The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

J C

2Scoops wrote: »

Where does it appear that they have the ability to wipe out most of mankind? Because they built a monument in the Georgia backwaters in 1979-80? Perhaps you know more than you're telling...Worshipful Brother?

......Scofflaw is the one 'who knows more than he is telling'!!!:D

......and the Holy Spirit has told me a lot more than any of you know about this subject.

......it's all part of our prophetic future......and is ultimately in God's hands.

2Scoops wrote: »

Mods, may I humbly suggest that a new thread is started to deal with the 'Guidestone' non-issue - it's irrelevant to this thread and just a diversion from the real debate. I believe the creation of a new thread will be an effective compromise, allowing the issue to be discussed further by those who are interested.

I think we have gone as far as is relevant on this topic on this thread......

.....so there is no need to create a new thread......unless Scofflaw wants to reveal all!!

pH

J C wrote: »

......Scofflaw is the one 'who knows more than he is telling'!!!:D

......and the Holy Spirit has told me a lot more than any of you know about this subject.

......it's all part of our prophetic future......and is ultimately in God's hands.

Scofflaw, I think you've broken J C.

I think we have gone as far as is relevant on this topic on this thread......

.....so there is no need to create a new thread......unless Scofflaw wants to reveal all!!

I'm not sure it's scofflaw that needs to reveal all ... are you prepared to reveal even a little of what the Holy Spirit has told you on this topic?

sdep

wolfsbane wrote: »

sdep wrote: »

We may conclude from scientific evidence that we have no proof that our species is special from the point of view of the universe. We have plenty of evidence from our daily lives that people are special to each other.

Even atheists have relationships they value - family, friends, those useful to them. But history proves man will slaughter one another 'for the greater good' - though that may in fact be very elitist.

The subjects of any cull would not be those 'special' to us. It would be the common people, the weak, the unneeded. Obviously there would be some collateral damage, but such risks are a part of life. Maximum care would be taken to protect the special people.

I think that we can see that the capacities we value in people are common to the whole of humanity, and that therefore we should value each and every individual, and recognise that we should all enjoy the same rights. This view rejects your suggestion that there are people who can be dismissed as not 'special to us'.

As to what history proves, I think that there a hundred schools of thought contend, and that that is an entirely new debate perhaps best held in another forum.

My narrow point in all this remains that our moral views of how we ought to behave towards other people are not dictated solely by our scientific understanding of our evolutionary origins.

stevejazzx

pH wrote: »

Scofflaw, I think you've broken J C.

It wasn't the Scoff, man, he arrived that way, he was b-grade to begin with so no refund either...

J C

pH wrote: »

Scofflaw, I think you've broken J C.

.....I'm not 'broken' ......so don't try to 'fix' me!!!:D

pH wrote: »

I'm not sure it's scofflaw that needs to reveal all ... are you prepared to reveal even a little of what the Holy Spirit has told you on this topic?

......Scofflaw FIRST!!!!!:D

wolfsbane

sdep wrote: »

I think that we can see that the capacities we value in people are common to the whole of humanity, and that therefore we should value each and every individual, and recognise that we should all enjoy the same rights. This view rejects your suggestion that there are people who can be dismissed as not 'special to us'.

As to what history proves, I think that there a hundred schools of thought contend, and that that is an entirely new debate perhaps best held in another forum.

My narrow point in all this remains that our moral views of how we ought to behave towards other people are not dictated solely by our scientific understanding of our evolutionary origins.

I'm suggesting that evolution - supposing it to be real - has produced Man who does NOT treat all people equally. Your conscience tells you we should, but look around - anyone who stands in the way of one's goals is certainly not treated treated with the same respect. War and exploitation are used to get from them what they won't give voluntarily.

Conscience is the only restraint where man has the power to force his way. But we can rationalise conscience to a very dim voice, if we start from assumptions that man is not special, just an animal like the others.

So I agree with your latter point - conscience does indeed inform everyone's moral view, in addition to their understanding of origins. The question is which has the final say.

wolfsbane

2Scoops said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Sorry you seemed to have missed my point: the atheist has no LOGICAL reason to reject such a cull. He may have emotional ones, I'm happy to say. In other words, most atheists tend to have some morality in common with Christians, even though it is not based on reason.

Emotions are most illogical, captain. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to recharge my robotic energy cells.

