unforum

[Kagehi Kossori]

[Kronus]

Maybe I'm mistaken but isn't God defined as The Everything? Wouldn't that make TVs going screwy and even the TV repair guy apart of God? Or maybe you want to believe that you and that TV repair guy have free will, and that TV is a creation of man and science, and therefore not devine. Is it any less devine when you realize that we are the tools of God? I guess this raises questions about whether God planned everything, and there is no free will, or God willed us to have free will but he's not as omnipotent as everyone claims. And christians just shrug and say, "oh, there's no point understanding God, he works in mysterious ways." I find it troubling that there are people who leave it at that.

P.S. Flying saucers, heh

[SuperJerms]

The beauty of reality is that you don't have to be right about everything to be right about anything. Just because there have been poorly thought out viewpoints on Creationism, or because people's understanding has changed along with strides in science does not mean that you automatically discard the theory. If you had to reject an entire idea every time you learn something new and change your perspective, then you'd have to disgard every single theory, ever.

The point is that ID is not incompatible with science. Darwin didn't kill God. God isn't afraid of Darwin. Evolution is no more a threat to theology than gravity, thermodynamics, or any other scientific study. Having someone put things in motion is not a threat to science.

We should all be able to agree: Perfectly understood theology is perfectly compatible with perfectly understood science.

The problem is that we don't have access to either of these, and we probably won't any time soon. Sure, we seem to be close in some areas, but we aren't there yet.

We get along much better in some sciences by studying empirical data only. To leave metaphysical forces out of a physical study is not the same as assuming that metaphysical forces don't exist. They simply don't fall into that decipline, by definition. But it's a two-edged sword...data is data, not proof of theology. You are no less foolish to say that gravity proves the existance of God than you are to say it disproves. Ironically, we hear many, many, many more people try and use scientific data to do the latter.

So, you have science and you have religion. You can say, "God uses gravity to hold planets in orbit." You can say, "Planets hold in orbit because of gravity, so God must not exist." Both statements use the exact same science, with a totally opposite theological bent, but both are equally biased. The best thing that could be done is to leave your diestic, nihilistic, or antagonistic subjectivity out of it and simply say, "Gravity is at work in this way...." The third statement is less accurate on the whole because it simply ignores the theological issue, but it isn't going to cause the arguments that the first two do.

Now, religious leaders have obviously gotten things wrong in the past, but this is not a logical ground to dismiss a particular religion. If I say that God is sitting in a chair on Jupiter, and we go to Jupiter but He isn't there, how do you figure that my being incorrect makes religion as a whole into a farce? If I say 2+2=corn, does that mean that agriculture is a wash too? That just isn't logical.

It would seem that people are ill-advised to take a "God-of-the-gaps" approach to science because they are bound to look stupid as soon as we figure out the gaps. But that doesn't make theology wrong.


Kronus, defining God is always going to go haywire, because the whole idea of God is something beyond ourselves. Any definition will have a refutation or paradox to it (or not make for a very interesting God). Go ahead and try. Even the "The Everything," could be taken as the God of many different religions with many very different beliefs. Now, I'm not sure what you're trying to get at, exactly, but that was a nice little blanket statement you have there. If Christians really didn't see any point to understanding God, there would be no Christian philosophers, theologans, pastors/preists/evanelists/Churches, scientists, artists, or hedonists (just to name a few). I think that you have missed something: a good 99% of all humanity spends every waking day trying to understand God better.

[Kali]

[Phaedra]

[Kali]

[krystyn]

I know what drives me to kill ...

[vector]

[thebruce]

edit: holy crap, ok I think THIS has got to be the longest forum post I ever made... man!

Ok, I'm in... I'll start off with the one paragraph from the other thread I left off with regarding anything not dealing with that thread topic
Disclaimer: I'll try not hold back in here, but please remember that anything I may say is strictly based on my beliefs, and I won't state anything as fact unless from an unbiased viewpoint (on both sides) it can be considered as fact. If I make that mistake, just please remember that it's because I believe it to be fact based on my beliefs. But, as the topic says, "Theology, Science and other stuff you don't want to read" (though, science really is between Theology and Evolution )

---
Science is (and don't quote me on this, I'm not trying to define science, because that's a very complex definition) basically the discovery of the facts, and use of interpretation and exploration of possibile explanations in order to refine the facts and offer possibilities for how and why our world works.

