Saturday, May 26, 2012

It Didn’t End With the Sophists: Richard Leakey Explains the Fact of Evolution Will Someday Be Supported By the Evidence and, In Any Case, the World Wasn’t Created

Plato’s destruction of the sophists unfortunately didn’t take and you can almost hear John Lennon’s Imagine as you read today’s AP piece on legendary evolutionist Richard Leakey promoting the usual man-is-the-measure-of-all-things fallacies evolutionists adore, all encapsulated in 900 words. In their value-laden world where they deny the existence of values, Leakey and the evolutionists warn that catastrophes are looming due to man-made climate change (“We may be on the cusp of some very real disasters that have nothing to do with whether the elephant survives, or a cheetah survives, but if we survive”), equate evolution with all that is good (“If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive. Then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges.”), deny the possibility of science without evolution (“how do you combat new pathogens, how do you combat new strains of disease that are evolving in the environment?”) and claim that the fact of evolution will someday actually be a fact (Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that “even the skeptics can accept it.”). This is all standard evolutionary red-meat that the world embraces (“Earlier this month, Paul Simon performed at a benefit dinner for the Turkana Basin Institute. IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond and his wife, Peggy Bonapace Gelfond, and billionaire hedge fund investor Jim Simons and his wife, Marilyn, were among those attending the exclusive show in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.”). Most importantly though is the religion that underwrites Lennon’s religion-free religious utopia:

You can lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that even a fool could work up. So the question is why, how does this happen? It’s not covered by Genesis. There’s no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I’ve read from the lips of any God.

That’s a powerful proof for evolution but it is not from science. Our religion tells us God did not create the world so we supply our own myth that the species and the world arose spontaneously—that something came from nothing. It contradicts what we know from science but no matter, theology remains the queen of the sciences. And that theology, like the creation myth, is man-made:

If you tell me, well, people really need a faith ... I understand that. I see no reason why you shouldn’t go through your life thinking if you’re a good citizen, you’ll get a better future in the afterlife.

A good citizen? Compare Leakey’s man-made theology with God’s Word:

The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men,
To see if there are any who understand, who seek God.
They have all turned aside,
They have together become corrupt;
There is none who does good,
No, not one.

No not one? Compared with evolutionary theology that sounds rather hopeless and impossible. But as Jesus Christ explained, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” He should know, He did the saving.

65 comments:

  1. Hmm, no mechanism,

    Dr. John Sanford "Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome" 1/2 - video
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ-4umGkgos

    Waiting Longer for Two Mutations - Michael J. Behe
    Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that 'for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years' (1 quadrillion years)(Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number ‘is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given’ using their model (which nonetheless "using their model" gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model.
    http://www.discovery.org/a/9461

    and no fossils:

    “We have all seen the canonical parade of apes, each one becoming more human. We know that, as a depiction of evolution, this line-up is tosh (i.e. nonsense). Yet we cling to it. Ideas of what human evolution ought to have been like still colour our debates.”
    Henry Gee, editor of Nature (478, 6 October 2011, page 34, doi:10.1038/478034a),

    Paleoanthropology
    Excerpt: In regards to the pictures of the supposed ancestors of man featured in science journals and the news media Boyce Rensberger wrote in the journal Science the following regarding their highly speculative nature:
    "Unfortunately, the vast majority of artist's conceptions are based more on imagination than on evidence. But a handful of expert natural-history artists begin with the fossil bones of a hominid and work from there…. Much of the reconstruction, however, is guesswork. Bones say nothing about the fleshy parts of the nose, lips, or ears. Artists must create something between an ape and a human being; the older the specimen is said to be, the more apelike they make it.... Hairiness is a matter of pure conjecture."
    http://conservapedia.com/Evolution#Paleoanthropology

    Hominid Hype and the Election Cycle - Casey Luskin - September 2011
    Excerpt: Ignoring fraudulent fossils like Piltdown man, the last 50 years have seen a slew of so-called human ancestors which initially produced hype, and were later disproven.
    http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/09/hominid_hype_and_the_election_050801.html
    “Something extraordinary, if totally fortuitous, happened with the birth of our species….Homo sapiens is as distinctive an entity as exists on the face of the Earth, and should be dignified as such instead of being adulterated with every reasonably large-brained hominid fossil that happened to come along.”
    Anthropologist Ian Tattersall
    (curator at the American Museum of Natural History)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Evolution of the Genus Homo - Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences - Tattersall, Schwartz, May 2009
      Excerpt: "Definition of the genus Homo is almost as fraught as the definition of Homo sapiens. We look at the evidence for “early Homo,” finding little morphological basis for extending our genus to any of the 2.5–1.6-myr-old fossil forms assigned to “early Homo” or Homo habilis/rudolfensis."
      http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100202

      "Fossil evidence of human evolutionary history is fragmentary and open to various interpretations. Fossil evidence of chimpanzee evolution is absent altogether". Evolutionist Henry Gee, Nature 2001

      The Genetic evidence is going in the opposite direction as Leakey presupposes as well:

      Critically Analyzing the Argument from Human/Chimpanzee Genetic Similarity - Casey Luskin - Part 8 of 8 in a series of articles refuting Dennis Venema's claims for information generation by neo-Darwinian processes - September 2011
      Excerpt: we're not talking about "small changes" but rather, as the journal Science explained, at the very least these differences entail "35 million base-pair changes, 5 million indels in each species, and 689 extra genes in humans."[1]
      http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/09/critically_analyzing_the_argum051321.html

      Study Reports a Whopping "23% of Our Genome" Contradicts Standard Human-Ape Evolutionary Phylogeny - Casey Luskin - June 2011
      Excerpt: For about 23% of our genome, we share no immediate genetic ancestry with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. This encompasses genes and exons to the same extent as intergenic regions. We conclude that about 1/3 of our genes started to evolve as human-specific lineages before the differentiation of human, chimps, and gorillas took place. (of note; 1/3 of our genes is equal to about 7000 genes that we do not share with chimpanzees)
      http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/study_reports_a_whopping_23_of047041.html

      The Gorilla Who Broke the Tree - Doug Axe PhD. - March 2012
      Excerpt: Well, the recent publication of the gorilla genome sequence shows that the expected pattern just isn’t there. Instead of a nested hierarchy of similarities, we see something more like a mosaic. According to a recent report [1], “In 30% of the genome, gorilla is closer to human or chimpanzee than the latter are to each other…”
      That’s sufficiently difficult to square with Darwin’s tree that it ought to bring the whole theory into question. And in an ideal world where Darwinism is examined the way scientific theories ought to be examined, I think it would. But in the real world things aren’t always so simple.
      http://www.biologicinstitute.org/post/19703401390/the-gorilla-who-broke-the-tree

      Delete
  2. It’s not covered by Genesis.

    But it is. The book of Genesis specifically mentions that the species are organized hierarchically. It's called the tree of life. Genesis goes on to state that gaining a true and correct understanding of the tree of life (metaphorically called "eating of the fruit of the tree of life) would give a person the knowledge and power to become immortal. Evolutionists cannot pretend that they originated the concept of the tree of life. The book of Genesis preceded them by thousand of years.

