What Really Matters

_{Cornelius Hunter

January 29, 2013

Intelligent Design}

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I believe there are big problems with evolution. But I could be wrong. Or perhaps I’m right but some form of evolution is nonetheless true. Evolutionists, on the other hand, are much more certain and there is a never-ending drum roll of high truth claims from their camp. These truth claims are unwarranted and it is them, rather than the theory itself, that are the problem. So I’m not so much concerned about the theory itself as I am about the certainty with which it is presented. Read more

Comments

JM: You are still ducking and dismissing. Let's roll the summary again, from 108:
it should be clear by now that all you are able to do is put forth long since corrected misrepresentations. It is clear to any knowledgeable person, that to deny the first, ever so plainly grounded fact about Jesus, his death by crucifixion under Pilate et al, and to write that in claimed scriptures, is fatal. The garbled accounts of what Jews and Christians believe theologically, multiply the failure. In the case of those Muslims latching on to the “Paulianity” myth by way of attempted justification, the account in Ac, by Luke, who is a proved, habitually accurate historian, suffices to shatter the talking points. Just so you can see what I would not otherwise have had occasion to put on record. And I have given links to sources that will provide far more details. But, that is not my main purpose in this thread, you provoked me by accusing PJ of being a fraud, and by proceeding to smear missionaries broadscale as liars. I hope that one day you will wake up and realise what you have been led to do.
As for Answering Christianity, I could not but notice that here they assert: Indisputable Proofs that 9/11 was 100% an Israeli Mossad Operation! A site that -- as part of "Answering Christianity" -- adverts to such conspiracist rubbish in the teeth of the evidence we all have been able to see [this shows the only vid footage of the first plane heading into and exploding in the WTC tower and the very first fire responders going into action; also cf the raw CNN video from the day here, noting the live on-screen impact of the 2nd plane . . . where a plane impact and jet fuel-Al etc fire are sufficient to explain softening of steel in trusses etc then a collapse of one story [think of 20 stories of 1-acre footprint building falling 10 ft, which would be enough to trigger pancake collapse of the buildings as can be seen, onward leading to debris hitting ground at some 120 mph], and which is unable to face patent, well documented facts -- cf here -- on whodunit, where we actually have an open admission by Mr Bin Laden et al to that effect [cf. here, has no credibility. Period. Sorry, JM, but your credibility is all used up, and your sources cannot pass a basic face the facts test. Time to continue the focus on the main subject, and I think the Craig-Rosenberg debate may be a good pivot for that. KFkairosfocus_{February 1, 2013
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Yeah, I think Rosenberg really got off on the wrong foot. Lot's of scientists don't believe in God. Therefore, Craig's arguments based upon science are not valid. srsly?Mung_{February 1, 2013
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EA: Thanks, what are your onward thoughts? KFkairosfocus_{February 1, 2013
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UD: Thanks for the clip. I am especially taken with:
The key issue, namely that origins from scratch cannot be explained in the same way, is not dealt with at all.
Body plan origin has always been the key gap in the Origin's narrative and its successors to today, starting with the very first body plan, the one at the root of the tree of life. Sir Fred, as usual, puts his finger on the trouble-spot. KFkairosfocus_{February 1, 2013
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F/N: very appropriate to this thread (as in JL, are you listening or did you only mean to snipe and scoot), the Craig-Rosenberg debate on does God exist. Short summary here, audio here. HT BA77 & Mung. BTW, I am utterly appalled and saddened to see Rosenberg committing the fallacy of appealing to Q-mech as allegedly proving that effects happen without causes, cf the UD weak argument correctives here on. KFkairosfocus_{February 1, 2013
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KF @110: Well said.Eric Anderson_{February 1, 2013
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KF @ 97 Here's more of Hoyle cutting right to the point in the book Evolution from Space
In 1835 and 1837 Edward Blyth published two papers in which he considered the effects of natural selection. He argued that once species were adapted to their environment, natural selection would prevent them becoming disadapted. He argued closely along the lines of the quotation from Darwin given in chapter 4: 'On the average every species must have some number killed every year by hawk....' Blyth saw this argument clearly, long before Darwin wrote it in his notebook, but he felt that it could only improve the adaptation of an already adapted plant or animal. Getting the adaptation there in the first place remained a problem, and for this Blyth found it necessary to take a position not much different from Paley's. The problem of getting the 2000 necessary enzymes there in the first place remains to this day.... What Darwin, and also Alfred Russel Wallace, did nearly a quarter of a century after Blyth was to assert that natural selection would indeed get the adaptation there in the first place, a position which Blyth had considered and rejected. The assertion was without proof, although the scientific world has been persuaded into thinking exhaustive proofs were given in The Origin of Species (1859). What we are actually given in Darwin's book are very many changes of adaptation by already adapted species, of which there has never been any cause for argument since Blyth's papers in 1835 and 1837. The key issue, namely that origins from scratch cannot be explained in the same way, is not dealt with at all. The speculations of The Origin of Species turned out to be wrong, as we have seen in this chapter. It is ironic that the scientific facts throw Darwin out, but leave William Paley, a figure of fun to the scientific world for more than a century, still in the tournament with a chance of being the ultimate winner.
