Yes he did, and it can happen to you too.
The story in a nutshell is about an obscure prophet named Jonah who was sent by Yahweh to change hearts in the rough town of Nineveh. Jonah tried to escape in the opposite direction but his ship was hit by a storm at sea, a storm so wild that the men on board thought they would die that day. The crew threw Jonah overboard to save their lives.
Jonah subsequently got eaten by a whale but managed to stay alive inside its belly for three days, after which Jonah was spit back onto dry land, ready to preach to Nineveh at last.
The implausible part of the story comes next:
“Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city and then proclaimed, ‘Only forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown.’ And the people of Nineveh believed in God; they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least.” (Jonah 3:4-5).
Deconstructing Jonah
Maybe I’m wrong, but the story telling turns pretty thin at the moment of Jonah’s crowning achievement, his conversion of the city of Nineveh. The apparently effortless conversion doesn’t feel like real life. Every other prophet in scripture begins his teaching: “The word of the LORD spoke to me thus…”
Jonah did not use such a phrase. He seems almost detached from his message. “Nineveh will be overthrown.”
Would a warrior people surrender themselves so readily to a prophet from Israel without some claim of authority? I don’t believe so. I think it is noteworthy that Jonah’s rhetorical technique is understated. It means something else might account for his success. Certainly the story is about how God accomplished his purpose through the feckless Jonah in spite of him. But there seems to be more. What is the point of describing a harrowing adventure at sea if it added nothing to the story?
Jonah’s close encounter with death inside the whale has to be about a personal journey, a quest, and yes, it might very well have involved his becoming fish bait. In any event, whatever happened to him during his three days at sea was so life-changing that once he appeared in Nineveh he stood as a man fully alive, a man whose eyes were wide open. By his face alone these people could see that he was speaking the truth. This would explain the unlikely conversion of Nineveh.
Mind you the power of a transformed face in scripture is not without precedent. Recall that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai after 40 days, it wasn’t the tablets in his hand that suggested something great had happened, it was the fact that “his face was as radiant as the sun” (Exodus 34:29).
Can a human face move an entire nation? Think of how Jacqueline Kennedy appeared in pictures on the way home to Washington D.C. hours after her husband President Kennedy was shot in Dallas in 1963. She intentionally remained in the pink dress she wore that day, a dress now spattered with blood. The expression on her face conveyed the totality of the meaning of a suffering wife, and this image was assimilated and transformed overnight into the suffering of a nation. This is the kind of immediacy I am talking about, a presence that is self-interpreting due to its transparency.
The Spiritual Meaning of Jonah
The incredible story of Jonah is something we could dismiss as a flight of fancy on the part of a humorous author, but alas, the story actually increased in importance in the centuries after it was written, with the whale incident intact, ultimately becoming part of one of Jesus’ most astonishing teachings.
In the Gospel of Matthew, there is a section where the tension between Jesus and the Pharisees has reached a boiling point over questions about the Sabbath. The frustrated Pharisees gave Jesus an ultimatum. The Pharisees say they have seen no sign that Jesus’ words were trustworthy. Jesus had in fact given them many signs, but they refused to see them in the light of faith. They said, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”
Jesus replied: “None will be given except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:38-41).
The belly of a fish, and the heart of the earth. The Church has always recognized this as a reference to Christ’s descent into hell, which we observe during the Liturgical season of the Triduum.
Here is how I interpret this astonishing allusion of Christ. Jonah had converted Nineveh because he had descended to the depths of his own sinfulness and was transformed, and the people of Nineveh knew it. Yet Jesus, who was greater than Jonah, would literally descend into hell, into the heart of the earth, taking on the sinfulness of all humanity, yet he could not turn the hearts of the Pharisees. The Ninevites were from the powerful empire of Assyria, and were Israel’s sworn enemy and yet they were converted by a mere “good man.”
Jesus therefore adds this solemn warning, “The people of Nineveh will rise up in judgment of this wicked generation” because all the Ninevites had to work with was Jonah, “and there is something much greater than Jonah here.”
St. Symeon Metaphrastis in the Philokalia of the Eastern Orthodox Church sheds some light on the mystical meaning of Christ’s descent into hell for us today. It seems germane to what I am getting at here:
When you hear that Christ descended into hell in order to deliver the souls dwelling there, do not think that what happens now is very different.
The heart is a tomb and there our thoughts and our intellect are buried, imprisoned in heavy darkness. And so Christ comes to the souls in hell that call upon Him, descending, that is to say, into the depths of the heart; and there He commands death to release the imprisoned souls that call upon Him, for He has the power to deliver us.
In some mystical way the descent into the belly of the whale is an honest descent into the depths of our hearts without pretense or defense. A good psychologist can tell you that most of us have attachments that drive us away from what we genuinely need. These attachments are so deep that we develop habits of dismissing them automatically before they can even form clearly in our minds, so they control us to greater and lesser extents without our full awareness.
These disordered attachments trap us in addiction, narrowness of thought, and recklessness that hurts the people around us. The Christian life calls us to a personal inventory so thorough that we couldn’t bear it were it not for the divine mercy that flows from the side of the crucified Christ. This is why such a journey into the dark night can only be completed inside the Church, with the Sacraments, aided by Grace and the Holy Spirit.
Jonah’s story is my story and your story. Read it carefully, and have mercy on those who believe they are perfectly self-sufficient and self-aware, who say they have no need for God, who think the Book of Jonah is just a fairy tale about a man and a big fish. We know better.
352 thoughts on “Did Jonah Really Get Eaten by a Whale?”
my take on this….to say that Jonah was “swallowed by in in the belly of a great fish”, means word for word “Jonah was completely surrounded by, and in the center of a huge wave”….we know that his prayer 1-very similar to psalm 69, a common prayer of the Jews…2 “breakers and billows passed over me…waters surge around me, seaweed up to my neck”…Jonah is on the shoreline for the whole ordeal…..waters of chaos, old testament, baptism new testament….but the real kicker is that huge waves and fish are synoptic, and (for myself), is the author uses colorful, and poetic language, and is exactly how I see the story…
It is interesting how Catholics don’t believe in the Jonah story but do believe in stuff not in the Bible like purgatory, baptizing babies, praying to Mary. It is so sad. Catholics are clueless.
Typical catholic attitude dismissing the literal truth of the Bible story as symbolism. If God can raise from the dead He can certainly do this miracle. You either believe in the miracles or you dont which will make you a heretic. It is literally true but also symbolic. It happened .
An ornament of a fish spewing a man was found in the ruins of Ninevah.
nworder, there is a difference between *symbols and signs*. A sign is linked by a relation (like cause and effect) to its source. The source is REAL. A symbol on the other hand is a psychological invention, an agreement to view a certain mark (such as the symbol for mathematical pi) as a proxy for some set of instructions, some rules of practice, etc.
Catholics believe that sacraments are outward *signs* of inward reality. We don’t view being in the belly of a whale is a merely symbolic thing. My goodness, Christ himself referred to the *sign* of Jonah. There is no doubt in our minds that the sign of Jonah points to something real, physical, and true.
However, we are very cautious not to equate the *reality of what the sign signifies* with our *subjective image of what the sign signifies*.
Many Christians who are not Catholic make the mistake of treating our sacraments as symbolic acts. Catholics are literal ones. We believe the Eucharist does not merely symbolically represent, but is in fact the Body and Blood of Christ.
I share your suspicion of those who reduce Christianity to symbolism. I hope nobody ever catches me saying that a Biblical reference is just a symbol, a human psychological invention! Never. And I hope some day in the future we can all agree that the Eucharist is much more than a symbol.
I believe in the sacraments from reading scripture and see the literal as well as the symbolic message. I believe that Jonah was actually swallowed by the whale after he came to the bars of Hell since nothing is impossible for God.
Interesting later on when the Ninevites went back to their old ways the massive city was destroyed beyond measure.
You either believe in the miracles or you dont which will make you a heretic.
This is what I mean by it being soooo important that people believe what you believe. The idea of a man being swallowed by a whale in the ANE is more than absurd. People who see it as fiction are heretics?
Anyone who thinks the creator of the universe could not use a whale to take Jonah across the Med needs to grow in faith. Ninevah was destroyed as per the prophecy when the Ninevites turned back to their evil ways .
It is all or nothing. If God created all living creatures in six days can he not get Jonah a whale for transport.
I find no problem believing the miracles in the Bible since many can be attested by archaeological evidence – such as the exodus.
Just in passing – a man fell overboard on a whaler and in its death throes the whale swallowed him – no one knew where he had gone – but when they cut the whale open he was still alive but blind and burned with acid – he lived on for a number of years.
You are just too anti secular science and too literal in your understanding of the Bible.
Not at all – I am very scientific – thats why I dont believe in evolution.
I am all for science but I have to say once again that evolution is not science – it is a religious theory about how life begn.
Surely you must be aware that the quotes I gave you are from the established scientists who work and earn a living from science.
There are many creation scientists who earn a living at the cutting edge of science – why would they not. They dont earn a living comparing stone bones and writing books against the Bible like Prof Dawkins.
“…An intelligible communication via radio signal from some distant galaxy would be widely hailed as evidence of an intelligent source. Why then doesn’t the message sequence on the DNA molecule also constitute prima facie evidence for an intelligent source? After all, DNA information is not just analogous to a message sequence such as Morse code, it is such a message sequence.”
(Charles B Thaxton, Walter L Bradley and Robert L Olsen: The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Reassessing Current Theories (New York Philosophical Library 1984) pp 211-212
I still prefer to chalk it up to the Cosmos and not a tribal god.
You are worshipping an inanimate object , the cosmos , which is not living and can only do what God makes it do.
Its like bowing down to a stone – it will not see you or hear your prayers.
Its called idolatry and God does not like it
“The definition of idolatry, according to Webster, is “the worship of idols or excessive devotion to, or reverence for some person or thing.” An idol is anything that replaces the one, true God. The most prevalent form of idolatry in Bible times was the worship of images that were thought to embody the various pagan deities.
From the beginning, God’s covenant with Israel was based on exclusive worship of Him alone (Exodus 20:3;Deuteronomy 5:7). The Israelites were not even to mention the names of false gods (Exodus 23:13) because to do so would acknowledge their existence and give credence to their power and influence over the people. Israel was forbidden to intermarry with other cultures who embraced false gods, because God knew this would lead to compromise. The book of Hosea uses the imagery of adultery to describe Israel’s continual chasing after other gods, like an unfaithful wife chases after other men.”
Read more: gotquestions.org idolatry
You are worshipping an inanimate object , the cosmos , which is not living and can only do what God makes it do.
You are not capable of understanding the concept of there being a natural order, independent of any deity, that Carl Sagan called the Cosmos. It is as good an explanation as your god and doesn’t judge us.
The Cosmos does not judge you because it cant – its not alive and has no intelligence – a rock cannot judge you.
Carl Sagan cannot save you from your sins. A natural order must be designed by laws and cannot make itself. The Cosmos is a group of stars made of matter – it does not know about you since it has no faculties and is not a living being. Can you converse with the moon ?
This is idolatry .
“To propose and argue that mutations even in tandem with ‘natural selection’ are the root-causes for 6,000,000 viable, enormously complex species, is to mock logic, deny the weight of evidence, and reject the fundamentals of mathematical probability.”
Cohen, I.L. (1984) Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities , New York: New Research Publications, Inc., p. 81
Saying that Carl Sagan cannot save me from my sins is just another sign of the Christian bias that influences your ability to deal with science in a way that does not cherry pick statements of those stating views that support your worldview which includes strict and literal interpretation of the Bible.
Carl Sagan cannot save you from your sins. Only Jesus can .
The bible is to be carefully and literally interpreted – not one jot or tittle is out of place – God does not make mistakes in His Word.
WHY DO YOU DENY SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE , FROM ATHEISTS TO BOOT :-
” A biochemist named Harold Morowitz has tried to make an intelligent guess at how simple a cell could be, and still be able to reproduce itself.
He has hypothesized that it might be conceivable for a cell to be able to reproduce itself with as few as one hundred protein molecules, all doing their respective functions (e.g. providing a cell membrane; synthesizing fats; providing energy; synthesizing the building blocks of DNA–the nucleotides; and synthesizing proteins). The cell would need a few messenger RNA molecules, ribosomes, enzymes, and, of course, a DNA molecule.
There is no way for scientists to conceive of a cell reproducing itself with less complexity. These are bare minimum requirements. In fact, no known cell reaches this degree of simplicity, but this hypothetical cell represents the bare minimum of “ingredients” that could conceivably be self-reproducing.
However, even this bare minimum cell, the simplest conceivable unit capable of self-replication, would be incredibly and awesomely complex. It would not be a “blob of simple protoplasm.” It would be an exquisitely complicated living “machine.” Each of the 100 or so protein molecules is an intricate combination of thousands of atoms. The DNA molecule is an intricate arrangement of literally billions of atoms.
Even in its simplicity, this cell would be made up of billions of atoms which would have to be arranged in an extremely complex organization. Michael Denton says it this way:
There is no continuum of functional forms through which the gradual evolution of the cell might have occurred–just a yawning gulf which can only be crossed in one vastly improbable leap. (p. 260)
He adds:
The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle. (p.264)
I completely accept what you are saying in the third and subsequent paragraphs. You are enlightening me to that extent. But not this:
Carl Sagan cannot save you from your sins. Only Jesus can .
The bible is to be carefully and literally interpreted – not one jot or tittle is out of place – God does not make mistakes in His Word.
This is a statement of what you believe through faith and then rationalize with your own reason and logic. I see it as factually incorrect but it is the cornerstone of your worldview and you are not going to ever agree with me that it is wrong.
No , the truth of the Bible is unique in that it prophecies the future even thousands of years ahead , whereas you dont know what will happen tomorrow.
Only a fool would say there is no God – Proverbs
He who despises the Word of God will be destroyed – Proverbs
It is also backed up with evidence much from secular sources.
Daniels prophecy predicted the date of Jesus’s crucifixion. Daniel predicted three empires still to come . Daniel has been proven to be written before the events .
Ezekiel predicts the return of the Jews to Israel – the country born in a day.
You can study these prophecies – there is no lack of them.
No I believe it through LOGIC – I was the doubting Thomas who wanted proof of the truth of the Bible – and found more than enough in every area.
You are the fantasist who believes the theory of evolution without evidence
ie like a religion. You wait for the evidence after 200 years even though it has got less – this is your true blind faith.
ABOUNDING JOY WEBSITE :-
“Another discovery that has been devastating for proponents of Darwinism is the amazing degree of interdependency that is found in the functions of the molecules of life.
For example, the mechanism of protein synthesis is dependent upon a cell membrane. But the cell membrane is dependent upon the existence of a protein synthesis mechanism!
Similarly, the protein synthesis mechanism requires energy. But the provision of that energy depends upon specific proteins that have already been synthesized.
In the same vein, the information for the assembly of protein components is stored in the DNA. But in order to obtain this information, proteins must exist that have been generated by the protein synthesis mechanism.
Cells have an accurate translational system (systems that allow the information contained in a DNA molecule to be transferred to other molecules) that totally depends on efficient enzymes. But these enzymes cannot be produced without an accurate translational system.
Examples could go on. The point is that it is impossible to conceive of a situation which gradually led to the conditions which enable a cell to self-replicate. The functions had to exist all at once, because each is dependent on the other.”
Only a fool would say there is no God – Proverbs
So. Atheists are fools. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Carl Sagan, and all others who think the Bible contains mere fiction and mythology are all fools. Because that is what it says in the Bible and the Bible is the Truth. Got it.
I have to agree – yes. The evidence for God is in the creation all around you.
If I showed you a car and said no one made it – it made itself – you would think madness.
How much more madness would it be to say no one made the universe – all matter and life made itself . Only a fool , if you think about it.
So if you deny logic and evidence you must be a fool – which I was once and still am to a certain extent.
“Scientists at the forefront of inquiry have put the knife to classical Darwinism. They have not gone public with this news, but have kept it in their technical papers and inner counsels.”
(Dr. William Fix, in his book, “The Bone Peddlers.”)
“In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection—quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection tautology.”
(Dr. Arthur Koestler)
“The only competing explanation for the order we all see in the biological world is the notion of special creation.”
(Dr. Colin Patterson, evolutionist and senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, which houses 60 million fossils)
“A growing number of respectable scientists are defecting from the evolutionist camp…..moreover, for the most part these “experts” have abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith or biblical persuasions, but on strictly scientific grounds, and in some instances, regretfully.”
(Dr. Wolfgang Smith, physicist and mathematician)
I still don’t get how or why the Creator made himself known to us in the way that he did. Why Abraham? Why Moses? Why David and Solomon? Why Jesus?