    Likewise, computational neuroscientists cannot act as if they came up with the idea that knowledge in the brain (or elsewhere) is organized hierarchically. Genesis's tree of knowledge was way ahead of you. And, as artificial intelligence experts will soon discover, hierarchical knowledge in the brain (or elsewhere) is or should be divided into good (beneficial) and bad (harmful) knowledge. This is just the tip of the iceberg of scientific information contained in the scriptures. The most revolutionary scientific breakthroughs in this century will come from the ancient scriptures.

    Us Christians need to understand that the gods' (not just the Christian god, mind you. They were others and they, too, left their mark) primary method of communication is metaphors. Half the knowledge contained in the ancient scriptures is metaphorical, that is, it is not what it seems to be; there is a hidden meaning that can be discerned via analogy and logical consistency. The book of Revelation is a case in point. It is not at all what most of us think it is. It's time for us to wake up and listen to the meaning of the metaphors. "He who has an ear, let him hear" and all that.

    Yep, Genesis was light years ahead of the evolutionists.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What is bad ( harmful) knowledge? Do you have an example or two?

      Delete
    2. velikovskys:

      What is bad ( harmful) knowledge? Do you have an example or two?

      Knowledge is stored into various branches attached to the hierarchical tree of knowledge. Every branch of knowledge in the tree is behavioral, that is, it can be used to effect a specific behavior if the intelligent agent so chooses. The anticipatory brain can examine a piece of knowledge to determine if it leads to reward (pleasure) or punishment (pain).

      Of course, knowledge is acquired through trial and error. Experience dictates what is bad and what is good and the degree of their badness or goodness.

      Delete
  3. If evolutionists had actual evidence for their myth, instead of just inference, assumption, speculation, and faith, they wouldn't need to attack their opponent's position. They know their myth can't stand up to criticism, so they attack the other side's position as a means of deflection...but it's all smoke and mirrors.

    Unfortunately for them, we are not intimidated or afraid to confront them...and they don't like that. They prefer for people to just sit down, shut up and drink their darwinian kool-aid.

    ReplyDelete
  4. In their value-laden world where they deny the existence of values, Leakey and the evolutionists warn that catastrophes are looming due to man-made climate change (“We may be on the cusp of some very real disasters that have nothing to do with whether the elephant survives, or a cheetah survives, but if we survive”),...

    We don't deny the existence of values, just that there is no "objective" set of values which is some sort of supreme authority. We're as entitled to set up our own scale of values as anyone else. What's wrong with that?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ian states: "We're as entitled to set up our own scale of values as anyone else. What's wrong with that?"

      Well Ian what is to make the rest of us respect the atheists/materialists arbitrary scale of values if, as atheists hold, they are but illusory and you are but 'living a lie'? You simply have no basis in reality to tell any atheist, or anyone else, who may hold power over you that their values for killing you, and treating you as worthless, are wrong simply because the values he holds are different from yours. As well, at least in his actions for treating you, and others, as worthless, he would be acting consistently with what you truly believe your value is in your atheistic worldview:

      The Soviet Union Story
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TR_az6__Zo

      Cruel Logic – video
      Description; A brilliant serial killer videotapes his debates with college faculty victims. The topic of his debate with his victim: His moral right to kill them.
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qd1LPRJLnI

      The atheist simply has nothing to appeal to so as to establish the moral worth of humans:

      i.e. Just how do you derive moral value and worth for a person from a philosophy that maintains transcendent values are illusory?:

      How much is my body worth?
      Excerpt: The U.S. Bureau of Chemistry and Soils invested many a hard-earned tax dollar in calculating the chemical and mineral composition of the human body,,,,Together, all of the above (chemicals and minerals) amounts to less than one dollar!
      http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/worth.asp

      Whereas Theism, particularly Christianity, has no trouble whatsoever figuring out how much humans are worth, since infinite Almighty God has shown us how much we mean to him:

      John 3:16
      “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

      Ralph Buckley - My Beloved One - Inspirational Christian Song
      http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4200171

      Moreover Theism, unlike atheism, has the added benefit of actually being true:

      Predictions of Materialism compared to Predictions of Theism within the scientific method:
      http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dc8z67wz_5fwz42dg9

      Delete
  5. Fossils, fossils, fossils.
    What in the world has geology to do with biology?!
    These fossils speak only if geological presumptions are accepted.
    Otherwise they are just sorted dead things.

    A funny aside.
    John Lennon came out against evolution in the 70's.
    He didn't YEC either but given time perhaops a song against evolution would of made top ten.

    "IMAGINE ALL THOSE EVOLUTIONISTS ADMITTING THEY WERE WRONG!"
    "YOU MAY SAY I'M A DREAMER BUT I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE ETC:"

    ReplyDelete
  6. “Dr. Leakey produced a biased reconstruction (of 1470/ Homo Rudolfensis) based on erroneous preconceived expectations of early human appearance that violated principles of craniofacial development,” Dr. Timothy Bromage
    http://www.geneticarchaeology.com/research/Mans_Earliest_Direct_Ancestors_Looked_More_Apelike_Than_Previously_Believed.asp

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. BA,

      So science isn't a religion after all,new technology and findings change interpretations of the data. Nowhere did Dr Bromage dispute evolutionary theory, in fact he actively is involved in reconstruction of fossils using computers techniques unavailable to Dr Leakey in the 1970's.

      Delete
    2. 'Nowhere did Dr Bromage dispute evolutionary theory,'

      ,,,the distortion visited upon the evidence by Leakey spoke for itself.

      Delete
    3. True if Leakey had declared his reconstruction was the absolute objective truth,not a best guess given the level of knowledge at that time.The question is why trust Bromage? Isn't he tainted by evolutionary theory?

      Delete
    4. Why not let the evidence speak for itself? Why must all evidence, no matter how antagonistic, always be force fit into the Darwinian meta narrative? This certainly is not science, but as Dr. Hunter points out time and again, this is a religion parading as science.

      Delete
    5. It is exactly science,what it isn't is religion. You dig up shards of bone from the ground, what now in your view of science? Can you date them? Geology assumes things, physics assume things. What is your science's next step?

      Delete
    6. vel, perhaps you can enlighten folks as to how atheism can ground science in the first place. For I can find no foundation for the practice of science in atheism:

      Atheism cannot ground morality or science
      https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ov3GNroapS12eg3rH0RxvlOdAXiFGaf436IPg5W2ids/edit

      Delete
    7. Science isn't atheistic, some scientists believe in God,some don't.

