The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

marco_polo

man of faith wrote: »

You guys will maintain its absurdity with vigilance, regardless of what I say. Don't you think Harold Gans, a senior code breaker and maker from the NSA would have had even more scepticism than you. Apparantly he spent 440 hours on a mission to debunk it, but instead discovered it to be real. Google his name and see what comes up.
Apology accepted. No hard feelings. I'm not a stupid person and its very offensive to me when it appears I am being ridiculed. You haven't walked a mile in my moccasins, neither have I in yours. We will achieve a lot more in this debate if mutual respect is established, and not mudslinging insults. My apologies also if I have insulted any other ones intellect. If I have, then I have acted contrary to my Christian principles and I am sorry.

The solution to the puzzle lies in considering, not fitting of the tests to the data, but tuning of the data to the tests. Not only did we identify the unacknowledged source of the exibility (primarily the fact that the available set of appellations for the famous rabbis is more than twice as large as the set actually used), but we proved that this flexibility is enough to allow a similar result in a secular text. We supported this claim by observing that, when the many arbitrary parameters of WRR's experiment are varied, the result is usually weakened, and also by demonstrating traces of naive statistical expectations in WRR's experiment.

Be that as it may, our most telling evidence against the codes is that we cannot find them. All of our many earnest experiments produced results in line with random chance. These included re-enactment of the famous rabbis experiment with the help of independent experts, Emanuel and Assaf.
In light of these findings, we believe that the Kass challenging puzzle has been solved.

http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?view=body&id=pdf_1&handle=euclid.ss/1009212243

Morbert

man of faith wrote: »

You guys will maintain its absurdity with vigilance, regardless of what I say. Don't you think Harold Gans, a senior code breaker and maker from the NSA would have had even more scepticism than you. Apparantly he spent 440 hours on a mission to debunk it, but instead discovered it to be real. Google his name and see what comes up.
Apology accepted. No hard feelings. I'm not a stupid person and its very offensive to me when it appears I am being ridiculed. You haven't walked a mile in my moccasins, neither have I in yours. We will achieve a lot more in this debate if mutual respect is established, and not mudslinging insults. My apologies also if I have insulted any other ones intellect. If I have, then I have acted contrary to my Christian principles and I am sorry.

Are you ignoring our posts? Nobody is impressed with extracting messages from books using convoluted algorithms. That can easily be done with many texts (see marco_polo's last post as an example). What is needed for affirmation is a code which makes high information predictions of future events (predicting monsoon rainfall or assasinations in volatile political climates, for example, won't cut it). The Bible Code has not done this.

MrPudding

Malty_T wrote: »

Yeah but

Sam Vimes wrote: »

In the past five minutes I've got the code to prove that Darwin is right, that the bible is evil, that you personally are wrong, that Malty may be gay :pac:, that Islam is the one true religion and now that Homer and Marge are god:
http://www.biblecodewisdom.com/bibledefault.aspx?q=homer+and+marge+god&num=1

How rigorous can this scrutiny have possibly been?

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Lucky for you you're one of the vast number of people who thinks my name is vines :P

http://www.biblecodewisdom.com/bibledefault.aspx?q=sam+vimes+the+true+god&num=1

I don't even get a look in

I AM GOD:

http://www.biblecodewisdom.com/bibledefault.aspx?q=pudding+god&num=1

MrP

man of faith

Let me just say that I have never claimed to be an expert on the Bible Code. If it turns out by expert cross examination of its credibility to not be code from God, and just random coincidence that can be applied to any series of text (even secular), then so be it. I don't rule this out, it very well could be the case. After all, I'm just an observer like you all and to me there is no shame in being proven wrong.

But I believe it is impossible to definitively prove that God doesn't exist. There is many valid arguments to support ID. I guess on the same token, you will see many valid arguments to support Darwinism. It will always be open to what man chooses to accept. Seeing as faith is a very strong theme in the Bible, it actually gives us a biblical definition of what it is - 'the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen'.
Just because something can't be seen, does not mean that it doesn't exist. You can choose to percieve something through the eyes of faith, or you can choose to perceive it in the realm of the five senses. But what is left is countless examples of unexplainable phenomenon. Unless you believe in God or some other supernatural force, then you have no logical answer to explain it. Who made themselves God by dictating some man imposed rule on how things must be percieved and understood. Why should I be told what to do by them? Are they a superior human being to me? - Of course not. Thank God for freedom of speach and thought.

