Questions to God.

[Isaac]

I find it funny to think that if evolution were true then man would have continued evolving and we would be much more sophisticated than we are. We wouldn't need someone to change our diapers when little and old

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I find it funny to think that if evolution were true then man would have continued evolving

Who says we haven't continued evolving? The adaptation of respiratory systems of Sherpa guides who live near Mt. Everest is evidence that we are still subject to evolutionary changes. The average height of men in the era of the Roman and Greek empires was about 5'5", but modern man has gained height to average out at 5'10" - a 5 inch change in height in about 2000 - 2500 years. It is an evolutionary change in that height is an inherited trait. I've got two grandsons who got height from their maternal grandfather. (They SURE didn't get it from me!) The shorter of the two is 5'11" and his brother is estimated to reach 6'2" by his last growth spurt.

Adaptations I looked up for changes to man since the year 0 CE.

1. Ability to consume lactase (milk sugars) i.e. adapting away from lactose intolerance.
2. Altitude adaptation - mentioned in above paragraph
3. Disease resistance for many diseases
4. Blue eyes (it's relatively a recent thing)
5. Body size - mentioned in above paragraph

Don't think for even a millisecond that evolution stopped for humans. The thing to remember is that unlike disasters and aggression, both of which are sudden and have rapid effects, evolution is SLOW and takes generations to assert itself fully for each change. This is the part that folks don't understand. You CANNOT expect to see TRANSMUTATIONS - such as a wolf turning into a dog. That doesn't happen in your lifetime. The breeding of wolves to become dogs took many generations of dogs. Your attention span isn't long enough. Heck, for some of the tougher changes, you LIFE span is not long enough. But evolution persists.

 

[GaP42]

I find it funny to think that if evolution were true then man would have continued evolving and we would be much more sophisticated than we are. We wouldn't need someone to change our diapers when little and old

Whereas I find it funny to think that if the FSG were true then there would be no change (no evolving), we would all be idiots and s*** ourselves throughout our lives as we kowtow to that deity, or that other one, or maybe that one ... you chose.

 

[Isaac]

Whereas I find it funny to think that if the FSG were true then there would be no change (no evolving), we would all be idiots and s*** ourselves throughout our lives as we kowtow to that deity, or that other one, or maybe that one ... you chose.

Really it's so unscientific, you're asking me to completely ignore the evidence of my own life in my own life of my relationship with God. It's a fascinating thing of psychology to me, the bias not to believe in God, although relatively rare, is so strong that people will just insist on denying any forms of evidence even the testimony of billions of people which would normally be an important thing in any type of study.

 

[GaP42]

The word evolution is thrown around as if it's a fact, but what exact type of evolution ar e we talking about? The only one that matters in my opinion is the one that all scientists refuse to honestly and truthfully graple with. Yes, I know they like to point their so called evidence, but when you drill down into the so called evidence, there is none to be found. Only assertions that non life is able to make selections based purely on biological chemistry or some other ridiculous assumptions that have nothing whatsoever to do with the crucial point of actual LIFE emerging from non life. How many zillions of years do we need to wait for all the other planets in the universe show any evidence of life? The fact that they insist on using life forms that are already fully formed to draw their conclusions is beyond circular reasoning. You don't get to start with dirt, you have to make your own dirt first. You don't get to start with proteins and amino acids, you have to make your own. Show me the proteins on mars or any other planet. The materialist fairy tale starts at nothing, then starts talking about building blocks of life, and then they love to use the word emerge as if it has some inherent power for the argument. There is no emerging that can be scientifically proven when you start from nothing. They love to fast-forward past the critical points of the process and claim after billions of years it will just happen. The universe is not a lab, it does not have a mind, so where is this absolute evidence at?

The whole video on Grok was a good example of how to use prompting to filter out all the garbage and focus on the actual evidence based on pure logic. Something we all have but don't use all the time unless it fits your world view. I thought it would ruffle some feathers, and it did just that.