      You forgot to explain how science works in your view, you find what looks like bone, a) throw it away
      b) read the bible for the metaphoric answer
      c ) pray for inspiration
      d) put it in on display with date and place found

      Delete
    8. vel, As for your flippant remark towards prayer:

      The following video shows that the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores for students showed a steady decline, for seventeen years from the top spot or near the top spot in the world, after the removal of prayer from the public classroom by the Supreme Court, not by public decree, in 1963. Whereas the SAT scores for private Christian schools have consistently remained at the top, or near the top, spot in the world:

      The Real Reason American Education Has Slipped – David Barton – video
      http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4318930

      You can see that dramatic difference, of the SAT scores for private Christian schools compared to public schools, at this following site;

      Aliso Viejo Christian School – SAT 10 Comparison Report
      http://www.alisoviejochristianschool.org/sat_10.html

      What Lies Behind Growing Secularism by William Lane Craig - May 2012 - podcast (steep decline in altruism of young people since early 1960's)
      http://www.reasonablefaith.org/what-lies-behind-growing-secularism

      United States Crime Rates 1960 - 2010 (Please note the skyrocketing crime rate from 1963, the year prayer was removed from school, thru 1980, the year the steep climb in crime rate finally leveled off.) of note: The slight decline in crime rate from the mid 90s until now is attributed in large part to tougher enforcement on minor crimes. (a nip it in the bud policy)
      http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

      AMERICA: To Pray Or Not To Pray - David Barton - graphs corrected for population growth
      http://www.whatyouknowmightnotbeso.com/graphs.html

      The following video is very suggestive to a 'spiritual' link in man's ability to learn new information in that the video shows that almost every, if not every, founder of each discipline of modern science was a devout Christian:

      Christianity Gave Birth To Science - Dr. Henry Fritz Schaefer - video
      http://vimeo.com/16523153

      I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily…. All my discoveries have been made in an answer to prayer. — Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), considered by many to be the greatest scientist of all time.

      The following video gives deep insight into how serious the problem of 'knowledge acquisition' is to the worldview of atheistic materialism:

      Kurt Godel - Incompleteness Theorem and Human Intuition - video (notes in description of video)
      http://www.metacafe.com/watch/8516356/

      Delete
    9. vel, you forgot to consider the little problem that since atheism cannot possibly ground science in the first place then atheism cannot possibly be true in the first place.

      Epistemology – Why Should The Human Mind Even Be Able To Comprehend Reality? – Stephen Meyer - video – (Notes in description)
      http://vimeo.com/32145998

      Why should the human mind be able to comprehend reality so deeply? - referenced article
      https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qGvbg_212biTtvMschSGZ_9kYSqhooRN4OUW_Pw-w0E/edit

      This following site is a easy to use, and understand, interactive website that takes the user through what is termed 'Presuppositional apologetics'. The website clearly shows that our use of the laws of logic, mathematics, science and morality cannot be accounted for unless we believe in God who guarantees our perceptions and reasoning are trustworthy in the first place.

      Presuppositional Apologetics - easy to use interactive website
      http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/index.php

      Random Chaos vs. Uniformity Of Nature - Presuppositional Apologetics - video
      http://www.metacafe.com/w/6853139

      Materialism/Atheism simply dissolves into absurdity when pushed to extremes and certainly offers no guarantee to us for believing our perceptions and reasoning within science are trustworthy in the first place:

      The Absurdity of Inflation, String Theory & The Multiverse - Dr. Bruce Gordon - video
      http://vimeo.com/34468027

      And Dr. Gordon's devastating observation is in his last powerpoint is here:

      The End Of Materialism?
      * In the multiverse, anything can happen for no reason at all.
      * In other words, the materialist is forced to believe in random miracles as a explanatory principle.
      * In a Theistic universe, nothing happens without a reason. Miracles are therefore intelligently directed deviations from divinely maintained regularities, and are thus expressions of rational purpose.
      * Scientific materialism is (therefore) epistemically self defeating: it makes scientific rationality impossible.

      This 'lack of a guarantee', for trusting our perceptions and reasoning in science to be trustworthy in the first place, even extends into evolutionary naturalism itself;

      Should You Trust the Monkey Mind? - Joe Carter
      Excerpt: Evolutionary naturalism assumes that our noetic equipment developed as it did because it had some survival value or reproductive advantage. Unguided evolution does not select for belief except insofar as the belief improves the chances of survival. The truth of a belief is irrelevant, as long as it produces an evolutionary advantage. This equipment could have developed at least four different kinds of belief that are compatible with evolutionary naturalism, none of which necessarily produce true and trustworthy cognitive faculties.
      http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/09/should-you-trust-the-monkey-mind

      Delete
    10. Modern science was conceived, and born, and flourished in the matrix of Christian theism. Only liberal doses of self-deception and double-think, I believe, will permit it to flourish in the context of Darwinian naturalism.
      ~ Alvin Plantinga

      The following interview is sadly comical as a evolutionary psychologist realizes that neo-Darwinism can offer no guarantee that our faculties of reasoning will correspond to the truth, not even for the truth that he is purporting to give in the interview, (which begs the question of how was he able to come to that particular truthful realization, in the first place, if neo-Darwinian evolution were actually true?);

      Evolutionary guru: Don't believe everything you think - October 2011
      Interviewer: You could be deceiving yourself about that.(?)
      Evolutionary Psychologist: Absolutely.
      http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128335.300-evolutionary-guru-dont-believe-everything-you-think.html

      Delete
    11. All that without answering the question.I'll take that as science will cease to exist as a means of determining any natural causation,since to assume any natural causation is to put a framework on data.

      So in your expert opinion are there actually laws in nature or does it appear that there are? A ball falls, is God the direct force? Or secondary?

      Delete
    12. bornagain77May 27, 2012 8:55 AM

      Why not let the evidence speak for itself? Why must all evidence, no matter how antagonistic, always be force fit into the Darwinian meta narrative? This certainly is not science, but as Dr. Hunter points out time and again, this is a religion parading as science.


      The way I see it is this. Science starts by gathering data about something. If that data can be shown to fit into some sort of explanatory framework it can become evidence to support that explanation. On its own, however, data is just data, it says nothing.

      Suppose one of our distant ancestors saw a bone-shaped lump of stone sticking out of an exposed rock face, what would he think? Most likely, he would just find it slightly interesting. He might try to dig it out to show his friends or he might just walk on and forget about it while he concentrated on the much more serious business of finding something to eat.

      Scroll forward a few thousand years and a geologist finding the same bone gets very excited. He now knows there is evidence that rocks are formed into layers and those layers are of different ages, some of them immensely old. He also knows from his colleagues in paleobiology, for example, that the bones of living creatures can be converted into stone copies of themselves given enough time. Thus the bone-shaped rock could actually be the fossilized remains of a creature that lived an immense time ago. It might be the distant ancestor of an animal that lives today or it might even be the only remains of one that is now extinct. Either way, it becomes of enormous scientific interest because, and only because, of the hypotheses and theories - the explanatory frameworks that give it meaning to those who know of them.

      I'm not aware of any of the world's religions that would cause its followers to see anything of interest in, to find any significance in, pieces of bone-shaped rock.