Yes, which illustrates my point to sdep - we can soon quell emotions or conscience if we apply logic to our beliefs about Man's origins.

I've read accounts of the gas-chambers and how the guards suffered emotionally at the start. But reason prevailed.

Scofflaw

wolfsbane wrote: »

I'm suggesting that evolution - supposing it to be real - has produced Man who does NOT treat all people equally. Your conscience tells you we should, but look around - anyone who stands in the way of one's goals is certainly not treated treated with the same respect. War and exploitation are used to get from them what they won't give voluntarily.

Conscience is the only restraint where man has the power to force his way. But we can rationalise conscience to a very dim voice, if we start from assumptions that man is not special, just an animal like the others.

So I agree with your latter point - conscience does indeed inform everyone's moral view, in addition to their understanding of origins. The question is which has the final say.

Conscience can also be rationalised to a very dim voice when you convince yourself that God or nation desires you to do something.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

wolfsbane wrote: »

2Scoops said:

Yes, which illustrates my point to sdep - we can soon quell emotions or conscience if we apply logic to our beliefs about Man's origins.

I've read accounts of the gas-chambers and how the guards suffered emotionally at the start. But reason prevailed.

The good of the Fatherland prevailed, together with centuries of anti-Semitic indoctrination. A very good example of my point above.

We've been over this before - eugenics has no bearing on the science of evolution. It is racism borrowing "scientific" clothes to lend itself respectability, neither more nor less.

cordially,
Scofflaw

wolfsbane

Scofflaw wrote: »

Conscience can also be rationalised to a very dim voice when you convince yourself that God or nation desires you to do something.

cordially,
Scofflaw

I agree: error about God's will is just as likely to lead one to evil actions as error about Man's origin.

Error at the start will cause all the rest of our reasoning - no matter how rigerous - to lead us astray.

That's why conscience is a crucial alarm.

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote: »

I'm suggesting that evolution - supposing it to be real - has produced Man who does NOT treat all people equally.

Well then "Man" was being a bit silly, since modern genetic study of human evolution demonstrates that we are all far more alike than we originally believed, the genetic drift in homo sapieans being relatively small.

Funny that a science designed to promote racism would actually end up demonstrating that racism has no grounds.

wolfsbane wrote: »

War and exploitation are used to get from them what they won't give voluntarily.

Such as when in the Old Testament God ordered the Hebrews to genocide those tribes that would not submit to them...

sdep

wolfsbane wrote: »

I agree: error about God's will is just as likely to lead one to evil actions as error about Man's origin.

Error at the start will cause all the rest of our reasoning - no matter how rigerous - to lead us astray.

That's why conscience is a crucial alarm.

Primo Levi described us poetically, saying, "man is a centaur, a tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust".

I think that if we see ourselves as the result of evolution, we should take this as a reminder to guard against our more instinctive side when it might lead us to do that which, in recognition of our better nature, we call inhuman.

sdep

Wicknight wrote: »

Well then "Man" was being a bit silly, since modern genetic study of human evolution demonstrates that we are all far more alike than we originally believed, the genetic drift in homo sapieans being relatively small.

Funny that a science designed to promote racism would actually end up demonstrating that racism has no grounds.

As I've remarked, I'm wary of drawing direct moral conclusions, positive or negative, from science.

The overall genetic differences between humans are shown to be small, and generally genetic diversity is distributed across what we traditionally call ethnic groups, not confined within them. But we know that biology shows individuals frequently cooperate preferentially with close kin, thereby promoting the survival of the genes common to the kin group. We can, then, speculate as to whether we have an evolved hypersensitivity to differences that could indicate how closely related others are to us. We still have appendices that can flare up; might we have unappealing vestigial behaviours that do so too? *

My argument is that we need to have some moral framework, separate from science, to tell us how best to behave in the light of our scientific understanding.

* N.B. The beauty of evolutionary psychology is that it can prove any argument either way.

Zombrex

sdep wrote: »

As I've remarked, I'm wary of drawing direct moral conclusions, positive or negative, from science.

I would agree with that 100%

My point was only that Wolfsbane charge that evolution was invented by racists who wanted to dehumanise certain sections of the population, is ridiculous since it has in fact done the exact opposite.

But its just more of Wolfsbane conspiricy nonsense.

J C

Wicknight wrote: »

Well then "Man" was being a bit silly, since modern genetic study of human evolution demonstrates that we are all far more alike than we originally believed, the genetic drift in homo sapieans being relatively small.

.....the genetic closeness of ALL of Mankind may have come as a surprise to 'millions of years' Evolutionists.......but it is a prediction of Creation Science......since we are ALL descended from TWO people (who lived less than 10,000 years ago!!!:)

Wicknight wrote: »

Funny that a science designed to promote racism would actually end up demonstrating that racism has no grounds.

.......a fairly dramatic admission!!!!:eek::D:)

Scofflaw wrote: »

aude, vide, tace,
Scofflaw

......tace......cur????

Cur non respondére Scofflaw ad e epistulae meus???

Sed tantum dic verbo credo in Jesu Christe et servare tu. (Fac 16:31):cool:

Quotquot autem receperunt eum, dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri. His qui credunt in Nomine ejus.:cool:

Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem coeli et terre, et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum. Iterum venturus est cum gloria cujus regni non erit finis. Et exspecto ressurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi saeculi.

pH

J C wrote: »

......tace......cur????

Cur non respondére Scofflaw ad e epistulae meus???

Sed tantum dic verbo credo in Jesu Christe et servare tu. (Fac 16:31):cool:

Quotquot autem receperunt eum, dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri. His qui credunt in Nomine ejus.:cool:

Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem coeli et terre, et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum. Iterum venturus est cum gloria cujus regni non erit finis. Et exspecto ressurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi saeculi.

No fair! not all of us can read Spanish

Zombrex

J C wrote: »

.....the genetic closeness of ALL of Mankind may have come as a surprise to 'millions of years' Evolutionists.......but it is a prediction of Creation Science......since we are ALL descended from TWO people (who lived less than 10,000 years ago!!!:)

Except we aren't. So there you go

wolfsbane

Wicknight wrote: »

I would agree with that 100%

My point was only that Wolfsbane charge that evolution was invented by racists who wanted to dehumanise certain sections of the population, is ridiculous since it has in fact done the exact opposite.

But its just more of Wolfsbane conspiricy nonsense.

I'm pretty sure I never made such a charge.

Primarily, Evolution was invented by atheists who wanted to offer a credible alternative to Creation.

That they were racists, and later used evolution for that agenda, need not indicate that it was their initial concern.

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote: »

I'm pretty sure I never made such a charge.

Primarily, Evolution was invented by atheists who wanted to offer a credible alternative to Creation.

That they were racists, and later used evolution for that agenda, need not indicate that it was their initial concern.

Who are "they"? Who "invented" evolution? Why would "they", as racists, invent a theory that put into question the very nature of racist divides? Your idea lacks even the most basic level of coherency. If they were inventing this theory (ie making it up) and they had a racist agenda, why not simply invent a theory that supported their racist agenda, rather than one that didn't?

You really seem to have gone off the deep end with your conspiracy nonsense Wolfsbane.

Pompey Magnus

J C wrote: »

.....the genetic closeness of ALL of Mankind may have come as a surprise to 'millions of years' Evolutionists.......but it is a prediction of Creation Science......since we are ALL descended from TWO people (who lived less than 10,000 years ago!!!:)

Firstly there is no such thing as Creation Science, because it is not a science, it is pseudoscience through and through. Secondly it would also be a prediction of Creationism that inbreeding occured from the children of the original two people. Thirdly, the idea that we were created 10,000 years ago can be pretty easily written off by the massive amounts of junk DNA and also the appendix that served some purpose hundreds of millions of years ago but is now defunct.

wolfsbane

sdep said:

My argument is that we need to have some moral framework, separate from science, to tell us how best to behave in the light of our scientific understanding.

I agree.

But how compelling can a moral framework be if it is just rules made up for the occasion? The only compelling morality is one that makes absolute claims, one that has its authority outside of man.

Atheism can have no such absolute morality. That leaves the atheist and the agnostic open to a complete range of morality - whatever they can invent to suit their needs. The Theory of Evolution was jumped at by a society longing to be freed from God.

Scofflaw

wolfsbane wrote: »

I'm pretty sure I never made such a charge.

Primarily, Evolution was invented by atheists who wanted to offer a credible alternative to Creation.

That they were racists, and later used evolution for that agenda, need not indicate that it was their initial concern.

A claim as ridiculous as it is untruthful. Perhaps you would like to break the seal of anonymity on these "atheists" who "invented" evolution?

amused,
Scofflaw

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote: »

sdep said:

I agree.

But how compelling can a moral framework be if it is just rules made up for the occasion? The only compelling morality is one that makes absolute claims, one that has its authority outside of man.

Atheism can have no such absolute morality.

And neither can Christianity ... if you could you wouldn't have so many different sects of Christianity that all like arguing constantly with each other over how they interpret the "one truth"

You may believe that your particular interpretation of your religion is the correct version of absolute morality, but you can no more demonstrate that than I can demonstrate that my personal morality is perfect and universe.

So you are left in a bit of a bind ...

stevejazzx

wolfsbane wrote: »

I'm pretty sure I never made such a charge.

Primarily, Evolution was invented by atheists who wanted to offer a credible alternative to Creation.

That they were racists, and later used evolution for that agenda, need not indicate that it was their initial concern.

eeeemmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
we've just hit rock bottom here I think...and to think the smart money was on JC....

wolfsbane

Wicknight wrote: »

Who are "they"? Who "invented" evolution? Why would "they", as racists, invent a theory that put into question the very nature of racist divides? Your idea lacks even the most basic level of coherency. If they were inventing this theory (ie making it up) and they had a racist agenda, why not simply invent a theory that supported their racist agenda, rather than one that didn't?

You really seem to have gone off the deep end with your conspiracy nonsense Wolfsbane.

An interesting news bite from AiG back in 1998:
Desmond King-Hele, a fellow of the Royal Society, has published a new biography of Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin.

In it he argues not only that Erasmus had already published a theory of evolution in his 1794 book Zoonomia, but had set forth therein the idea of natural selection. Indeed, Darwin had read Erasmus’ book at age 18.

King-Hele claims that Darwin’s father actively encouraged Charles to have ‘skepticism toward religion and a belief in evolution.’ He says, ‘Evolution was the family faith.’

The Sunday Times (London), 13 July 1997.

This is one more refutation of the popular myth of Darwin as the unbiased naturalist who stumbled across evolution by observing ‘the facts of nature.’

Anyway, the point would be that the science of genetics is not what they were advancing, especially not the much later detailed information we now have as to why racism is bunk. Rudimentary evolutionism certainly would have seemed to support racism.

Most of all, you have missed my central point: atheism was the main agenda, not racism.

wolfsbane

Wicknight wrote: »

And neither can Christianity ... if you could you wouldn't have so many different sects of Christianity that all like arguing constantly with each other over how they interpret the "one truth"

You may believe that your particular interpretation of your religion is the correct version of absolute morality, but you can no more demonstrate that than I can demonstrate that my personal morality is perfect and universe.

So you are left in a bit of a bind ...

On the contrary, EVERY form of theism can assert an absolute morality. They may be wrong, but they have logical grounds for their absolute morality: if their god exists and has revealed his will, it is an absolute moral code.

But atheism has no such source, and its morality is logically purely subjective to the individual. None of them can logically claim his morality is better/worse than the next man's.

2Scoops

wolfsbane wrote: »

But atheism has no such source, and its morality is logically purely subjective to the individual.

What about the immutable Guidestones?

wolfsbane

Wicknight said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
War and exploitation are used to get from them what they won't give voluntarily.

Such as when in the Old Testament God ordered the Hebrews to genocide those tribes that would not submit to them...

Since God made them, He is entitled to punish them for their wickedness if He desires. Which is totally different from men unjustly killing and grabbing others and their property.

wolfsbane

2Scoops said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
But atheism has no such source, and its morality is logically purely subjective to the individual.

What about the immutable Guidestones?

If they are appealing to divine revelation, they would indeed offer an absolute morality. As it appears to be the work of an atheist/atheists, it will be just another example of subjective morality.

Ekancone

wolfsbane wrote: »

On the contrary, EVERY form of theism can assert an absolute morality. They may be wrong, but they have logical grounds for their absolute morality: if their god exists and has revealed his will, it is an absolute moral code.

But atheism has no such source, and its morality is logically purely subjective to the individual. None of them can logically claim his morality is better/worse than the next man's.

But doesn't that provide for a more fluid nature of morality? Instead of a morality that is suited to a single time and place thousands of years ago?