.

 

Faith in God is a gift from God. Evidence that supports unimportant geographical and historical characters will never enlighten the weightier and more important topics of faith like original sin, salvation and redemption and the resurrection. I was just giving it a shot.

 

I'm sick as are most Atheists in the evolution is only a theory argument, we can demonstrate evolution in the laboratory when a bacteria mutates. We can see real life examples in nature with higher animals. Peter and Rosemary Grant have evidence that finches have evolutionary improvements in rapid order when the population is pressed on one island the plant life changed so in a few years they had beaks 25% larger to eat tougher seeds. We can see it in the fossil record, see it in nature and this backed up by various means like genetic research tracing human life back to a common ancestor. It may be a theory but so is gravity and we are pretty sure the two are true. Observation IS science its the basis of Astronomy when dealing with objects we can't explore save with telescopes and theory.

And the Bible did you people read the thing, and look at it from a rational moral viewpoint how can one use that even as a treatise of moral behavior your "god" is a monster, his followers committed crimes we condemned the Nazi Regime and others for (genocide, slavery, aggressive war, rape as a war weapon all come to mind) IF you take the book as true. If just stories if also fails to give a good example of morality.

Sorry I will oppose superstition, barbarism and the latent BS of religion.

 

I had assumed as much. One can certainly maintain faith in something in the face of evidence to the contrary...in fact this can be used as a definition of having faith. Faith however, and opinion are not useful when establishing fact.

 

I read this as well and it is very heavily sided to religious ideology.

The main problem with this article and assessment is that it details the concept that because the Bible has been shown to be an ACCURATE HISTORICAL RECORD of past ancient events that should not the Bible be considered equally accurate about it's stated religious ideology.

Well....if this was a fact then I think I would have to agree to a point but it is not entirely factual.

There are MANY incorrect Biblical statements of past history that we have been able to document as using the texts of other cultures such as the Egyptian Hieroglyphics which detail an entirely different account and perspective upon the Hebrews and one point of this is how the Hebrews are detailed by the Egyptians and other cultures to have been known as a WARRIOR MERCENARY RACE.

The Hebrews are detailed in various text as been HIRED as MERCENARIES by the Egyptians to be a part of the Egyptian Army as they helped expand various Pharaohs empires.

This is detailed in Hieroglyphics as well as in various texts written by those countries conquered by Egypt with the help of the Hebrew Warriors.

When the Hebrews living in Egypt grew in great numbers such texts and Hieroglyphics detail several attempts by the Hebrews to take over Egypt by force and several rebellion attempts were quashed by the Egyptian Army. These Rebellions are detailed by the Egyptian Glyphs and the Hebrews are carved in to the stone as being...THE EVIL ONES WHOM WERE HIRED TO DO PHARAOHS BIDDING.

These attempts at a take over were directly responsible for several Pharaohs sending their Army in to the Hebrew Villages to kill the first born son of every Hebrew Family. This happened several times over many decades and was a method to control the population of the Hebrews.

So...such archaeological discoveries tend to be used in what manner is deemed appropriate by those who are Religious.

AboveAlpha

 

I guess I still have difficulty understanding what the topic is. Well, it's been a long time since, but I did study geometry in high school, so this argument that the theory of evolution is a fact, that's total BS. When he says FACT in all caps, the word he's looking for is POSTULATE, which is an assumption of fact accepted without proof, but I fail to see what axiomatic qualities can be found in the theory of evolution. Maybe there is a group of scientists who deem it so by whatever virtues they imagine of themselves, but I'm not buying it.

Also, this notion that the Bible has zero basis in reality, how does one argue for or against that? Lately I've been reading the Bible I got from the JWs, those guys always stop by with their Watchtower pamphlets, and to consider what that must be like for them, and what it's like for anyone who thinks to discuss the scriptures among strangers: Matthew 10, "Look! I am sending you forth as sheep amidst wolves; therefore prove yourselves cautious as serpents and yet innocent as doves..." Pardon my sarcasm, but you know, I read that literally, does it mean that some people have evolved into sheep whereas some have evolved into wolves? So what link am I supposed to provide about that? What line of logic can be drawn in there? The horizon, of course. As the birds go in the sky above, so the fishes go in the water below.

But this is politics, and in the real world I live in Ohio where the capital city is called Columbus, and because of the separation of church and state, I guess I'm just supposed to pretend that the story of Jonas it totally irrelevant, but I take inspiration from that anyways. Lately, I'm tempted to delve into the Book of Mormon, not that I believe in it so much as I am curious about the idea of there being some connections between the Indians and the Jews of ancient times. That really throws the whole 1492 thing for a loop. Because I climbed onto tower, and I looked town at the Earth from above, like to see from the bird's point of view, and lo and behold what did I see if not the fish that swallowed up Jonas in the form of an astronomical observatory, and it was a 1500 ft numeral Pi.

That is some personal anecdotal evidence, if you want to call it evidence, but I don't know what exactly it means. If I come across as cranky, it's probably because I just an (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*) by nature. In all honesty, all this is a joy for me, keeps the mystery alive. So, my guess is, if it's about religious people getting testy, has to do with the way people identify with the stuff they read in the Bible, but if it's about faith in general, then it has to do with the way of the revelations and the apocalypse, which is the dawn, because that is the moment night turns into day, the invisible becomes visible, etc.

Anyways, sorry for this wall of text post, I don't mean to be rambling like a prissy know-it-all.

 

The problem has never been the fact, but the interpretation of the fact.

While "thunder" the fact is for one person a phenomenon in physics, for another is a voice of heaven.

In your several postings, the several "interpretations" given to explain the facts have been challenged by other explanations that are more accurate, or by finding errors that discredit the explanations given in your links.

I will give you an example. Someone mentioned the ice core dating as a yearly accumulatiuon of ice that never fails, and such and such. The counting of these ice core layers gave a minimum estimate of the age of the earth as 160,000 years old...(talkorigins) an amount far below of the billions of years estimated by the radiometric method. But, the radiometric method is claimed to be based in a fact, this is to say, the decay of such and such particle, and etc.

Then, you have two "facts" but the results made from the methods used to apply the facts won't agree at the end.

On one side, the counting of ice core has a disagreement between the computer calculation with the visual counting, because while the computer calculation is reaching 100,000 years, the visual is counting 25,000 years less. The "problem" here, is that the computer was calibrated to what the scientist "believes" will be the amount of pressure that will shrunk the ice to a certain thickness. With this action, the counting of ice core layers was made in base of computer calculations because visually was hard to see a border line between yearly accumulations. To make things more laughable, using laser for visual counting, the amount of ice core layers appear to be thousands times more that the "official" counting based in computer estimate of ice under pressure from the upper layers.

Then, a fact is a fact, that is apparently the yearly accumulation of ice, but the interpretation of the amount of ice core layers cannot be considered as accurate and definitive, because there are lots of discrepancies with their counting.

On the other hand, the radiometric method lacks of verification, is a method that can't be trusted because there is nothing to prove the veracity of the data results.

So, until all the scientists finally come united with one sole conclusion, until that day, there is no "fact" that can be used to discredit the biblical narration.

Go and fight with the scientific community first, in order for them to come up with solid answers, and after they finally come up with an agreement, then you can use that "fact" against the biblical narration.

So far, believers in God and followers of His doctrines and teachings can rest and enjoy their beliefs, because at the end, it appears that scientists won't reach such an agreement... and dogs that bark ussually won't bite... lol

 

Carlos...you can believe whatever you want to believe as this is your RIGHT...and I would and have DEFENDED such rights....and I am certain I will soon be doing so again.

But as far as your statement and I quote..." until all the scientists finally come united with one sole conclusion, until that day, there is no "fact" that can be used to discredit the biblical narration."...end quote.....

.....well Carlos this statement is not only confusing as to why you would use it as the conclusion of your previous analogy but as well....it makes absolutely ZERO LOGICAL SENSE!

First of all....you speak and vilify SCIENCE and SCIENTISTS as if you believe such a method and such people using it are specifically TARGETING YOUR RELIGION OR BELIEFS....it and they are NOT!

Science is simply a method to determine specific issues of REALITY. It is the best most honest and most effective way to determine the what, where, when, who, why and HOW'S of things and events.

Now back to the sentence I quoted...sole conclusion of WHAT? What to conclude about the ICE?

If you are saying until men of Science and Research can accurately determine the Earth's Age by coming to a conclusion upon how to gauge Ice Core Data well then I have NEWS FOR YOU....we have MANY, MANY DIFFERENT WAY'S to determine the Earth's Age it is ridiculous

The FACTS ARE we KNOW with 100 % CERTAINTY that the Universe is over 13.4 BILLION YEARS OLD....and that statement I just made is a UNDENIABLE FACT WITH SEVERAL PROOFS that are IMPOSSIBLE TO DEBUNK.

When I say IMPOSSIBLE I MEAN....IM-POS-I-BLE!!! LOL!

So just this fact right here shows us all that the OLD TESTAMENT story of GENESIS is PROVEN to be just a story.

And all that really matters is the lesson of such stories and the Morality they teach anyway's.

You shouldn't get so hung up wasting your time trying to prove something that can't be proven.

AboveAlpha

 

So if faith is a gift from God and not everyone gets it, God is determining who His chosen people are and the rest are screwed.
Is that how you see your benevolent God?

 

did he (never left) say that "not everybody gets it"?

 

No.
The fact that not everyone "gets" faith is a known quantity.
There are plenty of people on these threads alone that don't have faith.
He said faith is a "gift from God".
Since not everyone has it, according to him God has cherry picked those that will believe and those that don't.
Have I cleared that up for you?