Battle Talk ~ Battle Royale VII
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PureX
Well-known member
No one is denying truth. The issue is about "absolute" truth.
"I believe this...", "I believe that...", I believe that what I believe is absolutely true.
Fine, but saying it and believing it still doesn't make it true, and it especially doesn't make it absolutely true, to anyone else but the "believer". And in fact what that proves is that for we humans, the only truth we seem to be able to express (or grasp) is relative to our own experiences an beliefs. Relative truth is all we seem to possess, and a relative truth is not an absolute truth no matter how much we believe and claim that it is. A belief in God does not a God make. All it makes is a "believer".
This is and has always been the essential problem with such a debate. The same limitations that befall the believer, also befall anyone who would be foolish enough to try and DISprove such a metaphysical belief; the substance of which lies outside of our reality (and therefor outside of our ability to verify).
So we can make all the claims we want to about God, the afterlife, fate, whatever. But all they will ever be are claims. And if we pretend that they are something more than a claim, we are pretending. Even when we succumb to the illusion our own pretenses, we are still pretending. This much IS true.
Bob isn't going to present any evidence outside his own personal beliefs and experiences because there isn't any. And Zakath isn't going to disprove Bob's assertions because he can't. All Zakath can do is prove that Bob's assertions about the truth of God are all relative to Bob's beliefs and experiences, only, even if Bob can't recognize or admit to this himself. But proving that Bob's beliefs about truth are relative to Bob, does not prove that they are untrue any more than Bob can prove that they are true.
Yet, maybe some folks will learn a thing or too about their own assumptions about God, and truth, and the limitations of a human being's ability to varify their own assumptions.
The answer is this: the only way to God is by faith, should one experience a desire to go there.
PureX
Well-known member
"Natural law" would dictate that any energy form possessing the choice and ability to preserve and perpetuate itself will do. Is this "good"? Natural law also dictates that energy forms must compete with each other to maintain their existence as integral forms. Is this "evil"? Yet if so, then doesn't doing "good" (preserving one's own integral form) create the very competition that we have deemed "evil"?Originally posted by Freak
You kidding me. Natural Law speaks of the foundational truths of good and evil. Good cannot be evil, evil cannot be good. The mere words/meanings are different. How are these assumptions?
A few (presumably) rare energy forms have evolved to a point where they can actually begin to recognize these "natural laws" and can even choose to defy them. Is this then "immoral"? Yet how can it be when it's the very laws themselves that have created the forms that can now stand in defiance of them? Or would defying these natural laws, that have in fact created both "good" and "evil" themselves, be considered the morally superior path?
There's a whole lot we don't yet understand about "natural law", and what is really "good and evil", or what is "moral". Pretending that it's simple doesn't make it any simpler.
Zakath
Resident Atheist
Re: Curious
Re: Curious
Re: Curious
Well "Joe", I noticed that you never did address the original point of my post about the array of fossils radiating from the alleged site of Noah's ark...
For the same reason we're not walking on forty feet of oak leaves in the park down the street... most things are never fossilized but fall victim to decay.
Interesting story, do you have a source for this one?
Thank you, I'd be interested in reading it, as well.
Where'd you get 6100 years as "fact"?
Zakath
Resident Atheist
They can be fun, too. You ought to try to set aside some time and participate in one.
I have not disagreed with the point, I am merely asking for Pastor Enyart to define what he means by "truth". I think this is particularly needful in light of his rather unorthodox definitions for the Christian God.
It's only the second round of a ten round interchange. Check back and see what develops. :thumb:
Stratnerd
New member
Z-
do you have the right people in mind; I thought you were asking me?
You said "I'm not a hard-core biologist, but I might expect to see a relatively small number of widely divergent fossilized species closer to Ararat with more differentiation showing further and futher away... Is that the case?"
I dunno... are you invoking superspeciation rates (ala Bob B)? Or God commanding animals to go in certain directions (I forget whose that is). You're better off asking a creationist... I hate to be accused of present a cartoon "theory" of creation but I've been asking for specifics of a flood (that's is, a number of testable predictions about order or sequence) for four years and I have yet to see anyone do it.
do you have the right people in mind; I thought you were asking me?
You said "I'm not a hard-core biologist, but I might expect to see a relatively small number of widely divergent fossilized species closer to Ararat with more differentiation showing further and futher away... Is that the case?"