Try that on the other foot:
Believe in the almighty is thrown around as if it is a fact, but exactly which almighty are we talking about? The only one that matters is the one that all believers refuse to honestly and truthfully grapple with. Yes they like to point to their so-called evidence, but when you drill down there is none to be found. Only assertions that life was magically brought into existence, that miracles are real, caused by this almighty, that the stories of wandering desert nomads are unembellished truth, that the historical choices of what to include or not in a collection of these stories is the foundation of our belief, ... There is a god because I say there is, and my god is all powerful all knowing - everything good is due to my god, all evil is due to well me, or the devil. So my god can do anything and do anything so there is no need for any further explanation/examination. Hence you cannot prove I do not exist - circular reasoning at its finest. Materialism - lets ignore what is before our eyes and use magical, spiritualist thinking to explain and progress. So fast-forward, it happened therefore the almighty was the cause of it, do not seek answers, do not examine, seek no further.

The whole video on GROK you posted was absolute rubbish, and shown to be. You do read responses or are they too hard for you? Pure logic - or the absence thereof is the actual epitome of unfounded faith in magic.

So in terms of abiogenesis, the Urey-Miller experiment showing an array of amino acids being produced in a lab using the simple components of the primordial atmosphere and electrical discharge is just one of an array of experiments that point to the multiple ways in which amino acids as the building blocks of proteins may have been available in the distant past. You might visit the wikipedia page: abiogenesis to gain some insight over the breadth and depth of work in this area, or you might consider that too much to absorb and ignore, as is your want. Ignorance is bliss.

 

[GaP42]

Really it's so unscientific, you're asking me to completely ignore the evidence of my own life in my own life of my relationship with God. It's a fascinating thing of psychology to me, the bias not to believe in God, although relatively rare, is so strong that people will just insist on denying any forms of evidence even the testimony of billions of people which would normally be an important thing in any type of study.

And tell me which one is that? Does that deny the evidence of the followers of all others? Are you proposing that the consensus view must be adopted? Hmm ... And how rare is the "no faith" position? 38.9% of Australians indicated they had no religion in the last census, making it the second-largest "religious group" after Christianity. That does not necessarily mean that they have an atheist viewpoint of course, but the census did not ask that question. The trend of declining religious affiliation, particularly Christianity, and a corresponding increase in "no religion" has been ongoing since the 1960s. This trend of declining religious affiliation is also seen in other Western countries, such as the United States.

Not to deny your evidence - if only you could produce it. Personal testimony is like a survey of social practices and self reporting - how well do you trust it? How do you cross-correlate such data with objective data?

As a species we are likely evolved to develop cooperative/coherent social groups to survive - and we certainly have the largest of these in human history now. Group think / religious dogma are evolutionary consequences that have survived/ are reinforced through the heuristics maintaining position/ success in society - time for such to be changed or abandoned as we understand the actual workings of the world.

 

[GaP42]

The word evolution is thrown around as if it's a fact, but what exact type of evolution are we talking about? The only one that matters in my opinion is the one that all scientists refuse to honestly and truthfully graple with. Yes, I know they like to point their so called evidence, but when you drill down into the so called evidence, there is none to be found. Only assertions that non life is able to make selections based purely on biological chemistry or some other ridiculous assumptions that have nothing whatsoever to do with the crucial point of actual LIFE emerging from non life. How many zillions of years do we need to wait for all the other planets in the universe show any evidence of life? The fact that they insist on using life forms that are already fully formed to draw their conclusions is beyond circular reasoning. You don't get to start with dirt, you have to make your own dirt first. You don't get to start with proteins and amino acids, you have to make your own. Show me the proteins on mars or any other planet. The materialist fairy tale starts at nothing, then starts talking about building blocks of life, and then they love to use the word emerge as if it has some inherent power for the argument. There is no emerging that can be scientifically proven when you start from nothing. They love to fast-forward past the critical points of the process and claim after billions of years it will just happen. The universe is not a lab, it does not have a mind, so where is this absolute evidence at?

The whole video on Grok was a good example of how to use prompting to filter out all the garbage and focus on the actual evidence based on pure logic. Something we all have but don't use all the time unless it fits your world view. I thought it would ruffle some feathers, and it did just that.