udat_{February 1, 2013
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Mung: You seem to misunderstand the way miracles work concerning the Prophets of God. They happen when they do not due to some independent and innate ability of the individual concerned but due to God's permission . It is God who accompanies the miracle for the Prophet as Signs to mankind and that is why Jesus in several places in the Bible said that the miracles he was doing were not his own but God's and only by God's permission . The same applies to Muhammad saws . AnsweringChristianity takes care of anything that comes out of your answeringislam website . Have a good weekend oh !JoeMorreale1187_{February 1, 2013
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JL: Pardon, but with all due respect, it is clear that you are not paying close attention. If you are genuinely interested in the warranting grounds of the Christian faith, those will not be found above, all that has been done is to correct misrepresentations of basic historical fact and theology, compounded by improper accusations of fraud and lying; as I just had to summarise on at 108. If you do want to see what a grounds up worldview case for the Christian faith would look like, start here on. In the meanwhile, for the third time today, I have just refocussed the thread on the main subject from the original post; which I think is where a really profitable discussion can be had. KFkairosfocus_{February 1, 2013
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Folks: Again, the really focal issue, from 76 above: __________ >> I thought I should take up the focus at the head of this thread for a moment. As I do so, let me observe how CH definitely split his topic, raising and headlining the issue of scientific warrant and proper degree of certainty here, and then bridging elsewhere to a discussion that the priority spiritually is on sorting out ourselves. He is right to note that one can be a serious Christian and hold to common descent, up to and including universal common descent. For that matter, I understand that of the two generally acknowledged leading scientists in the design theory school of thought, one — Behe — believes in universal common descent, and the other — Dembski — has publicly stated here at UD that his view is a form of Old Earth Creationism, though he has not given any detailed particulars. And I suspect these two views take in a good slice of the adherents to design thought, through Young Earth Creationists, once they pull back from the debates over interpreting Gen 1 – 11, are also capable of looking through what we could call the Rom 1:19 – 20 lens. As to Genomicus’ question, I doubt that you will find a reliable survey on the subject but you can take the fact that the leading two scientific advocates for design theory split as above, as an indicator. I think the general breakdown is that in the US, some 15% of pop is now deeply secularised, and of the remaining 85% a bit less than half are YEC, and a bit over half are believers in an origin guided by God across a timeline as suggested by the various investigations. The former, I think take their pivot on Job 38, which warns us that we ought not to darken God’s counsel with words without knowledge, as we were not there when he laid the foundations of the world. Thus, they take their understanding of Gen 1 – 11 etc as a correct reading of the record by Him who was there, and hold that this should inform our science, even as respect for credible record is a part and parcel of general scientific investigations — as close as your friendly local lab or fieldwork notebook and what derives therefrom. Where also, of course, of the maybe 45% who take an old earth view, there would be some disagreement on the ways that the world without and our minds and consciences within point to the one who designed and made the world and us in it, but that split is I suspect not yet the subject of a serious and valid survey; at least, that I am aware of. I would guess that in Europe and elsewhere, the views of Christians, whether scientists or not, would tend to more of the same side, with YEC a distinct minority, save in zones where there is strong influence from the US. Sorry that I cannot give more exact numbers, but that is about what I can see. (Maybe someone out there has better knowledge of surveys. Though we should not put such on a pedestal, as though they answer to all things. Sometimes what we need is to understand a bit on why people think as they do.) Now, too, this pattern reflects the fundamental point that the Judaeo-Christian worldview and theology are capable of understanding God as working through secondary causes of his design, in the wider context that the fundamental view is much as cited earlier from Heb 1 above. Where, this C1 work from the Pauline School (I tend to agree with Nash in The Gospel and the Greeks that the patterns best fit Apollos as author) is at once the most militantly Hebraic NT document, and also the one that most directly engages the sorts of Judaic-Greek philosophical speculations that seemed to have run rife in Alexandria and spread from there. Let us cite again, vv 1 – 4, with a different emphasis:
Heb 1:1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He [= the Eternal Son, not a child of the sort spoken of in the silly pagan legends of the gods and pretty girls] is the radiance of the glory of God [--> "Light of Light" in the NC] and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins [--> a cleansing, i.e. the atonement], he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. [ESV, note the Johannine echo from Jn 1:1 – 12]
Col 1:15 – 20 is very similar. Let me set it in context, for the benefit of those who that will help to understand where Christian Theology and the creeds that summarise it, are coming from:
Col 1:9 . . . from the day we heard [of the church in Colossae], we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, 12 giving thanks[d] to the Father, who has qualified you[e] to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The Pre-eminence of Christ 15 He [= Christ --> the prophesied messiah, anointed of God in the OT] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. [--> Notice how the theology of redemption is so closely connected tot both the launch and purpose of the church, and the underlying eternal Sonship and status as active agent of creation and holding together the cosmos. This dovetails with the Johannine view in Jn 1:1 - 12, in which the same is described as the LOGOS, reason and communication himself, without whom was not anything made that was made. This is a part of the context in which Christians expected a world ordered by intelligible Divine law, which is reflected in our Law of nature terminology. That in turn is a big part of the story of the rise of modern science as a self-sustaining project rooted in the practical outworking of that expectation. As in, thinking God's creative and self-sustaining thoughts after him, in the terms used by Boyle.] 21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind [--> Notice the allusion to worldviews hostile to the above picture, and the onward tie-in to responding to the gospel that pivots on the theology of the passion, death on the cross -- and yes, the NT explicitly states that he became a curse that we in exchange may take his blessing, and was raised up by God in vindication of his Sonship, raised up as Lord and eternal Judge before whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord to the glory of the Father, a daring echo of Isa 45:18 - 23 and Dan 7:9 - 14 . . . ], doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation[g] under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. [ESV]
Remember, the pivotal warrant for this, is the prophesied death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, with 500 witnesses, unstoppable witnesses. From Ac 17, we may see that this is the offer of warrant that is put on the table by the Christian faith, announced as God’s demonstration to all men, now manifest in resurrection power at work in the hearts of those who respond to the gospel. That is important to observe, as in a day when there is ever so much debate over origins, that is apt to be forgotten. I think that in part that is what CH sought to echo in his plea to put all of this in perspective. Now, let us zoom in on the “certainty” issue and the often encountered notion that the macroevolutionary, blind watchmaker thesis universal common descent by purposeless, unintelligent chance and mechanical necessity working through sheer raw differential reproductive success of varieties in ecological niches, is a “fact” on the level of the law of gravity or the roundness of the earth, etc. Some time back, I scooped a Wiki clip on that subject:
. . . When scientists say “evolution is a fact” they are using one of two meanings of the word “fact”. One meaning is empirical, and when this is what scientists mean, then “evolution” is used to mean observed changes in allele frequencies or traits of a population over successive generations. Another way “fact” is used is to refer to a certain kind of theory, one that has been so powerful and productive for such a long time that it is universally accepted by scientists. When scientists say evolution is a fact in this sense, they mean it is a fact that all living organisms have descended from a common ancestor (or ancestral gene pool) [8] even though this cannot be directly observed. [["Evolution as theory and fact," coloured emphasis added. Acc: Aug. 7, 2010.]