Turtwig

man of faith wrote: »

Let me just say that I have never claimed to be an expert on the Bible Code. If it turns out by expert cross examination of its credibility to not be code from God, and just random coincidence that can be applied to any series of text (even secular), then so be it. I don't rule this out, it very well could be the case. After all, I'm just an observer like you all and to me there is no shame in being proven wrong.

But I believe it is impossible to definitively prove that God doesn't exist. There is many valid arguments to support ID. I guess on the same token, you will see many valid arguments to support Darwinism. It will always be open to what man chooses to accept. Seeing as faith is a very strong theme in the Bible, it actually gives us a biblical definition of what it is - 'the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen'.
Just because something can't be seen, does not mean that it doesn't exist. You can choose to percieve something through the eyes of faith, or you can choose to perceive it in the realm of the five senses. But what is left is countless examples of unexplainable phenomenon. Unless you believe in God or some other supernatural force, then you have no logical answer to explain it. Who made themselves God by dictating some man imposed rule on how things must be percieved and understood. Why should I be told what to do by them? Are they a superior human being to me? - Of course not. Thank God for freedom of speach and thought.

And you are perfectly entitled to those beliefs. You are in fact correct, it is impossible to neither prove or disprove the existence of a God.
The question you should be asking yourself though, is why so many Gods? Are Gods just human inventions(you clearly believe this to be the case for Thor, Isis, Neptune etc)? I mean if a human invents a God that he defines to be outside everything then that God is simply outside everything and we can neither prove nor disprove its existence.
ID on the other hand, has been completely disproven and rubbished.
It is about as close to a fact as the idea of the earth being bigger than the sun.

Sam Vimes

man of faith wrote: »

But I believe it is impossible to definitively prove that God doesn't exist.

This is true. I also can't prove that invisible pink unicorns don't exist but that's not a reason to believe in them

man of faith wrote: »

There is many valid arguments to support ID. I guess on the same token, you will see many valid arguments to support Darwinism. It will always be open to what man chooses to accept.

The thing is though that there aren't actually any valid arguments to support ID and there is a mountain of irrefutable evidence to support evolution. You have the right to choose not to believe it but only in the same way that you have the right to believe the world is flat. No one can stop you believing it no matter how wrong you may be

man of faith wrote: »

Seeing as faith is a very strong theme in the Bible, it actually gives us a biblical definition of what it is - 'the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen'.
Just because something can't be seen, does not mean that it doesn't exist. You can choose to percieve something through the eyes of faith, or you can choose to perceive it in the realm of the five senses. But what is left is countless examples of unexplainable phenomenon. Unless you believe in God or some other supernatural force, then you have no logical answer to explain it. Who made themselves God by dictating some man imposed rule on how things must be percieved and understood. Why should I be told what to do by them? Are they a superior human being to me? - Of course not. Thank God for freedom of speach and thought.

But "god did it" is not a logical answer. All it does is answer a mystery with an even greater mystery. Human progress has been hindered no end by people who attributed natural things to the supernatural because they didn't understand them. If something is unexplained it means nothing more than it is unexplained, not that it was done by a supernatural being. Something should be attributed to the supernatural only when it has been definitely established that it has a supernatural cause, not simply when we with our limited abilities cannot find a natural one.

man of faith

Seeing God starts with wanting to see Him.
Let me make it very clear that by stating this I do not mean that I am just believing in Him because I want Him to be real - please don't misunderstand the statement i just made by drawing this conclusion.
I make this statement because it points out to me the reason why someone denies God's existence. If you don't want God to exist, then you will dispel all the evidence that is staring you in the face. When I say this, I mean the understanding we have of the human body, dna, nature, the planets, the universe etc.. You will fail to see God in any of it, because your mind has already dispelled the existence of God, before God even gets a chance to be seen in these things. You have already decided that God's existence is impossible, so no amount of evidence at this point will ever convince you, regardless of how compelling it is. You will constantly put the challenge out there to a believer to prove God's existence to you, but really this is just a game to amuse you. You have already decided before even proposing this challenge that God doesn't exist, and this is just your pre set response to anyone who claims He does exist. You will then seek to gradually dismantle there whole argument, to further confirm to yourself that you are right and they are wrong.

I believe what I have just said is a very clear assessment of the mountain that stands in the way of atheist and creationist argument. Check this link out: There are many testimonies here but I want to draw your attention to one in particular. That is the testimony of B.W Melvin, a militant ex atheist who used to love arguing with and picking on Christians
www.insightsofgod.com
You can choose to just dispel it as lies and some guy just making it all up to sell a book, or actually listen to him and atleast give him a chance to make up your mind using your ability of observation and perception to determine whether or not he is telling you the truth. This is definitely not some pitch to sell his book, as the whole testimony can be downloaded absolutely free.

Zombrex

man of faith wrote: »

So is that the best you've got.
That doesn't debunk the Bible code, that simply shows that you can put letters into one passage of preselected text just like the test that can be done on all books.

That it the point.

Statistical probability says that you will find these "codes" in any large body of text, simply because the criteria for a match is so wide that it encompasses nearly every combination of letters and characters.

Zombrex

man of faith wrote: »

You know, you are acting a real jerk Malty T.

Well about 4 pages ago it become painfully obvious that you have already closed your mind to other explanations for these "codes" and are in no way interested in listening to these explanations that don't involve a supernatural deity placing secret words in books, so you can hardly blame people for having a bit of fun at the silliness of all this.

Turtwig

man of faith wrote: »

Seeing God starts with wanting to see Him.
Let me make it very clear that by stating this I do not mean that I am just believing in Him because I want Him to be real - please don't misunderstand the statement i just made by drawing this conclusion.
I make this statement because it points out to me the reason why someone denies God's existence. If you don't want God to exist, then you will dispel all the evidence that is staring you in the face. When I say this, I mean the understanding we have of the human body, dna, nature, the planets, the universe etc.. You will fail to see God in any of it, because your mind has already dispelled the existence of God, before God even gets a chance to be seen in these things. You have already decided that God's existence is impossible, so no amount of evidence at this point will ever convince you, regardless of how compelling it is. You will constantly put the challenge out there to a believer to prove God's existence to you, but really this is just a game to amuse you. You have already decided before even proposing this challenge that God doesn't exist, and this is just your pre set response to anyone who claims He does exist. You will then seek to gradually dismantle there whole argument, to further confirm to yourself that you are right and they are wrong.

I do not, nor do any atheists here, rule out the possibility of the existence of a higher being of some kind that created us all, but to choose which one (if any?) from human cultures is the correct higher being....now that is HARD.

I only put the prove God is real challenge out there when folks put the prove He/She/It isn't real out before me first.
Btw, they usually dismantle their own argument;)

Zombrex

man of faith wrote: »

If you don't want God to exist, then you will dispel all the evidence that is staring you in the face.

Well given that it only took a few minutes to demonstrate that these Bible codes are probably not in fact supernatural codes but simply a result of a loose matching criteria for a statistical plotting, yet you utterly ignored that and continued in vain to argue that just because you can see this phenomena in lots of other books doesn't mean there isn't something supernatural going on, I would think that the only think staring anyone in the face is that the Bible Code is not supernatural.

I do ignore evidence that is staring me in the face if the evidence is really bad, if it fails to explain other phenomena (if the Bible Code is a supernatural message from God why is it also in Moby Dick), and if other far more plausible explanations exist.

If I wake up in the morning after a windy night and my patio chair has blown over I conclude it was the wind, not God. Someone saying I'm ignoring the evidence it was God is pulling straws from a hat

lugha

man of faith wrote: »

There are many testimonies here but I want to draw your attention to one in particular. That is the testimony of B.W Melvin, a militant ex atheist who used to love arguing with and picking on Christians

It appears he had a personal revelation . If and when I have one of these I am sure I will think again about the whole question.

BTW MOF, might I ask if your religious conviction began with the bible code revelations or were you a Christian before?

man of faith

why do you limit yourself to logic? Logic is an inherant function of our brain used to process information. Yet phenomenon defies, or should I say transcends logic, so if logic is all your relying on to disect the truth then your going to run into real problems.

Has it also ever occurred to you that what you are percieving as evolution could very well be things that God has actually created? And that you are only using the whole Evolution VS ID thinking to seperate it. This is the danger of an already established pre-conceived mindset - it clouds your very judgement to question everything. I am proud to say that I do question everything and have no problem in conceding when I am wrong if so proven to be. You or no other atheist will ever be able to prove me wrong because the testing tools do not exist in science, and they probably never will. Why would God limit himself to time if He was the one who created it? He would of only created it for our world and not limit Himself to its restrictions. 'Zero time' transcends what we are able to comprehend in our natural mind, so how are we going to prove it? Doesn't mean it doesn't exist - just ask Albert Einstein. By the way, he very much pondered the possibility of a God has a highly likely scenario.

Sam Vimes

man of faith, you're suggesting that there is nothing that can convince us and this is just a game to amuse us but this is not correct. You're basically turning the believers inability to give a convincing argument around and making it look like we're at fault. I've already given an example of something that would prove god's existence to me: an amputee praying for his arm to regrow and having his prayer granted. It would have to be verified of course.

I have seen argument after argument for the existence of god. Most of them argue for a generic creator type being with the unspoken assumption that if I accept these arguments that in some way means I have to accept the bible. In reality, arguing for a generic creator god leaves me no closer to knowing which religion is right. We know that at most one religion is right and all of the rest are inventions of man. Since there are thousands upon thousands of religions in the world that are unquestionably false, I simply see no reason to arbitrarily pick one and declare it to be true. You can point to the human body, dna, nature, the planets and the universe all you want, none of that has anything to do with accepting that a Jewish guy raised from the dead 2000 years ago.

I took a quick look at the B.W. Melvin story, it's just yet another argument from personal experience. My response: the human mind is extremely susceptible to hallucination. Somebody else's personal experience alone will never convince me of god's existence firstly because I know how flawed the human mind is and secondly, for every person who has had an experience that "proves" the christian god there's another who's had one that "proves" their own. Most people just don't understand how complex the human mind is and how easily it can fool them. I personally have seen things that I know were not there. I have reached out to touch them and my hand has gone through them. It mostly happens when I'm about to get into bed but I'd still be wide awake. It's just a misfiring of the brain in processing the input from my eyes. Someone seeing "hell", especially when in the process of dying from drinking contaminated water, is no more miraculous than someone hallucinating after taking drugs. It's just a function of the human mind

Turtwig

man of faith wrote: »

why do you limit yourself to logic? Logic is an inherant function of our brain used to process information. Yet phenomenon defies, or should I say transcends logic, so if logic is all your relying on to disect the truth then your going to run into real problems.

Has it also ever occurred to you that what you are percieving as evolution could very well be things that God has actually created? .

Firstly Evolution does not by any means rule out God, if you are however suggesting that God created the fossils to look like they evolved then I am going to argue that He merely created the universe after you read this post and made you think it was created before then. See how pointless that is?

I admit that common sense perception of human reality is a dangerously flawed tool, for this very reason humankind uses science because it allows us to access a testable objective reality - that is why science works.

Einstein was a pantheist, he did not believe in the personal God that you believe in.

man of faith

Well atleast you play fair Malty. Already I feel that we are communicating well. I'm glad to hear that you have not ruled out the possibility of a God.

Sam Vimes

man of faith wrote: »

why do you limit yourself to logic? Logic is an inherant function of our brain used to process information. Yet phenomenon defies, or should I say transcends logic, so if logic is all your relying on to disect the truth then your going to run into real problems.

Has it also ever occurred to you that what you are percieving as evolution could very well be things that God has actually created? And that you are only using the whole Evolution VS ID thinking to seperate it.

Has it ever occurred to you that what you are perceiving as god could very well be natural processes that you don't understand and your mind playing tricks on you? I don't "perceive" evolution, I look objectively at the massive amounts of evidence supporting it. I accept it for the same reason that I accept gravity, it has been proven to exist.

Also I think its ironic that you're talking the flaws and limitations of the human mind and then linking us to a guy who believes in god and the only evidence he has is an experience that exists only in that flawed mind of his.

man of faith wrote: »

This is the danger of an already established pre-conceived mindset - it clouds your very judgement to question everything. I am proud to say that I do question everything and have no problem in conceding when I am wrong if so proven to be. You or no other atheist will ever be able to prove me wrong because the testing tools do not exist in science, and they probably never will. Why would God limit himself to time if He was the one who created it? He would of only created it for our world and not limit Himself to its restrictions. 'Zero time' transcends what we are able to comprehend in our natural mind, so how are we going to prove it? Doesn't mean it doesn't exist - just ask Albert Einstein. By the way, he very much pondered the possibility of a God has a highly likely scenario.

The point here is that if something is outside time and space then you can do absolutely nothing except claim that it's there. I can claim that there's a flying spaghetti monster outside time and space and you can't prove me wrong. But if the being does nothing except stay outside of time and space then its existence is irrelevant, it doesn't do anything that effects us. It only becomes relevant when this being interacts with this universe and at that point he is performing actions within the confines of time and space so it should be possible to objectively verify that he is in fact doing these things. The resurrection did not happen outside of time and space, nor do miracles, nor do the effects of prayer. Human beings seek agency, when something happens our brains compel us to find meaning in it, to find intelligence behind it because that's what we're used to. It's a very useful survival trait from back in the days when a rock that appeared to move all on its own might very well be an alligator. You will mistake a shadow for a burglar but you will never mistake a burglar for a shadow.

Honestly think about this: you as a christian believe in miracles and believe in the power of prayer. So why is it that you know that no matter how hard an amputee prays his arm is never going to grow back? Why is it that when all ambiguity is taken out, when the event can only be explained by divine intervention, we know its never going to happen?

man of faith

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Has it ever occurred to you that what you are perceiving as god could very well be natural processes that you don't understand and your mind playing tricks on you? I don't "perceive" evolution, I look objectively at the massive amounts of evidence supporting it. I accept it for the same reason that I accept gravity, it has been proven to exist.

Also I think its ironic that you're talking the flaws and limitations of the human mind and then linking us to a guy who believes in god and the only evidence he has is an experience that exists only in that flawed mind of his.


The point here is that if something is outside time and space then you can do absolutely nothing except claim that it's there. I can claim that there's a flying spaghetti monster outside time and space and you can't prove me wrong. But if the being does nothing except stay outside of time and space then its existence is irrelevant, it doesn't do anything that effects us. It only becomes relevant when this being interacts with this universe and at that point he is performing actions within the confines of time and space so it should be possible to objectively verify that he is in fact doing these things. The resurrection did not happen outside of time and space, nor do miracles, nor do the effects of prayer. Human beings seek agency, when something happens our brains compel us to find meaning in it, to find intelligence behind it because that's what we're used to. It's a very useful survival trait from back in the days when a rock that appeared to move all on its own might very well be an alligator. You will mistake a shadow for a burglar but you will never mistake a burglar for a shadow.

Honestly think about this: you as a christian believe in miracles and believe in the power of prayer. So why is it that you know that no matter how hard an amputee prays his arm is never going to grow back? Why is it that when all ambiguity is taken out, when the event can only be explained by divine intervention, we know its never going to happen?

I will respond to you all later on. Its 4am in my part of the world and I need to get some shut-eye, very tired. Very interesting discussion. Thankyou all for your time and will talk to you all again soon.

Flamed Diving

PDN? Can we keep Man of Faith and get rid of JC?

Pleasssssse?

PDN

Flamed Diving wrote: »

PDN? Can we keep Man of Faith and get rid of JC?

Pleasssssse?

:D:D:):):):):eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::pac::

There's a limit to how many smilies boards.ie will let you post.

Who would have believed it?

J C

pts wrote: »

This might be the link you were thinking of:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8291948.stm

..or perhaps it was this link to the results of new peer-reviewed tests on the shroud
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4210369.stm.

...which dates the shroud at between 1300 and 3,000 years old!!!:D

...so no medieval conjurer produced this shroud!!!
.
.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/411366.stm

J C

robindch wrote: »

Don't worry -- us atheists and agnostics don't get upset by debate

..just as well that you don't get upset by debate...because you keep 'getting the pants beaten off yourselves' every time you debate with Creation Scientists!!!

Zombrex

man of faith wrote: »

why do you limit yourself to logic? Logic is an inherant function of our brain used to process information. Yet phenomenon defies, or should I say transcends logic, so if logic is all your relying on to disect the truth then your going to run into real problems.

Logic is merely the art of reasoning, determining the pattern that things work.

Therefore "transcending logic", what ever that is, doesn't make sense as a phrase.

You can certainly ignore logic, particularly if logic is not giving you the answer you are searching for.

man of faith wrote: »

Has it also ever occurred to you that what you are percieving as evolution could very well be things that God has actually created?

Certainly. Darwinian Biological Evolutionary theory says nothing about God, it is entirely possible that God created evolution.

But such a conclusion would require evidence and theory, both of which are lacking. "The Bible says so" isn't good enough for most people on this thread.

Turtwig

J C wrote: »

..or perhaps it was this link to the results of new peer-reviewed tests on the shroud
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4210369.stm.

...which dates the shroud at between 1300 and 3,000 years old!!!

...so no medieval conjurer produced this shroud!!!
.

I thought some guy baked this thing or something using fabric from medieval times already??

J C

Malty_T wrote: »

Old Earth Creationist then ^^


He's published on those topics...
That's just depressing:(

*I need a moment*
...
*Retreats to losing faith in humanity thread*

...Prof Craig seems to be a Theistic Evolutionist ... so here we are going to have have a 'debate' between two evolutionists chaired by another evolutionist!!!!!

...sounds like a good way of never ACTUALLY questioning Evolution!!!!

Turtwig

J C wrote: »

...Prof Craig seems to be a Theistic Evolutionist ... so here we are going to have have a 'debate' between two evolutionists chaired by another evolutionist!!!!!

...sounds like a good way of never ACTUALLY questioning Evolution!!!!

Well one way or another, he either hasn't a clue of what evolution is or he is being intellectually dishonest.

J C

Morbert wrote: »

Yes it can, through the natural selection of genetic mutation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_biology

...the belief that mutations can add to CSI is like somebody believing that you can improve your car through having repeated accidents with it!!!!!

J C

Morbert wrote: »

I
You said we were afraid of the truth (which you presumably believe is John 3:16) Why would we be afraid of forgiveness and eternel pardise?

...please do tell us why somebody would be afraid of forgiveness and eternal paradise????

J C

robindch wrote: »

I've listened to and read Craig quite a few times in the past, and his stuff is truly frightful -- mushy and unfocussed where it's not eyewateringly obviously true, or equally obviously false.

A bit like an restaurant that fails to impress on a third visit, I think he's had a fair chance to impress and he didn't manage it.

It would only be closed-minded if we'd refused to give him our time in the first place, and I think most A+A posters here have done that.

The balls in his court. Literally, I think.

...this is what the Materialists REALLY think of their Theistic Evolutionist colleagues!!!

J C

Malty_T wrote: »

I thought some guy baked this thing or something using fabric from medieval times already??

...the forensics on the shroud are indicating that it was present in Jerusalem and originates at a much earlier date than the 1988 carbon dating has suggested.

Of course, it may not be the actual shroud of Jesus Christ .
However, if it is, then it would be a very important artefact as it would be a tangible link to the fact of Jesus Christ's resurrection (which is the very basis of Christianity).

Future forensics may reverse the latest conclusions again...but whatever happens ... the shroud is indeed a fascinating artefact.