At what point will you in the progress of observation and experimentation, that inert molecules can give rise to life with no supernatural intervention? The process is complex and different steps are hypothesised: process of increasing complexity involving the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. It is not proposed that the spontaneous assembly of some 300 genes (or whatever it was in you rubbish GROK video) from inorganic elements was ever how it occurred - because that mathematically would be vanishingly small. Would your answer be never- because of my faith, or perhaps only if we could generate a living cell from inorganic elements - a process that may have taken some billion years from the point the earth became potentially habitable (by extremophiles), or that the steps are shown by experiment to be reproducible or observed to occur naturally, even though they cannot be produced in a lab as a continuous set of steps that lead to novel life forms - or logic is applied, even though there may be gaps in the experiments, that point to a plausible set of steps that lead to the conclusion that life arose through natural processes. Don't be disingenuous.
If only there was some piece of unambiguous evidence for a supernatural power then I would have to change my position wouldn't I? Perhaps someone rising from the dead, or a virgin having a baby? or just a few fish and loaves feeding thousands? spontaneous parting of the waters of a sea sufficient to allow a group of people to cross, or ... there could be so many demonstrations. or do we hide behind the concept of we have a choice and any revelation depends upon making the choice and having faith.

Oh - BTW this article appeared reporting on a New Scientist article recently:
New Scientist: Closer to recreating the first steps

 

[The_Doc_Man]

the bias not to believe in God, although relatively rare, is so strong that people will just insist on denying any forms of evidence even the testimony of billions of people which would normally be an important thing in any type of study.

OH, you want to play the NUMBERS game?

There are an estimated 9500 variant species of dung beetle in the world, making them a quite populous species. The population of dung beetles world-wide is probably in the billions. So... let's play a numbers game. 50 billion dung beetles are going to eat tonight. Will you join them?

The problem with numbers is not that some number of people believe. Remember how militant some of those groups are when you are shown to be a non-believer. Remember that children are taught during a time when their beliefs are malleable. It is not accidental that Jesus said, "Suffer the little children to come to me." And suffer they did. Some of them - me included - suffered cognitive dissonance when we got old enough to think like adults and suddenly question some of the things we had been taught. The dissonance comes about when you realize that your parents LIED to you about God's existence. (You learn to forgive them when you realize that your grandparents lied to your parents...) Think about religion throughout history and its - shall we say INTENSE - attitude towards those resistant to following the party line on beliefs.

Let's not even begin to think about the Islamic world where in many nations TODAY, apostasy is a capital crime. Can you count those people as true believers or subjugated slaves of religion? Think back further in time to consider the Inquisitions? Or consider those days in other nations where their emperor was considered to be a walking god on Earth.

Religion makes a point about "free will" - but a lot of the time your ability to exercise free will in believing or NOT believing was simply not your choice. You had the "free will" to believe as the power hierarchy wanted you to believe. But again, can you count those people as believers or as frightened people afraid to be non-conformant?

 

[Isaac]

And tell me which one is that? Does that deny the evidence of the followers of all others? Are you proposing that the consensus view must be adopted? Hmm ... And how rare is the "no faith" position? 38.9% of Australians indicated they had no religion in the last census, making it the second-largest "religious group" after Christianity. That does not necessarily mean that they have an atheist viewpoint of course, but the census did not ask that question. The trend of declining religious affiliation, particularly Christianity, and a corresponding increase in "no religion" has been ongoing since the 1960s. This trend of declining religious affiliation is also seen in other Western countries, such as the United States.

Not to deny your evidence - if only you could produce it. Personal testimony is like a survey of social practices and self reporting - how well do you trust it? How do you cross-correlate such data with objective data?

As a species we are likely evolved to develop cooperative/coherent social groups to survive - and we certainly have the largest of these in human history now. Group think / religious dogma are evolutionary consequences that have survived/ are reinforced through the heuristics maintaining position/ success in society - time for such to be changed or abandoned as we understand the actual workings of the world.

Funny, when we test out a new drug we have no problem pointing to the way people feel as evidence that the drug is working in fact.

There can only be one God, but I understand people have different ways of describing Him and often feel protective of their own - that only underscores, IMO, the fact that one exists and mere human beings (obviously) will not agree on the who and how he feels.
Blind men and elephants, you know...

 

[Isaac]

OH, you want to play the NUMBERS game?

There are an estimated 9500 variant species of dung beetle in the world, making them a quite populous species. The population of dung beetles world-wide is probably in the billions. So... let's play a numbers game. 50 billion dung beetles are going to eat tonight. Will you join them?

The problem with numbers is not that some number of people believe. Remember how militant some of those groups are when you are shown to be a non-believer. Remember that children are taught during a time when their beliefs are malleable. It is not accidental that Jesus said, "Suffer the little children to come to me." And suffer they did. Some of them - me included - suffered cognitive dissonance when we got old enough to think like adults and suddenly question some of the things we had been taught. The dissonance comes about when you realize that your parents LIED to you about God's existence. (You learn to forgive them when you realize that your grandparents lied to your parents...) Think about religion throughout history and its - shall we say INTENSE - attitude towards those resistant to following the party line on beliefs.