Pardon, but with all due respect, this is rubbish, no true ~~scotsman~~ [scientist] rubbish. Rubbish that ignores and implicitly disqualifies those who disagree with the alleged universal consensus from the ranks of “true scientists,” and which then goes on to make a gross category error. For, patently, the evolutionary, universal common descent explanatory model of the deep past of origins is a proffered explanation, not a directly observed fact. Job 38 is right in its key observation that we were not there in the past of origins, and so we do not know beyond possibility of correction. Where, even in cases of sciences that observe and infer explanatory models in the present, we have faced repeated scientific revolutions that have overturned the hitherto consensus view. Explanatory scientific knowledge claims are only capable of the weak form, inherently provisional degree of warrant, that so far this is the best explanation and it is per empirical resting, reliable. When it comes tot he blind watchmaker thesis evolutionary models, on objective facts, the degree of warrant that is possible is weaker still. When we deal with remote reaches of space and time, where we have no generally accepted record and where we can make no direct observation, we are forced to rely on a comparison of traces from the remote reaches with the more immediately observed causal processes we can see here and now, and their consequences and more or less characteristic signs. That is what Newton spoke of when he laid out his four rules of reasoning. So, we are in effect saying that we observe traces — light from the sun and stars, rock minerals with radioactive elements a, b, c, a fossilised bone, a dinosaur bone that has not fossilised and has in it soft tissue and blood vessels with blood cells, etc. — of the remote past of origins. On this, we have over time constructed a model timeline with various explanatory models, each with its own particular degree of warrant and of limitations. In that context, I would suggest that the sort of stellar lifetime model based on the Hertzprung- Russell plot of inferred absolute magnitude vs spectral patterns/ temperature gives us a “gold standard” for such models. We have known physics, we have a relationship of mass of a H-ball and the implied or at least plausible stellar life cycle, we have H-R plots of clusters that show branching off to the post-main sequence giants stage which is linked in the models to the lifespan so far, etc etc. This is multiplied by the overall cosmological model that has come to be known as the Big bang theory, rooted in turn in evidence of a cosmological expansion rooted in a stretching out of the very thinness of space itself, giving an estimate for the age of the cosmos timeline to date, of some 13.7 BY. Indeed, so impressive is the overall framework that in recent years, Vardimann and Russell Humphreys, noted YEC physicists, have worked on a model in which there is a 15 BY or so cosmos as a whole in which through a sort of time freeze effect we can have an earth of age about 10,000 or so years. (Yes, such a model can be constructed.) In that context, t he models advanced for origin of life and origin of body plans simply do not have anything near that level of empirical warrant on close comparison to observed processes tracing to known causal factors today. The origin of cell based life in some sort of plausible prebiotic stew and environment, pond, comet, moon of gas giant, etc, is simply not well grounded on evidence of spontaneous formation of a metabolic automaton with built in information based von Neumann self replicating mechanism, using complex information rich polymer nanomachines. The textbook illustrations and smooth words that give a different impression simply do not have good warrant. This means, there is no credible root for the blind watchmaker Darwinist tree of life, in a context where, no roots, no shoots or branches. the only known and observed cause of code-storing and executing machinery that shows functionally specific complex organisation and associated information, is design. Going beyond, there is no empirical observational basis of novel body plans originating by spontaneous blind chance and necessity processes. Yes, there have been textbooks that have tried to give the impression that reconstructed fossils on reconstructed timelines (that often run into various circularity problems as in the link above on timelines) are an observation of the “fact” of macroevolution, but this is grossly fallacious. (That BTW, is the root reason why over the past four months and counting, the 6,000 word darwinist challenge essay has sat without a satisfactory submission.) What, then, is driving the school of thought? Johnson has a sobering answer, one that needs to be heeded:
For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [[Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them “materialists employing science.” And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) “give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [[Emphasis added.] [[The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]
We need to think again, very, very carefully indeed. Where, of course, the cosmological evidence points to such a multidimensional fine tuning, that we are left much as the noted astrophysicist and life long agnostic, Sir Fred Hoyle, put it long since:
The big problem in biology, as I see it, is to understand the origin of the information carried by the explicit structures of biomolecules. The issue isn’t so much the rather crude fact that a protein consists of a chain of amino acids linked together in a certain way, but that the explicit ordering of the amino acids endows the chain with remarkable properties, which other orderings wouldn’t give. The case of the enzymes is well known . . . If amino acids were linked at random, there would be a vast number of arrange-ments that would be useless in serving the pur-poses of a living cell. When you consider that a typical enzyme has a chain of perhaps 200 links and that there are 20 possibilities for each link,it’s easy to see that the number of useless arrangements is enormous, more than the number of atoms in all the galaxies visible in the largest telescopes. This is for one enzyme, and there are upwards of 2000 of them, mainly serving very different purposes. So how did the situation get to where we find it to be? This is, as I see it, the biological problem – the information problem . . . . I was constantly plagued by the thought that the number of ways in which even a single enzyme could be wrongly constructed was greater than the number of all the atoms in the universe. So try as I would, I couldn’t convince myself that even the whole universe would be sufficient to find life by random processes – by what are called the blind forces of nature . . . . By far the simplest way to arrive at the correct sequences of amino acids in the enzymes would be by thought, not by random processes . . . . Now imagine yourself as a superintellect working through possibilities in polymer chemistry. Would you not be astonished that polymers based on the carbon atom turned out in your calculations to have the remarkable properties of the enzymes and other biomolecules? Would you not be bowled over in surprise to find that a living cell was a feasible construct? Would you not say to yourself, in whatever language supercalculating intellects use: Some supercalculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule. Of course you would, and if you were a sensible superintellect you would conclude that the carbon atom is a fix.