      Narratives are, in one sense, what science is all about. A good theory can be worth far more than gold itself. Think how much of modern technology depends on the theories which tied together the phenomena of electricity and magnetism. Think how wealthy the descendants of Faraday or Maxwell would be today if they had been able to patent their ideas.

      If you or anyone else thinks the "Darwinian meta-narrative" doesn't work, then by all means try to come up with something better. There could be a Nobel Prize in it for the first one who does.

      Delete
    13. BA,

      Do you know how the SAT questions are created? Do you know that private schools are under different constraints than public schools?Do nondenominational private schools do worse than religious schools on the SAT? Do you know that prayer is not outlawed in public schools? If prayer helps students to achieve higher scores ,is God guilty of cheating by giving correct answers? Is religion an indicator of intelligence? Pick any 2

      Delete
    14. Ian, neo-Darwinism is pseudo-science period. For you to 'innocently' pretend there is no competing hypothesis, which accounts for the facts far better than Darwinism, is self imposed blindness on your part!

      Vel, I listed the data for the whole nation when prayer was removed from schools. Perhaps to preserve your irrational atheism you can find some nuances to the overall pattern in the questions you asked, but, as a Christian, methinks you shall be ignoring the elephant in the living room once again just to preserve your nihilistic worldview. ,,, A truly pointless endeavor if ever there was one!

      Delete
    15. as to 'natural' causation, please give me the exact natural non-local, beyond space and time, causation for quantum mechanics:

      Quantum Mechanics has now been extended by Anton Zeilinger, and team, to falsify local realism (reductive materialism) without even using quantum entanglement to do it:

      ‘Quantum Magic’ Without Any ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’ – June 2011
      Excerpt: A team of researchers led by Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences used a system which does not allow for entanglement, and still found results which cannot be interpreted classically.
      http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110624111942.htm

      Delete
    16. bornagain77 May 27, 2012 2:05 PM

      Ian, neo-Darwinism is pseudo-science period. For you to 'innocently' pretend there is no competing hypothesis, which accounts for the facts far better than Darwinism, is self imposed blindness on your part!


      It doesn't matter what you think of "neo-Darwinism" any more than it does what I think of it. What matters is whether the people who actually do the science - the biologists - find it useful and the vast majority of them do. You may not like it but that's the way it is.

      Delete
    17. "the people who actually do the science - the biologists - find it useful and the vast majority of them do."

      wrong again, belief in a metaphysics is considerably different from scientifically 'useful':

      "Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming's discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.
      Philip S. Skell - (the late) Professor at Pennsylvania State University.
      http://www.discovery.org/a/2816

      Podcasts and Article of Dr. Skell
      http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/11/giving_thanks_for_dr_philip_sk040981.html

      Science Owes Nothing To Darwinian Evolution - Jonathan Wells - video
      http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4028096

      "nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin(ism) can be described as scientific" - Imre Lakatos (November 9, 1922 – February 2, 1974) a philosopher of mathematics and science, quote was as stated in 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture

      On the Fundamental Difference Between Darwin-Inspired and Intelligent Design-Inspired Lawsuits - September 2011
      Excerpt: Darwin lobby litigation: In every Darwin-inspired case listed above, the Darwin lobby sought to shut down free speech, stopping people from talking about non-evolutionary views, and seeking to restrict freedom of intellectual inquiry.
      http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/09/on_the_fundamental_difference_050451.html

      "Evolution is the only 'scientific theory' that needs laws to protect it!" Author Unknown

      Delete
    18. Many of these researchers also raise the question (among others), why — even after inducing literally billions of induced mutations and (further) chromosome rearrangements — all the important mutation breeding programs have come to an end in the Western World instead of eliciting a revolution in plant breeding, either by successive rounds of selective “micromutations” (cumulative selection in the sense of the modern synthesis), or by “larger mutations” … and why the law of recurrent variation is endlessly corroborated by the almost infinite repetition of the spectra of mutant phenotypes in each and any new extensive mutagenesis experiment (as predicted) instead of regularly producing a range of new systematic species…
      (Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, “Mutagenesis in Physalis pubescens L. ssp. floridana: Some Further Research on Dollo’s Law and the Law of Recurrent Variation,” Floriculture and Ornamental Biotechnology Vol. 4 (Special Issue 1): 1-21 (December 2010).)
      http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/12/peer-reviewed_research_paper_o042191.html

      In fact the Darwinian meta-narrative has in fact been a hindrance to biological science:

      Neo-Darwinism’s negative effect on science and society
      https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lwdaq8r5K0JbzNtTU4-UqB3t-giK2-hUlsFrNDiJ7Ok/edit

      Delete
  7. A good citizen? Compare Leakey’s man-made theology with God’s Word...

    We are not saved by our works. The only way to be saved is to trust in the sacrifice of the cross. It matters not whether you follow Christ. What matters is whether you believe in Him.

    ReplyDelete
  8. On the other hand:

    For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pedant May 27, 2012 5:41 AM

      On the other hand:

      For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.


      And, if I remember correctly, discussions within the Christian community became rather heated over the relative merits of salvation through faith versus salvation by works. I'm not sure which position BA77 supports and why, for example, given that you can find scriptural support for both.

      Delete
  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Dr Leakey,

    " If you have a deep faith and belief that you were created in God's image by his decision, fair enough. But if you start having that question by virtue of the development of new scientific technology, issues that are not explained in Genesis, and you begin to look at what humans are really, an awful lot of people begin to have some doubts about that. This is not to say they should have doubts about the purpose of religion, which to me is to control our social ways and to control our ability to live together. I think that is very important, but if it's based on a faith that is being eroded, you can have a lot of instability, and I think to a certain extent, the instability of the last decade has seen the growth of fundamentalism, which worries me for political reasons. It worries me for social reasons. So, I think offering a real scientific explanation for who I am, why I am the way I am, and why you are the way you are, where we came from -- and from that the predictability of where we might go -- I think this gives our species, which is remarkably unique in its intelligence, capacities, a far better stance on this planet than if we just leave it to some unknown and call in some supernatural to justify or explain things that perhaps could have been mitigated against or anticipated. So, I think it's a real legitimate concern that we need to pursue."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "I think to a certain extent, the instability of the last decade has seen the growth of fundamentalism, which worries me for political reasons. It worries me for social reasons."

