Michelle,
Leviticus 23:13
...together with its grain offering of two-tenths of an ephah [ a ] of fine flour mixed with oil—an offering made to the LORD by fire, a pleasing aroma—and its drink offering of a quarter of a hin [ b ] of wine.
Shel
Discussion of "intelligent design" (uncapitalized, AlanF)
by AuldSoul 153 Replies latest members adult
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hillary_step
Michelle,
dear king Agrippa......I would to God that not only you, but also all who hear me today, might become both almost and altogether such as I am, except for these chains...Acts 26:29
Is the apostle Paul the person who isolated the the human genome? Because if he did, then surely he would have the answer to the question of 'ID' or as Auld Soul would prefer to have it known ( understandable now that he has introduced aliens into the equation ) 'id'.
HS
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Little Drummer Boy
AuldSoul: The "in" is simple. The improbability of life originating on earth is not necessarily the improbability of life originating on another planet. Since the probability can theoretically be increased by removing the question to another planet with conditions more suitable to life, the probability of extra-terran origin of life is at least greater.
As to whether there is extraterrestrial life, one need not be a Creationist or believer in the Bible to be firmly convinced of that. One need only examine the likeliest source of the mythos from the majority of the world's advanced civilizations. From the Egyptian gods, to the Greek and Roman pantheon, to the Aztec and Mayan civilizations, we see rampant indications of ancient peoples exposed to advanced technology in their descriptions of the actions of their Gods and Goddesses.
Ok, I know I'm not always the sharpest tool in the shed, but is the reasoing going down the lines of "the beginnings of life on Earth came from another planet and were put here by ET " and "little green men are real"?
If so, I would like to add the missing middle which is "after millions of years of life on this planet after the first seeding, the original aliens still gave enough of a crap about their science project to come back (maybe they never went away?) and then contacted us so that - in all of their wisdom- we could misinterpret them as being gods and now that we won't think of them as gods because our understanding is more advanced, they play around making crop circles".
Am I misunderstanding AuldSoul's reasoning? Please help.
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myelaine
dear Little Drummer Boy...
"(maybe they never went away?) "...
...may be... that God and the angels are in a different dimension than us...which would explain how the Holy Spirit can be in people...how angels can direct people...how the kingdom of God is in heaven...and in our midst...(Isaiah 66:1)...imo...
Mark 12:28-34
love michelle
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Terry
We are no longer discussing anything much at all. Just emptying our pockets out on the table and complaining how dull the other fella's pocket knife is :)
There is:
1.What we know
2.What we don't know
3.What we think we might know
4.What we think we know and don't
5.What we think we don't know and do.
That pretty much covers it, I think.
If we were alone on that proverbial island and faced with life or death choices there would be proof daily as to which of the above was which in our behavior and longevity factor.
We think rubbing sticks together will make a fire and yet, no fire results.
Rub harder? Wrong kind of sticks? Wood too damp?
Such hypotheses necessarily demand tests. Should we take the trouble or give up on fire?
You see, life is so damned comfortable for most of us (creature needs, not emotional needs) that we hardly ever face such choices. We can become extremely casual and complacent in our quiver of "truths".
We flip a switch and cook our dinner with electromagnetic waves in a micro-oven. And don't even know (or care) how/why it works.
How in the hell can such people as we have an intelligent discussion of the origins of life?
It is ludicrous. We aren't anywhere close to knowing enough factually to present other than regurgitated posturings.
I don't know and you don't know and few who think they know have the education to support their data.
The rest is silence......
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myelaine
"We are no longer discussing anything much at all. Just emptying our pockets out on the table and complaining how dull the other fella's pocket knife is :)"
...didn't Einstein say everything is relative...in theory...
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TopHat
Which came first?
Evolutionism: The Egg came first. Formed by chance
Creationism: The Chicken came first. God created life and prepared the earth for Life to live upon it.
Intelligent Design: The egg was genetically engineered by a person or persons unknown. They came from outerspace? Another planet?
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hillary_step
Terry,
Easy does it now!
Discussions and debates, complete with pleasantries and large lashings of cynicism are the stuff of XJW discussion boards. Anybody who thinks some astonishing universal truth is going to pop out of anybody here is probably clinically depressed, dissapointed, or in our own case getting old far too quickly.
We know that none of us have the answers, but that does not undermine the need or value of asking questions. Much of what is discussed has to be accepted or rejected on the presentation of weight of evidence, rather than the definitive facts we would all love to grasp as a security blanket. Of course you know all this.
For example. Why do we die when there is no clinical reason why we should not keep living? Well, we can believe what evolutionists suggest, that is, that as everything on this planet has to trap and kill everything else in order to survive, few living creatures ever live out their lives. There has been no reason to evolve a need elongate our live span as we probably live far longer than we should anyway. We are one of the few creatures that at least has an opportunity to live out a 'natural' life. We might also believe that some pantomime in a garden long ago which involved two newly created humans and a snake that spoke, is the reason we die. I am sure there are many variations on this theme, but weight of evidence seems to favour the scientific view here. Of course the religionists could be right and some great supernatural exercise is taking place around us in which Satan has manipulated matter to cause many to stumble into atheism and agnosticism. Sounds like bunk to me these days, but how do I prove otherwise?
We are just playing with concepts here on this thread that are not to be taken very seriously, unless of course they pay the mortgage and prove mightier than the sword. But the action of debate is very useful intellectually and for XJW's very healthy emotionally in the long-term , but as I have said - you know all this.
HS
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Pole
Interesting discussion. Auld Soul's arguments seem to suffer from the anthropomorphic bias identified in Narkissos's first post.
Metaphors, metonymies and an overwhelming sense of purpose and order. Sometimes excessively overwhelming ;-). I think Auld Soul's arguments are just another piece of evidence for evolution. We are in a transitional phase where our minds/brains are not yet fully capable of abstract thinking and they need to develop a form of conceptual realism (kind of tounge-in-cheek comment). I for one like to take a more nominalistic stand.
Lakoff's and Johnson's published in 1980 (Metaphors we live by) is a good reading to begin with. It presents a predominantly linguistic perspective, but I echo Narkissos's recommendation because at times Auld Soul seems to be steering the discussion into the direction of linguistics, by trying to force AlanF to admit that by using the word 'goal' and 'purpose' he meant something else than he did ;-). That is where I think his argument begins to wobble and collapse miserably. Nice metaphor, innit ;-)?
Pole -
kid-A
Any attempt to discuss a hypothetical "designer" cannot exclude discussion of the essential nature, qualifications and motivations of said "designer". Here is where the ID arguments descend into absurdity. Even a cursory observation of the natural world reveals stunning and overwhelming instances of BAD design. Cancer, Parkinsons, Huntingtons, Leukemia, birth defects, Cystic Fibrosis, Schizophrenia, spinal columns that are poorly adapted to upright bipedalism, the list is infinite. Our cells are constantly dividing and with each successful pass through the cell cycle, our telomeres are shortened, leading invariably to apoptosis and cellular death. Every cell in our being is pre-programmed to die, it is a mechanism built into our cellular machinery.
When one takes the time to meticulously study human physiology, molecular biology, organic chemistry or any of the biological sciences, it becomes readily apparent that what "appears" as complexity is very simply reduced to basic and primordial electrochemical reactions and simple atomic structures that have merely been layered on over millions of years to result in an endless array of organisms that function "just well enough" for their given environments. When the environment changes, the species that successfully evolved within the parameters and environmental constraints therein, becomes extinct and disappears. It has happened to the dinosaurs and an infinite number of other species that have entered and exited the evolutionary stage, and it will happen to us. Now, given this rather obvious reality, what motivation would a hypothetical supreme intelligence have for "designing" such a freak show? For amusement? A grand cosmic joke? Think about it. What reason would such a god have for creating this puppet show? Artaud's "Theatre of Cruelty" springs to mind! lol.
Even the human brain operates on relatively simple principles of biochemical synaptic communication. Human sentience and the sense of "self" is generated by subcortical structures mixed with a cocktail of neurochemicals, all of which are subject to pharmaceutical manipulation and control. Now, where is the "intelligence" behind any of this? Who is this master magician that has created this canvas of horrors upon which we must suffer the ravages of disease and barbarity of our fellow humans? When one divests the mind of romantic and inaccurate preconceptions of humanity as representing some pinnacle of grand design, there is simply no logical reason to invoke supernatural explanations for the existence of the human animal. Indeed, it is the height of human arrogance to imagine we are somehow superior to any other being on this planet. We are for the most part, violent brutes intent on destroying the planet via exploitation of any other creature or resource that satisfies our immediate and ephemeral selfishness.