No wonder, in that same talk, Hoyle also added:
I do not believe that any physicist who examined the evidence could fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce within stars. [["The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Engineering and Science, November, 1981. pp. 8–12]
There is a lot of food for thought in the substance of this thread. >> ___________kairosfocus_{February 1, 2013
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The apologetics for Christianity and Islam sound exactly the same in this thread. I would assume it’s the same for Judaism too. Everything from cosmology, teleology, history, miracles, prophecy, reliability, archaeology, theology, after-life. It’s all the same arguments but just a different guy. They can’t both be right unless there really are multiple paths to the same God. Both sides claim evidence for their belief and refutations for everyone else. It sounds like you guys may be giving credence to the atheist canard “once you understand why you dismiss all other gods, you’ll understand why I dismiss yours.” Any Jews, Hindus or Buddhists want to join?JLAfan2001_{February 1, 2013
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JM: it should be clear by now that all you are able to do is put forth long since corrected misrepresentations. It is clear to any knowledgeable person, that to deny the first, ever so plainly grounded fact about Jesus, his death by crucifixion under Pilate et al, and to write that in claimed scriptures, is fatal. The garbled accounts of what Jews and Christians believe theologically, multiply the failure. In the case of those Muslims latching on to the "Paulianity" myth by way of attempted justification, the account in Ac, by Luke, who is a proved, habitually accurate historian, suffices to shatter the talking points. Just so you can see what I would not otherwise have had occasion to put on record. And I have given links to sources that will provide far more details. But, that is not my main purpose in this thread, you provoked me by accusing PJ of being a fraud, and by proceeding to smear missionaries broadscale as liars. I hope that one day you will wake up and realise what you have been led to do. Now, I will again put on the table the matters that are properly focal for the thread. KFkairosfocus_{February 1, 2013
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It is the rather explicit teaching of the Quran that Muhammad performed no supernatural, verifiable miracles apart from the inspiration that he received. The Quran in several places emphatically negates the idea of Muhammad performing physical feats such as raising the dead, healing the sick, opening physically blind eyes etc. We present those citations here in order for our readers to see for themselves the Quran’s outright denial that Muhammad was able to perform the miraculous.
http://www.answering-islam.org/Responses/Azmy/mhd_miracles.htmMung_{February 1, 2013
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Anyway guys I am busy this weekend and will reply to your comments on Sunday. There is no object worthy of worship but Allah and Muhammad is His Servant and Final MessengerJoeMorreale1187_{February 1, 2013
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JM1187: I take seriously your claim that Christianity is based on a lie (that Jesus died, was buried, and raised from the dead). It's a shame you can't take me seriously. Oh well.Mung_{February 1, 2013
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Mung: In my generosity I going to help you out. As Muslims we rightly boast of the Quran as the best and provable living miracle today but Muhammad saws actually performed hundreds of miracles which unlike the Bible have been reliably recorded and authenticated via the unrivalled Isnad / chain of transmission hadiths. I recommend you read a book by Mustafa Zayed ( who wrote a devastating page for page refutation of the vile John spencer) called 'The Prohecies of Muhammad ' If its miracles you are after my son that should satisfy you but sadly I suspect rather that it will be inconveniencing you instead.....JoeMorreale1187_{February 1, 2013
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Mung: Sorry mate , can't take you seriously !JoeMorreale1187_{February 1, 2013
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KN:
Look, y’all can go around and around this stuff all day and all night if that’s what you’re into, but Muslims and Christians and Jews have been debating and debating and debating for thousands of years, so don’t get your hopes up about changing anyone’s mind about anything.
This is why Christians preach. We don't change people's minds. (But we are instructed to be able to give reasons.) http://utmost.org/not-by-might-nor-by-power/Mung_{February 1, 2013
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KN #95 Thank you, now I understand you better. - Gr.Gregory_{February 1, 2013
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...Allah tells us Muslims to demand of them proof of their claims which they mistakenly believe their scriptures provides and they blatantly don’t .
Is that why Muhammad performed no miracles? Or is proof of claims only required from non-muslims?Mung_{February 1, 2013
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@JoeMorreale1187:
After all Satan and his army of Jinn/ Demon spirits deceive many people.