      The Soviet Union Story - video
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j296ubWIRzM

      The unmitigated horror visited upon man, by state sponsored atheism, would be hard to exaggerate,,, Here's what happens when Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of Government:

      “169,202,000 Murdered: Summary and Conclusions [20th Century Democide]
      I BACKGROUND
      2. The New Concept of Democide [Definition of Democide]
      3. Over 133,147,000 Murdered: Pre-Twentieth Century Democide
      II 128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS
      4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
      5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill
      6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State
      7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime
      III 19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS
      8. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan’s Savage Military
      9. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State
      10. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey’s Genocidal Purges
      11. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State
      12. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland’s Ethnic Cleansing
      13. 1,503,000 Murdered: The Pakistani Cutthroat State
      14. 1,072,000 Murdered: Tito’s Slaughterhouse
      IV 4,145,000 VICTIMS: SUSPECTED MEGAMURDERERS
      15. 1,663,000 Murdered? Orwellian North Korea
      16. 1,417,000 Murdered? Barbarous Mexico
      17. 1,066,000 Murdered? Feudal Russia”

      This is, in reality, probably just a drop in the bucket. Who knows how many undocumented murders there were. It also doesn’t count all the millions of abortions from around the world.
      http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM

      Chairman MAO: Genocide Master
      “…Many scholars and commentators have referenced my total of 174,000,000 for the democide (genocide and mass murder) of the last century. I’m now trying to get word out that I’ve had to make a major revision in my total due to two books. I’m now convinced that that Stalin exceeded Hitler in monstrous evil, and Mao beat out Stalin….”
      http://wadias.in/site/arzan/blog/chairman-mao-genocide-master/

      Delete
    2. What is your point? Iran is no threat to world peace?

      Delete
    3. bornagain77 May 27, 2012 9:02 AM

      "I think to a certain extent, the instability of the last decade has seen the growth of fundamentalism, which worries me for political reasons. It worries me for social reasons."

      The Soviet Union Story - video
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j296ubWIRzM

      The unmitigated horror visited upon man, by state sponsored atheism, would be hard to exaggerate,,, Here's what happens when Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of Government:

      “169,202,000 Murdered: Summary and Conclusions [20th Century Democide]


      Those are terrible numbers but so is the accusation that it was all done in the name of atheism, which I deny, still less that it was done in the name of evolution.

      If you want to trade dubious statistics, however, we do have evidence from the Old Testament of the numbers killed by God or the human armies acting in his name

      Who has killed more, Satan or God?

      [...]

      In a previous post, I counted the number of people that were killed by God in the Bible. I came up with 2,476,633, which, of course, greatly underestimates God's total death toll, since it only includes those killings for which specific numbers are given. No attempt was made to include the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc., with which the good book is filled. Still, 2 million is a respectable number even for world class killers.

      [...]

      In a previous post, I've listed and counted God's killings in the Bible. But I only included those that said exactly how many were killed by God. I came up with 2,476,633.

      But that didn't include some of God's most impressive slaughters. How many did God drown in the flood or burn to death in Sodom and Gomorrah? How many first-born Egyptians did he kill? The Bible doesn't say, so there's no way to know for sure. But it's possible to provide rough estimates in order to get a grand total, and that's what I'm attempting here.

      Total with estimates: 25 million.


      Now, those numbers seem small compared with the 20th century until you put them into context.

      Firstly, five thousand years ago or more, the world's total population was far, far smaller than it was in the last century. There were simply a lot fewer people around to kill.

      Secondly, apart from God's super powers, the weapons and technology available to do the killing with were a lot more primitive than their twentieth century equivalents. There just weren't the means then to kill people in the quantities they could in the last century.

      Thirdly, I suspect that, if you took the body counts as a percentage of the total populations at the various times, you would find the God and the Israelites actually did better than Stalin, Hitler and Mao. After all, in the Great Flood, God wiped out almost all life on Earth apart from the chosen few. Even if you lump them all together the twentieth century tyrants didn't even come close to that impressive achievement.

      Delete
    4. Actually if you want to falsely accuse God of murder instead of righteous judgement against sinful man then you can attribute all the deaths on the face of earth that have ever happened to God and get a far higher figure than what you have biasedly listed. As for your claim that Communism is not atheistic in its foundational that is simply ludicrous and reveals your dogmatism.

      ans Since you listed Sodom and Gomorrah, and you actually hold them to be merely 'myth', since you, in your atheism, hold there to be no God, why does the following video give a very different account as to the reality of the event than what you believe to be true???

      The Physical Ashen Remains Of Sodom and Gomorrah - video
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwTVFk1HK3Y

      -----

      Hebrews 9:27
      And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

      Natalie Grant - Alive (Resurrection music video)
      http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=KPYWPGNX

      Delete
    5. If killing people who are evil is objectively good, are laws which forbid murder wrong?

      Again, is the fundamental regime in Iran a problem for you? They believe they are objectively correct, are they objectively moral?

      Delete
    6. bornagain77 May 27, 2012 11:26 AM

      Actually if you want to falsely accuse God of murder instead of righteous judgement against sinful man then you can attribute all the deaths on the face of earth that have ever happened to God and get a far higher figure than what you have biasedly listed. As for your claim that Communism is not atheistic in its foundational that is simply ludicrous and reveals your dogmatism.


      The evidence for the acts committed by God and His people are in the accounts of the Old Testament set down for all to see. Any falsehood or unreliability are in there.

      As for Communism, I have never claimed that it was not atheistic. It certainly was - and is - but the atrocities committed by the various Communist regimes were done in the name of the Communist revolution, party and political ideology which happened to be atheist not atheism itself.
      ans Since you listed Sodom and Gomorrah, and you actually hold them to be merely 'myth', since you, in your atheism, hold there to be no God, why does the following video give a very different account as to the reality of the event than what you believe to be true???

      You must be confusing me with someone else. I have never argued that the cities Sodom and Gomorrah were mythical although I do think that the story of their destruction was embellished and turned to serve the interests of the early Christians.

      Delete
  11. Dr. Hunter wrote, "Our religion tells us God did not create the world so we supply our own myth that the species and the world arose spontaneously—that something came from nothing. It contradicts what we know from science but no matter..."
    Thanks again, Dr. Hunter, for relentlessly hammering the fact that Darwinism is founded firstly on theology. "God wouldn't have done it this way (we know because we're pretty smart and WE would have done it a lot better), therefore God didn't do it. Darwinism is the way that everything MUST have arisen given that we "know" God didn't do it. And again, we know God didn't do it because if there was a God, he/she/it/them would be smart like us, and would have made things in a way that suits us."
    It appears that the message "DARWINISM IS FIRST OF ALL RELIGIOUS" is getting through. I read an article posted on the Uncommon Descent blog about a law review that makes this point: "...we can see that the government, even in limiting the teaching (in schools) to only evolution, is endorsing a religious ideology."

    Snippet follows, From UD, 5/25/12:
    "In “This Is the Trap the Courts Built: Dealing with the Entanglement of Religion and the Origin of Life in American Public Schools” (Southwestern University Law Review, 2008 37 SWULR 1), Jana McCreary, who doesn’t seem to be proceeding from a theistic perspective, offers some cautionary thoughts on lobbying for Darwin in the schools:

    Excerpt: Over eighty years ago, debates began concerning what we should teach our schoolchildren regarding origins of life in their science classes. 1 The debate continues today, and even a new twist has been added: intelligent design. 2 But new twist or old, courts seem to fear offering any theory to schoolchildren that might have been part of the original creationism movement. Courts are concerned that the government not endorse or show any preference over a religions idea regarding the origin of life. 3

    But each time we present a theory of life’s origin to our schoolchildren, we are showing preference. And by actually looking at the theories and what they represent, as well as looking at what religion provides for people, we can see that the government, even in limiting the teaching to only evolution, is endorsing a religious ideology. A message exists behind this endorsement – the same message people feared would exist if we allowed schools to teach biblical creationism theories or even intelligent design theory"

    ReplyDelete
  12. Apparently, Leakey doesn't see the problem, as it has nothing to do with evidence. Furthermore, it's particularly ironic in that Cornelius accidentally referenced the problem in the title of his post.

