Questions to God. (2 Viewers)

[Mike Krailo]

We all have a conscience, imagine that. First, there are certain people who appear to NOT have a conscience. However, I'll let that pass. The problem is that linking that to a proof of God's existence is a non-sequitur. There is no direct path between that statement and your God.

The thing is, all non-tangible things like feelings (emotions), love, suffering to love, logic, ability to reason at all, math, the concept of infinity are simply not part of the physical world at all. None of these obviously real things have mass. They are the type of things of the spirit. All humans have the ability to grow spiritually good (more like God), or less spiritual which is essentially materialistic type thinking.

Playing hokey pokey with some of the good things of God and claiming them to be of natural origin, when nothing that has been made was made without him is stealing his good attributes and claiming them as your own. Our hearts can either soften and open up to the highest qualities of love and spirit as intended or grow cold and distant from them for purely selfish reasons. This is just how we were designed to operate.

Like I said, you are well aware of the non material spiritual things of the heart. So it most certainly follows that spiritual things do not come from the material universe. Where do spiritual things come from?

 

[Mike Krailo]

We all have the ability to love each other and choose to do so even when it might cause suffering for ourselves. Another non-sequitur.

Another hokey pokey move from someone who should know better.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The work of Alan Turing includes a mathematical study of how complexity can arise from nature. It is a biology paper, titled "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" and it describes his theory in something he called a reaction-diffusion system. In it he shows how complexity can spontaneously spring from simplicity.

In essence you create the building blocks of life from the stormy conditions of primordial Earth oceans. Now they are floating around in the mineral-rich oceans, floating in random orientation and moving in more or less random directions, influenced by tidal flow - which is not always uniform. These molecules collide in random orientations. Most of the time, the collisions are passive - but there is this little thing called electrophilic attraction such that it is POSSIBLE for the colliding molecules to stick together chemically - i.e. a chemical reaction. And for small molecules, their virtual surface is COVERED with electrons that can be shared by forming a chemcial bond. That bond is strong enough that the combined molecules stay combined for a while. The more stable the bond, the longer the components stick together.

So now you have these slightly more complex molecules floating around colliding with other molecules... and some of THEM exhibit electrophilic attraction to an active part of the molecule, so THEY react. Here is Nature, bouncing random molecules in random orientation, and SOME few collisions yield greater complexity - because, of course, they are BIGGER now and become easier targets.

So these molecules bounce off of other molecules. Some of the collisions promote increased molecular complexity, others don't. But all this time, for hundreds of millions to a couple of BILLION years, the collisions continue as Nature iterates through the orientation combinations, the moral equivalent of tossing the spaghetti on the wall to see if it sticks. Or of a child playing with Legos to see what will hold together. Iterating through solutions, most of which don't stay together. But some of them do. And it all depends on random collisions of molecules to see what sticks. I went through the math earlier in post #280. You had 4.8 x 10^39 collision possibilities that would be likely to be productive over a time span measured in billions of years.

Let's try something simpler. Do you know how rubies, sapphires, and emeralds form? In solution, chromium oxide molecules collide and become dichromium oxides, then trichromium, etc., forming the start of a crystal that grows layer by layer, driven by the forces implicit in entropy/energy balance. From the simple to the complex. Nature iterating through collision orientations to see what sticks. Sound familiar? See a pattern here?

 

[Isaac]

Why do you not accept an infinite universe?

Because to me, semantically and theologically, that's the same thing as believing in God.
In a sense I DO accept that, that's why I believe in God. Someone, or something, put things into existence that weren't in existence. There just isn't a way 'around' that

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Because to me, semantically and theologically, that's the same thing as believing in God.
In a sense I DO accept that, that's why I believe in God. Someone, or something, put things into existence that weren't in existence. There just isn't a way 'around' that

Except that the latest JWST findings suggest a different physical reality to that concept. Msgr LeMaitre's Big Bang theory was based on incomplete data because no telescope of his day could see as far as JWST can. The "moment of creation" computed by Bishop Ussher (about 6300 years ago) doesn't hold up to science. Now the Big Bang of about 14 billion years ago is also failing to hold up. Which means you can't use the Biblical creation stories any more. If the universe really IS eternal, there goes your "creation" story right out the window.