Is it possible, that Satan deceived Mohammed?JWTruthInLove_{February 1, 2013
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KF: You are apologising as if what you are saying has refuted what I said let alone hurt me. You can twist, turn and spin all you like the fact remains despite the Bible not being reliable and corrupt and even though there are remnants of truth in there there is more than enough to show that the Paulinian/Church/s doctrines of trinity , original sin , crucifixion and atonement etc etc are not only very badly supported but down outright contradicted ! And all this from the NT which were carefully selected as the canonical scriptures from the Council of Nicea onwards deemed as the best ones to support their pagan man made trinitarian doctrines ,crucifixion etc. The other hundreds of Gospels and epistles considered 'apocryphal ' that were gotten rid of and/or locked away in the Vatican library, what did they contain that was so inconvenient I wonder ??? No wonder the Quran boldly says to the Jews and Christians who boast of their claims and that salvation is only with them that this is vain wishful thinking on their part, Allah tells us Muslims to demand of them proof of their claims which they mistakenly believe their scriptures provides and they blatantly don't . You guys cannot defend your scripture and that is why Christians often resort to subjective experiences and emotional arguments of the 'have you experienced the Holy Spirit/Jesus in your life?'JoeMorreale1187_{February 1, 2013
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F/N: to help return focus, let me clip from 76: ____________ >> I thought I should take up the focus at the head of this thread for a moment. As I do so, let me observe how CH definitely split his topic, raising and headlining the issue of scientific warrant and proper degree of certainty here, and then bridging elsewhere to a discussion that the priority spiritually is on sorting out ourselves. He is right to note that one can be a serious Christian and hold to common descent, up to and including universal common descent. For that matter, I understand that of the two generally acknowledged leading scientists in the design theory school of thought, one — Behe — believes in universal common descent, and the other — Dembski — has publicly stated here at UD that his view is a form of Old Earth Creationism, though he has not given any detailed particulars. And I suspect these two views take in a good slice of the adherents to design thought, through Young Earth Creationists, once they pull back from the debates over interpreting Gen 1 – 11, are also capable of looking through what we could call the Rom 1:19 – 20 lens. As to Genomicus’ question, I doubt that you will find a reliable survey on the subject but you can take the fact that the leading two scientific advocates for design theory split as above, as an indicator. I think the general breakdown is that in the US, some 15% of pop is now deeply secularised, and of the remaining 85% a bit less than half are YEC, and a bit over half are believers in an origin guided by God across a timeline as suggested by the various investigations. The former, I think take their pivot on Job 38, which warns us that we ought not to darken God’s counsel with words without knowledge, as we were not there when he laid the foundations of the world. Thus, they take their understanding of Gen 1 – 11 etc as a correct reading of the record by Him who was there, and hold that this should inform our science, even as respect for credible record is a part and parcel of general scientific investigations — as close as your friendly local lab or fieldwork notebook and what derives therefrom. Where also, of course, of the maybe 45% who take an old earth view, there would be some disagreement on the ways that the world without and our minds and consciences within point to the one who designed and made the world and us in it, but that split is I suspect not yet the subject of a serious and valid survey; at least, that I am aware of. I would guess that in Europe and elsewhere, the views of Christians, whether scientists or not, would tend to more of the same side, with YEC a distinct minority, save in zones where there is strong influence from the US. Sorry that I cannot give more exact numbers, but that is about what I can see. (Maybe someone out there has better knowledge of surveys. Though we should not put such on a pedestal, as though they answer to all things. Sometimes what we need is to understand a bit on why people think as they do.) Now, too, this pattern reflects the fundamental point that the Judaeo-Christian worldview and theology are capable of understanding God as working through secondary causes of his design, in the wider context that the fundamental view is much as cited earlier from Heb 1 above. Where, this C1 work from the Pauline School (I tend to agree with Nash in The Gospel and the Greeks that the patterns best fit Apollos as author) is at once the most militantly Hebraic NT document, and also the one that most directly engages the sorts of Judaic-Greek philosophical speculations that seemed to have run rife in Alexandria and spread from there. Let us cite again, vv 1 – 4, with a different emphasis:
Heb 1:1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He [= the Eternal Son, not a child of the sort spoken of in the silly pagan legends of the gods and pretty girls] is the radiance of the glory of God [--> "Light of Light" in the NC] and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins [--> a cleansing, i.e. the atonement], he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. [ESV, note the Johannine echo from Jn 1:1 – 12]
Col 1:15 – 20 is very similar. Let me set it in context, for the benefit of those who that will help to understand where Christian Theology and the creeds that summarise it, are coming from:
Col 1:9 . . . from the day we heard [of the church in Colossae], we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, 12 giving thanks[d] to the Father, who has qualified you[e] to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The Pre-eminence of Christ 15 He [= Christ --> the prophesied messiah, anointed of God in the OT] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. [--> Notice how the theology of redemption is so closely connected tot both the launch and purpose of the church, and the underlying eternal Sonship and status as active agent of creation and holding together the cosmos. This dovetails with the Johannine view in Jn 1:1 - 12, in which the same is described as the LOGOS, reason and communication himself, without whom was not anything made that was made. This is a part of the context in which Christians expected a world ordered by intelligible Divine law, which is reflected in our Law of nature terminology. That in turn is a big part of the story of the rise of modern science as a self-sustaining project rooted in the practical outworking of that expectation. As in, thinking God's creative and self-sustaining thoughts after him, in the terms used by Boyle.] 21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind [--> Notice the allusion to worldviews hostile to the above picture, and the onward tie-in to responding to the gospel that pivots on the theology of the passion, death on the cross -- and yes, the NT explicitly states that he became a curse that we in exchange may take his blessing, and was raised up by God in vindication of his Sonship, raised up as Lord and eternal Judge before whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord to the glory of the Father, a daring echo of Isa 45:18 - 23 and Dan 7:9 - 14 . . . ], doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation[g] under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. [ESV]
Remember, the pivotal warrant for this, is the prophesied death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, with 500 witnesses, unstoppable witnesses. From Ac 17, we may see that this is the offer of warrant that is put on the table by the Christian faith, announced as God’s demonstration to all men, now manifest in resurrection power at work in the hearts of those who respond to the gospel. That is important to observe, as in a day when there is ever so much debate over origins, that is apt to be forgotten. I think that in part that is what CH sought to echo in his plea to put all of this in perspective. Now, let us zoom in on the “certainty” issue and the often encountered notion that the macroevolutionary, blind watchmaker thesis universal common descent by purposeless, unintelligent chance and mechanical necessity working through sheer raw differential reproductive success of varieties in ecological niches, is a “fact” on the level of the law of gravity or the roundness of the earth, etc. Some time back, I scooped a Wiki clip on that subject:
. . . When scientists say “evolution is a fact” they are using one of two meanings of the word “fact”. One meaning is empirical, and when this is what scientists mean, then “evolution” is used to mean observed changes in allele frequencies or traits of a population over successive generations. Another way “fact” is used is to refer to a certain kind of theory, one that has been so powerful and productive for such a long time that it is universally accepted by scientists. When scientists say evolution is a fact in this sense, they mean it is a fact that all living organisms have descended from a common ancestor (or ancestral gene pool) [8] even though this cannot be directly observed. [["Evolution as theory and fact," coloured emphasis added. Acc: Aug. 7, 2010.]