    Specifically, creationism is a variant of solipsism. It merely moves the boundary at which human reasoning and problem solving supposedly cannot pass.

    Rather than claiming we cannot know if an external reality exists because we cannot know if anything but the self exists, creationism claims we cannot know how the knowledge of how to build the biosphere was created because God might have "created" this knowledge instead, depending on the way he could have chosen to create the universe we observe.

    For example, Cornelius argues that it's possible God might have chosen to create the biosphere we observe not entirely though secondary causes, but could have been directly involved through a limited number undetermined intentional interventions. In the process, God would have "created" the knowledge of how to build regularity systems, rather than evolutionary processes.

    Furthermore, supposedly there was never a time where God did not know to build dinosaurs, frogs, bacteria, tigers, etc.. In other words, God has always had the knowledge of how to build anything logically possible, even if he chose not to. This would include things that have yet to exist, or that God supposedly has chosen not to create. (Note that God creating new knowledge in the form of concluding he wanted to create X, did created X or will create X is not the same as the knowledge of how to create X)

    As such, creationism is misleadingly named, as is it's a general purpose means of denying that creation actually took place.

    ReplyDelete
  13. To illustrate just how general purpose this means is, I'll first point out that the two options Cornelius has proposed are parochial. Specifically, there are more possible ways that a designer might have chosen to have created the world we observe other than entirely though secondary causes or through a limited number of unknown intentional interventions that occurred at unknown intervals though an unknown means and method. Another possibility is that an abstract designer, with no defined limitations, could have also chosen to directly create the world we observe last Thursday. And in doing to said designer would have created all of the knowledge before then.

    For example, Darwin wouldn't have been the author of evolutionary theory. And the same would be said for the people who authored the ideas and concepts that supposedly influenced Darwinism up to then. Rather, this designer would have authored them all when it created the universe last Thursday.

    This would even include Cornelius' "theory" that Darwinism isn't accepted due to collaborating evidence but to these same religious ideas. However, rather than Cornelius being the author, this designer would have been the author instead.

    In other words, how does Corneous know that an abstract designer, with no defined limitations, didn't choose to create the universe last Thursday, thus making his "theory" false? Why doesn't he use this same general purpose means to deny his own theory?

    It's simple: he doesn't want to. He only applies it to theories he personally finds objectionable.

    So, Leakey has it wrong. More evidence will have no effect on people that appeal to general purpose means of denying anything as they could use it to deny that evidence as well.

    Rather, we'll only see acceptance when these people, or others like them, no longer want to deny it because they no longer have any motivation to make the appeal. (Apparently, pointing out that they're appealing to general purpose means of denying anything, in detail, has no effect because they cannot grasp how it's the same appeal, they're bound and determined to remain ignorant, or they refuse to acknowledge it, despite knowing full well it's the same appeal.)

    However, should we survive long enough, even children will be able to design more harmonious, moral, efficient biospheres with the help of massively parallel computers. At which time, theists will no longer want to claim design of the biosphere any more than they want to claim lighting today.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Not an atheist, for the fiftieth time. And really wouldn't need a priest to tell me that ramming a plane into a building was a bad thing, how about you? Need God to tell you it is wrong? The terrorists believed their God told them it was right.

    ReplyDelete
  15. "Not an atheist,"

    And yet, in the very next breath, you claim objective morals can be had without God. Go figure!

    The moral argument - Dr. Craig:
    A number of ethicists, such as Robert Adams, William Alston, Mark Linville, Paul Copan, John Hare, Stephen Evans, and others have defended "divine command" theories of ethics, which support various moral arguments for God's existence. One such argument:

    1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
    2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
    3. Therefore, God exists.

    By objective values and duties, one means values and duties that are valid and binding independent of human opinion. A good many atheists and theists alike concur with premise (1). For given a naturalistic worldview, human beings are just animals, and activity that we count as murder, torture, and rape is natural and morally neutral in the animal kingdom. Moreover, if there is no one to command or prohibit certain actions, how can we have moral obligations or prohibitions?

    Premise (2) might seem more disputable, but it will probably come as a surprise to most laypeople to learn that (2) is widely accepted among philosophers. For any argument against objective morals will tend to be based on premises that are less evident than the reality of moral values themselves, as apprehended in our moral experience. Most philosophers therefore do recognize objective moral distinctions.

    Nontheists will typically counter the moral argument with a dilemma: Is something good because God wills it, or does God will something because it is good? The first alternative makes good and evil arbitrary, whereas the second makes the good independent of God. Fortunately, the dilemma is a false one. Theists have traditionally taken a third alternative: God wills something because he is good. That is to say, what Plato called "the Good" is the moral nature of God himself. God is by nature loving, kind, impartial, and so on. He is the paradigm of goodness. Therefore, the good is not independent of God.

    Moreover, God's commandments are a necessary expression of his nature. His commands to us are therefore not arbitrary but are necessary reflections of his character. This gives us an adequate foundation for the affirmation of objective moral values and duties.
    http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/july/13.22.html?start=4

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. bornagain77 May 27, 2012 4:15 PM

      [...]

      The moral argument - Dr. Craig:
      A number of ethicists, such as Robert Adams, William Alston, Mark Linville, Paul Copan, John Hare, Stephen Evans, and others have defended "divine command" theories of ethics, ...


      Yes, and you can find a number of critics as well. So what?

      ...which support various moral arguments for God's existence. One such argument:

      1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.


      Non sequitur. Why should the existence of objective moral values be dependent on the existence of God or any other intelligent, conscious being? In fact, it is arguable that to be truly objective they must be independent of any individual awareness and that, conversely, if they are dependent on the existence of a particular being, they cannot be truly objective.

      2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.

      Craig says they do. I say they do not. Assertions prove nothing either way.

      3. Therefore, God exists.

      That is a valid conclusion if, and only if, the premisses stand. The premisses are vulnerable to and, in my view, fall before certain attacks so Craig's argument fails.

      Delete
    2. i>bornagain77 May 27, 2012 4:15 PM

      [...]

      While we're at it, let's take a little closer look at Craig's defense of his claims:

      By objective values and duties, one means values and duties that are valid and binding independent of human opinion. A good many atheists and theists alike concur with premise (1). For given a naturalistic worldview, human beings are just animals, and activity that we count as murder, torture, and rape is natural and morally neutral in the animal kingdom. Moreover, if there is no one to command or prohibit certain actions, how can we have moral obligations or prohibitions?