Human relationships is what it is all about , which is love and faithfulness and charity. These humans are examples to us all in order to follow their good virtues and avoid their mistakes. Also to give us encouragement that we can make it if we are contrite and humble.
There will be no rebellion in eternity.
Why did God manifest himself thousands of years ago instead of now?
God is always there – thats what prayer is for. God spoke to Moses and Abraham. When you read the Bible God is conversing with you.
You dont need signs and wonders if you have faith.
But there are still miracles .
You believe that the story in which Abraham entertained the three men and one of them was God and God being in a burning bush. I don’t.
You cant pick or choose but you can research Sodom . All the evidence is there that it was a smoking ruin from historians as well. Archaeologists have even identified the sulfur and bitumen (brimstone) and burned buildings.
You will say it is a coincidence but I expect you to.
God does not tell lies so the burning bush represented Israel.
Jeff, excellent article! I had not thought about Jonah in this way until your article. Insightful!
You also helped me consider additional reasons the people of Ninevah may have accepted the message of Jonah so readily. Perhaps the boat he was on reached Ninevah during the three days he was in the whale, and they told everyone in that city what had happened. Then here he comes walking into town! Or someone may have seen Jonah spewed out of the whale and they ran back in horror to report it. Just some thoughts…God bless.
Thank you for the enlightening article. I would suspect Jonah initially had no hope of being able to leave such a captive place as the belly of a whale. Thus I like your comparison with Moses. His face would shine like no one before. Anyone would be totally blind not to have seen this magnificent change in Jonah and realized they need what Jonah now has.
Why thank you Susan. I did indeed hope to make us imagine Jonah’s face, I love your comments.
Thank you David, I am so glad you found it meaningful!
I agree ….. that someone or a few saw the event and reported it giving the prophet his authenticity. Plus in these days a prophet would be highly regarded.
There is the ornament I mentioned above .
I thought this was a very good piece. I myself thought (and still do) that Jonah died in the “big fish” and when the [whale] spit him up then at that moment God resurrected Jonah. It is why it is a ‘sign of Jonah’ perfectly parallel’s to Christ’s upcoming resurrection. But I really like how you made reference to Christ’s visiting hell. Because there is scripture that mentions “He visited the prisoners”. (and some believe that this was hell). Thank you very much for the enlightenment!
Thank you so much. I like your observation too. There are many figures in the prophetic books that point to the resurrection and Jonah may very well be one of them.
” No one ever discovers the depth of their own loneliness.” G. Bernanos
I thought you would appreciate this james. Letting go of attachments. Going deep.
I certainly did. Thank you.
The implausible part of the story comes next:
The part about being in the fish was the plausible part? I wish people would take Bible stories for what they are: stories.
Well that’s an ignorant statement, the Bible is a Library of bookS (plural). Some stories are history, some stories are parables, some are mythical (in the Chestertonian/Tolkien/CS Lewis sense of the word), some stories are biographies, etc. It depends which story or stories from the Bible you’re talking about.
The histories and biographies are fictional not historical or biographical. Men sat down and wrote stories without research, eyewitness accounts, etc.
For 2000 years, “experts” and “scholars” believed that the Trojan war described in the Iliad (and the Aeneid) was a mythological event that ancient Greeks made up due to their superstition. Until 1868, it was considered “settled science” that it was all phony. But then, archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann did an excavation and found the actual city of Troy, a war zone, in modern day in Hissarlik in Turkey. Today’s scientific consensus is that that Trojan war stories are based on a core historical event. All those people who ridiculed the Iliad for all those years, they sure owe Western civilization an apology for the disrespect they showed for these ancient documents. Fortunately, these pseudo-intellectuals no longer judge the Greeks. The Greeks judge them: they are guilty.
Instead of me telling you, can you give me an example of a Bible story that was made up and not factual? Adam and Eve? The Flood? Parting of the Red Sea? Are these all true?
If these are not true then our faith is in vain. The evidence for the flood is overwhelming since the earth is a virtual flood sediment with killed creatures right up to the tops of the mountains.
The chariot wheels scan be seen at the bottom of the red sea , even a golden one. So can the blackened top of the real Mt Sinai in saudi arabia .
Adam and Eve must be true since evolution is an impossibility .
If these are not true then our faith is in vain.
So, if the Bible is not LITERALLY TRUE your faith is in vain? It definitely is NOT.
Jesus and Abraham believed in the books of Moses – literally .
Jesus made the following statements about the Old Testament:
“For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me.
But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:46-47)
If you do not believe in the books of Moses you will not believe if an angel stood in front of you.
Abraham quoted by Jesus in the NT in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.
I never said that Jesus didn’t believe the Old Testament to be literally true. That is what they all believed at that time. We know better now.
But if Jesus is the Son of God how would you know better ? unless you dont believe in Him and follow fables like the big bang and evolution for which there is not a shred of evidence.
fables like the Big Bang and Evolution
Those might be fables to you (and the Bible is not?). Then to you I believe in fables. We are supposed to learn more and more as we grow older. You have gone in reverse. You knew more when you were in a secular school than you know now.
Well lets see proof of your faith , so far you have not answered a question or given proof for what your faith in “no god” rests on .
From an atheist scientist :-
““Nowhere was Darwin able to point to one bona fide case of natural selection having actually generated evolutionary change in nature….Ultimately, the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century.” Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crises (Bethesda, Maryland: Adler & Adler, 1986) pp. 62, 358.
I really can’t prove to you what I accept on faith. It is a decision that doesn’t carry the dire consequences that your decision carries. I don’t go to hell if I am wrong. And I can admit to being wrong if someone convinces me that I am.
By saying to God -” you dont exist so you cant put me in hell ” when you find out that He does exist is a new one for me.
If rests on whether the bible is true – ie if its true then you do go to hell if you reject the Lord’s invitation – that he died in agony for your soul to be in joyful eternity – this is the only way to have your sins forgiven.
There is to be no rebellion in eternity , no repeat of what the devil did, so
we are tested to yield and humble ourselves to the truth.
“”In fact [subsequent to the publication of Darwin’s book, Origin of Species], evolution became, in a sense, a scientific RELIGION; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to `BEND’ their observations to fit with it. . To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all . . If living matter is not, then, caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces, and radiation, how has it come into being? . .
I think, however, that we must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is Creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it.” H.S. Lipson, “A Physicist Looks at Evolution,” Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31, p. 138 (1980) [emphasis his].
Since the whole purpose of the bible is to be accepted and reproduced (meme) it is not surprising that it spends so much time making promises of eternal happiness to those who believe it and eternal misery to those who don’t. Knowing that, why should we believe it? Because we are too afraid of being wrong? If I am wrong then I am wrong. Don’t try to entice or scare people into believing in you. Same applies to Jesus if he was real and really said those things.
Being right about everything is above my pay grade. At least I have no fear of being wrong.
I USED EVIDENCE for the bible’s truth but you reject on the emotions you feel.
“Modern apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They have no yesterday, no fossil record. And the true origin of modern humans – of upright, naked, tool-making, big-brained beings – is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, an equally mysterious matter.”
Dr. Lyall Watson, Anthropologist
”We’re not just evolving slowly,” Gould says, ”for all practical purposes we’re not evolving. There’s no reason to think we’re going to get bigger brains or smaller toes or whatever – we are what we are.”
Stephen Jay Gould ( Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University )
I have no Darwinian explanation for species appearing with no evidence of transitional fossils such as in the Cambrian explosion. Mutations cannot be just random. Every mutation happens for a reason. Nature has an intelligence to it that I choose to term the Cosmos.
NATURE itself has no intelligence neither does matter. Only God can impute them with intelligence.
Mutations are random – this is not disputed by evos.
“The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein”.’
Sir Fred Hoyle (English astronomer, Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge University)
Only God can impute them with intelligence.
And this “God” that imputes Nature with intelligence is described in the Bible? It has a chosen people and a son who died for our sins.
That’s why I prefer to call it the Cosmos and not weigh it down with useless mythology.
Your first sentence is correct but the last sentence is pure fantasy since the cosmos can create nothing and certainly not itself.
You dont believe not because of the evidence for creation but for the reason given by arthur keith below :-
‘ I know the question in the minds of many of you who have followed me to this point: “Does not science prove that there is no Creator?” Emphatically, science does not prove that!’
Paul A Moody, Ph.D. (zoology) (Emeritus Professor of Natural History and Zoology, University of Vermont)
So why do most people believe it?
“Evolution is unproved and improvable, we believe it because the only alternative is special creation, which is unthinkable.”
(Sir Arthur Keith, a militant anti-Christian physical anthropologist)
Nature has an intelligence to it?!!! That is hilarious.
Pray tell “whose reason” decides to make happen every mutation? Nature’s reason? What is that? Which part of nature has this reason? Where did nature get this reason from ?
There is an intelligence behind all this. It manifests itself in nature. You misunderstand the metaphor in a statement like “Let Nature take its course”. That’s all I mean when I say there is an intelligence in Nature. What I mean is it isn’t a god. There no gods, angels, demons, etc.
Well duh! Intelligence is only proper to intellectual beings.
There is not such thing as “intellectual nature in general”.
Whatever intelligence exists that we have no comprehension of its source, that source has nothing to do with any of the major religions of the world. The gods of ancient religions were just attempts to explain what could not be understood at the time and people are still doing that.
We do – God told us it all comes from him. Intelligence has to be from a living being. A stone does not have intelligence – it cant think , walk or talk , or be sad or happy – if you worship a stone and pray to it you are an idolater.
Idolatry – this is like you Bill – except replace the painted wood with Sagan’s Cosmos :-
Solomon’s wisdom :-
But all men are vain, in whom there is not the knowledge of God: and who by these good things that are seen, could not understand him that is, neither by attending to the works have acknowledged who was the workman:
2 But have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon, to be the gods that rule the world.
3 With whose beauty, if they, being delighted, took them to be gods: let them know how much the Lord of them is more beautiful than they: for the first author of beauty made all those things.
4 Or if they admired their power and their effects, let them understand by them, that he that made them, is mightier than they:
5 For by the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby.
6 But yet as to these they are less to be blamed. For they perhaps err, seeking God, and desirous to find him.
7 For being conversant among his works, they search: and they are persuaded that the things are good which are seen.
8 But then again they are not to be pardoned.
9 For if they were able to know so much as to make a judgment of the world: how did they not more easily find out the Lord thereof?
10 But unhappy are they, and their hope is among the dead, who have called gods the works of the hands of men, gold and silver, the inventions of art, and the resemblances of beasts, or an unprofitable stone the work of an ancient hand.
11 Or if an artist, a carpenter, hath cut down a tree proper for his use in the wood, and skilfully taken off all the bark thereof, and with his art, diligently formeth a vessel profitable for the common uses of life,
12 And useth the chips of his work to dress his meat:
13 And taking what was left thereof, which is good for nothing, being a crooked piece of wood, and full of knots, carveth it diligently when he hath nothing else to do, and by the skill of his art fashioneth it and maketh it like the image of a man:
14 Or the resemblance of some beast, laying it over with vermillion, and painting it red, and covering every spot that is in it:
15 And maketh a convenient dwelling place for it, and setting it in a wall, and fastening it with iron,
16 Providing for it, lest it should fall, knowing that it is unable to help itself: for it is an image, and hath need of help.
17 And then maketh prayer to it, inquiring concerning his substance, and his children, or his marriage. And he is not ashamed to speak to that which hath no life:
18 And for health he maketh supplication to the weak, and for life prayeth to that which is dead, and for help calleth upon that which is unprofitable:
19 And for a good journey he petitioneth him that cannot walk: and for getting, and for working, and for the event of all things he asketh him that is unable to do any thing.
God told us it all comes from him.
How did your god tell you this? If you get from the Bible that the Bible is the Word of God and you believe that what you read in the Bible is God speaking to you, how can anyone convince you that you are barking up the wrong tree? I agree with what you sent me about idol worship. As an atheist, it is plainly obvious how silly it is to carve something out of wood or stone and worship it.
How did Carl Sagan convince you it was “all” in the “cosmos”
How did you come to trust the high priest of cosmic mysteries carl sagan
are you easily fooled by a human.
I can get input from watching “Cosmos” episodes or from reading the Bible. Which input is more up to date reflecting what has been learned up to that time? Cosmos.
Which is just hearsay accepted on faith alone and outdated and primitive? The Bible
Carl Sagan was more intelligent and better informed than the writers of the Bible, by far.
Carl Sagan could not create on atom or one dot of living matter.
But he is your high priest of nebulousness – making statements which sound good but signify nothing.
But he is your high priest of nebulousness – making statements which sound good but signify nothing.
He was just a very intelligent man with a knack for bringing science into people’s living rooms. He was not a high priest if anything. He promoted the concept of the Cosmos which I find useful.
He promoted a religious and Godless cosmos that designed itself – so he was high priest of the cosmos religion.
It’s not worth arguing about. I am anti religious. If you want to say that my religion is believing in the Cosmos, that’s fine. It’s the closest you are going to get to understanding my worldview ( which you refer to as a religion).
Carl Sagan could not create one atom or one dot of living matter.
This whole idea of rejecting the most up to date scientific theories about the Big Bang which occurred over 13 billion years ago, formation of the earth over 4 billion years ago, the appearance of life over 3 billion years ago, the evolution of species of plants and animals, etc. is a bit disconcerting to me. The notion of replacing the knowledge compiled by humans over thousand of years and the very latest findings with the Bible is a scary thought when one looks at the problems caused by Christian fundementalists that affect gays and woman very significantly.
Rejecting evolution is not rejecting the latest theories but ACCEPTING them.
How many more posts do you need showing you there is NO evidence of evolution – these quotes were from EVOLUTIONISTS ??
Christianity is the only religion that honours the female and the mother and wife so you are talking nonsense again.
It is the gays that attack christian values. What gay ever has to subject himself to christian rules ? – none. But if that same gay was in a moslem or buddist country his life would be in danger.
Once again you slam the religion you were brought up in and let the pagan religions off scot free.
It is the gays that attack christian values. What gay ever has to subject himself to christian rules ?
There are gays who consider themselves Christians. It is they who are mistreated by their own church.
Once you join the church – you have to follow the rules – the rules are in the Bible – over and over – in the NT and the OT they have not changed.
Gay relationships are not allowed. Joining the christian church will do you no good whatsoever if you continue to sin.
Even joining a golf club you have to obey the rules
“On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud. You do this even to your brethren. 9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.…”
What could be clearer
I feel sorry for gays who want to be Christian. They are much better off having no religion at all and going about just being themselves.
Only if the bible was not true – if it is true then they will regret for all eternity and so will you – so you better get it right.
We are going over the same ground .
Hmmm, it seems you are having problems with comprehension today.
I am not talking about source of intelligence.
You are making a statement that NATURE has intelligence. And as I said, well duh, only intellectual beings have intelligence.
Nature per se is not an intellectual being.
And I am not talking about gods of ancient religions. I am showing you the hocus pocus you are pulling here in your attempt to sound intelligent.
You are stating ASSUMPTIONS not facts.
Gravity is a law of nature. Its force is not so weak that the universe would have just kept expanding without the gravity needed for stars and planets to form. It is not so strong that the universe would have collapsed back into itself. There seems to be an intelligence behind gravity being just right. That is an a example of there being intelligence in nature.
Since nature is just a concept of the laws already in place like the law of gravity it is impossible for nature to create the law of gravity.
Laws must a lawgiver. You always put the cart before the horse.
Ok. There is a lawgiver of some sort. Do you think you have it all figured out and know what the lawgiver is?
The God of Abraham , Issac and Jacob.
So. The law of gravity was authored by the god of the Bible. You really believe that.
You believe the law of gravity just made itself ??? And you think you are rational ???????
This is tiring , I am going over the same ground again and again so I leave
to your own desires and the god of the cosmos.
That’s only so much yadda, yadda.
Gravity is a physical law but it is not intelligence.
Try again.
The just right strength of the gravitational field suggests that it was established by an intelligent entity of some sort. You call it God. I don’t. For simplicity and to have a word for it, I call it the Cosmos as in the TV series and book.
You have brainwashed yourself with hope in stardust – I saw some of the series – just wishful thinking to avoid the commandments.
Stardust is the source of the chemical elements formed from hydrogen. I see it for what it is. It is not the Cosmos. It is part if it like you, me and everything else. You should have got more out of the series than you did. You just view it as atheist propaganda instead of science.
So you think that the hydrogen and helium created itself then turned into gold , silver and platinum etc 100 different elements each with its own set of laws -all coming from nothing ? Its hard to believe you are rational or that carl sagan had any thinking power at all.
Your notion that the 1st law of thermodynamics can be broken by carl sagan using graphics is wishful thinking.