I dunno... are you invoking superspeciation rates (ala Bob B)? Or God commanding animals to go in certain directions (I forget whose that is). You're better off asking a creationist... I hate to be accused of present a cartoon "theory" of creation but I've been asking for specifics of a flood (that's is, a number of testable predictions about order or sequence) for four years and I have yet to see anyone do it.
Zakath
Resident Atheist
I was, but he cited my comment. I thought he might at least take a shot at answering my question...
Sorry, with all the posts flying back and forth here I got lost. It seems like we'd argue a similar side in that discussion...
Does anyone here have an answer, one way or another, to that point about distribution of species?
Stratnerd
New member
I'm an ecologist not a chemist and not an evolutionary biologist but, being an ecologist that studies (but still doesn't understand) how landscapes at various scales to affect populations, I have a hint of complexity (evolution = ecology + time)
Organisms, and I'm excluding viruses and prions, which aren't really organisms, are all based on DNA/RNA and share many other features suggesting a single origin of life and we know of no other forms of life (at least, those that are independent of ones we know) and this, to me suggests that spontaneously forming life is highly improbable but that is not saying impossible, just improbable (just as any individual getting struck by a meteorite). If going from a catalytic community to protobionts to pre-modern cells to cells took many many steps (which seems reasonable to me) then a model reconstructing these steps is nearly impossible because each step has a probability function that is the result of many other probabilitity functions (such as temperature, salinity, UV concentration, starting methane, starting ammonia, starting pH, I say starting because cyclicity of these might be an important factor so add that to the mix, and there are probably many many elements that are important). If the origin of life has a history and if contingency had any effect, and no doubt it does, then building a model of it would be like building a model of the probability of me typing this to you starting with the original humans. There are an infintessimal number of combinations at any one time of conditions and then combine this with the number of combinations of sequences of potential events. The best we can do is pick the teeniest tiniest fraction of that history and work with a teeny tiny (that is a scientific term btw) fraction of combinations of starting materials (and someone on this board suggested that all have been tested!). I don't even know how to translate the results of some of these studies even "negative" results (perhaps these molecules were important later on) because it is difficult to even place the outcome in a particular sequence. For example, nobody expected cells from Miller experiments yet we see this as a failure to produce living organisms.
Does any of this make sense?
At the opposite scale, we can build very general models and I haven't seen any of these that are precluded by any physical laws but that doesn't really help us reconstruct a living organisms since one of these general steps (e.g, formation of a lipid membrane) may represent billions of chemical reactions.
Organisms, and I'm excluding viruses and prions, which aren't really organisms, are all based on DNA/RNA and share many other features suggesting a single origin of life and we know of no other forms of life (at least, those that are independent of ones we know) and this, to me suggests that spontaneously forming life is highly improbable but that is not saying impossible, just improbable (just as any individual getting struck by a meteorite). If going from a catalytic community to protobionts to pre-modern cells to cells took many many steps (which seems reasonable to me) then a model reconstructing these steps is nearly impossible because each step has a probability function that is the result of many other probabilitity functions (such as temperature, salinity, UV concentration, starting methane, starting ammonia, starting pH, I say starting because cyclicity of these might be an important factor so add that to the mix, and there are probably many many elements that are important). If the origin of life has a history and if contingency had any effect, and no doubt it does, then building a model of it would be like building a model of the probability of me typing this to you starting with the original humans. There are an infintessimal number of combinations at any one time of conditions and then combine this with the number of combinations of sequences of potential events. The best we can do is pick the teeniest tiniest fraction of that history and work with a teeny tiny (that is a scientific term btw) fraction of combinations of starting materials (and someone on this board suggested that all have been tested!). I don't even know how to translate the results of some of these studies even "negative" results (perhaps these molecules were important later on) because it is difficult to even place the outcome in a particular sequence. For example, nobody expected cells from Miller experiments yet we see this as a failure to produce living organisms.
Does any of this make sense?
At the opposite scale, we can build very general models and I haven't seen any of these that are precluded by any physical laws but that doesn't really help us reconstruct a living organisms since one of these general steps (e.g, formation of a lipid membrane) may represent billions of chemical reactions.
Freak
New member
Natural Law speaks of the reality of "good" & "evil." All of humanity knows of good & evil, for the conscience reveals these universal truths. I noticed you didn't deal with reality, when I mentioned good cannot be evil & evil cannot be good. Just as "chair" cannot be "spider." This is foundational logic. There is absoluteness in goodness & evil. This absoluteness come from God.
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