      'Objective' is usually opposed to 'subjective', in other words, objective is whatever is not of the subject. There is a red car in the parking lot outside. If I conjure up an image of it in my mind or dream about it, that imagined or dream image is subjective, it ceases to exists when I stop dreaming or thinking about it.

      The color of the car is also arguably subjective. We know from physics that the car, to be perceived as red, is reflecting certain wavelengths of light and absorbing others. The redness, however, is how those wavelengths are represented in our visual model, so the color itself is a subjective experience.

      The car itself, on the other hand, is not subjective. It does not cease to exist, I assume, whenever I'm not aware of it. I can, if I want, see it, hear it, touch it, taste it and smell it and so can anyone else who happens by. It is, by any reasonable definition of the word, objective.

      Defining objective values and duties as those which are "valid and binding independent of human opinion" is curious. "Valid" usually refers to logical arguments which are formally correct or, perhaps, a claim which has legal warrant or authority. However, our laws are subjective. If the entire human race were to be wiped from the surface of this planet by some cosmic disaster, we assume that the planet would continue to exist but our laws would be gone with us. Alien explorers visiting Earth would find no trace of our laws hanging around in the air or fossilized in the ground.

      Thus, the reason why murder, torture and rape do not exist as such in other animal societies is because they are defined and prohibited by human laws which were drafted and enacted by human legislatures and which are held to have jurisdiction only within human societies.

      As for that old chestnut "how can we have moral obligations or prohibitions?" what is to prevent us from working them out for ourselves? Yes, we are subject to what used to be called animal impulses and appetites but that is not all we are. We can imagine and do better and without the alleged benefits of faith although I do not deny that religion can be a force for good although, as the old musical number goes, it ain't necessarily so.

      Craig seem to think that his second premiss is the more vulnerable but, in my view, his first is just as exposed if not more so. Either way, his argument fails.

      Delete
  16. You know of course that your moral code is not really objective, just because you say it is backed up by God's authority? How did you decide which was the True God?

    ReplyDelete
  17. Isn't Divine Command the argument Craig used to defended the slaughter of defeated enemies by the Jews?

    Defend proposition 2. What is an objective moral, and what is an objective moral duty. How do you know have objectivity?

    ReplyDelete
  18. A concrete example please,this should be easy,right?

    ReplyDelete
  19. Well vel, you are in quite a Dilemma, you readily admit that objective morals exist. In fact you asked me,,, 'And really wouldn't need a priest to tell me that ramming a plane into a building was a bad thing, how about you?' Yet you seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that you can't account for why I should automatically 'know' that what they did was evil! i.e. Exactly where is the objective moral to 'know' what they did was evil coming from?

    Romans 2:14
    Even Gentiles, who do not have God's written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it.

    ReplyDelete
  20. That example of an objective moral was?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 'And really wouldn't need a priest to tell me that ramming a plane into a building was a bad thing, how about you?'

      Delete
    2. So not even one? Then it is foolish to believe you could tell objective from subjective.

      Delete
    3. BA,

      What about the rival interpretation that some alien civilization genetically programmed us us to think ramming airplanes into buildings is a bad thing when they planted us here as a future food source?

      After all, if we kill each other off, then there would be significantly fewer of us to eat when they return.

      And that's just one I came up with off the top of my head. There are an infinite number of interpretations that accept the same evidence, (we do not need a priest to tell us that ramming a plane into a building is a bad idea) yet suggest something completely different is going on in reality. (to maximize their food supply)

      Why have you picked this your particular interpretation, rather than another?

      Delete
    4. vel, so you deny objective morality all the while claiming that you automatically know, and I should also automatically know, without a priest ever informing us, that terrorists ramming jets into skyscrapers to murder innocent people is evil.,,, So are you saying that even though you automatically know this moral it is still subjective to you? Your argumentation is simply ludicrous vel! But hey it is free country you can believe anything you want no matter how ludicrous, as Scott so clearly demonstrates:

      notes:

      The Knock-Down Argument Against Atheist Sam Harris' moral landscape argument – William Lane Craig – video
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL_vAH2NIPc

      Richard Dawkins and the Moral Argument for God by William Lane Craig - video
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f3I2QGpucs

      At Emory University, Consternation over Ben Carson, Evolution, and Morality - Richard Weikart - May 10, 2012
      Excerpt: If Emory University (biology) professors want to argue that evolution has no ethical implications, they are free to make that argument (I wonder how many of them actually believe this). However, if they do, they need to recognize that they are not just arguing against "benighted" anti-evolutionists, but against many of their cherished colleagues in evolutionary biology, including Darwin himself.
      http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/05/at_emory_univer_1059491.html

      Delete
    5. Is it possible to have an example of an objective moral ?

      Delete
    6. I was curious if you needed God's authority to decide killing innocents was wrong? Beyond your objective moral plane,are there any subjective reasons to feel it wrong?

      Delete
    7. vel, you are completely, purposely, missing the point. How do you yourself personally know that terrorizing and murdering people by crashing planes into skyscrapers is wrong? And why do you expect me to know that it is wrong. I personally have no problem accounting for why I know that it is wrong and why I expect you to know that it is wrong in that I hold we are made in God's image. Indeed I hold that God breathed a his 'breath' into us. You, in a atheistic worldview, simply cannot account for morality as is evidenced by your dancing around in circles to avoid admitting the truth:

      Delete
    8. vel, whether you admit it or not, God 'hears' our every thought, word, and prayer.

      I find it extremely interesting, and strange, that quantum mechanics tells us that instantaneous quantum wave collapse to its 'uncertain' 3-D state is centered on each individual observer in the universe, whereas, 4-D space-time cosmology (General Relativity) tells us each 3-D point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe. These findings of modern science are pretty much exactly what we would expect to see if this universe were indeed created, and sustained, from a higher dimension by a omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal Being who knows everything that is happening everywhere in the universe at the same time. These findings certainly seem to go to the very heart of the age old question asked of many parents by their children, “How can God hear everybody’s prayers at the same time?”,,, i.e. Why should the expansion of the universe, or the quantum wave collapse of the entire universe, even care that you or I, or anyone else, should exist? Only Theism offers a rational explanation as to why you or I, or anyone else, should have such undeserved significance in such a vast universe:

      Psalm 33:13-15
      The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works.