My more Zen oriented approach is this: The universe exists. Does it appear to require attention? Not at the moment. Can I do anything about it if it DOES require attention? I doubt it. Therefore, l will be myself and the universe can be itself. You posit the existence of God. Can you prove it? No, and in fact your belief system REQUIRES that proof is not an issue. Has God directly communicated to me, or indirectly so, it a way that I can recognize? No, I don't think so. Can I do anything to prove your God's existence? Doesn't look like it. I'll be myself and God can be Himself. Next question?

 

[Isaac]

Next question?

Indeed, that is the question

 

[Isaac]

There is no equality between the innocents in Texas and the people of Gaza and I can't believe you make one. The people of Gaza made their own problem. ALL THEY EVER NEEDED TO DO was to stop bombing innocent Israeli civilians. Very simple. READ some history. Israel left Gaza more than 20 years ago. They had their wish of independence. Israel left them with viable businesses and farms, lots of good housing and infrastructure. The Palestinians elected Hamas to rule themselves and that was their downfall. The world has since sent billions of dollars in aid to Gaza. Hamas has stolen it all to buy bombs and arms. As others have pointed out, Hamas even pulled up the water pipes to make rockets. These people are only interested in killing Jews. They live to kill Jews. They are sick and evil. They are getting exactly what they give. What goes around comes around is what we call this. Yes the youngest of the children are innocent as are all young children. But it doesn't take many years to corrupt a child and that is why NO OTHER Arab country will consent to take Palestinian refugees. Think about that for a moment. What does Egypt and Jordan and Syria and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Iraq and all the others know that you don't know?

When you shoot bombs into Israel targeting civilians, they shoot back. Duh!!!

Fox News gets inside look at Gaza humanitarian situation as Israel weighs next steps

Fox News was given an inside look at an aid site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as the organization faces fierce international backlash.

www.foxnews.com

This doesn't sound like a free Palestinian people who support Hamas, it sounds like people who themselves are hostages and suffering immensely from lack of food and medical care.

 

[Mike Krailo]

The work of Alan Turing includes a mathematical study of how complexity can arise from nature. It is a biology paper, titled "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" and it describes his theory in something he called a reaction-diffusion system. In it he shows how complexity can spontaneously spring from simplicity.

In essence you create the building blocks of life from the stormy conditions of primordial Earth oceans. Now they are floating around in the mineral-rich oceans, floating in random orientation and moving in more or less random directions, influenced by tidal flow - which is not always uniform. These molecules collide in random orientations. Most of the time, the collisions are passive - but there is this little thing called electrophilic attraction such that it is POSSIBLE for the colliding molecules to stick together chemically - i.e. a chemical reaction. And for small molecules, their virtual surface is COVERED with electrons that can be shared by forming a chemcial bond. That bond is strong enough that the combined molecules stay combined for a while. The more stable the bond, the longer the components stick together.

So now you have these slightly more complex molecules floating around colliding with other molecules... and some of THEM exhibit electrophilic attraction to an active part of the molecule, so THEY react. Here is Nature, bouncing random molecules in random orientation, and SOME few collisions yield greater complexity - because, of course, they are BIGGER now and become easier targets.

So these molecules bounce off of other molecules. Some of the collisions promote increased molecular complexity, others don't. But all this time, for hundreds of millions to a couple of BILLION years, the collisions continue as Nature iterates through the orientation combinations, the moral equivalent of tossing the spaghetti on the wall to see if it sticks. Or of a child playing with Legos to see what will hold together. Iterating through solutions, most of which don't stay together. But some of them do. And it all depends on random collisions of molecules to see what sticks. I went through the math earlier in post #280. You had 4.8 x 10^39 collision possibilities that would be likely to be productive over a time span measured in billions of years.