Talk origins, talk about anything that is an interpretation of the facts AS fact and you're forcing a possible explanation on people. There is no 'magic' in science. There is 'magic' in explanations however. The explanation, whether containing 'magic' or not, is a belief, an interpretation of the facts. Unless the explanation is disproven, it is entirely a viable interpretation that people should be free to believe in until proven otherwise. THAT is science. Evolution is an interpretation of the facts. People are free to believe that it is true if they want, but that doesn't make it true. What IS True are what we have done to explore how our world works. Based on your fundamental belief, your starting point, you'll interpret those facts to fit what you believe to be the ultimate truth...
---

So.

[urthstripe]

HOLY CRAP!


This time my head definitely asplode.

[DreamOfTheRood]

To sum up thebruce's points, both the evolutionist and creationist models are relying on the same data, but the data is interpre ...

LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!

[SuperJerms]

holy crap. me too. Kablooey.

EDIT: Ok, I read through it all, and bruce of course has my seal of approval on most of this. One major exception.

While there is a strict literalist interpretation of the Genesis account for creation, creationism is in no way dependant on it. The argument that demonizes Theistic Evolution is not compelling in my opinion (nor in other's opinion in this thread). I don't have time to do a point-by-point rebuttal against the page bruce linked (and I'd get bored with the back-and-forth anyway), but quickly:

Literalist Creationism depends on 24 hour days for timelines. Although light was made on the first "day," days weren't created until the fourth day of creation (Gen 1:14, 19 - "Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years...There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day."

Every single point that the guy puts out is easily an extrapolation of a very specific reading of the Bible. His hermeneutics aren't the best I've ever seen (you'd better hope Phaedra doesn't see that he called the OT an "on ramp" to the main event of the NT). His PhD is in IT, not a field related to the argument. This fella is hardly an authority on hermeneutic readings of Genesis or theological interpretations of the passages he cites as pertaining to evolution.

My point being that I don't find this article (or this argument) personally compelling. I agree with everything else thebruce has said in almost every post he's ever made...but this is off base. Nicely put, some Christians view the Genesis account as literally as can possibly be interpreted, and that's fine. It is NOT fine to say that alternative readings are tantamount to not believing in the God of the Bible. Aside from being a really emotionally charged statement, it's also a fairly devisive one. Better to say, "Those who believe in Theistic Evolution don't believe in certain authors' interpretation of a very, very short and vague passage which may or may not have been meant as 100% literal."

Being open minded to the possibility of misinterpretation is not the same as rejecting the Bible as the authortative, inspired word of God.

The Bible was not made to be a good cookbook.
The Bible was not made to be a good exegesis on Marxian Hegemony.
The Bible was not made to be a good MLA, APA, or AP style guide.
The Bible was not made to be a good guide to drawing Anime.
The Bible is not a first-grade reader book.
So what makes anyone think that the Bible was made to be a Cosmology, Thermodynamics, Quantum Mechanics, Geology, or Biology primer?

[ScarpeGrosse]

Holy crapnuts, Batman.

Do you guys realize you've spent two forum pages now on a topic that has been at the center of debate for oh... gee, hundreds/thousands of years? Is there really going to be any further resolution that you guys can come up with to quench the firey pits of discourse and debate on this?

That being said: (/me turns on Admin voice)

Would it be possible to wrap up the evolution/creationism god v. science debate here and maybe possibly move on to something more topical, like (and I can't believe *I'm* the one saying this), HALO 2?

Thanks guys!

[thebruce]

hehe Scarpe, that's why this thread was made, because the topic which started as AI vs Human (Melissa / Yasmine vs Dana's life) branched off into this, so it was decided to start a specific OT thread for it instead of taking up value relevent thread space

As for the raging debate through history, yeah, we know but, as we've always been saying, we respect that we're all remaining civil. They turn bad in other places because emotions and feelings enter in, instead of healthy discussion of the facts, and respecting of opinions that the facts can't touch.

The goal of this thread is hopefully to reveal all the facts, and which opinions we all have are based on fact or on interpretation... hopefully, as long as we're all open minded, we can all accept the possibility of being wrong if we're shown to be wrong. If you check the poll, I think the current opinion is still to keep the thread around... I don't think it's gotten to the point of closing down yet

[thebruce]

oh and just a quick generic link to many articles dealing with common questions about the validity, contents, and literal aspects of Genesis

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/genesis.asp