      Moreover vel, we have a eternal soul which cannot be destroyed:

      Does Quantum Biology Support A Quantum Soul? – Stuart Hameroff - video (notes in description)
      http://vimeo.com/29895068

      Quantum Entangled Consciousness (Permanence 'conservation' of Quantum Information)- Life After Death - Stuart Hameroff - video
      https://vimeo.com/39982578

      Delete
    9. Moreover Scott, whether you believe in objective morality or not, when we die each one of us shall have to give account to infinitely holy God for every careless word we have spoken and careless deed we have done:

      Near Death Experience – The Tunnel, The Light, The Life Review – video
      http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4200200/

      Matthew 12:36
      I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak,

      Moreover vel, every man has fallen short of the perfection required to continuously dwell in the presence of God,,

      Top Ten Reasons We Know the New Testament is True – Frank Turek – video – November 2011
      (41:00 minute mark – Despite what is commonly believed, of someone being 'good enough' to go to heaven, in reality both Mother Teresa and Hitler fall short of the moral perfection required to meet the perfection of God’s objective moral code)
      http://saddleback.com/mc/m/5e22f/

      ,,,and not one man can stand in the presence of almighty God without the propitiating sacrifice of Jesus Christ which atones for our sins:

      G.O.S.P.E.L. - poetry slam - video
      https://vimeo.com/20960385

      But alas vel, I can't make you accept Christ so that you will not be separated from God, all I can do is in my very flawed and finite ability try to warn you of the dire consequences you will bring on yourself by rejecting Christ's atoning sacrifice for your sins:

      A man, near the beginning of this following video, gives testimony of falling down a 'tunnel' in the transition stage from this world to hell:

      Hell - A Warning! - video
      http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4131476/

      Delete
    10. So you know it is wrong to kill because we are made in God's image and because God breathed life into us. Which part looks like God, it cannot be a physical body? God is beyond natural,I assume from catechism it is our immortal soul. So killing someone does nothing to harm the soul, then what is the big deal?

      Delete
    11. "So killing someone does nothing to harm the soul, then what is the big deal?"

      well, in the nihilistic fantasy world of atheism, of subjective morality, not even killing the body really matters does it vel? (just ask Stalin), but in the actual Theistic world of objective morality, where every careless word matters and has eternal consequences,,,

      Matthew 5
      21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.

      Revelation 21:8
      But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

      As to the 'fiery lake of burning sulfur', the following woman, in her following testimony about her Near Death Experience, a woman who has been blind since birth, speaks of seeing hell in her Near Death Experience at the 10 second mark of the following interview,

      coast to coast vicki's NDE part 2 of 3
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwlm2ZPSh-8

      Moreover Vicki speaks of smelling the putrid odor of hell, and having that smell match the smell of the sulfur balls brought to her by friends from Sodom and Gomorrah:

      The following video is downright eye-opening with its archeological evidence for authenticity of the Bible:

      The Physical Ashen Remains Of Sodom and Gomorrah - video
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwTVFk1HK3Y

      Delete
    12. Also Bill Weise, in his following testimony, also speaks of the putrid sulfuric smell he had smelt in his OBE of hell:

      Bill Wiese - 23 Minutes In Hell - 2010 video
      http://www.vimeo.com/16641462

      It should also be noted: All foreign, non-Judeo-Christian culture, NDE studies I have looked at have a extreme rarity of encounters with 'The Being Of Light' and tend to be very unpleasant NDE's save for the few pleasant children's NDEs of those cultures that I've seen (It seems there is indeed an 'age of accountability'). The following study was shocking for what was found in some non-Judeo-Christian NDE's:

      Near-Death Experiences in Thailand - Todd Murphy:
      Excerpt:The Light seems to be absent in Thai NDEs. So is the profound positive affect found in so many Western NDEs. The most common affect in our collection is negative. Unlike the negative affect in so many Western NDEs (cf. Greyson & Bush, 1992), that found in Thai NDEs (in all but case #11) has two recognizable causes. The first is fear of 'going'. The second is horror and fear of hell. It is worth noting that although half of our collection include seeing hell (cases 2,6,7,9,10) and being forced to witness horrific tortures, not one includes the NDEer having been subjected to these torments themselves.
      http://www.shaktitechnology.com/thaindes.htm

      further note on Vicki's 'blind' NDE:

      Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper (1997) conducted a study of 31 blind people, many of who reported vision during their Near Death Experiences (NDEs). 21 of these people had had an NDE while the remaining 10 had had an out-of-body experience (OBE), but no NDE. It was found that in the NDE sample, about half had been blind from birth. (of note: This 'anomaly' is also found for deaf people who can hear sound during their Near Death Experiences(NDEs).)
      http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_1_64/ai_65076875/

      Coast to Coast - Vicki's Near Death Experience (Blind From Birth) part 1 of 3
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e65KhcCS5-Y

      Quote from preceding video: 'I was in a body and the only way that I can describe it was a body of energy, or of light. And this body had a form. It had a head. It had arms and it had legs. And it was like it was made out of light. And 'it' was everything that was me. All of my memories, my consciousness, everything.' -
      Vicky Noratuk

      Are humans really beings of light?
      Excerpt: "We now know, today, that man is essentially a being of light.",,, "There are about 100,000 chemical reactions happening in every cell each second. The chemical reaction can only happen if the molecule which is reacting is excited by a photon... Once the photon has excited a reaction it returns to the field and is available for more reactions... We are swimming in an ocean of light."
      http://viewzone2.com/dna.html

      Verse and music:

      1 John 1:5-7
      "This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."

      Toby Mac (In The Light)
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_MpGRQRrP0

      Delete
    13. vel, I would also like to point out how important our conscious choice is to determining our reality:

      "Thus one decides the photon shall have come by one route or by both routes after it has already done its travel"
      John A. Wheeler

      Alain Aspect speaks on John Wheeler's Delayed Choice Experiment - video
      http://vimeo.com/38508798

      Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past - April 23, 2012
      Excerpt: The authors experimentally realized a "Gedankenexperiment" called "delayed-choice entanglement swapping", formulated by Asher Peres in the year 2000. Two pairs of entangled photons are produced, and one photon from each pair is sent to a party called Victor. Of the two remaining photons, one photon is sent to the party Alice and one is sent to the party Bob. Victor can now choose between two kinds of measurements. If he decides to measure his two photons in a way such that they are forced to be in an entangled state, then also Alice's and Bob's photon pair becomes entangled. If Victor chooses to measure his particles individually, Alice's and Bob's photon pair ends up in a separable state. Modern quantum optics technology allowed the team to delay Victor's choice and measurement with respect to the measurements which Alice and Bob perform on their photons. "We found that whether Alice's and Bob's photons are entangled and show quantum correlations or are separable and show classical correlations can be decided after they have been measured", explains Xiao-song Ma, lead author of the study.
      According to the famous words of Albert Einstein, the effects of quantum entanglement appear as "spooky action at a distance". The recent experiment has gone one remarkable step further. "Within a naïve classical world view, quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events", says Anton Zeilinger.
      http://phys.org/news/2012-04-quantum-physics-mimics-spooky-action.html

      i.e. In a atheistic worldview, where our choices really don't matter, this finding is certainly not to be expected, but in a Christian worldview, where our free will choice to accept Christ or not into our lives has drastic eternal consequences for us, this finding is not really all that surprising, and in fact, when you contemplate the severity of the consequence of the choice, is to be expected:

      Deuteronomy 30:19
      "Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!

      Music:

      Third Day - Trust In Jesus
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BtaCeJYqZA

      Carrie Underwood - Temporary Home
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LraOiHUltak

      Delete
  21. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete