Posted on 08/13/2008 9:44:45 AM PDT by Sopater
You can wish that away into unfalsifiability as much as you like. It doesn't change the fact that people making different decisions based on the same facts shows the supernatural, non-determinant basis of the mind.
I accept your complete and unconditional surrender.
I’m going to be on the side of God’s Word.
That’s what I’m teaching my kids too. I’ll teach them what man’s “wisdom” says, as well, but teach them the failings, both historical and present, of “man’s wisdom”.
What this judge is trying to do is say:
“If you don’t indoctrinate your kids in atheism, or at least in compromised scripture so that someone later can atheize them, they can’t get into our universities, and therefore cannot earn a living.”
If that’s what feeds your ego, go ahead.
I’m sure you consider yourself wiser than God, as well.
Sure. Me and the Pope and the majority of the rest of the world MUST think we are “wiser than God” for not accepting YOUR interpretation of what Genesis means.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19956961/
The pontiff, speaking as he was concluding his holiday in northern Italy, also said that while there is much scientific proof to support evolution, the theory could not exclude a role by God.
“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”
The pope’s no more infallible than the next sinner.
He can compromise Genesis if he wants to, and then wonder why no one takes the rest of the Bible as authoritative, and “just a bunch of stories”.
I guess you think you know the Bible better than one of the preeminent Biblical scholars of our day. Your hubris is awesome! Good job on that. One day you may even have an accomplishment to go with it.
I don’t remember anything about Madison.
Your appeal to authority is noted. I hope your personal attacks make your Pride feel good.
My apologies. The insults to Madison were from another poster. Sorry for the mistake.
I take it that, in your view, the Genesis accounts contain no allegory or metaphor, and are both literal and subject to a single, self-evident interpretation. Is that correct?
regardless of literal versus allegorical interpretation,
there are certain concepts that are essential to the Christian faith in Genesis.
One of these is the effect of sin, what the world was like before sin (”Very Good”, no death, disease, predation, every creature a vegetarian), and what happened after the Fall, requiring the Savior.
So, if “allegory” is the answer in order to
***conform the Bible to Man’s interpretation***
of his observations of nature,
then these specifics are to be dismissed?
You have to dismiss the “very good” description of creation in order for the “God used evolution” assertion.
And you would also have to assume that God is not omniscient to conclude that "very good" was intended to apply only to the pre-fall creation. (Indeed, one of the conundrums of Genesis is its depiction of a contrarian and oddly limited God, who was, for example, unaware of the location of Adam and Eve after they succumbed to the temptation that He had orchestrated for them.)
No such "have to"...
God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. It WAS very good, pre-fall. Man had free will, but he WAS still good, with the potential to choose sin. This potential is not a flaw. If it wasn't there, we'd be automotons.
The alternative? Just toss the basis of all Christian religion, and that is the whole goal anyway, isn't it?
If you assume that the Christian idea of sin and forgiveness is inextricably dependent on the existence of a literal Garden of Eden, a literal tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a literal talking snake, a literal tree of life, a literal inability of God to locate his creation in the Garden, etc., etc., then I suppose you would be "tossing" the basis for Christianity.
But of course, for a great many Christian theologians throughout history, such literalism has not been the sine qua non of Christianity. This is undoubtedly because, as allegory, the Genesis account is a more compelling and inspired rendition of the nature of man and his relationship to God than it would be if taken as a mere event catalog.
==Genetic variation arises through random mutation. If a gambler looses at dice isn’t it still God’s will that he do so, despite it being demonstrably random?
As we are discovering via epigenetics, genetic variation can arise via non-random, or directed mutation. So I reject the premise of your question.
And the part about dice and God has nothing to do with biology. You are still avoiding the question. I wonder why.
Does this ring a bell???
According to classical evolutionary theory, phenotypic variation originates from random mutations that are independent of selective pressure. However, recent findings suggest that organisms have evolved mechanisms to influence the timing or genomic location of heritable variability. Hypervariable contingency loci and epigenetic switches increase the variability of specific phenotypes; error-prone DNA replicases produce bursts of variability in times of stress. Interestingly, these mechanisms seem to tune the variability of a given phenotype to match the variability of the acting selective pressure. Although these observations do not undermine Darwin’s theory, they suggest that selection and variability are less independent than once thought.
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867407001213
“Epigenetic switches increase the variability of specific phenotypes” (not genotypes). Check.
So how again can epigenetic switches change genotype? You still cannot provide an answer.
Check again...they admit that classical evolutionary theory with respect to phenotypic adaptation as being brought on by random mutation that is independent of natural selection has been FOUND TO BE IN ERROR.
All your handwaving about this being limited to phenotypic versus genotypic changes is a non-starter because until now, the Darwinists thought that phenotypic adaptation was determined my random (genetic) mutation. As usual, they were wrong!
Damn! All those patented,genetically modified food crops wasted on a false religion. Just damn.
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