Let's try something simpler. Do you know how rubies, sapphires, and emeralds form? In solution, chromium oxide molecules collide and become dichromium oxides, then trichromium, etc., forming the start of a crystal that grows layer by layer, driven by the forces implicit in entropy/energy balance. From the simple to the complex. Nature iterating through collision orientations to see what sticks. Sound familiar? See a pattern here?

The big assumption here is that meaningful different iterations of something totally unknown to us now are assembling themselves randomly. That just doesn't happen in randomness in anything that is as complex as what we're talking about. How many collisions of numbers and millions of years of mixing of the numbers would it take before the full number of PI out to infinity would line up perfectly and stay that way to be meaningful? NEVER. Not gonna happen, and that's jus one meaningful number in mathematics. The complexity of one single cell that grows by division of itself does not just happen randomly no matter how much time and swirling building blocks soup.

There is more to life than it's fundamental design structure. It's about the way it is constructed so that it actually becomes viable. The timing is super critical. And just how many critical steps are involved in this unknown process? Way too many assumptions being made here to be remotely valid, but thanks for at least showing me where your thinking is. Allen really was treated badly near the end of his short life. The guy had a brilliant mind for math and ciphers.

As far as rubies and sapphires, that's very similar to a snow flake, so nothing inherently complex about a crystal. They are unique, but so are clouds, so what. There is no life in crystals or snow flakes and while they might appear to be complex, they are really not unless you count the ones that superman uses in the movie. Now those were some special crystals.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

That just doesn't happen in randomness in anything that is as complex as what we're talking about.

With due respect and no intention of maliciousness or rudeness, your statement is incorrect.

Before life started, nature did what nature does. It scrambled things and if something useful fell out of the mix, great. If not, it doesn't matter. After life started at the unicellular level, it progressed to multi-cellular entities, then more and more cells tacked on. And at each stage, that which survives had some minor (or in some cases, major) advantage that allowed it to compete just a little better than those other creatures around it.

The genomes of many species have been fully explored and we KNOW which species is the predecessor of other species. The DNA is a roadmap to the evolutionary path. This is KNOWN AND FACTUAL from biologists and paleontologists. We know Man's predecessors, members of the Hominid group. Folks sometimes try to throw up the straw man that we are evolved from monkeys, but in genealogical terms, monkeys are our (distant) cousins, not ancestors. Man was not created, Man evolved / developed over time.

Then, there is the matter of viruses - which by consensus among many biological disciplines, are NOT alive. Even so, COVID mutated in ways to cause lots of disruption to living people. Since viruses aren't alive, would it bother you if THEY were created spontaneously?

Your statement regarding pi is not relevant, as irrational numbers have nothing to do with permutations and combinations of cell orientation. But if you dislike irrational numbers, you can consider the Euler relationships, which include the consideration of e and pi and the imaginary number i.

Just to clarify...
e = 2.718281828459045235360287471352... - an irrational number the basis of so-called natural logarithms.
pi = 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197... - an irrational number that is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle
i (in math) = square root of -1 - referred to as the imaginary number.

e^(i x pi) = 1

There, that got rid of the irrational numbers for you, right? An irrational number raised to an imaginary number times another irrational number ... equals the most rational number you could ever want... 1.

 

[Isaac]

The likelihood that evolution is how existing things came to be existing things.........Is exactly zero.
Because evolution involves something evolving from something, whereas things first coming into existence involved nothing producing something.
That "Nothing" is likely God, it's far more plausible than anything else (not that I've ever heard anything else for something coming from nothing)

 

[The_Doc_Man]

A god who has been around forever IS plausible? Sorry, not biting on that bait. As I have been pointing out, recent findings with the James Webb Space Telescope are putting Msgr LeMaitre's Big Bang theory pretty much to rest. So science is no longer claiming "something from nothing" because stellar matter has been in existence longer than first thought. And by the way, the first chapter of Genesis mysteriously claims creation of the heavens, Earth, oceans, animals, and MAN from a void. What was that about "something from nothing" being not plausible?

 

[Pat Hartman]

This doesn't sound like a free Palestinian people who support Hamas, it sounds like people who themselves are hostages and suffering immensely from lack of food and medical care.

Which is exactly why Israel tries very hard to not injure innocent civilians. It is the truly evil members of Hamas who have made the residents of Gaza prisoners so complain about Hamas and stop blaming Israel. Israel can't solve this problem except by destroying Hamas. The Palestinians can stop it themselves by either rising up themselves and throwing off their tormentors or by feeding information to Israeli forces so the Israelis can solve the problem directly.

Hamas has been stealing aid from the civilians since Israel left more than 20 years ago. This is not a new problem. Hamas steals the aid, takes what it needs and sells the rest, either to the citizens they stole it from or to other countries. They then use the proceeds to purchase bombs and other armaments which they use to perpetuate their war with Israel.

 

[Mike Krailo]

Before life started, nature did what nature does. It scrambled things and if something useful fell out of the mix, great. If not, it doesn't matter. After life started at the unicellular level, it progressed to multi-cellular entities, then more and more cells tacked on. And at each stage, that which survives had some minor (or in some cases, major) advantage that allowed it to compete just a little better than those other creatures around it.

That is a very incoherent statement you just made there. Just read it to yourself a few times, and think about it.

I could make statements too. None of us was there before life started. The process of creating just one biological cell that can survive requires an entire support system behind it before it can have a prayers chance at surviving. The most important stage is very first stage which has a complex process behind it, not a simple or random one. Even if the very first step was stumbled upon by chance, there are many things in the process that have to be programed into that one little cell. Then to assume that it is naturally going to survive without any support system and not degrade within hours of getting step one out of the way is highly presumptuous. The entire framework of the idea has way too many assumptions swirling around that very first cell of life. This is the critical point you keep avoiding.

It's amazing enough that a perfect eco system had to be in place before any living land animal could even have a prayers chance of surviving at all. The plants had to be there first and plants don't just grow legs and crawl out of the sea and come into being. There likely wasn't even any land to begin with as the Earth could have been totally covered with water. No light, no life and the entire atmosphere could have been so thick it blocked out all light in the beginning.

Then we look at all those planets and stars in the sky. Do you see any square planets? Are there any rectangular planets? How about a pyramid shape? Interesting how they are all spheres. Off topic, but interesting none the less.

I have no idea what you think is so revolutionary about the deep space pictures of the cosmos or what they contain that is of any significance. Suffice it to say, it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with creating that first living cell on our own planet. One thing is certain, scientists will keep changing their minds on this whole debate and insist that there is no God until the day they die and finally meet him.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

It's amazing enough that a perfect eco system had to be in place before any living land animal could even have a prayers chance of surviving at all. The plants had to be there first and plants don't just grow legs and crawl out of the sea and come into being. There likely wasn't even any land to begin with as the Earth could have been totally covered with water. No light, no life and the entire atmosphere could have been so thick it blocked out all light in the beginning.

Your statement betrays your lack of familiarity with evolution and with the predominant explanation of planetary development. My statement is not incoherent; it is just that you don't see it as I do.

Here is an analogy:

Mother Nature is the dealer at the Evolutionary Casino poker game, shuffling and dealing 5-card no-draw poker hands from a multi-deck "dealer's shoe " so there will be more than one of each possible card. Add to this dealer's shoe a Joker as a wild-card so some folks can get a better hand even though they didn't get the "right" card. However, to control things, if there are 10 decks in the shoe, no more than one or two of those decks included a joker. The other decks are 52-card standard decks.

The players are seated, the hands are dealt. Some of them are no-pair, no-flush, no-straight, and the high card is a seven. (The worst possible hand in this analogy is the "rainbow" 2-4-5-6-7.) But other hands DO show up now and then.

Eventually, some player WILL get a decent hand. The players with winning hands get chips (advantages) that allow them to move to a new table for the next set of deals, and keeping the "advantages" (chips) they won in that round as they move.

The players that DIDN'T move forward don't necessarily leave the first table of the game right away because they still might get a decent enough pile of chips to continue. The players who don't ever get enough good hands to continue eventually leave the game.

The key analogies to evolution in this description are:

(a) constant "shuffling and dealing" i.e. nature iterating over the various possible combinations - except that in genetic terms, Mother Nature has more than 52 distinct cards. But to compensate in this analogy, cards can be duplicated so that multiple players could get the same card. Or multiple players (species) can have the same genes.

(b) the winning hand at the table might be as simple as Ace-high if nobody else can beat that... i.e. the promotion advantage doesn't have to be spectacular. When hominids descended from the trees, their advantage was closer access to a new and better food source plus the ability to walk upright and thus see farther. But the advantage might be as small as a coloration change leading to better camouflage OR a change so that males of a particular bird species have brighter plumage that can attract mates easier. Little things like that.

(c) the players who never get good hands leave the table (become extinct) - even if you thought that player was a nice guy. (But what is that old adage about "nice guys" and "last place"?) The dodo and great auk come to mind. Homo sapiens sapiens vs. Homo neanderthalensis comes to mind, and in that latter showdown, it turns out that we got to keep some of their chips.

(d) the players that continue to the next level now have more "chips" (in the form of an advantage over their opponents... more chips = bigger advantage)

(e) that joker represents spontaneous mutations. Note that even if you get dealt a joker, if it only gives you a pair and someone else gets a natural three-of-a-kind, you still can lose a hand with what appears to otherwise be an advantage.

(f) the game never ends. Mother Nature keeps dealing hands as often (and as fast) as necessary. That dealer's shoe is never allowed to become empty. And that dealer even deals hands to viruses; consider the rapid mutations of COVID viruses, which are not deemed to be alive. But somehow THEY get dealt hands too.

Mike, THAT is one way that I see evolution. And before you complain about "living things" - note carefully that COVID and other viruses ARE NOT LIVING CELLS!!!!!! Why do you insist on a dichotomy between living and non-living when it is clear that even non-living biologics play a part in our lives? Does your objection to evolution apply to random changes in non-living viruses? (If you answer "yes" then BZZZZZT thank you for playing but ... wrong answer.)

 

[Isaac]

Your statement betrays your lack of familiarity with evolution and with the predominant explanation of planetary development. My statement is not incoherent; it is just that you don't see it as I do.

Here is an analogy:

Mother Nature is the dealer at the Evolutionary Casino poker game, shuffling and dealing 5-card no-draw poker hands from a multi-deck "dealer's shoe " so there will be more than one of each possible card. Add to this dealer's shoe a Joker as a wild-card so some folks can get a better hand even though they didn't get the "right" card. However, to control things, if there are 10 decks in the shoe, no more than one or two of those decks included a joker. The other decks are 52-card standard decks.

The players are seated, the hands are dealt. Some of them are no-pair, no-flush, no-straight, and the high card is a seven. (The worst possible hand in this analogy is the "rainbow" 2-4-5-6-7.) But other hands DO show up now and then.

Eventually, some player WILL get a decent hand. The players with winning hands get chips (advantages) that allow them to move to a new table for the next set of deals, and keeping the "advantages" (chips) they won in that round as they move.

The players that DIDN'T move forward don't necessarily leave the first table of the game right away because they still might get a decent enough pile of chips to continue. The players who don't ever get enough good hands to continue eventually leave the game.

The key analogies to evolution in this description are:

(a) constant "shuffling and dealing" i.e. nature iterating over the various possible combinations - except that in genetic terms, Mother Nature has more than 52 distinct cards. But to compensate in this analogy, cards can be duplicated so that multiple players could get the same card. Or multiple players (species) can have the same genes.

(b) the winning hand at the table might be as simple as Ace-high if nobody else can beat that... i.e. the promotion advantage doesn't have to be spectacular. When hominids descended from the trees, their advantage was closer access to a new and better food source plus the ability to walk upright and thus see farther. But the advantage might be as small as a coloration change leading to better camouflage OR a change so that males of a particular bird species have brighter plumage that can attract mates easier. Little things like that.

(c) the players who never get good hands leave the table (become extinct) - even if you thought that player was a nice guy. (But what is that old adage about "nice guys" and "last place"?) The dodo and great auk come to mind. Homo sapiens sapiens vs. Homo neanderthalensis comes to mind, and in that latter showdown, it turns out that we got to keep some of their chips.

(d) the players that continue to the next level now have more "chips" (in the form of an advantage over their opponents... more chips = bigger advantage)

(e) that joker represents spontaneous mutations. Note that even if you get dealt a joker, if it only gives you a pair and someone else gets a natural three-of-a-kind, you still can lose a hand with what appears to otherwise be an advantage.

(f) the game never ends. Mother Nature keeps dealing hands as often (and as fast) as necessary. That dealer's shoe is never allowed to become empty. And that dealer even deals hands to viruses; consider the rapid mutations of COVID viruses, which are not deemed to be alive. But somehow THEY get dealt hands too.

Mike, THAT is one way that I see evolution. And before you complain about "living things" - note carefully that COVID and other viruses ARE NOT LIVING CELLS!!!!!! Why do you insist on a dichotomy between living and non-living when it is clear that even non-living biologics play a part in our lives? Does your objection to evolution apply to random changes in non-living viruses? (If you answer "yes" then BZZZZZT thank you for playing but ... wrong answer.)

I have to say, I admire you for having faith in all those trillion-to-one mutations happening - and happening so many trillions of times, I guess it'd be like me winning the lottery every day the rest of my life. Yep it's possible, just highly unlikely.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Yep it's possible, just highly unlikely.

You place your faith in magic. I place my faith in science.

Loosely analogous to Albert Einstein and Robert J Oppenheimer. Albert was a strict-causality person where as Robert was a quantum probabilities person. Albert said "God doesn't play at dice." Oppenheimer developed the Atomic Bomb based on statistical treatments of nuclear physics, i.e. played with dice that went BOOM.
.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Real belief comes from the heart, not just the head.

 

[Isaac]

You place your faith in magic. I place my faith in science.

I agree.

And magic has a lot better chance of being right than science does, which can't produce things into existence from nothing & therefore has no answer to the question - but studying the spiritual realm, it's possible

 

[Mike Krailo]

(a) constant "shuffling and dealing" i.e. nature iterating over the various possible combinations - except that in genetic terms, Mother Nature has more than 52 distinct cards. But to compensate in this analogy, cards can be duplicated so that multiple players could get the same card. Or multiple players (species) can have the same genes.

Except there is no constant shuffling in an iterative scientific sort of way. Shuffling is a very specific action on specific things, in this case building blocks of life. To create life with those building blocks requires precision at every step, not just the right combination once and it's off to the races. It requires timing for the next steps with correct combo to be applied, and the next. There is no timing in randomness, and there quite literally is no constant shuffling of the building blocks into every possible permutation as you are suggesting. Just saying it's happening doesn't make it remotely so. That's just a false assumption. So the idea that every combination is being tried and eventually hit means, from that point forward timing of doing exactly the right things is crucial, or it degrades back down non functional building blocks.

There are no species yet, we haven't gotten one cell in the soup yet. So no point moving beyond this point until it's adequately addressed.

(f) the game never ends. Mother Nature keeps dealing hands as often (and as fast) as necessary. That dealer's shoe is never allowed to become empty. And that dealer even deals hands to viruses; consider the rapid mutations of COVID viruses, which are not deemed to be alive. But somehow THEY get dealt hands too.

Viruses and diseases did not exist in the beginning. That came much later in the game.

Mother nature is fully formed already, before there was any life at all, you could hardly call that state of the Earth mother nature. This is all a game of finding thoughts to rationalize one's rejection of the creator. If anything you said so far on this particular point made any sense, I would believe it and investigate further to confirm, but I see great complexity in a single biological cell and notice that all the examples we observe today come fully formed already due to replication from it's respective host. There is no example of shuffling the building blocks of life and making one cell with all the intended functions working and ready to divide and develop into a biological creature that has life.

I still say even if a fertilized human egg was floating around in that soup, it would never survive on it's own. Not in a billion years is that ever going to work. Every human being requires at least one parent to take care of it for a long time after birth as we know it. So who pray tell took care of the very first human that popped out of the soup? Who took care of the very first anything for that matter? They didn't do it on their own.

This is why God word say's in Romans 1:20 we all can clearly perceive his creation as his handy work.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, being understood by what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Mike, THAT is one way that I see evolution. And before you complain about "living things" - note carefully that COVID and other viruses ARE NOT LIVING CELLS!!!!!! Why do you insist on a dichotomy between living and non-living when it is clear that even non-living biologics play a part in our lives? Does your objection to evolution apply to random changes in non-living viruses? (If you answer "yes" then BZZZZZT thank you for playing but ... wrong answer.)

Evolution does not explain the genesis of life on our planet. And it says nothing about our souls (who we really are). If it did, I wouldn't object to it. It conveniently skips over the genesis event and starts reasoning about the small changes over time of fully formed living things not realizing that the ability for all living creatures to make those small changes over time are already programmed in the DNA to do what they do. You can call it whatever you like, but it's just an insignificant observation of small changes only for purposes of adaptation of the body. There is no jumps in kinds of animals to another kind of animal. No matter how much time you throw at it, that is not how biological life works. I'm not sure anyone could fall for such absurdity, but I guess the desire to be right and find reasons to reject the creator is a strong force to reckon with.

Furthermore, the immaterial nature of self does not come from within the world view of the materialist. The immaterial self animates the human body for training purposes only, otherwise we would have started right with a spiritual only experience, but most of us are not ready for that life yet. We are not our bodies, we just control one for a period of time. Once you see it, you cannot un see this truth. The purpose of life is to encourage each other to grow spiritually and in the knowledge of the one who created us (reaching our full spiritual potential). To do otherwise is like never once acknowledging your biological father and mother by never talking to them, never looking at them, and never responding to anything they say or the wise counsel and support they give you anyways. Like they were invisible or something. Of course God is invisible, and that is what many object to, but I'll bet he has very good reasons for doing it this way.

BTW, Scientists just bred a cheetah with a crab. Things went sideways real fast.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Those of us in south Louisiana understand that blue lake crabs ALWAYS go sideways.

Your belief is yours, mine is mine. I have given an ANALOGY of what I believe happened.

Science tells us that ribonucleic acid formed in the primordial soup. It wasn't alive because RNA is not alive. It's just a melange of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen. But when two RNA molecules intertwined, things got interesting. Because two intertwined RNA sequences equal a DNA sequence. Technically, DNA isn't alive, either - but with DNA as a template, things REALLY got interesting.

Now I'm going to give you the double whammy. If you are a young-Earth creationist following the chronology of Bishop Ussher, we have things more than 6300 years old that are attributed to humans. If you are an intelligent-design creationist, though, denying that it could have happened this way because God wanted it lot look this way... that denial limits the power of your God. Are you sure you want to do that?