Pardon, but with all due respect, this is rubbish, no true ~~scotsman~~ [scientist] rubbish. Rubbish that ignores and implicitly disqualifies those who disagree with the alleged universal consensus from the ranks of “true scientists,” and which then goes on to make a gross category error. For, patently, the evolutionary, universal common descent explanatory model of the deep past of origins is a proffered explanation, not a directly observed fact. Job 38 is right in its key observation that we were not there in the past of origins, and so we do not know beyond possibility of correction. Where, even in cases of sciences that observe and infer explanatory models in the present, we have faced repeated scientific revolutions that have overturned the hitherto consensus view. Explanatory scientific knowledge claims are only capable of the weak form, inherently provisional degree of warrant, that so far this is the best explanation and it is per empirical resting, reliable. When it comes tot he blind watchmaker thesis evolutionary models, on objective facts, the degree of warrant that is possible is weaker still. When we deal with remote reaches of space and time, where we have no generally accepted record and where we can make no direct observation, we are forced to rely on a comparison of traces from the remote reaches with the more immediately observed causal processes we can see here and now, and their consequences and more or less characteristic signs. That is what Newton spoke of when he laid out his four rules of reasoning. So, we are in effect saying that we observe traces — light from the sun and stars, rock minerals with radioactive elements a, b, c,a fossilised bone, a dinosaur bone that has not fossilised and has in it soft tissue and blood vessels with blood cells, etc. — of the remote past of origins. On this, we have over time constructed a model timeline with various explanatory models, each with its own particular degree of warrant and of limitations. In that context, I would suggest that the sort of stellar lifetime model based on the Hertzprung- Russell plot of inferred absolute magnitude vs spectral patterns/ temperature gives us a “gold standard” for such models. We have known physics, we have a relationship of mass of a H-ball and the implied or at least plausible stellar life cycle, we have H-R plots of clusters that show branching off to the post-main sequence giants stage which is linked in the models to the lifespan so far, etc etc. This is multiplied by the overall cosmological model that has come to be known as the Big bang theory, rooted in turn in evidence of a cosmological expansion rooted in a stretching out of the very thinness of space itself, giving an estimate for the age of the cosmos timeline to date, of some 13.7 BY. Indeed, so impressive is the overall framework that in recent years, Vardimann and Russell Humphreys, noted YEC physicists, have worked on a model in which there is a 15 BY or so cosmos as a whole in which through a sort of time freeze effect we can have an earth of age about 10,000 or so years. (Yes, such a model can be constructed.) In that context, t he models advanced for origin of life and origin of body plans simply do not have anything near that level of empirical warrant on close comparison to observed processes tracing to known causal factors today. The origin of cell based life in some sort of plausible prebiotic stew and environment, pond, comet, moon of gas giant, etc, is simply not well grounded on evidence of spontaneous formation of a metabolic automaton with built in information based von Neumann self replicating mechanism, using complex information rich polymer nanomachines. The textbook illustrations and smooth words that give a different impression simply do not have good warrant. This means, there is no credible root for the blind watchmaker Darwinist tree of life, in a context where, no roots, no shoots or branches. the only known and observed cause of code-storing and executing machinery that shows functionally specific complex organisation and associated information, is design. Going beyond, there is no empirical observational basis of novel body plans originating by spontaneous blind chance and necessity processes. Yes, there have been textbooks that have tried to give the impression that reconstructed fossils on reconstructed timelines (that often run into various circularity problems as in the link above on timelines) are an observation of the “fact” of macroevolution, but this is grossly fallacious. (That BTW, is the root reason why over the past four months and counting, the 6,000 word darwinist challenge essay has sat without a satisfactory submission.) What, then, is driving the school of thought? Johnson has a sobering answer, one that needs to be heeded:
For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [[Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them “materialists employing science.” And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) “give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [[Emphasis added.] [[The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]
We need to think again, very, very carefully indeed. Where, of course, the cosmological evidence points to such a multidimensional fine tuning, that we are left much as the noted astrophysicist and life long agnostic, Sir Fred Hoyle, put it long since:
The big problem in biology, as I see it, is to understand the origin of the information carried by the explicit structures of biomolecules. The issue isn’t so much the rather crude fact that a protein consists of a chain of amino acids linked together in a certain way, but that the explicit ordering of the amino acids endows the chain with remarkable properties, which other orderings wouldn’t give. The case of the enzymes is well known . . . If amino acids were linked at random, there would be a vast number of arrange-ments that would be useless in serving the pur-poses of a living cell. When you consider that a typical enzyme has a chain of perhaps 200 links and that there are 20 possibilities for each link,it’s easy to see that the number of useless arrangements is enormous, more than the number of atoms in all the galaxies visible in the largest telescopes. This is for one enzyme, and there are upwards of 2000 of them, mainly serving very different purposes. So how did the situation get to where we find it to be? This is, as I see it, the biological problem – the information problem . . . . I was constantly plagued by the thought that the number of ways in which even a single enzyme could be wrongly constructed was greater than the number of all the atoms in the universe. So try as I would, I couldn’t convince myself that even the whole universe would be sufficient to find life by random processes – by what are called the blind forces of nature . . . . By far the simplest way to arrive at the correct sequences of amino acids in the enzymes would be by thought, not by random processes . . . . Now imagine yourself as a superintellect working through possibilities in polymer chemistry. Would you not be astonished that polymers based on the carbon atom turned out in your calculations to have the remarkable properties of the enzymes and other biomolecules? Would you not be bowled over in surprise to find that a living cell was a feasible construct? Would you not say to yourself, in whatever language supercalculating intellects use: Some supercalculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule. Of course you would, and if you were a sensible superintellect you would conclude that the carbon atom is a fix.
No wonder, in that same talk, Hoyle also added:
I do not believe that any physicist who examined the evidence could fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce within stars. [["The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Engineering and Science, November, 1981. pp. 8–12]
There is a lot of food for thought in the substance of this thread.>> _____________kairosfocus_{February 1, 2013
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Thanks for the link mung!bornagain77_{February 1, 2013
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And when I was in Hebrew school, we were taught that Islam and Christianity are both based on fundamental misunderstandings of the Law. :) Look, y'all can go around and around this stuff all day and all night if that's what you're into, but Muslims and Christians and Jews have been debating and debating and debating for thousands of years, so don't get your hopes up about changing anyone's mind about anything.Kantian Naturalist_{February 1, 2013
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The reason for Jesus’ body not being found is very simple . God spared him the humiliation and death of the cross and raised him up to Himself where soon he will return to defeat the anti-Christ .
According to Islam, Christianity is a lie. Christianity just is the confession that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again. That was Paul's message as well. Islam denies that Jesus died, was buried, and rose from the dead. That's why they must claim that Paul invented Christianity. But that hardly explains who Paul was out persecuting before his conversion. Or is that account of his life yet another lie? Of course, if Islam's claims about Jesus are false, then Islam itself is based upon a lie. Ibn WarraqMung_{February 1, 2013
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G; Pardon, but with all due respect, you need to pause and address the strawmen you have set up in your definitions that you would force-fit on others. Then, there can be a reasonable discussion, as has been pointed out in thread after thread. G'day. KFkairosfocus_{February 1, 2013
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JM: With all due respect, you are now simply repeating talking points, which lack cogency and have been long since corrected. I again speak for record, mainly for the onlooker, but also in hope that you may pause and begin to question your programming. Let me clip some of the answered objections from the previously linked discussions, that speak to your just above remarks, in further exposure for the onlooker. It is plain that only pain will serve to teach, and after this it should be plain that the talking points you keep on adducing are without merit, coming from a source that cannot even get what it objects to straight.. Clipping:
OBJ 9: Paul distorted the original teachings of Jesus and created a new Christianity -- which should be called "Paulianity" instead. As a part of that distortion, he invented the doctrine of Jesus as Son of God. ANS 9: And the C1 historical evidence for such a distortion is? Ans: nil. In fact, from the record in Acts and elsewhere, Paul persecuted the early Christians precisely becaue they were teaching that Jesus was the promised Messiah and end of days Son of Man of Daniel 7:9 - 14 who would sit at the Right Hand of God, and would be given Authority as Judge and ruler of the eternal Kingdom of God. It is noteworthy, therefore, that at the trial, the first Christian martyr, Stephen: Ac 7:55 . . . [Stephen,] full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” 57 But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. 58 Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. This is of course exactly the claim that had led the High Priest to tear his robes in declaration of blasphemy and led the controlling faction of the Sanhedrin to conclude that Jesus was thus worthy of death. The resurrection, therefore -- just as Paul asserts in Rom 1:1 - 5 -- is thus a direct Divine response to that accusation, a vindication of Jesus' claim to be the Son of Man. But, there is more. It is the ascended Christ who arrests Paul on the road to Damascus in Ac 9, and who tutors him in Arabia for three years. Then, when Paul had returned from his first Missionary Journey, a challenge was made to how he did not compel Gentiles to become Jews in order to become Christians. So, in Ac 15, the assembled apostles and elders in the First Jerusalem Council did not rebuke Paul for distorting the message of Jesus, but received, approved and commended him. Going further back, when we look in Mark 2:1 - 12, we see where Jesus claims a Divine prerogative, the power to forgive sins, and backs it up by healing the paralytic man who had been let down through the roof. Among many other things, such as declaring in Jn "before Abraham was, I AM." Then, as both Peter and Paul faced martyrdom in Rome in the 60's, Peter's final epistle, 2 Peter 3:16, speaks of Paul's writings as being subject to being wrenched by the unstable and unlearned, just as is so with "the other Scriptures." In short, the "Paulianity" claim is little more than wishfully dismissive thinking. OBJ 10: The leading Christian Theologians themselves tell us -- including in bestsellers! -- that we need not listen to fundamentalist, Bible-thumping claptrap and proof texts. The Bible as we have it is not trustworthy, or a serious source of knowledge about God, much less the absurd, incomprehensible doctrine of a Trinity. The only sensible approach is to glean from the wreckage what reasonable insisghts and advice we can, then dismiss the rest as outdated anti-scientific, unreliable supernaturalistic myths and speculation. ANS 10: This objection turns on an indirect attack against the scriptures and the associated Christian worldview. The main response is thus to point to the historic foundations of the Christian faith, and to the worldview foundations of same. However, in summary, there is no good reason (dismissive prejudices and anti-supernaturalistic question-begging do not count) to dismiss the basic accuracy of the NT as history, or to brush aside the fact of predictive prophecy, especially in Isa 52:13 - 53:12. On the strength of that, we have good grounds to take the Scriptures and their teachings seriously, as well as the testimony and experience of the millions of Christians over the centuries who have met God for themselves in the face of Christ, through trusting those same Scriptures. As for the modernist theologians, perhaps Eta Linnemann -- a former Bultmannian who discarded her own publications in the rubbish on coming to actually meet and be transformed by Jesus -- has most directly set the record straight: Theology as it is taught in universities all over the world . . . is based on the historical-critical method . . . . [which] is not just the foundation for the exegetical disciplines. It also decides what the systematician can say . . . It determines procedure in Christian education, homiletics and ethics . . . . Research is conducted ut si Deus non daretur (“as if there were no God”). That means the reality of God is excluded from consideration from the start . . . Statements in Scripture regarding place, time, sequences of events and persons are accepted only insofar as they fit in with established assumptions and theories . . . . Since other religions have their scriptures, one cannot assume the Bible is somehow