The first atoms formed after the Big Bang were hydrogen which made up the stars. The other elements were formed in the stars and sprayed throughout the universe when the stars exploded. Everyone should know that.
What evidence have you got about the first element being hydrogen – absolutely none. How did hydrogen get made into gold by a star.
We cant make hydrogen into over 100 different elements . Even in a lab we cant do this.
Its always the fairy story – a way way out there a long long time ago – hydrogen
made itself into all the elements . But who made the hydrogen – it was a fairy
angel a long long time ago.
It is your fairy story .
There is no evidence that the big bang happened in fact thousand of scientist’s disagree.
Neither of us can know everything. We have to put our faith in people we trust. You trust the writers of the Bible. I don’t. I trust mainstream science. You don’t. We are on far opposite sides of the cultural divide that particularly affects the US. I never asked where you are from but wherever you are I am sure you can agree that the far extremes are Christian fundamentalism and atheism. You can’t find two people further on opposite ends than us. Yet we respect one another. That’s the way it should be. Polar opposites in other cultures are not faring as well.
Mainstream science is nothing to do with evolution which has no proof if you bothered to read the mainstream scientists that I posted.
Science was before Darwin and after Darwin – he did not affect science which is about evidence.
Fundamentalism is a much abused word – if it means sticking to the truth then Jesus was a fundamentalist.
I find the fundamentalism in pagan and non christian religions often violent and intolerant of many things which dont matter.
No matter how improbable it seems, no matter how enormously far the explanatory power of its mechanisms must be extrapolated beyond the testable evidence, no matter the lack of evidence for many of its tenets, it has to be true because there isn’t any other naturalistic theory that comes close.
I guess the best I can do is stick with a naturalistic explanation and hope that scientists will figure out why mutations seem to be teleological and anthropomorphic as opposed to random. You’ve convinced me that Neo- Darwinism is more like a religion than science. The establishment and academia are going to have to break that paradigm.
They wont since there is no evidence that we all came from a single.
It does not work even as a theory or in practice since the transitionals are not there as Darwin admitted.
PROPHECY FULFILMENT – chances.
“With that introduction, let us go back to our chance of 1 in 10 to the power of 157. Let us suppose that we are taking this number of electrons, marking one, and thoroughly stirring it into the whole mass, then blindfolding a man and letting him try to find the right one. What chance has he of finding the right one? What kind of a pile will this number of electrons make? They make an inconceivably large volume.” [ibid., pp 109,110]
The chances of finding the correct electron out of the pile of electrons that Stoner uses for this last illustration is something on the order of picking one single correct electron out of all of the electrons in all the known mass of the entire known universe.
Such is the chance of any one man fulfilling any 48 prophecies. Yet Yeshua Ha’Natseret fulfilled not just 48 prophecies, not just 61 prophecies, but more than 324 individual prophecies that the Prophets wrote concerning the Mashiach.
All of these probability analyses don’t mean a thing. Unless you can admit that scribes sat down and wrote made up stuff, you have no chance of being able to deal with reality.
They were written before the events (confirmed by dead sea scrolls and other evidence) You cant prophecy what will happen tomorrow.
You have become apostate – only God can get you out of this condition but you are too proud in your own beliefs .
Its getting tiring going over the same ground.
On December 31, 2013, my kids detonated some brightly-colored things covered with paper, and guess what? The explosion produced a replica of the Empire State Building in my backyard.
Was this in response to my saying how things came to be what they are today having started with the Big Bang? Are you offended that I don’t believe that your god had anything to do with it?
No other god is like you, O Lord, and nothing compares with your works. All people — all nations you made — will come and worship before you; they will give glory to your name. For you are great, you work wonders: you alone are God.
Yes. Somebody wrote that. Is it suppose to prove something? Is it true?
“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”
Yes. Somebody wrote that two. It is quite craftily written and presented in such a way that anyone who reads it is inclined to put their faith and trust in those accounts and words of Jesus whether those accounts and words are really true or not.
“I was all hot for honours, money, marriage: and You made mock of my hotness. In my pursuit of these, I suffered most bitter disappointments, but in this You were good to me since I was thus prevented from taking delight in anything not Yourself. Look now into my heart, Lord, by whose will I remember all this and confess it to You. Let my soul cleave to You now that You have freed it from the tenacious hold of death. At that time my soul was in misery, and You pricked the soreness of its wound, that leaving all things it might turn to You, who are over all and without whom all would return to nothing, that it might turn to You and be healed. I was in utter misery and there was one day especially on which You acted to bring home to me the realisation of my misery. I was preparing an oration in praise of the Emperor in which I was to utter any number of lies to win the applause of people who knew they were lies. My heart was much wrought upon by the shame of this and inflamed with the fever of the thoughts that consumed it. I was passing along a certain street in Milan when I noticed a beggar. He was jesting and laughing and I imagine more than a little drunk. I fell into gloom and spoke to the friends who were with me about the endless sorrows that our own insanity brings us: for here was I striving away, dragging the load of my unhappiness under the spurring of my desires, and making it worse by dragging it: and with all our striving, our one aim was to arrive at some sort of happiness without care: the beggar had reached the same goal before us, and we might quite well never reach it at all. The very thing that he had attained by means of a few pennies begged from passers-by — namely the pleasure of a temporary happiness — I was plotting for with so many a weary twist and turn.”
Hmm. St. Augustine? Confessions? All joy is temporary. Nothing is eternal. Deal with it.
Suit yourself!
It’s not the way I would have it if I had my druthers. It is what it is.
Or, perhaps, it is what you choose.
It is what I choose to believe as being true. It’s not for me to choose what is true. It’s for me to choose what to believe is true.
Exactly. We want to believe that which is true, and act accordingly.
I would like the truth to also be what makes me feel best. Unfortunately, that which makes me feel best is not that which I can accept as the truth.
May God be with you!
And with your spirit.
“Jesus’ prayer also contains a warning that pride can keep us from the love and knowledge of God. What makes us ignorant and blind to the things of God? Certainly intellectual pride, coldness of heart, and stubbornness of will shut out God and his kingdom of peace, joy, and righteousness. Pride is the root of all vice and the strongest influence propelling us to sin. It first vanquishes the heart, making it cold and indifferent towards God. It also closes the mind to God’s truth and wisdom for our lives. What is pride? It is the inordinate love of oneself at the expense of others and the exaggerated estimation of one’s own learning and importance” (Don Schwager (c) 2014).
What is pride? It is the inordinate love of oneself at the expense of others and the exaggerated estimation of one’s own learning and importance
Self-esteem also requires you to love yourself and take pride in what you know. To a lesser degree than what you would call sinful pride.
That is incredibly dumb. The Cosmos cannot create itself so therefore it cannot be the intelligence behind its creation.
Try again.
There is nothing wrong with coming up with a name for something we can’t totally understand yet. Carl Sagan called it the Cosmos. You call it God with all the biblical bs that goes with that name.
Bill, this discussion is not about coming up with sometning we cannot understand yet.
You said something very stupid about the Cosmos being the intelligence behind itself. That is an incredibly dumb statement. The cosmos had a beginning. The cosmos did not bring itself into bieng therefore the cosmos cannot be the intelligence behind it’s own creation.
If Carl Sagan said what you said, then he is equally dumb in this regard.
The problem with science-philles is that they venture into the territory of metaphysics with their microscopes.
It is simple. I say potato you say potaahto. I say Cosmos. You say God. The only difference between the two is that the Cosmos does not have a bunch of ancient stories about it except for the Greeks using that word to indicate the order in the universe as opposed to Chaos, the disorder in the universe.
You are right. It is simple and only the stupid can claim that Cosmos is God.
Here it is for the umpteenth time. The cosmos cannot be the intelligence behind itself because it cannot create itself. That is so simple and yet you still are not getting it.
Take a computer. Can a computer create itself? And yet here you are basically saying that the cosmos created itself. The cosmos had a beginning.
Please, please, please, try to digest this before you reply.
There is no God to me. There is only the Cosmos. What you call God, I call the Cosmos. That way I don’t have to worry about the Cosmos judging me and damning me for eternity if I don’t kiss its ass.
Are you really that dumb? You cannot understand something so simple?
How old are you? I thought that maybe you must at least be 16 and yet you can’t understand my previous post.
Let me simplify that again.
A mother gives birth to a child. I am saying that the mother is separate to the baby. The mother is not the baby, the baby is not the mother. But you are saying that the mother is the baby.
He might just be a teen or younger if you examine the logic.
Who created God?
Who created the Cosmos?
Same answer.
Who created God?
That is a dumb question. If there is a God then He is uncreated – no beginning no end. Any being who was created is not God.
Most people seem to think that God is the same as everything else save that he is super bigger, supper better, super more intelligent. He is not like that at all. God is in a different plane altogether. God is totally other. And this is the only idea that works.
As for who created the cosmos. Well if there is a super intelligent being who is before all time and space, and who is not created, then obviously That would be the creator of the created cosmos.
He thinks that God must be created but finds no problem that the cosmos does not need a creator ??
What can I say? Most atheists are completely devoid of the ability to reason. Maybe Bill is still young and hopefully will learn to exercise his intellect later on.
If there is a Cosmos, then it is uncreated – no beginning no end. Any being that came into existence is part of the Cosmos.
As Carl Sagan said the Cosmos is all that is, or was or ever will be. It’s a philosophical concept similar to the concept of God.
If there is a Cosmos, then it is uncreated – no beginning no end. Any being that came into existence is part of the Cosmos.
How long are you going to be this dumb? The cosmos has no beginning? Have you never heard of the big bang? I am sorry to have to say this but you are probably the most stupid atheist I have ever had a discussion with. Some of them at least know that the universe had a beginning.
s Carl Sagan said the Cosmos is all that is, or was or ever will be
And if he said that then he is as stupid as you. Pretending to be scientifically knowledgeable and yet going against the very findings of science. Plain, plain dumb.
You just don’t understand the concept of the Cosmos. You say it began with the Big Bang. That is the universe. You have put up a defense that no one can penetrate. I can come up with a concept and call it anything I want. Carl Sagan has done that for me. The concept of the Cosmos replaced your concept of God and you don’t like that so you accuse people who don’t accept your concept of being stupid. That is your defense, that I am stupid.
Well duh! When scientists refer to the cosmos, they refer to the universe – that is why we have its study called cosmology.
The concept of the cosmos replaced the concept of God only for those who are unable to reason properly.
You are not really stupid – you just choose to be. And that is sadder than being truly stupid. But one day maybe you will outgrow that.
The concept of the cosmos replaced the concept of God only for those who are unable to reason properly.
Well it has for me and I reason just fine. If I develop a concept that works for me, like the Cosmos, it doesn’t matter to me that other people have a different definition and concept of the same word. I don’t expect a cosmonaut to use the word the way I do. To him, the cosmos could be his word for the universe. That’s not how I choose to look at it. Surely you don’t think that there is only one use for the word “god”. It means different things to different people and cultures. I don’t think the word “stupid” should be thrown around in this conversation. I might think you are but I wouldn’t tell you that. I’m more polite than that.
Well it has for me and I reason just fine
But that’s just it. You don’t. You can develop a concept as much as you like but if it is devoid of reason, it does not matter.
You have this kind of nebulous idea of the cosmos which is not the cosmos at all. If you are going to have recourse to some pretence of science, then at the very least, use the latest scientific data not some myth that you have manufactured in your head. You dislike the Bible because you call it myth and here you are making your own flying spaghetti monster which you call the cosmos.
You are like some science junkie who also dabbles in some new age ideas. No wonder your understanding is so up the creek. Maybe you would like to join L Ron Hubbard.
You have this kind of nebulous idea of the cosmos which is not the cosmos at all.
And you have this fantasy concept of God which is not sensible or reasonable because it is based on the Bible, which you think is true but which reasonable people will admit is not really literally true at all.
And you have this fantasy concept of God which is not sensible or reasonable because it is based on the Bible
You are quite wrong. I am not arguing from the Bible. I am arguing from Philosophy. And the idea of God that I am arguing for is a very, very solid philosophically.
But your idea of cosmos will be laughed at by any cosmologist.
Billions of “reasonable ” believe the Bible. Your statements are always a priori reasoning that their is no God .
That’s my worldview.
Apropos my earlier reply.
You are right, I should not use the word ‘stupid”. But when an idea is indeed stupid, then I think it is good to call a spade a spade.
This is not about being polite. Maybe I should say that your idea is ludicrous or absurd but if something is so insane, then I think we should call it what it is.
If you want to be taken seriously, then maybe you should think before you post. You make assertions that you cannot back and then you get upset that I say that it is stupid.
You know what’s the problem with you atheists? You have been listening to far too much dribble from so called scientific-atheists and have bought what they say hook line and sink that you have no idea that their claims are philosophically untenable. Start really thinking for yourself. Before you spill your stock standing stupid athetistic arguments here, find out first what we believers actually believe. Maybe even get a short course on logic.
The major flaw in most scientific arguments is their predeliction to conflate ideas.
Remember this: the natural sciences can only speak about the natural world because that is all it is about. Stop jumping to metaphysical conclusions when all you are armed with are scientific facts.
The idea of a cosmos without a beginning and an end is hogwash. It does not stand up to scientific examination nor to philosophical examination.
The idea of a cosmos without a beginning and an end is hogwash. It does not stand up to scientific examination nor to philosophical examination.
The idea of a god without a beginning and an end is hogwash. It does not stand up to scientific examination nor to philosophical examination.
The idea of a god without a beginning and an end is hogwash. It does not stand up to scientific examination nor to philosophical examination
Actually it is not hogwash. It does not stand up to scientific examination because it is not a question of science. This is why I say that people who argue from science to refute the existence of God are stupid.
But the idea of God without beginning or end does stand up to philosophical examination. In fact, that is why we say God has not beginning of end – from purely philosophical reasoning. The statement was a result of philosophical enquiry.
Good conversing with you. I’m being shut off.
Well, that’s a pity.
It was good conversing with you as well.
And while you may not believe in Him, God really, really, really does love you.
And yes, you will think that crazy, but one day you will find that to be true. I am sure of that.
In the meantime, if you still get this – I recommend you read the book “Something Other than God.”
You can also watch the author’s interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXmX8NrpaLE
She was an atheist and very intelligent. Don’t just dismiss this. Look into it.
Its not whether a concept “works” for someone – the question is whether the concept is true or a lie. The concept that you promote is that the cosmos is a living being which can create itself and all life – there is no evidence for this.
So how did the cosmos make itself ?
That is a mystery. How did God make himself. He always was? Cosmos always was.
God does not need to be made but existed from all eternity God made the cosmos and described how he did it.
You just make wild statements without evidence. You question the same points over and over even though you get rational answers – like a rebellious teenager who has just discovered atheism – so I dont really want to go over the points again – you never study the evidence given .
Look forward to eternity with your messiah the “cosmos” and carl sagan his prophet.
Marc – he goes round in circles ,believes things with no evidence but denies all the evidence when faced with evidence.
He is a disciple of Carl Sagan – I saw most of the series – it was a stage act – he was not so much a scientist but a showman – certainly not a biologist.
So I gave up cutting through the mangroves.
Yes, unfortunately these scientific atheists don’t have any idea how dumb their arguments are.
Why should we believe it ????, to avoid eternal misery and enjoy eternal heavenly delight. You cant avoid something by saying I dont believe its there .
“”…not being a paleontologist, I don’t want to pour too much scorn on paleontologists, but if you were to spend your life picking up bones and finding little fragments of head and little fragments of jaw, there’s a very strong desire to exaggerate the importance of those fragments…”
Dr. Greg Kirby (Senior Lecturer in Population Biology at Flinders University ) in an address given at a meeting of the Biology Teachers Association of South Australia.
“the incident on a par with two other embarrassing faux pas by fossil hunters: Hesperopithecus, the fossil pig’s tooth that was cited as evidence of very early man in North America, and Eoanthropus or ‘Piltdown Man’, the jaw of an orangutan and the skull of a modern human that were claimed to be the ‘earliest Englishman’.”
Why should we believe it ????, to avoid eternal misery and enjoy eternal heavenly delight.
Well. Did you know that there really is an oldest trick in the book. Believing or rejecting the Bible may affect your worldview and behavior, but it has absolutely no impact on what happens when you die, your body becomes plant food and you cease to exist as a conscious being. Think.
Thats right – its what the Bible says happens to our physical body – from dust you have come and to dust you will return – but we also have a soul and spirit which continues forever and is reunited with our new eternal body – as was Jesus when he returned to earth after his resurrection.
You think thats what happens but where is your proof. NDE’s prove otherwise.
If you insist on believing in life after death and that you can only attain it by believing in it, what can I say. I have to stop debating that point.
You insist on believing in NO life after death and you can only attain this annihilation by believing in it , what can I say . I have to stop debating at that point.
So. In summary, we are at an impasse on life after death and evolution but I agree with you that the odds of this all coming about randomly are almost zero. You call it the biblical God. I call it the Cosmos. I would call it God but then I would insist that no religion accurately describes this God.
So why would a God who is kind and loving and merciful not give us proof of His existence – tell us about Himself – how He created us to return His love.
He did – it is called the Bible – and that’s the way He has decided to do it.
One is forced to conclude that many scientists and technologists pay lip-service to Darwinian theory only because it supposedly excludes a creator.”
Dr. Michael Walker, Senior Lecturer — Anthropology, Sydney University. Quadrant, October 1982, page 44.
“Darwinian theory is the creation myth of our culture. It’s the officially sponsored, government financed creation myth that the public is supposed to believe in, and that creates the evolutionary scientists as the priesthood… So we have the priesthood of naturalism, which has great cultural authority, and of course has to protect its mystery that gives it that authority—that’s why they’re so vicious towards critics.”
Phillip Johnson, On the PBS documentary “In the Beginning: The Creationist Controversy” [May 1995]
“Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented.”
Provine William B., [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], “Darwin Day” website, University of Tennessee Knoxville, 1998.
So why would a God who is kind and loving and merciful not give us proof of His existence – tell us about Himself – how He created us to return His love.
This is what Jesus taught about God. It is how he drew followers but who says he is right about anything. It’s a circular argument. Jesus says he is God. God doesn’t lie. Jesus is God.
Yes but thousands of rational people went to their deaths knowing the truth .
One would also think that the Creator of the universe would not be a liar or a fickle God. We know the Greek Mythology is cruel fickle Gods , more like us.
If you dont believe the Bible there is lots of secular evidence to back up the truth of the gospels that Jesus existed and was crucified to let us avoid our punishment for our sins which God being infinitely Holy cannot have in his presence – unrepented of.
The best way I have seen is to humble yourself and ask God to show Himself to you in some way.
This happened to my son in law , he had fallen away after a lifetime of churchiness and put his doubt to God asking for proof – He heard an audible voice giving him a scripture reference which he read and was convinced by the power of the words.
“We are told dogmatically that Evolution is an established fact; but we are never told who has established it, and by what means. We are told, often enough, that the doctrine is founded upon evidence, and that indeed this evidence ‘is henceforward above all verification, as well as being immune from any subsequent contradiction by experience;’ but we are left entirely in the dark on the crucial question wherein, precisely, this evidence consists.”
Smith, Wolfgang (1988) Teilhardism and the New Religion: A Thorough Analysis of The Teachings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books & Publishers Inc., p.2
“The best way I have seen is to humble yourself and ask God to show Himself to you in some way.”
That’s just about the only thing I can do. I’ll give it a try.
That is only true if you factor out God.
But if you factor out God, nothing makes sense.
Well of course I am factoring out God. That is a fictional character from the Bible, just like Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, etc.
Perhaps in your brilliance you can give me a convincing proof that God is indeed a fictional character.
The Bible is a fictional account from God creating the heavens and the earth to the six days of creation to walking in the garden with Adam to sending a Flood to kill everyone to visiting Abraham to destroying Sodom and Gamorah to appearing in a burning bush to parting the Red Sea on and on. Somehow a fictional character became real to people.
Well the evidence is NOT there for your alternative beliefs but it IS there on the flood and sodom .
You only have to google the archaeology.
If you see the “most holy family monastery” you tube on the journey through the desert you can see with your own eyes the evidence.
This is an anti Novus Ordo monastery but the creation evidence is excellent
You dont seem to want to see any evidence on God but without any evidence you believe that space dust is intelligent – and everything popped out of a tiny speck etc etc
If I showed you a house that I had built and you said I that I had only built about half of the house and the rest made itself – this is the type of logic you are using. I find it hard to search your logic.
Well the evidence is NOT there for your alternative beliefs but it IS there on the flood and sodom.
There is evidence that things have occurred in the past but there is no proof that they occurred the way the Bible says they did. You need to see the Bible for what it really is and not for what you want it to be.
Well lets see your evidence for this ??? you have not provided a shred so far.
I don’t need evidence for something I don’t believe. I don’t believe it because there is no satisfactory evidence to convince me to believe. And besides that, when a story involves a violation of the laws of nature, that is satisfactory for me that the story is false.
The big bang and evolution defy the laws of “nature” so why do you swallow without questioning.
The Big Bang provides us with evidence of laws of nature we have not yet identified. The Higgs Boson acts in ways that we can’t yet understand. When we figure it out, it will be a law of nature that we were previously unaware of.
So what – we are always discovering God’s laws.
Laws dont make themselves – laws need a lawgiver not carl sagan.
I will never understand how everyone thinks this hypothetical lawgiver just so happens to be their God. I have the same conversations with Muslims who say it is Allah.
Mohammad had joined the jews for a while then the christians then left to start his own religion. That is why there are parts of the bible in his quran , even Jesus. But they cant accept that He died on a cross for their sins which is a key belief in christianity.
This all boils down to a handful of men sitting with pen in hand writing things down the importance of which they could not ever in their wildest dreams have imagined. The Torah, and then the Old and New Testaments are looked at by believers as the Word of God and by nonbelievers as a collection of fables, psalms, poems and proverbs.
How many times have I to say this – these writers of the Bible were prophets of God – most were persecuted often to death for the writings. They were told what to write by God . It was not for popularity or control since the hypocrites had control not the prophets who were despised.
The prophets have never been proved wrong – once again I am going over the same ground.
THE PROBABILITIES FOR JUST 8 PROPHECIES :-
Stoner says that by applying the modern science of probability to just these eight prophecies, “… We find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 10 ^17.” That would be one in 100,000,000,000,000,000. In order for us to be able to comprehend this staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by supposing that:
“… we take 1017 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote in their own wisdom.
“Now these prophecies were either given by inspiration of God or the prophets just wrote them as they thought they should be. In such a case the prophets had just one chance in 1017 of having them come true in any man, but they all came true in Christ [Mashiach].
“This means that the fulfillment of these eight prophecies alone proves that God inspired the writing of those [eight] prophecies to a definiteness which lacks only one chance in 1017 of being absolute.” [Stoner, Peter W. Science Speaks. Chicago: Moody Press, 1963, pp 100-107.]
Stoner considers 48 prophecies and says, “… We find the chance that any one man fulfilled all 48 prophecies to be 1 in 10157.
“This is a really large number and it represents an extremely small chance. Let us try to visualize it. The silver dollar, which we have been using, is entirely too large. We must select a smaller object. The electron is about as small an object as we know of. It is so small that it will take 2.5 times 1015 of them laid side by side to make a line, single file, one inch long. If we were going to count the electrons in this line one inch long, and counted 250 each minute, and if we counted day and night, it would take us 19,000,000 years to count just the one-inch line of electrons. If we had a cubic inch of these electrons and we tried to count them it would take us, counting steadily 250 each minute, 19,000,000 times 19,000,000 times 19,000,000 [nineteen million times nineteen million times nineteen million] or 6.9 times 1021 years.
these writers of the Bible were prophets of God
It seems pretty easy to tell the story of Jesus in a way that specifically includes fulfillment of prophesies and then to add – this happened so as to fulfill such and such a prophesy. Like “they cast lots for my garment”. So you just make up an account of the Romans casting lots at the foot of the cross. Who’s going to deny it?
I’m not sure that a single scribe who wrote any part of the Bible was ever persecuted for what he wrote.
Then you are ignorant of the old and new testaments – which would be typical of most catholics – I know since I am one .
Oh yes Jesus would order his crucifixion to stage his own agonising death – so that it would agree with scripture ???
A great plot going back 4000 years lol.
No. Don’t be silly. The evangelist wrote in the events in order to match the prophesies. Jesus didn’t have to do anything to fulfill anything. The writers added them themselves.
We are talking about prophecies written thousands of years before Jesus – what on earth are you on about . You did not even read the article
It doesn’t matter when the prophesy was made. The writers have events happen to fulfill the prophesies. I shall call my son out of Egypt. Have them flee to Egypt and return. Born in the City of David. Have them go to Bethlehem for a census. They shall call him a Nazarean. Have him come from Nazareth.
I think you are missing a shilling – how would a writer influence events after he died ???????? Could I prophecy that europe will invade america and then die and a thousand years make it happen even though I am dead – what would be the advantage since the jews that had the OT did not even believe in Jesus.
I think you have used the monty python life of Christ for you information.
WHO is the who that you are saying is doing this ???
Your lack of knowledge about how things work is astounding but I am getting fed up – you will need to do the research on your own with the help of the cosmos.
Ok. I’ll let you go after this. The Evangelists. They wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Any one of them can take something, anything from the Old Testament and make up something to fulfill it. Make the soldiers cast lots and say that fulfilled this prophesy. That’s all I’m trying to say. I’ve frustrated you enough. Thanks for your insights
So the evangelists told the romans what to do – so that the OT would be fulfilled – they told Pilate how to go about the crucifixion and then told the romans and the jews to persecute themselves and get stoned like stephen
all on the basis of lies which they made up.
And Jesus was hanging on the cross delighting in his agony with his mother involved in the plot , how can anyone pull of a plot like that.
Your unbelief is not knew.
He who believes and is baptised will be saved – but he who does not believe is condemned already.
You are only condemning yourself.
So the evangelists told the romans what to do – so that the OT would be fulfilled – they told Pilate how to go about the crucifixion and then told the romans and the jews to persecute themselves and get stoned like stephen
all on the basis of lies which they made up.
Somehow you are thinking that these things had to really happen in order for the evangelists to write them. One more time: I am an evangelist writing a gospel story. I read in the Jewish scriptures “the virgin shall bear a child”. I write that Mary was a virgin when she conceived. She didn’t really have to be a virgin. I read “they shall call him a Nazarean.” I write that Mary lived in Nazareth. I read that the Messiah will be born in the city of David, Bethlehem. I write that there was a census that required Joseph to go to Bethlehem to register. None of this has to really happen. I just write that it did to demonstrate the prophesies being fulfilled. There should be nothing difficult about this for you to understand.
This is old hat – but they now know there was a census . But the problem WHY would they want to give themselves a life of pain.
You say none of it happened ? it was fabricated for 4000 years , that there would be a Messiah . And even when He does come you say the story was written to suit the prophecies even though no historian ,even the atheist ones deny that Jesus existed , there seems no hope for you.
People like you said Pilate did not exist but there is concrete evidence.
It is the devil that is controlling not because the truth cannot be found but you dont want to hear the truth – this is the test but you dont know it – so you think up every obstacle to get in the way of the truth.
Could you make up a gospel and some old scripts that would make carl sagan a messiah – and then write that it had come true – you would be recognised as a loonie.
it was fabricated for 4000 years , that there would be a Messiah .
Yes. Of course. There is no Messiah. Never was one. Never will be one.
You’re convinced of the truth as you see it. I am equally convinced that you don’t know the real truth at all.
“To those who believe no explanation is necessary – for those who do not believe no explanation is possible.”
You, Bill have proved this statement beyond doubt.
I will leave it there.
nworder
“To those who believe no explanation is necessary – for those who do not believe no explanation is possible.”
I guess it is like if you are a child and your mother tells you about the tooth fairy. You accept it on faith even before you see evidence.
But as you get older, no evidence can convince you that the tooth fairy exists and you begin to wonder about the other things you’ve been told like the boogeyman and Santa Claus. Eventually you come to disbelieve even the true things because you lose faith in the person telling you those things. I have lost faith in religion and I think for good reason. Thanks for our discussions. I enjoyed them.
That is not what I asked.
You said: “Well of course I am factoring out God. That is a fictional character from the Bible,”
Since you are so sure that God is a fictional character, then maybe you have incontrovertible proof that he is indeed a fictional character.
After all, you people are the ones who are always demanding proof.
I just gave you examples of God being a fictional character. The people who wrote those stories were not there to witness what they wrote about. They either made the stories up or heard them from others who made them up.
That is not an example of God being a fictional character at all.
If you wrote about Darwin, considering you did not see Darwin, would that make Darwin a fictional character?
I am asking you for proof. You haven’t provided any.
There may be a super intelligence that we have yet to explain. We can call that super intelligence something that we will all relate to. If we call it God, we must be careful not to confuse it with the God of the Torah, Bible, Quran, etc. because that God started out as a tribal god (Yahweh) about whom fantastic stories were told that got more and more embellished in those books.
The intelligence behind all that is has nothing to do with God, Allah or any other deity, all of which are imaginary.
There have been no changes to the bible since it was written – the jews never changed scripture even though it condemns them many times. God never changes – His word is eternal – the bible never contradicts – you come out with these vague statements but never with evidence.
I know what the Bible is and what it isn’t. You see it for what it isn’t. It is not the inerrant word of a god.
You dont seem to know the bible at all – you have no proof that it was not written by God whereas I gave you plenty of proof that it must have been since it has never been disproved in any area.
Once someone decides that the Bible is what you say it is, that person cannot be “saved” from a life of superstition and ignorance.
If we call it God, we must be careful not to confuse it with the God of the Torah, Bible
Why not?
that God started out as a tribal God (Yahweh
Only to someone who is clueless about the Bible and yet has the arrogance to pontificate on it.
The intelligence behind all that is has nothing to do with God
Prove it.
Only to someone who is clueless about the Bible and yet has the arrogance to pontificate on it.
I probably know the Bible better than you. Yahweh started out as a tribal god. The Torah was written by the ancestors of today’s Jews (some of them. Not those who converted.). It contains fictional accounts of creation, the flood, the exodus from Egypt, etc.
Scientists study the laws of nature that seem to come from a yet to be discovered intelligence that some call the Cosmos, as in the book and TV show, or just simply Nature.
Yahweh started out as a tribal god
As I said, you are clueless about the Bible for the mere fact that you believe that Yahweh started out as a tribal God. If Yahweh is indeed God, then tribe or not tribe he is God.
Let me explain. Suppose an ancient text claimed that the earth is round in the time of flat-earthers. Would you say that the idea of a round-earth came with an ancient text. The earth is round ancient text or no ancient text.
Things are regardless of what people may claim.
As for knowing the Bible better than me, no you don’t for the simple fact that you are arguing the way you are arguing.
In the meantime, I am still waiting for you to prove that the intelligence behind all that is has nothing to do with God.
The concept of gods goes back to prehistoric times. We all had our god who was the best god and the others were inferior to ours. One tribe called their god Yahweh and the Book of Exodus first mentions him. Yahweh had a chosen people who he told to not put any gods before him. Eventually, he just became God with a capital G and all kinds of books were written about him such as Job, Genesis, Exodus, etc.
So. What you are saying is that there is one true God and he is the god described in the Torah and then the Bible and then the Quran (where he is called Allah).
I don’t see that God as the same thing as the Cosmos. Do you ?
The concept of gods goes back to prehistoric times
So what?? Just because something goes back to prehistoric times, that means it is not true? Can’t you see the utter stupidity of that argument?
So. What you are saying is that there is one true God and he is the god described in the Torah
I have not said anything along those lines. What I have said is please give me proof of your claim that the God of the Bible is not the one responsible for all that is. You are the one who made that claim and so I am asking you to prove that. After all, you people are the ones who are asking us for proof. So now I am asking you to prove your claim.
And you are right, that God is not the same thing as the Cosmos. But your statement that the intelligence behind the cosmos is the cosmos itself means that you believe that the cosmos is God. It seems to me that you are not able to follow even your own arguments.
So you don’t say that the god described in the Torah is the one true God. I thought that is what you believe ? Am I wrong?
What I believe is beside the point. We are not discussing here my beliefs.
What I am asking you is to prove what you said that the God of the Bible is not the one responsible for all that is. If you have not made such a statement I will not be asking you to prove it.
Ok. Let’s do it your way. The intelligence behind all this is God. I call it the Cosmos because I find the Bible to be bullshit from cover to cover with a few exceptions (such as some of the proverbs and sayings by Jesus like turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, etc.) and if I were to call the Cosmos “God” it could be confused with the God in the Bible.
But ok. God is behind all that is. But everything said about God in the Bible is bullshit. He didn’t make everything in six days. He didn’t place Adam and Eve together in the Garden of Eden. He didn’t cause the Flood or part the Red Sea. Those are all bullshit stories about God. And don’t get me going on Allah.
That’s why I just call it the Cosmos.
And this is where I come in and say that your statement about you knowing more about the Bible than me is all rubbish for what you wrote in paragraph 2.
Firstly, you cannot call God the Cosmos because the Cosmos is the cosmos. That would be like saying your father is you. Maybe you can call him Super Intelligence ala Fred Hoyle. But you can’t call Him Cosmos because Cosmos is Cosmos.
Secondly, the Bible is not a science book and was never written as a science book.
Thirdly, you still have not shown why the intelligence behind all that is cannot possibly be the God described in the Bible. Why not?
Ok. It is the God described in the Bible. However, that description is inaccurate. So it is the God that is inaccurately described in the Torah, Bible, Quran and every other book that tries to describe it because it is indescribable.
Ok. It is the God described in the Bible. However, that description is inaccurate .
How do you think the Bible describes God and then explain why it is in accurate.
Anyone who objectively reads the Bible can see what a ridiculous collection of stories it contains. The intelligence behind all things cannot be accurately described even now, let alone thousands of years ago.
Again, how do you think the Bible describes God and then explain why it is not accurate.
how do you think the Bible describes God and then explain why it is accurate.
Inaccurate. Not accurate. What I am trying to say is that I have a concept of the Cosmos that is similar in one regard to your concept of God. In our individual beliefs, we both believe in an intelligence behind all that is. To you it is God. To me it is the Cosmos.
If it were important for me to be on the same page as you (which it isn’t really), I would just agree to call the Cosmos “God” and define God as the intelligence behind all that is. Then if I picked up and read the Bible, the stories to me would be like stories that someone might make up about a famous person like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln such as the story about the cherry tree or throwing a coin across the Potomac. I know the Cosmos never parted the Red Sea and if I am calling the Cosmos God, I know that story about him is similar to the stories about Washington and the cherry tree and coin.
Ok. I’ll go along with you with that.
So to you the Super Intelligent being is the Cosmos.
Are you not a science buff? Do you think that would go down well when you talk with your scientifically inclined friends when you start saying that the Cosmos is the Super Intelligence behind the everything? Do you think the cosmologists would find that okay or would they laugh at you?
You can’t make definitions as you go along because you are in conversation with people for whom these words are already defined.
That would be like me saying my brother is sick (when in reality it is my mother who is sick but for all intents and purposes I have decided to call my mother my brother).
The only disambiguation for the Cosmos is that it means order as opposed to chaos.
If you keep going on the way you are going, you are going to create chaos instead of order.
As for God not parting the red sea, how do you know that for a fact? You have got to stop making statements that you cannot prove.
How do you know that God did not part the Red Sea ? The chariot wheels and axles can be seen as can the blackened top of Jebel al-Lawz in saudi arabia etc
If God exists why would He not be able to do this by suspending the laws He created.
If God exists why would He not be able to do this by suspending the laws He created.
It doesn’t work that way.
Bill you cant even see the stupidity of your reply – sorry , goodbye.
Sorry. I had to rush my response.
Intelligence has to come from a living being. What story in the bible is ridiculous – where is your evidence ?
I can’t point to a Bible story that I believe. Maybe something in Kings.
The Holy Spirit wrote the Bible through the prophets – in its original language the Bible is inerrant and the Word of God.
The stories are literal and also have a symbolic meaning.
Well, that is what you have come to believe through indoctrination, rationalization or whatever. There is just about no truth to the Bible.
What do you mean by “truth”? Certainly the myth of Oedipus had truth for those who heard it – namely, the inexorable power of fate and the lot of people, the inability to escape one’s destiny. Was there literally a king named Oedipus? Maybe, but that’s not the point.
As a commenter said, the Bible is a library including “history” (not in the modern western sense but more akin to the great epics), poetry, psalmody, wisdom (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs), and, yes, even fiction (which includes Jonah, Judith, Ruth, Tobit, etc). Was there a Ruth, Tobit, or Jonah? Probably, but that takes second place to the story – like Abraham Lincoln and that penny or Washington and the cherry tree or Johnny Appleseed.
As for the histories, they certainly are intended as factual history in the ANE sense. Take Genesis, however – which causes the most problems. If we want to debate the historicity of the Exodus or “Conquest” (which has a lot of nuances and is often misrepresented), that’s another story. Archaeologically, we can confirm the existence of the House of David so the monarchy from David onward stands relatively firm whether we want to debate minutiae within. As a side note, I doubt we could archaeologically confirm a lot about what we “know” from history if we didn’t have people like Manetho, Herodotus, Josephus, or Thucydides – which is why I am not a biblical minimalist [though not a “literalist,” something only a few hundred years old or so; the greatest thinkers of the Church catholic, Origen, the Cappadocians, John Scotus Eriugena, and St. Augustine among other Fathers and Mothers (St. Macrina the Younger) were certainly not literalists, like the fundamentalists today].
To get back to Genesis, first, there’s no clear answer about when it was written. Scholarship for its final, editorial form has ranged from the time of Solomon (Dr. Gary Rendsburg) to the Persian period. Personally, I lean towards the former due to its strong Egyptian interaction and polemic (cf. Rendsburg’s “The Egyptian Sun-God Ra in the Pentateuch”; Hoffmeier’s “Some Thoughts on Genesis 1-2 and Egyptian Cosmology”), but no matter. Following standard ANE form, the Flood of Noah and Tower of Babel act as a narrative breaker between poetic, symbolic/abridged history and epic history – i.e., between the unremembered past and the earliest collective memories (see Kikawada’s entry on “Primeval History” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary). In fact, Genesis 1 in particular is written like poetry – not history – and at least in some estimates was written as a temple liturgy to be performed. The world is depicted as a temple, God as the primordial temple-builder for his residence (cf. Egyptian motifs of the primordial mound). Thus the truths affirmed are the oneness of God [i.e., no other god possesses Godliness like the Creator-God], the utter dependability of the creation on God who creates the gods and hosts as his servants (from nothing even?), who cannot subvert God as his creatures, its sacred place as temple for the interaction between God and humanity in worship, and the human role in looking after it as his image, ruling in a priestly fashion.
Please see [John Walton’s “The Lost World of Genesis”; Morrow, Jeffrey. “Creation as Temple-Building and Work as Liturgy in Genesis 1-3”; Stager, Lawrence. “Jerusalem as Eden”; Anderson, Gary. “The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in the Jewish and Christian Imagination”; anything by Dr. Michael Heiser, who maintains a blog]
That same message is reinforced in Genesis 2, adopting the scheme where Eden is located on the sacred and primordial mountain, perhaps located in the third heavens, where the council of the sons of God and Adam and Eve as his priests are located – a paradise, a temple garden. Adam and Eve possessed a God-given destiny, theosis, not yet fulfilled; yet they chose wrongly, the wrong Tree, and thus lost a privilege to partially regained at Mt. Sinai and the Jerusalem Temple – the future transfiguration of humanity as a son of God. Please see Wilder’s “Illumination and Investiture: The Royal Significance of the Tree of Wisdom in Genesis 3” and Alexandra Parvan’s “Genesis 1-3: Augustine and Origen on the Coats of Skin” Indeed, the gods themselves fell and were allotted to the nations, dispersed due to their affront to God to remain together in spite of his desires for them to fill the earth, the Flood itself due to the pollution of the world with violence, Cain, the first murderer and father of walled cities, state against state, and weapons of war and idolatry (cf. Blumenthal, Fred. “From Noah to Abraham: The Onomastics of the Period” in the Jewish Biblical Quarterly; man, made of the soil but destined for garments of light so that soil itself might be raised up to God, now alienated from God, nature, and each other; alienated from woman and put in conflict with her – Genesis 1 and 2 unraveled – see Robert Murray’s “The Cosmic Covenant” for the role of the gods and the historical cosmos in the Bible.
This is the world we live in, the historical world, the world of nature “red tooth and claw,” But, deep down, we know that if God once said the world is good and holy, then something is wrong with our current constitution even if no one, not even the biblical writers, know of such a specific time. It was God’s dream and our dream, and the writers place the loss of that dream on our shoulders, our theodicy. Now theodicy can only exist if we affirm the one God of Genesis 1 who made all things (“out of nothing” post-exilic Jews and Christians will add). We live in the pit of theodicy, of death and conflict. Yom Kippur and the High Holidays represent the ancient Jewish answer – the day of YHWH’s purgation of the world and the day of judgment on sins and impurity – the resetting of the world to Genesis 1. For Jews and Christians, ancient and modern, the resurrection and the World to Come represent a partial answer – namely, that God will save those creatures who trust him even unto death and beyond it. He will provide justice. Please see Leonard Greenspoon’s “The Origin of the Idea of the Resurrection,” Klaas Spronk’s “Beatific Afterlife in Ancient Israel,” Desmond Alexander’s “The Old Testament View of Life After Death,” and Stephen Cook’s “Funerary Practices and Afterlife Expectations in Ancient Israel.”
For Christians, this hope is manifested specifically in the resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus, who fulfills the General Resurrection in the World to Come, fulfills it for all of creation in his own body, by sacrificing his body unto death and then overcoming it. So, do I think there was a historical Adam and Eve? Noah? Maybe, but even their historical counterparts take second importance to the situation we and the ancient writers know to be true everyday – namely, the theodicy and its incompatibility with the God of Genesis 1.
As a side note, if you are interested, there is an excellent little book on the historical Noah [not the literary one] – minus the global flood (which has no evidence) and the ark (ditto) – entitled “Noah’s Ark and the Ziusudra Epic: Sumerian Origins of the Flood Myth” by Robert M. Best.
There is overwhelming evidence of the Noachin Flood you can study it easily by googling. Jesus , Peter , Paul referred to the Flood and since the universe was created through Jesus – then He would know.
Believing man made myths and rejecting the inerrancy of the Bible is prophesied to happen even among christians.
“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)
Religion has one purpose: to make people believe so they will pass it on and increase the number of followers thereby increasing the contributions to the leaders. Look at how rich the Pope is and the televangelists.
It predicts that people will stop believing for the very purpose of making sure they continue to believe. And why should there be such dire consequences for not believing? What difference does it make if I don’t believe any of it?
Jesus and the apostles were not rich and suffered excruciating pain and torture as did millions of Christians throughout the ages for their faith.
Preaching the gospel for money is also prophesied in the NT BUT that does not make it untrue.
2 peter 2 ; 3 NIV “In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.”
Well according to the Bible – if you reject the only means of salvation you will be judged on what you have done and that would mean the lake of fire for me
and for you for all eternity , since I have done much harm
I am not concerned with eternity. I think, see, hear, feel, etc. because I have a brain that is functional. As my brain goes, so goes my consciousness. There is no consciousness without a functioning brain. When I die, my brain will stop functioning and there will be no consciousness. In essence, I will no longer exist. So why would I worry about a lake of fire which is just an attempt to scare me into believing what I already know is not true?
Who designed the brain ?? The most powerful and small computer on the planet . But yet you would not believe a computer with a million times less power could make itself , nor the program in it , do you ever ponder the complexity of the creation ??? Have you ever seen anything make itself ?
Like all living organs, the brain has evolved from brains of our ancestors including the Great Ape and its ancestors. The Cosmos is behind all the physical and chemical laws and processes involved in this evolution.
It is childish reasoning to think that the apes are close to us ie because they look like us somewhat – it does not go by looks since we have 50% DNA in common with bananas and up 80% in common with jellyfish and a type of worm. Your great uncle was not a banana .
There are more than 300 million DNA differences with apes.
““Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless.” Louis Bounoure. The Advocate, 8 March 1984, p. 17.
“And the salient fact is this: if by evolution we mean macroevolution (as we henceforth shall), then it can be said with the utmost rigor that the doctrine is totally bereft of scientific sanction. Now, to be sure, given the multitude of extravagant claims about evolution promulgated by evolutionists with an air of scientific infallibility, this may indeed sound strange. And yet the fact remains that there exists to this day not a shred of bona fide scientific evidence in support of the thesis that macroevolutionary transformations have ever occurred.” Wolfgang Smith, Teilhardism and the New Religion (Rockford., Ill.: Tan Books, 1988), pp. 5-6. Dr. Smith, taught at MIT and UCLA.
If evolution was not the mechanism for the development of different species of plants and animals, then a better explanation must be determined. If someone who thinks he has proven that Darwin was wrong is then going to resort to some kind of creationist alternative, wouldn’t that be a worse theory than Darwin’s?
Darwins Evolution is the elephant in the room – few believe it .
But there are only two possibilities – God created all – or nothing created all.
With absolutely no evidence for evolution after 200 years it leaves us only with God.
If evolution was true the evidence would be overwhelming – there would be trillions of intermediates in the fossil record and walking about today since they all had to survive to continue the great miracle.
There would be deer with flippers and sonar standing around the shores waiting for the next cosmic ray to damage the DNA in egg or seed so that they can plunge into the sea and chase squid rather than pine cones.
(this scenario is actually proposed on nat. geog. on the basis of a fossil earbone – insanity.)
“It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favored by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.”
Personal letter from Dr Collin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London, to Luther D. Sunderland
“Random mutations” might be the only error that Darwin made and Neo Darwinism holds on to so as not to concede any ground to the creationists.
So there is a teleological influence on mutations. They somehow have a purpose. I credit this to the Cosmos. Not God or Allah.
MUTATIONS ARE DAMAGE or neutral to the genome. They cannot design a whale’s sonar or a bats radar – they are primitive damage – you dont want even one if you can avoid them.
Bacterial mutations are ALREADY built into their genome. Like Darwins finches are still finches whose beaks can adapt in three generations to food supply – they have this ability already in their genome. They will always be finches.
“Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum, there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species.”
Dr. Etheridge, senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, cited in Dr. Scott Huse, The Collapse of Evolution.
“The more statistically improbable a thing is, the less can we believe that it just happened by blind chance. Superficially the obvious alternative to chance is an intelligent Designer.”
– Dr. Richard Dawkins (Department of Zoology, Oxford University, UK)
I concede to you that the mutations are not random. They are teleological. Even Darwin’s finches had beneficial mutations that were not random. I concede to your argument about (random) mutations.
The adaptation ability ( mutations) which God gave each genome has to be designed into the creature. But they will never change one kind into another.
The fastest deer is “selected” when it escapes the lion , but it is still a deer –
its DNA has not changed because of this event – indeed natural selection keeps the DNA pure.
Natural selection is not evolution at all but breeding .
“The hair on the Chekurovka mammoth was found to have a carbon-14 age of 26,000 years but the peaty soil in which is was preserved was found to have a carbon-14 dating of only 5,600 years.”
(“Dry bones and other fossils” by Dr. Gary Parker)
“Scientists got dates of 164 million and 3 billion years for two Hawaiian lava flows. But these lava flows happened only about 200 years ago in 1800 and 1801.
(Radiocarbon Journal, Vol. 8, 1966.)
“The Carbon-14 contents of the shells of the snails of Melanoides tuberculatus living today in artesian springs in southern Nevada indicate an apparent age of 27,000 years.”
Alan C. Riggs, Science, vol 224 (1984) 58-61
I concede that there is an intelligence behind the mutations but not that evolution as a mechanism for change (even one species to another) is wrong. I don’t acknowledge your biblical god as that intelligence.
But who is the intelligence and why can’t it not be the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.
Mutations dont construct new species. And muddy water will not “evolve ” a single cell.
PLUS All the evidence does not prove your mutation theory as having given us the species – so this is what we see and many evolutionists see.
It did not happen.
“I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. . .I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument.”
Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History. The quote is from a personal letter dated 10th April 1979 from Dr. Patterson to creationist Luther D. Sunderland and is referring to Dr. Patterson’s book “Evolution” (1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.).
Help me on this. I just read Counting to God by Doug Ell. He also comes to the conclusion that the intelligence behind this is the God of Abraham. Why????
What did ANE scribes know that we don’t know now? I believe Carl Sagan when he calls it the Cosmos.
All scripture is inspired by God through His prophets . He spoke directly to Abraham and called him friend. He was chosen because of his faith to be the father of all who have faith in Christ.
Not one letter , jot or tittle of the Law will pass away. In the Hebrew each letter of the Torah has importance which is why the Jews would perform lots of tests before they would authenticate even one page of scripture.
All other faith writings are mumbo jumbo compared to the Word of God which actually has power when spoken.
Jesus is the WORD (the bible) made flesh.
So scripture was not made up by the writers – God told them what to write.
The real reason for atheism and God knows it :-
“I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.
The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves.
As for myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.”
Aldous Huxley: Ends and Means, pp. 270 ff.
Note: Some have questioned my use of Huxley’s quote here asking, “What does it have to do with the theory of evolution?” The answer can be found in the statements of Provine, Shallis, and Simpson just above. The theory of evolution provides a means for the philosophical belief in a “purposeless and materialistic process” of life. Some, like Huxley, find this state of meaninglessness to be rather “liberating”.
No. I definitely don’t believe all that. But it is a stretch to say there is absolutely no meaning or purpose to all this. You can always make your own and live by it.
It is a matter of research on archaeology , prophecy , scientific evidence and personal testimony study. If God sees you are genuine He promises that you will find Him. He knows your heart
‘We have no acceptable theory of evolution at the present time. There is none; and I cannot accept the theory that I teach to my students each year. Let me explain. I teach the synthetic theory known as the neo-Darwinian one, for one reason only; not because it’s good, we know it is bad, but because there isn’t any other. Whilst waiting to find something better you are taught something which is known to be inexact, which is a first approximation. . .’
Professor Jerome Lejeune: From a French recording of internationally recognized geneticist, Professor Jerome Lejeune, at a lecture given in Paris on March 17, 1985. Translated by Peter Wilders of Monaco.”
I think if evolutionists show the slightest doubt, the creationists will pounce on those doubts and claim victory. It is more important to teach kids nontheistic imperfect theories than theistic nonsense such as God spoke everything into existence and made all living things in the species and forms they are in today. That amounts to abuse.
But evolutionists do show doubt if you read the quotes.
If evolution is not true it should be pounced on . It is evil to teach kids scientific lies in order to hide God from them.
Science is not evolution and does not need evolution which is an unproven theory.
Evolution is a faith based religion.
“Thus, a century ago, [it was] Darwinism against Christian orthodoxy. To-day the tables are turned. The modified, but still characteristically Darwinian theory has itself become an orthodoxy, preached by its adherents with religious fervour, and doubted, they feel, only by a few muddlers imperfect in scientific faith.”
Grene, Marjorie [Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of California, Davis], “The Faith of Darwinism,” Encounter, Vol. 74, November 1959, pp.48-56, p.49
“The more one studies palaeontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which it is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion.”
More, Louis T. [late Professor of Physics, University of Cincinnati, USA], “The Dogma of Evolution,” Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ, 1925, Second Printing, p.160.
Looking at all of this with the premise that the atheists are right and the theists wrong, it all comes down to followers believing scriptures that they have come to accept as being inerrant and sacred. They could just as easily be made up, especially if they contain reports of occurrences that defy the laws of nature. There had never been a single documented and substantiated case of any law of nature ever being superseded. All such reports are nonverifiable or shown to be delusions or frauds.
For the Bible to contain so many supernatural occurrences, none of which can be verified and accepted on faith under the threat of dire consequences for those who don’t believe all makes me very skeptical.
GOD demands faith in His Word. A miracle is when God suspends His Own Laws. There are plenty of frauds but thousands of miracles which were proven throughout the ages.
The Jews demanded signs and wonders in order to believe but Jesus did not oblige them again. It is about testing faith. I dont need any signs and wonders
but have a strong faith.
But everything follows a single theme: Believe. The whole goal of religion is to make people believe in it. The Muslims are even worse than the Christians. They will kill you if you leave their religion.
It’s like: “You better believe or else”. Why can’t people see right through that?
Because some christians used coercion in the past does not make the truth void Jesus invited everyone to the banquet – He did not use coercion but spoke the word of God with its power to save. He was gentle and kind and never refused anyone. Love only love is the way with true christians.
But evolution defies the laws of nature – it defies what we see with our own eyes . It boils down to accepting a theory thats not been proven in 200 years.
If you dont believe in evolution or dont keep stum you wont get a job in most areas of science like teaching or research.
Evolution must rely on miracles more incredible than the bible story.
The universe popping out from a tiny speck – a living cell with 3000 DNA code spontaneously arising in a muddy pool and teaching itself to divide , then how to become a jellyfish , fish , land animal , bird , then back to the sea as a whale
This is fairy stories for adults
By denying what some of the most esteemed scientists in the world have to say about evolution and accepting the Bible as an authoritative source of information about life, the world and the universe, you are turning the clock back to the Dark Ages. I’ve never conversed with a full fledged creationist such as you seem to be. It is pretty hard for me to swallow some if the things you believe from religion and what you don’t believe from science. You seem to have all kinds of references from what I assume are reliable sources. I don’t know.
But the quotes I gave you are from esteemed scientists – and most if not all are atheists but honest enough to say they have no evidence.
The clock is not turned back at all since the founders of the scientific disciplines were mainly christian bible believers. The church was full of scientists.
Evolution is not science – science exists without this unproven faith based theory.
Many famous scientists are creationists and do excellent work.
The quotes are well known and referenced.
“STEPHEN GOULD, Harvard, “…one outstanding fact of the fossil record that many of you may not be aware of; that since the so called Cambrian explosion…during which essentially all the anatomical designs of modern multicellular life made their first appearance in the fossil record, NO NEW Phyla of animals have entered the fossil record.”, Speech at SMU, Oct.2, 1990
Something unusual must have occurred in the Cambrian Era.
Its called the creation in Genesis . They were created instantly – no evolution at all.
“”Generation after generation, through countless cell divisions, the genetic heritage of living things is scrupulously preserved in DNA … All of life depends on the accurate transmission of information. As genetic messages are passed through generations of dividing cells, even small mistakes can be life-threatening … if mistakes were as rare as one in a million, 3000 mistakes would be made during each duplication of the human genome. Since the genome replicates about a million billion times in the course of building a human being from a single fertilized egg, it is unlikely that the human organism could tolerate such a high rate of error. In fact, the actual rate of mistakes is more like one in 10 billion.”
(Miroslav Radman and Robert Wagner, The High Fidelity of DNA Duplication… Scientific America. Vol. 299, No 2 (August 1988, pp 40-44. Quote is from page 24))
You are mixing up two totally separate issues. One is the intelligence behind nature and the universe (which I call the Cosmos) and the other is the main fictional character described in the Bible. There is no connection between these two entities. They’re like apples and oranges.
Intelligence can only come from living beings not from inanimate matter.
Nature is directed by God – you cannot speak to nature and converse intelligently .
My point is that you have taken an imaginary person, God, and credited him with being the answer to questions that scientists are seeking to answer using billions of dollars of research money and the greatest minds in the world. As I said, even if there is this great being who is responsible for all that is, it is not who or what you think it is. It is not your imaginary friend.
You say that God is imaginary but billions would disagree.
You think the Cosmos has intelligence when simple observation would show that the stars are merely inanimate matter and cannot answer your prayers.
You imagine that the moon is conscious and has intelligence ?
Even atheists would disagree.
There is an incredible order to the universe. The Greeks referred to it as the Cosmos and compared it to Chaos, which is its opposite. So Cosmos and Chaos are what we see when we look around us. Some things, like Nature, seem orderly like the Cosmos. Others are haphazard and chaotic with no rhyme or reason.
Religions have come to credit the good gods for the order (cosmos) and the bad gods for the disorder (chaos). Yours is just another one of those religions and is currently the most popular religion on the planet. But only about 20% of the people follow it. Are they right and the others wrong. According to you maybe but not me.
There is an incredible order to the universe – eg the universal constant and thousands of laws such as Boyle’s laws.
Laws need a lawgiver – God the creator.
Although you might see chaos in the universe this is only through your own eyes , but there is no chaos – everything has a purpose.
Jesus said only a few will find the truth – it does not go by popularity.
Jesus said He was the way , the truth and the life – there is no other way.
The christian religion does not permit the worship of any part of the creation – this is idolatry.
The Christian religion, as with Islam and others, is just that, a religion. By its very nature, a religion requires its followers to believe all kinds of weird shit.
As a religious person, that is what you are doing. You are believing all kinds of weird shit. Had you been raised a Muslim, you would believe in all kinds of other weird shit and recognize the weird shit that other religions teach for what it is.
The weird shit you believe makes perfect sense to you, but you can see right through the weird shit that other religions push on their followers.
It’s all a bunch of weird shit to an atheist. Every religion is wrong. Why can’t we all see that?
God can reach anyone He wants at any time – thats why many muslims , buddists etc convert – it is all God’s will when He sees repentance and humility.
The weird stuff that you believe seems incredible to me – stars and galaxies popping out of a tiny speck. A muddy pool making the super single cell , just like that. The magic fairy single cell evolving into fish , animals , birds
I gave you lots of scientific quotes on the impossibility of this happening.
But you can choose to remain in ignorance of God’s creation
Laws need a lawgiver – God the creator
Don’t you see what you are doing? Because laws need a lawgiver, you just happen to know one, your god.
Not so fast. We’ll figure this out eventually. We don’t need an answer so urgently that we accept a fictional character as the ultimate lawgiver.
Gravity , the speed of light , expansion , contraction , the universal constant – they all need scientific laws to operate – this is obvious even to a child.
You think the laws made themselves or that Mr Cosmos did it.
You think the laws made themselves or that Mr Cosmos did it.
The laws are representative of this great order that the Greeks, Carl Sagan and others call the Cosmos, as in the book and the television series. It is a much less complete and satisfying answer than yours.
That is why we are still working on it. There is no “Mr. Cosmos”. It is a concept not a man like your god.
It is just a nebulous concept with no proof , no logic just your own wishful thinking – making your own god – like getting a stone , painting it and bowing down to worship something that cant hear or see or do you any favors .
Called Idolatry – wasting your precious time on earth.
Yes. I agree. It is just a nebulous concept. But it is not idolatry because we do not worship the Cosmos or Nature or knowledge or wisdom, etc. We value these things but they are not false idols. Maybe it is all from a god. It’s just not the god of anyone’s religion. I hope you will try to understand what I am trying to say. I value your wisdom.
Yes even though we say we dont worship idols it is easy to fall into that trap – it is not only statues and bowing etc but could just be an idea, or pop music – I had lots of idolatry in my life but did not realise it. It is a great release when you let go of all worldliness . Its about how you spend your time.
Just want to tell you that your efforts are not in vain.
I will read your comments again and follow up on the reference. You feel strongly about the weird shit that you believe. And yes, I have my own weird shit that I believe.
Hope you find the truth by asking God in prayer , since I believed weird stuff for 35 years – the book that cancelled my doubts was the genesis flood by morris and whitcomb since I was brought up in an evolutionary background – it was sitting in a 2nd hand book shop that I had never been in. Solved all my doubts in minutes.
the genesis flood by morris and whitcomb
I’ll check it out.
I took you for someone who was raised a fundamentalist from the start. So you saw things my way for 35 years? I believed in Catholicism for 60.
CC can lose a lot of youth when they start to question the truth of the bible which is OK but they dont get proper answers – just believe was the answer.
My five daughters were brought up to believe the Bible in a literal and a symbolic sense and I always found an answer for them – so they are still in the faith.
Hmmm. I totally oppose religious indoctrination of children. I did to my kids and every generation before me did it to the next generation. Now that I am pretty much anti religion, I agree with Dawkins that it is child abuse.
But Dawkins et al does the same – he wants all schools to preach evolution only but without examining evidence ie accept the theory – no questions and no other theory allowed.
I didn’t indoctrinate them just showed them where to look and to spot the holes in Darwin’s theory. There was no compulsion
We are to teach the truth to our children.
“We are to teach the truth to our children.”
Exactly. First we have to know the truth. None of the religions of this world are truthful. They mislead people. Perhaps ignorance is bliss, but the truth matters.
We are on opposite sides in the culture wars.
But Jesus was truthful – He had no sin in Him .
All organisations by man will see some sort of corruption because the devil”s always there – eg there was Judas among the disciples.
But this does not make us turn our backs on the truth.
Understand that while I think you’re very bright, I am 180 on this.
To me, Jesus was mistaken to be something he was not. I don’t really know what in the Gospels is true and what is made up or embellished. I do know that if he even existed, he was not what people make him out to be.
I believe that Jesus taught us to love one another and to think of God as being Our Heavenly Father. I don’t believe much more about him.
You believe in the Monty Python sketch then – just someone in the wrong place at the wrong time
Well pliny the elder and the younger talked about Jesus , so did Titus and Josephus and Claudius , and Nero – reliable historians.
Jesus prophesied that the temple would be destroyed and it happened in 70 ad after his death and all the scriptures were written since this prophecy was the only mention of it.
Josephus who was there describes how the Christians escaped by believing this prophecy – they ran over the rooftops to edom – just as the prophecy said.
Some Christians who lingered were given another chance when the Romans laid off for a while – they did not turn back to collect their belongings as Jesus warned them.
There are lots of prophecies in the bible which came true to the letter and lots more is to happen – such as the last week of years in Daniel in Israel when the antichrist will reign the world.
Bah! The Gospel in which Jesus talks about the temple was written after it was destroyed. The Romans talk about the Christians but what they say is hardly about Jesus.
You have great trust in the truthfulness of the Bible. I think there is barely anything of significance in it that is actually true.
You saying what anti christs have been saying for 2000 years that it is made up. The prophecy was so accurate they HAD to say this.
The christians managed to escape BECAUSE they read it BEFORE the event..
Well talking about Christians is the same as talking about Jesus – it proves He existed. There was anti christian graffiti on the walls of pompey before it was
destroyed – they rejected Jesus .
Lots wife did not believe God’s word and was destroyed , she was not a bad woman in our sense of the word – lukewarm.
Thats why Jesus reminds us to remember Lot’s wife.
The salt likeness is worth a google but I dont need to know if it is authentic.
Wow. You are like a believer on steroids. When it comes to religious beliefs, you swallow it all, hook, line and sinker. But any scientific theories that cause one to question religion are immediately dismissed as heretical. You have drunk the Kool-Aid big time, my friend.
CREATIONISTS DO GOOD SCIENCE by BibleScienceGuy
What world-famous medical doctor and inventor said this?
“I am a young earth creation scientist and believe that God created the world in six 24-hour days, just as recorded in the book of Genesis.”
This innovative scientist designed a diagnostic tool used worldwide to detect cancer. In 1989 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for this invention.
Who is he?
In 1988 President Reagan awarded this man the National Medal of Technology for his invention. In 2001 he received the $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award for his work.
Who is this super-scientist and creationist?
He is Dr. Raymond V. Damadian (1936- ), the inventor of the MRI scanner that revolutionized the field of medicine.
Damadian discovered that tumors and normal tissue can be distinguished in live individuals by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). In 1971 he reported this discovery in a research paper in the journal Science.
Damadian invented the first MRI machine for scanning the human body. In 1977 he was the first to diagnose cancer via a full body scan of a human being.
Dr. Damadian is a Biblical creationist. He said,
“I am a young earth creation scientist and believe that God created the world in six 24-hour days, just as recorded in the book of Genesis. By God’s grace and the devoted prayers of my godly mother-in-law, I invented the MRI scanner in 1969. The idea that scientists who believe the earth is 6,000 years old cannot do real science is simply wrong.”
Listen to Dr. Damadian’s testimony (26 seconds) in his own forceful words:
The fact that this doctor’s religious beliefs do not hamper his technical expertise in no way should be taken as an indication that those religious beliefs are correct. Why would he have to be correct in what he believes about the history of this planet to be a good doctor? They are entirely different disciplines.
Well you seemed to think earlier on that creation had no place in science
but since evolution is a faith based religion it does not affect science at all.
“”The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table, … the collection is so tantalizingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmented and inconclusive, that more can be said about what is missing than about what is present. …but ever since Darwin’s work inspired the notion that fossils linking modern man and extinct ancestor would provide the most convincing proof of human evolution, preconceptions have led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man.”
John Reader (photo-journalist and author of “Missing Links”), “Whatever happened to Zinjanthropus?” New Scientist, 26 March 1981, p. 802
since evolution is a faith based religion it does not affect science at all.
Come on, now. It is a scientific theory and you know it. I’m not buying the objectivity of religious people who deny evolution. They have their own agenda.
THE QUOTES WERE MAINLY FROM ATHEIST SCIENTISTS.
What about the atheist scientists who say there is no evidence for Darwin’s theory – surely they have not been brainwashed by religion since most of the quotes I gave you are from scientists with no axe to grind.
So we have NON religious scientists who deny the theory.
“Echoing the criticism made of his father’s habilis skulls, he added that Lucy’s skull was so incomplete that most of it was ‘imagination made of plaster of Paris’, thus making it impossible to draw any firm conclusion about what species she belonged to.”
Referring to comments made by Richard Leakey (Director of National Museums of Kenya) in The Weekend Australian, 7-8 May 1983, Magazine, p. 3
“”The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion… The only alternative is the doctrine of special creation, which may be true, but is irrational.” (Dr. L.T. More)”
I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme… (Dr. Karl Popper, German-born philosopher of science, called by Nobel Prize-winner Peter Medawar, “incomparably the greatest philosopher of science who has ever lived.”)
“The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory — is it then a science or faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation…” (Dr. L. Harrison Matthews, in the introduction to the 1971 edition of Darwin’s “Origin of Species”)”
What is so frustrating for our present purpose is that it seems almost impossible to give any numerical value to the probability of what seems a rather unlikely sequence of events… An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle… (Dr. Francis Crick, Nobel Prize-winner, codiscoverer of DNA)
So we have NON religious scientists who deny the theory.
It is, nonetheless, a scientific theory (not a faith based religion) even if some disagree with that theory.
Science is about evidence and there is no evidence for Darwin’s theory.
It is therefore a faith based religion much more than Christianity which has abundant evidence.
After 200 years of looking desperately for evidence we have none.
These are atheist scientists :-
“The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change…” (Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, famous Harvard Professor of Paleontology)
“I admit that an awful lot of that has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs (in the American Museum) is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable, particularly because the people who propose these kinds of stories themselves may be aware of the speculative nature of some of the stuff. But by the time it filters down to the textbooks, we’ve got science as truth and we’ve got a problem.” (Dr. Niles Eldridge, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum)
“The fundamental reason why a lot of paleontologists don’t care much for gradualism is because the fossil record doesn’t show gradual change and every paleontologist has know that ever since Cuvier. If you want to get around that you have to invoke the imperfection of the fossil record. Every paleontologist knows that most species, most species, don’t change. That’s bothersome if you are trained to believe that evolution ought to be gradual. In fact it virtually precludes your studying the very process you went into the school to study. Again, because you don’t see it, that brings terrible distress.” (Dr. Stephen Jay Gould)
Science is about evidence and there is no evidence for Darwin’s theory.
It is therefore a faith based religion much more than Christianity which has abundant evidence.
This is an incredibly biased statement that could only be made by someone with an extremly fundamentalist worldview.
The only suspected error in Neo-Darwinism involves the notion that the mutations occur randomly with no teleological purpose and that the changes are minor and gradual as opposed to major and abrupt.
This does NOT mean that evolution is not a scientific theory. Your delusion that Christianity is based on evidence instead of on faith and that evolution is based on faith instead of evidence is way, way out there in left field.
You are lost in terms of your having a grip on reality. Let’s just agree that the part of the theory of evolution that states that the mutations occur randomly and not teleologically cannot be proven and is therefore suspect. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water and declare that evolution is a religion, not science. That is insane.
Its not biased at all – NO evidence has been found in ANY area of evolution.
It is nothing to do with fundamentalism but evidence.
Mutations cannot design extra living machinery but are actually damaging or neutral.
You would never get a mouse mutated to a bird or bat in a trillion trillion years.
There is also no intermediates , there should be trillions.
You are detached from reality – even from what you see around you.
Anyone who thinks a deer could mutate into a whale does need treatment
Your basis for believing this nonsense is a rejection of God.
“”To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts. These classical evolutionary theories are a gross over-simplification of an immensely complex and intricate mass of facts, and it amazes me that they are swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without murmur of protest.” (Sir Ernest Chain, Nobel Prize winner)
“Evolution is a theory universally accepted, not because it can be proved to be true, but because the only alternative, ‘special creation,’ is clearly impossible.” (D.M.S. Watson, Professor of Zoology, London University)
Your basis for believing this nonsense is a rejection of God.
Then the Pope also rejects God.
I accept your argument AGAINST random mutations and natural selection being the mechanism for every living thing having evolved from a single living cell over 3 billion years. Your references are wonderful. But that only leaves creationism and that is unacceptable.
You admit then that your rejection of God is based on being unable to accept Him as creator and not on scientific evidence – blind faith like this is therefore a religion.
MORE REAL SCIENCE
“Scientists now know that proteins are extremely complicated three-dimensional chains of several thousand atoms. These atoms are arranged very precisely depending on the function of the protein. Each protein molecule is made up of a “backbone” of amino groups and carboxyl acid groups, linked by carbon atoms. All along the length of the molecule are amino acids, arranged as “side groups” in a very precise fashion, depending on the function of the protein.
As the study of protein molecules progressed, it became evident that proteins of similar function, but in different organisms, had slightly different sequences of amino acids.
Now the study has progressed to the point that it is possible to state with mathematical precision the degree of divergence (difference) in the amino acid sequences of similar proteins from one species to another. For example, a protein molecule that performs a certain function in the cell of a dog might be 17% different from a protein molecule that performs the same function in a fish.
Evolutionists expected that these differences would support their theory. They would have predicted that the protein molecules from the cell of yeast, for example, would perhaps be slightly different from the proteins that performed the same functions in a bacteria cell, but far more similar to the bacterial protein than the proteins from a vertebrate would be. The idea was that the yeast was closer to the bacteria on the “evolutionary ladder” than a vertebrate was, therefore their proteins should be more alike (less divergent). Evolution theory would have predicted that the differences between protein molecules would become gradually and progressively larger as organisms moved up the evolutionary ladder.
However, the evidence is now quite conclusive. The protein from yeast, to continue the above example, is as mathematically divergent from the bacteria protein as the protein from a human. And, in fact, so are the proteins from birds, fish, insects, and even plants!
Instead of a “chain” of divergences leading gradually up from simple species to complex ones, the proteins of each subclass are essentially “equidistant” in divergence from the proteins of the other subclasses. There are no “intermediates” connecting the subclasses.
This phenomenon has now been observed and cataloged for many proteins in many different species.
This evidence has been devastating for the theory that species have gradually changed from simple to complex. Had that theory been true, the divergences at a molecular level, where the changes must have taken place, would have grown gradually and sequentially larger and larger as the species moved up the evolutionary ladder. There should be no “breaks” in the degree of divergence, only a smooth continuum.
Instead the differences are consistent and have startling mathematical precision.
Again. I applaud your being able to prove, without any credible contradiction, that all this precision requires an intelligent entity of some nature who our forefathers referred to as the Creator. But: You admit then that your rejection of God is based on being unable to accept Him as creator and not on scientific evidence
Yes. I reject God. Why? Because of all the bs that people say about him.
But it is not man we listen to but the bible – “Let God be true and every man a liar ” It is what His book the bible says about Himself .
“I reject evolution because I deem it obsolete; because the knowledge, hard won since 1830, of anatomy, histology, cytology, and embryology, cannot be made to accord with its basic idea.
The foundationless, fantastic edifice of the evolution doctrine would long ago have met with its long- deserved fate were it not that the love of fairy tales is so deep-rooted in the hearts of man.” (Dr. Albert Fleischmann, University of Erlangen)
“By the late 1970s, debates on university campuses throughout the free world were being held on the subject of origins with increasing frequency. Hundreds of scientists, who once accepted the theory of evolution as fact, were abandoning ship and claiming that the scientific evidence was in total support of the theory of creation.
Well-known evolutionists, such as Isaac Asimov and Stephen Jay Gould, were stating that, since the creationist scientists had won all of the more than one hundred debates, the evolutionists should not debate them.” (Luther Sunderland, “Darwin’s Enigma”, p.10)
Ok. Suppose practically the whole academic and scientific communities are wrong. No species ever evolved into another one. There are no transitional fossils between species. Every species was created during a six day period, including man and dinosaurs. Where does that leave us?
It leaves us believing in the creator God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and also all of the bible . This means that we can rely on God’s instructions in the Bible and have a respectful fear of God so that we will repent and follow the commandments of Jesus.
“Without faith no one can please God” Abraham believed God and his faith was credited as righteousness.
Evolution although some religious accept it through ignorance is mainly an alternative God – evolution – the god of chance and time and even bigger miracles..
“”Many have a feeling that somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe.”
(Charles Townes, 1964 Nobel Prize winner in physics, “Science Finds God,” Newsweek, 20 July, 1998)
“250,000 species of plants and animals recorded and deposited in museums throughout the world did not support the gradual unfolding hoped for by Darwin.”
(Dr. David Raup, curator of geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, “Conflicts Between Darwinism and Paleontology”)
“The pathetic thing about it is that many scientists are trying to prove the doctrine of evolution, which no science can do.”
(Dr. Robert A. Milikan, physicist and Nobel Prize winner, speech before the American Chemical Society.)
“The miracles required to make evolution feasible are far greater in number and far harder to believe than the miracle of creation.”
(Dr. Richard Bliss, former professor of biology and science education as Christian Heritage College, “It Takes A Miracle For Evolution.”)
Alright. So. Let’s say I go back in a time machine and can observe the creation of the universe. Does it happen like the Big Bang?
And then what would I see happen in terms of the creation of the earth and living things ?
There was no big bang – impossible. God spoke everything into existence in six literal 24 hour days (hebrew = yom = 24 hour days)
The creation just appeared fully formed out of nothing.
Ironically the big bang people think it popped out of nothing – By Itself ??
A bigger miracle.
“”The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop.”
(Dr. Edwin Conklin, evolutionist and professor of biology at Princeton University.)
“One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are-as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.”
(Dr. George Wald Evolutionist, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University at Harvard, Nobel Prize winner in Biology.)
“The explanation value of the evolutionary hypothesis of common origin is nil! Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, it seems to convey anti-knowledge. How could I work on evolution ten years and learn nothing from it? Most of you in this room will have to admit that in the last ten years we have seen the basis of evolution go from fact to faith! It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not be taught in high school, and that’s all we know about it.”
(Dr. Colin Patterson, evolutionist and senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, which houses 60 million fossils)
So. This comes down to dismissing the results of billions of dollars and man hours to ascertain how this all came to be for the writings of a ANE scribe.
If billions are spent trying to prove that God does not exist then according to the evidence the money is wasted. It is Nimrod all over again .
So you think that billions of dollars in research are spent in vain? And that science is trying to prove that God doesn’t exist?
Certainly not – there is science and there is the theory of evolution – they are not related – and science does not depend on evolution being true.
But any science like paleontology – looking at stone bones – is a waste of time and your life.
The Leakeys wasted their lives and found nothing.
Evolution does not even make it as a theory since its mechanism has never been determined or recapitulated .
“Hypothesis [evolution] based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts….These classical evolutionary theories are a gross over-simplification of an immensely complex and intricate mass of facts, and it amazes me that they are swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without a murmur of protest.”
(Sir Ernst Chan, Nobel Prize winner for developing penicillin)
“There is the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the “general theory of evolution,” and the evidence which supports this is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis.”
(Dr. G. A. Kerkut evolutionist)
The Big Bang and creation by God are equally credible. It is not more difficult to believe in the former rather than the latter.
Since nothing has ever come from nothing I disagree – God is easier to believe than the tiny speck compressed with billions of universes.
If I see a house I know someone built it – but you say it would be easier to believe it made itself ?
The builder can be seen in the houses he built – is this too easy for you.
“All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that life’s complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did.”
(Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winner)
“The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and the falsity of their beliefs.”
(Dr. Pierre-Paul Grasse of the University of Paris and past-president of the French Academy of Science)
“Meanwhile, their [evolutionists] unproven theories will continue to be accepted by the learned and the illiterate alike as absolute truth, and will be defended with a frantic intolerance that has a parallel only in the bigotry of the darkest Middle Ages. If one does not accept evolution as an infallible dogma, implicitly and without question, one is regarded as an unenlightened ignoramus or is merely ignored as an obscurantist or a naive, uncritical fundamentalist.”
(Dr. Alfred Rehwinkel)
I’m going with the Big Bang and Evolution with teleological mutations instead of at random. I’m also going to call the intelligence behind everything the Cosmos. God is the name of the main character in the Bible which is mostly fiction.
So pray and talk to the cosmos – you wont get an answer from stardust.
The stardust does not even know you exist.
There is no such thing as teleological mutations leading to new purposeful DNA code .
“It is my conviction that if any professional biologist will take adequate time to examine carefully the assumptions upon which the macro-evolution doctrine rests, and the observational and laboratory evidence that bears on the problem of origins, he/she will conclude that there are substantial reasons for doubting the truth of this doctrine. Moreover, I believe that a scientifically sound creationist view of origins is not only possible, but it is to be preferred over the evolutionary one.”
(Dean H. Kenyon, professor of biology at San Francisco State University)
“For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”
(Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means)
“I suppose the reason we leaped at the origin of species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.”
(Sir Julian Huxley, President of the United Nation’s Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO).)
You are dead set on believing and justifying certain things and denying and trying to prove other things wrong. So much so that I find it impossible to accept your worldview.
The only thing I concede is the you are right about Neo-Darwinism and how it has become almost a religion. I did come to that conclusion from our correspondences which I didn’t believe previously. But I strongly disagree with much of what you accept on faith or through faulty reasoning.
Either there IS a God who created everything or there or there is no God.
There is no in between
God does not do a bit of this and a bit of that then waits to see what happens.
God is in total control of every atom in the universe.
“God does not play dice ” Albert Einstein
“I shall discuss the broad patterns of hominoid evolution, an exercise made enjoyable by the need to integrate diverse kinds of information, and use that as a vehicle to speculate about hominoid origins, an event for which there is no recognized fossil record. Hence, an opportunity to exercise some imagination.”
(Dr. David Pilbeam)
Either there IS a God who created everything or there or there is no God.
There is no in between
I guess if those are the only two choices, I have to take the second option.
Then you have rejected your saviour in spite of the evidence for the GOD of creation.
Even if I accepted a god of creation, I still don’t need a savior.
No one can come before God with arrogance and unforgiven sins . Only by being covered by the blood of the atonement can we be accepted .
This is because God is Holy beyond our imagination.
Even Mary , the mother of Jesus said she needed a saviour
No one can come before God with arrogance and unforgiven sins.
That is a belief from a religion that has thrived by promising people forgiveness of their sins and eternal life, which is the oldest trick in the book. If I offend someone I need their forgiveness, the person whom I offend. The intelligence behind all of this is not offended by anything I do and I don’t need its forgiveness. And I definitely don’t need anyone to suffer and die to atone for anything I do, think or say.
In eternity there is no rebellion – only those who love God will be there.
Think if you had a business and you caught an employee sinning ie stealing on the small side. So you invite him for an interview before you judge him.
He comes in to your office with an arrogant air , puts his feet on your office desk right in your face , and loudly crunches on an apple – he refuses to admit to wrongdoing and says you dont pay enough and he will continue to steal in a small way – you would run him out of course.
Consider coming before God like this , in an unrepentant state , expecting to live forever with Him – you must be joking.
God is offended everytime anyone sins – since He has forgiven them many times without them even acknowledging thanks .
Eternal life is promised by religions so people like you will support those religions. When you die, that’s it. Same as when a dog dies. You just cease to exist. You need to come to grips with that. No one is going before anyone to be judged.
Not only did true believers lose all they had , they lost their lives for the Truth.
Jesus never promised prosperity but persecution. So this is nonsense.
I gave you the evidence that you live for all eternity in heaven or in hell.
I gave you the evidence that you live for all eternity in heaven or in hell.
You gave me evidence that you believe in heaven and hell. I accept the evidence that shows me you believe that.
Someday, it will be proven that genetic changes are not just random and that there is a purpose served by them. It will just be another wonder of nature and won’t be interpreted as proof of the existence of God. We can study and be amazed by nature without any religious overtones. I believe that is the correct way to educate our children. In publicly funded schools, there is no place for religion in the classroom.
Studying and being aware of nature is what Paul the apostle asks you to do , because God can be seen in the things he has MADE.
All the DNA of the species of the world can fit into a teaspoon – Bill Gates said the information system of DNA codes dwarf the whole computer industry.
There is already only one religion being taught in the classroom – it is called the theory of evolution. Christianity is not allowed in american schools – you can be expelled for bringing a bible to school.
I still don’t see the Judeo Christian God as the intelligence behind coding of DNA etc.
So who do you think would do DNA – this is only the code there are billions of other things in the human genome that they are still discovering . You know that a spoon was made by someone so what kind of infinite intelligence would design a code that could not be fully studied in ten lifetimes.
Can the DNA code arise in a muddy pool – with a cellular wall – its has to work first time ???????
“”… Life cannot have had a random beginning … The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10 to the power of 40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court …”
(Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space)
“The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it … It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution … if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.”
(Sir Fred Hoyle, astronomer, cosmologist and mathematician, Cambridge University)
So who do you think would do DNA
Let me guess. The god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Right first time – muddy pools dont do DNA .
“Evolution lacks a scientifically acceptable explanation of the source of the precisely planned codes within cells without which there can be no specific proteins and hence, no life.”
(David A Kaufman, Ph.D., University of Florida, Gainsesville)
“Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which – a functional protein or gene – is complex beyond … anything produced by the intelligence of man?”
(Molecular biologist Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (London: Burnett Books, 1985) p 342.)
“There is no agreement on the extent to which metabolism could develop independently of a genetic material. In my opinion, there is no basis in known chemistry for the belief that long sequences of reactions can organize spontaneously — and every reason to believe that they cannot. The problem of achieving sufficient specificity, whether in aqueous solution or on the surface of a mineral, is so severe that the chance of closing a cycle of reactions as complex as the reverse citric acid cycle, for example, is negligible.”
(Orgel, Leslie, “The origin of life — a review of facts and speculations,” Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 23 (Dec 1998): 491-495. pp. 494-495)
What concerns me is that Christian fundementalists choose to disprove NeoDarwinism and then say that because it is wrong, it proves that their god is behind how everything came to be as it is. Why their god?
Well who do you think made everything – what is the name of your God.
Did your God die on a cross to take the punishment for your sins.
Did the cosmos forgive your sins ??
That’s the whole point. The intelligence behind all this doesn’t care about morality. There is no morality to nature and the universe.
We are not animals and you do know about morality – God wrote it on your heart. The universe is not conscious so it can neither be moral or immoral.
“In all the thousands of fly-breeding experiments carried out all over the world for more than fifty years, a distinct new species has never been seen to emerge … or even a new enzyme.”
(Gordon Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery (New York: Harper and Row, 1983, pp 34, 38)
I completely disregard any stories that pre-date the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Some time during the reign of the kings, maybe Josiah, the Torah was written. You remember that the scrolls were supposedly found during the renovation of the temple during his reign. Who’s to say that they weren’t written for the purpose of uniting one people under one god in order build a great nation? It is likely that no historical figure truly existed before the kings and the prophets. No Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and no captivity in and exodus from Egypt. It is almost certain that the Red Sea was not parted and that there never were commandments etched into stone by a divinity.
The Old Testament was compiled during the Babylonian captivity and included “prophesies” warning the Jews not to stop worshipping their god only. By the time of Jesus, the Old Testament was accepted as literally true and people have continued to this day believing it.
How do you know all these things – where is your evidence.
The OT was written by God through His prophets. The Bible never contradicts itself so how could this book be conjured up by the Jews to agree on every point .
You can even test the prophecies that have come true. Even the date of the crucifixion was foretold by Daniel. Mathematicians have calculated that it is impossible with the theory of probability for these prophesies to be so accurate.
All the surface of the earth evidences a global flood catastrophe .
You can watch the video of Joshua’s temple , the split rock evidencing water egress , the burnt top of mt sinai , and the chariot axles and golden wheel at the bottom of the red sea – what more evidence would you need than your own eyesight .
“Prophecies warning the Jews to stop worshipping their one true God ” ????
If there are they did not come from God.
Jesus the Son of God accepted the OT as inerrant.
That the Hewbrews (Hibaru) were slaves in Egypt has been proven by recent discoveries.
When you were taught about evolution and the Bible being fables, you were given the most up to date information available at the time. You have turned away from that real truth and bought into the religious concept of “Truth” that I find to be absolutely repulsive.
So if you believe in the cruel faith of evolution – there should be trillions of examples eg like intermediates from the magic single cell in the muddy pool upwards to us – then give us ONE example of the proof of evolution.
It has been my experience that evolution deniers cannot be convinced that it is real. The tree of life can be traced using DNA analysis. It goes all the way back to one single living cell. Unlike you, I don’t predict for you any dire consequences for not believing. It is true or not true. It doesn’t matter what you believe. It has no effect on you or the truth.
No you are wrong – the tree of life does not exist but is a figment of Darwin’s imagination. The so called tree is upside down as well for evolution to be true.
Only God could create a code of 3 billion characters . God used this code to design ALL living things – it is not proof of evolution.
“I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science.” Søren Løvtrup, Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth (New York: Croom Helm, 1987), p. 422.
“Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact.” Dr. T. N. Tahmisian Evolution and the Emperor’s New Clothes by N.J. Mitchell (United Kingdom: Roydon Publications, 1983), title page.
“The Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific research, but purely the product of imagination.” Albert Fleischmann. Witnesses Against Evolution by John Fred Meldau (Denver: Christian Victory Publishing, 1968), p. 13.
How do you explain how dogs evolved from wolves and how we were able to use artificial selection over a much shorter time than has occurred through natural selection to create various breeds?
DOGS ARE STILL DOGS after billions of breeding events – they have not evolved wings or gone back to the sea as dolphins.
BREEDING is not evolution.
You are making Darwin’s mistake but he did not have knowledge of DNA or the cell.
Breeding within the “kinds” is not evolution – evolution is the changing of one species like a cod fish into say a cow over long time.
Breeding selects the DNA already in the dogs genome and can be speeded up through directed selection. But the end result is always a dog even though they look vastly different.
So God created the dog (canine) species or kind with the full genome of DNA code so this full code has given rise to all the dog species .
The poodle and the wolf can breed , but the species can diversify so much and lose so much DNA that they become sterile – but still remain dogs.
“The Big Bang “…represents the instantaneous suspension of physical laws, the sudden, abrupt flash of lawlessness that allowed something to come out of nothing. It represents a true miracle—transcending physical principles….” Paul Davies, The Edge of Infinity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), p161.
“We have all heard of The Origin of Species, although few of us have had time to read it…A casual perusal of the classic made me understand the rage of Paul Feyerabend…I agree with him that Darwinism contains ‘wicked lies’; it is not a ‘natural law’ formulated on the basis of factual evidence, but a DOGMA , reflecting the dominating social philosophy of the last century.” Kenneth J. Hsu, “Sedimentary Petrology and Biologic Evolution,” Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 56 (September 1986): p730.
“I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.” Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun as quoted by James Perloff, Tornado in a Junkyard (Arlington, Massachusetts: Refuge Books, 1999), p. 253.
Ok. Then where and when (and how) was the first dog “created”?
God created all species within the six days – out of nothing – He spoke them into existence – there can be no other explanation.
I mean the stories, the narratives about change over time. How the dinosaurs became extinct, how the mammals evolved, where man came from. These seem to me to be little more than story-telling.
We have access to the tips of a tree, the tree itself is a theory and people who pretended to know about the tree and to describe what went on with it, how the branches came off and the twigs came off are, I think, telling stories.
Dr. Colin Patterson,( Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London ) in an interview on British broadcasting Corporation ( BBC ) television
“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.”
Stephen Jay Gould, Former Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Harvard University
That is your alternative to evolution? GOD SPOKE THEM INTO EXISTENCE???!
So why do you swallow without questioning that “NOTHING” spoke everything into existence but reject what God says that He spoke things into existence.
Cant you see your own blindness – that you can believe in “nothing” more than you can believe in God ???
“The opportune appearance of mutations permitting animals and plants to meet their needs seems hard to believe. Yet the Darwinian theory is even more demanding: a single plant, a single animal would require thousands and thousands of lucky, appropriate events. Thus, miracles would become the rule: events with an infinitesimal probability could not fail to occur …. There is no law against day dreaming, but science must not indulge in it.”
Grasse, Pierre-Paul (1977) Evolution of Living Organism Academic Press, New York, N.Y., p. 103
Scientists are trying to figure out how everything came from nothing. They know that the idea that a divinity spoke it into existence is an ANE myth and have already ruled that hypothesis out.
Nothing comes from nothing – pure fantasy – everything has a cause.
The 1st law of thermodynamics will never be broken except by God.
They rule the hypothesis out because they dont want there to be a God on the day of judgement. This actually was Charles Darwin’s motivation as he admitted – he was minister of the gospel who could not reconcile the kindness of God with the sternness of God’s judgement .
But Jesus said His yoke is easy and His burden is light – so why did Darwin not believe him.
“His theory had, in essence, preceded his knowledge-that is, he had hit upon a novel and evocative theory of evolution with limited knowledge at hand to satisfy either himself or others that the theory was true. He could neither accept it himself nor prove it to others. He simply did not know enough concerning the several natural history fields upon which his theory would have to be based.’
Dr. Barry Gale (Science Historian, Darwin College, UK) in his book, Evolution Without Evidence.”
It is true that I celebrate being free of a judgmental god and see no need for it to send its son to save me. But you got it backwards when you cite that as my motivation to choose evolution over creation. It is the other way around. Darwin has freed the world from having to pander and cower to religion. Between evolution and the concept of the Cosmos, I’ve got this. Don’t need anyone or anything. Especially a religion.
But Darwin and I think yourself did not use reason to determine the character of God . He disliked what he read in the bible first , and then went on from there with “his”faith.
“Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.”
Provine, William B. [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], “, “Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life”, Abstract of Will Provine’s 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.
“It is no more heretical to say the Universe displays purpose, as Hoyle has done, than to say that it is pointless, as Steven Weinberg has done. Both statements are metaphysical and outside science. Yet it seems that scientists are permitted by their own colleagues to say metaphysical things about lack of purpose and not the reverse. This suggests to me that science, in allowing this metaphysical notion, sees itself as religion and presumably as an atheistic religion (if you can have such a thing).”
Shallis, Michael [Astrophysicist, Oxford University], “In the eye of a storm”, New Scientist, January 19, 1984, pp.42-43.
I can see where you might see meaning and purpose in life based on what you believe. That is what I miss most but missing it isn’t going to make me believe that it exists. It doesn’t. You make your own meaning and purpose in life. No one can provide it for you. Not religion. Not government. No one.
The original Hebrew has no word for coincidence – everything is a God incidence , so we think we make our own lives but we dont , everything is God’s will , even the time and place of our birth.
I did not believe at all until I examined the evidence , especially the scientific evidence – it was after a family tragedy that led me to search for a meaning but being logical I just could not accept blind faith so I did the research and God actually pointed me to the correct books..
Neither did Dr Rawlings , an athiest heart surgeon who brought people back from clinical death – a miraculous experience with a patient led him to believe in Hell and he quickly became a christian with a website of stories from clinical death – google up.
Lee Strobel – a lawyer set out to prove to his christian wife that there was no God – he looked at the evidence from a lawyers eye and became a christian
– good DVD’s especially about the cosmos with astronomers , covers Carl Sagan. see website.
Here is what I don’t get. People who sit down with a pen and a scroll can pretty much write whatever they want to write. They are basically telling stories and I doubt that they conduct extensive research and interview eyewitnesses, if any are even alive at the time.
I do not accept that these men, essentially making up stories about people like Adam, Eve, etc. are inspired by what you call God and I call the Cosmos. When these scrolls were compiled and copied and put into what eventually became the Bible, probably beginning during the Babylonian Captivity and continuing up through the selection of the books that would be accepted in the 4th century under Constantine, I wonder if the writers thought that their writings would someday be considered to be the word of God.
You think that the whole process was somehow guided by the Holy Spirit. I think it was guided by men who wanted to control the masses by having them all buy into what eventually became a world religion (or actually three world religions).
Its a sort of circular argument – If you accept that God exists then He knows how to choose who would write the scripture.
Luke was a doctor who said he would interview the witnesses to the death of Jesus. He would do this very quickly and give his report to Theophilus .
The scrolls were usually kept separately .
The amazing thing is the prophets condemned the the jewish behaviour and wrote of the judgments that would be coming yet not once do we see the Jews refusing to truth of the scriptures in the OT.
No other religious books condemn their followers but appeal to the pride of the adherents .
The prophets who wrote the scriptures did not control the masses but were usually murdered , sawn in half ,torn by wild beasts. This is why Jesus rebuked the masses over and over.
The books ratified at the council were not suggested by Contantine – he did nor interfere with the Bishops. The accepted books were well known certainly in the OT by the Jews like Paul and the NT by the Christians – it was just a ratification of what was already accepted to keep out the obvious forgeries.
The NT was written very quickly and copied by scribes. It was all done and dusted before 70 AD – since no account of the temple destruction was mentioned. The NT was not left on shelves for 300 years but was circulated at the time the letters were written.
The “indoctination” is on the MSM and “education” side. I was never indoctrinated in Bible truth but in evolution and that the Bible is only fables – that is until I investigated the truth of it.
Give me one example disproving the Bible .
Take the very first sentence.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. If you take the beginning to be the Big Bang, the planet Earth wasn’t formed until 9 billion years later. Is that still the beginning?
There was no big bang and many atheist astronomers would agree with me.
It is just a made up story for those who want to reject God.
There is no proof that the bang happened but even common sense would tell you that a universe cannot be compressed into a tiny speck – who would do it ? who would decide when it was ready to blow ? ….. the hydrogen and helium forming into over a 100 elements like gold , silver etc .
It takes more faith to believe in the big bang than it does to believe that God created the finely balanced universe with thousand of laws like the universal constant , boyle’s laws , etc
Laws need a lawgiver
All the tests on the earth show that it is young – such as C14 dating of diamonds , coal , oil , etc when there should be zero C14.
The sea would be dead with salt after 4 billion years.
Mt St Helens lava was dated at over a million years by radio dating lol
Pacific lava 200 yrs old was dated at 1.2 billion years.
We know from observation that nothing makes itself – everything is designed , even an atom , no scientist has made ONE atom or a single living cell no matter how simple (there no simple cells).
ROMANS 1.20 – no excuse for anyone :-
“because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through WHAT HAS BEEN MADE , so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.…”
First. Paul says everything with one purpose in mind. MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE!
It takes more faith to believe in the big bang than it does to believe that God created the finely balanced universe with thousand of laws like the universal constant , boyle’s laws , etc.
I have such faith. God is not the answer. Carl Sagan called it “the Cosmos”, which would be equivalent to the Word or the Logos but without all the biblical bs attached to it.
What is your proof that this “cosmos” made itself and everything in the universe – who would direct the “cosmos” – how does inanimate matter make itself and living flesh ?? Carl liked his cannabis .
“Cosmos” is just a word that can be substituted for “God”. Any time you want to prove that God exists, just call it the Cosmos instead. Who created the Cosmos? Who created God? God always existed. The Cosmos always existed.
The cosmos is just part of God’s creation – but not God . This is idolatry – worshipping the stars – the Jews were commanded not to do this.
According to the big bang theorists the cosmos did not always exist.
“If complex organisms ever did evolve from simpler ones, the process took place contrary to the laws of nature, and must have involved what may rightly be termed the miraculous.” R.E.D. Clark, Victoria Institute (1943), p.
THOMAS HUXLEY THE ATHEIST EVOLUTIONIST :-
” `Creation,’ in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some preexisting Being.
Then, as now, the so-called a priori arguments against Theism and, given a Deity, against the possibility of creative acts, appeared to me to be devoid of reasonable foundation.” Thomas H. Huxley, quoted in *L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, Vol. I (1903), p. 241 (1903). 63.
The cosmos is just part of God’s creation – but not God.
That is an opinion. Carl Sagan said that the Cosmos is all that is, all that ever was and all that ever will be.
It is a concept that you can accept or not accept. I accept his definition of this philosophical concept. The Cosmos is not a god. Gods are fictional characters.
The cosmos is just matter , which is energy . Only God can input the energy
Energy cannot be created or destroyed – the 1st Law of Thermodynamics
The cosmos cannot design and create things.
This is what primitive people thought – that the stars have intelligence – they don”t.
Colin Patterson remained an athiest :-
“One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, was … it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it.
That’s quite a shock to learn that one can be so misled so long. …so for the last few weeks I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people. Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, ‘I do know one thing — it ought not to be taught in high school’.”
Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London Keynote address at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City
The Cosmos is a philosophical concept. You wouldn’t say that a thought consists of matter. It is an alternative to the God of the gaps concept. “God” is essentially a concept. It can be used interchangeably with the Cosmos as long as it doesn’t mean the biblical God. The Boble doesn’t accurately describe that God any more than it describes the Cosmos. The latter comes for the Greek word for the natural order of the universe. That is what the Cosmos is. The natural order of everything that is, was or ever will be.
The cosmos is just matter with no intelligence to design anything – the moon the sun cannot design or create – they were obviously designed.
“The opportune appearance of mutations permitting animals and plants to meet their needs seems hard to believe. Yet the Darwinian theory is even more demanding: a single plant, a single animal would require thousands and thousands of lucky, appropriate events. Thus, miracles would become the rule: events with an infinitesimal probability could not fail to occur …. There is no law against day dreaming, but science must not indulge in it.”
Grasse, Pierre-Paul (1977) Evolution of Living Organism Academic Press, New York, N.Y., p. 103
I am afraid the question you presented was simply to attract readers. A question that, in the minds of those curious about the Bible, is a serious one. No doubt, the article you wrote is interesting, well-written, and I am better off for it. But, you wrote off this serious question with a “duh” and then moved on to talk about something else. The something else may be more important (I think it is) but I wonder if it doesn’t turn fringe Christians away.
I do see what you are saying. I gave the article this title at the last minute. It was supposed to be called “Deconstructing Jonah”, and I thank you for your kind comments about the value of what I did discuss. It was definitely not meant to be an archaeological or scientific piece, though I bet someone could write a great one on the topic.
I am let down that the title comes off as bait and switch if you’ll pardon the pun.
Anyway, thank you again for your comment, and it is exceedingly well taken. You have to admit, “Deconstructing Jonah” would have been a snooze.
If the truth turns ” fringe” Christians away then that is their problem if they want to reject the Words that Jesus spoke.
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