Let's not even begin to think about the Islamic world where in many nations TODAY, apostasy is a capital crime. Can you count those people as true believers or subjugated slaves of religion? Think back further in time to consider the Inquisitions? Or consider those days in other nations where their emperor was considered to be a walking god on Earth.

Religion makes a point about "free will" - but a lot of the time your ability to exercise free will in believing or NOT believing was simply not your choice. You had the "free will" to believe as the power hierarchy wanted you to believe. But again, can you count those people as believers or as frightened people afraid to be non-conformant?

Your posts are sometimes persuasive, but I think comparing billions of people's serious experiences with God vs. a dung beetle eating poop is not one of them. Nor is the play on words with "suffer", which of course we know Jesus meant "allow", not actually suffer.

I think people who don't have the free will to choose God are more like subjugated slaves of people in power, yes.

What's the point there? If a strong man forces you to say you believe in a theory, that doesn't make the theory any less true, it just means a powerful man is using his power to control you.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

If a strong man forces you to say you believe in a theory, that doesn't make the theory any less true, it just means a powerful man is using his power to control you.

Except that it affects the validity of that "billions of people" claim and mitigates the reasons for their beliefs.

 

[MsAccessNL]

Why did you wait 98000 years before sending your son to save us and why couldn’t you wait another 2000, so he could have used the internet to spread the word, Where all the people before the year 0, going to hell? If tthey didn’t, why did the people after the year 0 go to hell.

 

[Isaac]

Except that it affects the validity of that "billions of people" claim and mitigates the reasons for their beliefs.

I'll concede that anyone who is being forced at gunpoint (or similar) to say they believe in something clearly doesn't count toward my 'evidence'
The general feeling man has had that there is a God, unable to rip it out of him though he's tried, is still pretty numerous, I'd say ..
Smith Wiggleworth saw God raise people from the dead and do a bunch of other miracles - this is just one guy from history, but there are many others. If you find yourself getting really inventive trying to discredit eyewitness testimony, I think that's a sign of something.

 

[Pat Hartman]

The dissonance comes about when you realize that your parents LIED to you about God's existence.

My dissonance came about as I studied history and learned of the many evil things done in the name of God by the church hierarchy. It didn't result in a non belief in God but it sure resulted in a distaste for authority and disgust with the Papacy. I can't even go to mass they've gotten so woke. Christian Charities is now aiding and abetting criminal activities in the name of wokeness.

 

[Mike Krailo]

My dissonance came about as I studied history and learned of the many evil things done in the name of God by the church hierarchy. It didn't result in a non belief in God but it sure resulted in a distaste for authority and disgust with the Papacy. I can't even go to mass they've gotten so woke. Christian Charities is now aiding and abetting criminal activities in the name of wokeness.

If your not in a church first get back into reading the bible on a regular basis, and then you will know what to do. The only authority I follow (try to follow) is the Word of God first in historical context and then how it best applies in our lives today. The main thing is that you will know them by their fruit (the strong leaders have it in abundance). If any claimed church leader or tradition of men starts to creep in or exceptions are made just to get more members or deviate from the clear teachings of the original church, them I'm out. I left the catholic church long long ago simply because they don't do a good job of personal discipling the members by way of reading for themselves and actually repenting. If they did, they would discover that praying to a statue of Mary is pure idol worship (Hail Mary...really?). Same with the saints. Did the saints do that? Absolutely not, so why do they allow their church members to fall into that clear trap? Not repenting just keeps us farther and farther away from God.

I know they have the Apocrypha and although I have not read through all of this yet, on the surface it all looks pretty good to me, especially the Wisdom book which is thought to be written by King Solomon. The only problem I have the heavy traditions of the church itself and how they claim to be the only one's with authority to interpret the bible. That is pure BS, the anointing of any church leader can be striped away when they don't do as commanded to do. Anyone can read the Word and begin to at least learn the historical parts in context. The trouble comes in when it is to be applied to today's Christian culture. It can be willfully misinterpreted by anyone with evil or selfish intentions and by those that are spiritually weak.

All that said I know a lot of people like the traditions of the church and as long as they are growing spiritually and reading the Word, they will figure it out just fine. I really like all the musical aspects of worship when it's done well but there has to something better than just the traditional music. Surely there can be more creative artists that can break into even more powerful music that makes the roof fly off and still meet the requirements quality worship music.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I'll concede that anyone who is being forced at gunpoint (or similar) to say they believe in something clearly doesn't count toward my 'evidence'
The general feeling man has had that there is a God, unable to rip it out of him though he's tried, is still pretty numerous, I'd say ..
Smith Wiggleworth saw God raise people from the dead and do a bunch of other miracles - this is just one guy from history, but there are many others. If you find yourself getting really inventive trying to discredit eyewitness testimony, I think that's a sign of something.

Had to look up Wiggleworth. The articles I found mentioned RUMORS of raising the dead, but no witnesses and no other verification. The problem is that a desire to convert people has been shown to include "lying for Jesus" and CERTAINLY has involved "hallucinating for Jesus" in the past. Without verification, there is no miracle. The Catholic Church, for example, will investigate miraculous claims very carefully to avoid getting caught in the "hallucinations for Jesus" trap, which would SURELY weaken their position. Except that they still can't eliminate the one fact... that we don't know how, but some people get better even without prayer.

 

[GaP42]

Funny, when we test out a new drug we have no problem pointing to the way people feel as evidence that the drug is working in fact.

Funny - I thought that to get approval for a new drug we do things like Randomised Clinical Trials - as we don't like to trust hearsay - the effectiveness and efficacy of new drugs are looked at in terms of measurements of physiology! In your view all that is useless, lets go back to the dark ages, or rely upon crap like homeopathy. Perhaps someone will diagnose your illness using phrenology.
Let me be generous, for a second, you might be talking about reported side effects to drugs (merely as an example of accepting hearsay as evidence). True - we do accept the reports provided by people about how they feel when taking medications, but that does not mean it is accepted as a recognised side-effect. I am shocked that someone who works with data does not understand, who is so naive as to believe that such reports are accepted on face value. For instance do you not think there is also evaluation of how common the complaint (claimed side-effect) is within the general population - the background level, or consider how commonly it is reported in the trial participants (those taking the drug and those that don't) or whether it is dose-sensitive or the correlation between the timing of taking the drug and noting the claimed effect ... there is a healthy and practical dose of scepticism applied - it is part of the method by which the REAL effects are determined - and it is not just hearsay, unlike your beliefs.

There is none so blind as those who cannot see, perhaps? Remove those scales from your eyes.

You referred to Sam Wiggleworth where it is claimed to have raised someone (his wife) from the dead ... that is high quality rock-solid evidence - NOT. Were he and any onlookers primed, or partisan in reaching that conclusion? Unbelievable - literally.

 

[Mike Krailo]

I have personally never witnessed any healing but Wes Huff's story is pretty compelling. It's his personal experience and that of the doctors that actually did verify the account. Wes Huff Story

 

[GaP42]

I have personally never witnessed any healing but Wes Huff's story is pretty compelling. It's his personal experience and that of the doctors that actually did verify the account. Wes Huff Story

The personal blog is not compelling of anything more than spontaneous reversal of paralysis of the lower limbs. There is nothing presented which says any investigation as to what change occurred in the state of the spinal cord of the paralysis itself - just the symptom paralysis of the lower limbs. Doctors and Wes Huff may well have been surprised, and not have had any explanation, and the doctors did verify the account - to the extent that a spontaneous reversal occurred - what else would you expect? Spontaneous reversal does occur (rarely), and can usually be explained when investigated: see Spontaneous reversal of paralysis: NIH

Attributing the reversal to a miracle is dependent upon what you define as a miracle: if, say, the reduction in pressure caused by a haematoma or the rebuilding of the damaged inflamed tissue leading to reduced pressure on the spinal cord is a miracle (because the FSM did it), then there are so many natural miracles entirely explainable by the FSG you should be down on your knees each day because you survived each day. But then what do you say about the miracles where the body "goes" wrong. Oh, yes that was the work of the devil. Give me a break. Selective/ biased, uncritical thinking, cognitive dissonance, no?

No, I am not saying this is the explanation in the case of Wes Huff - there just is not any information. There is nothing presented in that blog or elsewhere that says what was investigated / ruled in or out - for the cause of the spontaneous reversal

 

[NauticalGent]

This thread reminds me of this song