unique and superior to them . . . . It is taken for granted that the words of the Bible and God’s word are not identical . . . the New Testament is pitted against the Old Testament, assuming that the God of the New Testament is different from that of the Old, since Jesus is said to have introduced a new concept of God . . . . Since the inspiration of Scripture is not accepted, neither can it be assumed that the individual books of Scripture complement each other. Using this procedure one finds in the Bible only a handful of unrelated literary creations . . . . Since the content of biblical writings is seen as merely the creation of theological writers, any given verse is nothing more than a non-binding, human theological utterance. For historical-critical theology, critical reason decides what is reality in the Bible and what cannot be reality; and this decision is made on the basis of the everyday experience accessible to every person [i.e. the miraculous aspect of Scripture, and modern reports of miracles -- regardless of claimed attestation -- are dismissed as essentially impossible to verify and/or as merely “popular religious drivel”] . . . . Due to the presuppositions that are adopted, critical reason loses sight of the fact that the Lord, our God, the Almighty, reigns. [Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1993), pp. 83 – 88 as excerpted. Emphases in original; parenthetical notes in square brackets.] OBJ 11:"Allah forgiveth not that partners should be set up with him; but He forgiveth anything, else to whom He pleaseth; to set up partners with Allah is to devise a sin most heinous indeed." With: "Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) an Messenger of Allah and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from Him: so believe in Allah and His Messengers. Say not "Trinity": desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is One Allah: glory be to him: (for Exalted is He) above having a son . . . " [Quran, An Nisa, Surah 4:48 & 171, Yousuf Ali]. And also: "Allah will say "O Jesus the son of Mary! Didst thou say unto men, `worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah"? He will say: "Glory to Thee! never could I say what I had no right (to say). Had I said such a thing, Thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest what is in my heart, though I know not what is in Thine. For Thou knowest in full all that is hidden." [Q, 5:116] ANS 11: This is clearly predicated on a misunderstanding of the Trinity. Jesus is not the biological son of God, but the Eternal Son who was incarnate by a miracle. he is not to be worshipped as a god, but acknowledged as the Living Lord, risen from the dead by God's power, in vindication of that Sonship. And, while Mary is indeed a fellow human being who in the Magnificat speaks of God as her Saviour, there simply is no orthodox Christian Creed that has ever held that she is to be regarded as a god[dess] alongside the Creator of all Worlds. It is unfortunate that there has been in some quarters an excessive reverence for her, which does in some cases look far too close to idolatry to be proper, but that error has been staunchly corrected for many hundreds of years. Those who persist in such activities, should reflect soberly on the consequences, including as was just cited. OBJ 12: ". . . they uttered against Mary a grave false charge. (156) That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";? but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not.? (157) Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise. (158)." [Q, 4:156 - 158.] ANS 12: This is of course a direct denial of the consensus historical record of C1, across the Christians, Jews and Romans, that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, and was crucified, and died as a consequence of being so executed. The onward implication, of course is that the core substance of the gospel in 1 Cor 15:1 - 11 -- recorded c 55 AD -- is denied and dismissed, and that on the blanket claim that the reciter of the Quran was a prophet of God. It is enough to contrast the recorded testimony of the over 500 eyewitnesses, most of whom were alive when the record was made: 1 Cor 15: 3 . . . I [Paul] delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. [ESV] So, in sum, it is indeed possible to object to and even dismiss the Christian teaching of the triune God, but it is not possible to responsibly dismiss this as not being historically rooted in the C1 Christian witness, testimony, life, worship, thought and experience. And, in particular, as Paul records from an early Creedal hymn, we are counselled: Phil 2: 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, 2 being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. [ESV]
There is more at the linked, and if the onlooker needs it, why not go to one of the sources and see what happened in the McDowell-Gilchrist vs Deedat debate, here, at book length. (I have already given a link to the Nehls-Eric primer on dealing with typical Dawah talking points. Ex Muslims speak for themselves here.) Now, JM, this is enough to show that you have not properly done your homework before repeating talking points. Until you can explain why the founder of Islam speaking in the name of the voice that spoke to him could not get basic facts straight about the Christian faith and Judaism, the Bible and Christian theology, etc, as well as explaining the sorts of issues already outlined or linked, not to mention 9/11 conspiracy theorism, it is clear you have nothing to seriously add to a discussion on the matter of inappropriate claims of warrant for evolutionary materialistic assertions, and the issue that it is possible to accept universal common descent while being a Judaeo-Christian Theist. I regret having to be so direct, but you have insisted, in the teeth of gentle hints. It is now time to return this thread to the proper focus, so I point back to my comment at 76 above. KFkairosfocus_{February 1, 2013
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This thread displays Steve Fuller's intellectual superiority to any current living Big-ID/IDM proponent. Check out his 'anthropic worldview' (2006), which speaks in unison of the Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam. "So to you your Religion and to me mine." - JoeMorreale1187 Of course, Big-ID advocates on this site will easily admit that this has *nothing* to do with Big-ID theory. And because most Big-IDists here are (closet or open) evangelical Christians, they will press their belief that 'Big-ID' has *nothing* to do with Islam. But Islam accepts a single 'Designer' just as does (3-in-1) Christianity. My Turkish students aren't awed by the 'creationist' fantasy of Harun Yahya. But at least Yahya wisely distanced himself from Big-ID! CH may have a point in the OP: "some form of evolution is nonetheless true." You folks live under the yolk of collectively expressing that truth. So far communicative babel has been the trend...Gregory_{February 1, 2013
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Joe I am not being hostile to you personally, and am sorry if you take it that way, but am merely challenging your the truthfulness of your claims fro Islam. I sincerely don't see how anyone can justify believing in a religion that advocates suicide bombers and lying as a means of advancing their religion!bornagain77_{February 1, 2013
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