Well, on that happy note, so endeth the thread. Thanks, all.
Lion Cask
JoinedPosts by Lion Cask
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91
Population 7 billion. Changes ahead.
by Lion Cask inaccording to the world population clock, we're going to hit the magic 7 billion number this year.
that's 7,000,000,000,000 living human beings on this planet.
the world is about to change, again.
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Non-evidence reasons why people embrace Evolution.
by hooberus inevolutionists always claim that the reason why they believe in evolution and reject creation is due to "evidence".
they frequently use the opposite term "no evidence" in relation to any type of intelligent design, or creation, (and especially to genesis creation and flood history !).
their advocated beliefs always tend to include whatever is necessary to believe in to intellectually "explain" the existence of the universe, world, and its creatures without needing god).
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Lion Cask
Yes, bohm, but that would require genuinely open minds.
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Non-evidence reasons why people embrace Evolution.
by hooberus inevolutionists always claim that the reason why they believe in evolution and reject creation is due to "evidence".
they frequently use the opposite term "no evidence" in relation to any type of intelligent design, or creation, (and especially to genesis creation and flood history !).
their advocated beliefs always tend to include whatever is necessary to believe in to intellectually "explain" the existence of the universe, world, and its creatures without needing god).
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Lion Cask
Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Does anyone in here have an open mind, or are we here for the sole purpose of convincing everyone else that they are wrong and we are right?
All people possess survival mechanisms to which they give free reign. It's not a choice, really. You can't not allow your adrenal gland secretions to spike when you sense danger, for example. Your brain becomes flooded with adrenaline and depending on your psychological makeup you fight or you flee. Whether mechanisms like these come from God or from millions of years of evolution is irrelevant. They just are.
For the most part survival mechanisms are good, for obvious reasons. But there's one that's a mixed bag and that is denial. Our brains invoke the mechanism of denial as an automatic protective response to what we do not want to experience.
Say you're sitting on the front porch on a warm sunny afternoon and you're watching your kids playing fetch with the family dog. Someone throws the ball a bit too hard and it rolls onto the street. Before you can even think, Rex is mangled horribly by a pickup truck. What is the first word out of your mouth?
It is "NO". Maybe it's "Oh my God NO!" Same thing. Your brain is confronted with something it does not want to experience and it triggers the defense mechanism of denial. In this example it doesn't work, because the evidence of what you don't want to believe is overwhelming and manifestly real.
That is what is happening in here. The difference is the defense mechanism of denial works only with belief, because only belief is deniable. The Title of this thread could have been "Non-evidence reasons why people embrace Creationism". It could even have been singular. "Non-evidence reason ..." because ultimately there is only one, and that is denial. The very notion that there might be no God is horrifyingly incomprehensible to those for whom belief in God is absolute. Entertaining the thought would be like watching Rex getting hit by the truck, only much, much worse.
When there is an option and we are confronted with evidence of something we don't want to believe, no matter how compelling, the defense mechanism of denial kicks in, we choose not to accept it, and the bad feeling goes away. The reality, however, remains unchanged.
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Non-evidence reasons why people embrace Evolution.
by hooberus inevolutionists always claim that the reason why they believe in evolution and reject creation is due to "evidence".
they frequently use the opposite term "no evidence" in relation to any type of intelligent design, or creation, (and especially to genesis creation and flood history !).
their advocated beliefs always tend to include whatever is necessary to believe in to intellectually "explain" the existence of the universe, world, and its creatures without needing god).
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Lion Cask
No offense taken at all, agonus. The hypothetical is that God established both the universe and the laws that govern it and that He set things in motion 14 billion years ago. I perceive you are on that page, and it is by far more logical and observable even with the limited ability we have than the supposition of an instantaneous (dare I say magical) creation of enormous complexity.
If God is the absolute alpha - ie nothing came before Him and he therefore always was - what did He do with Himself for the eternity that preceeded His momentous act of creation? If we suppose He created all the other supernatural beings before He decided to set off the Big Bang, even if He did that trillions of years before, then what did He do with Himself the trillions upon trillions of years before that? Did He just float around keeping Himself company?
The unliklihood of a supreme being having created the universe goes immediately to the unliklihood of the existence of a supreme being in the first instance. Chicken and egg all over again.
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Moral Dilemma
by Mattieu inexcuse me so called holy spirit directed governing body; what do you do when you discover that a long term hospital liaison committee elder who gives talks at all1 day assemblies, 2 day assemblies & district assemblies and is quite prominent n the victorian/nsw circuit, is addicted to pornography, particularly under age and bestiality porno?
and oh, if you have print outs of his internet log ins and internet history fully detailing his log ins from his work computer???
and im not talking breach of privacy, im talking his breach of work usage of computers, of which im in charge of the it.
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Lion Cask
This has been an interesting conversation. If I might summarise the facts and suppositions:
The man in question is a Watchtower elder who looks at pornography. Some of that pornography has been of younger people, but there is no child porn involved. The elder has broken no laws or statutes and in all probability constitutes no threat to children, youths and adults in his congregation. If he is guilty of anything it is hypocrisy. He says words and represents himself in ways that are inconsistent with this secret side of his life.
I might have a personal inclination to expose this man, but in the end I would suppress it. At its worst, public exposure will cause him to be disciplined by the WTS, certainly not DFed but perhaps demoted for a time, and it will damage his marriage and relationship with his children. But there will be no damage, none whatsoever, done to the WTS itself. In the meantime, you expose yourself to damage in some ways. So, then, what's the point?
I come full circle to my original piece of advice. Talk to him one on one. Let him know what you know without being judgemental and that should be sufficient to frighten the wits out of him. If he asks what you will do tell him you want only to give him a chance to end his hypocrisy but he must desist his activities because it will otherwise be a matter of time before he is exposed, and then the consequences could be considerable to him personally.
Do this, Mattieu, and you will be the better man, and both you and he will know it.
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Non-evidence reasons why people embrace Evolution.
by hooberus inevolutionists always claim that the reason why they believe in evolution and reject creation is due to "evidence".
they frequently use the opposite term "no evidence" in relation to any type of intelligent design, or creation, (and especially to genesis creation and flood history !).
their advocated beliefs always tend to include whatever is necessary to believe in to intellectually "explain" the existence of the universe, world, and its creatures without needing god).
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Lion Cask
Who is to say there will not be another paradigm shift in biology that alters the scientific story surrounding the history of life at some point?
It would be astonishing if there is not a paradigm shift like you describe, slimboyfat. There have been, after all, several since Darwin's time. There will yet be others and we will just be closer to understanding the history of life. We will never understand it completely. It is simplistic and easy to assign the creation of life in all its complexity to an all powerful supreme being, but of all the stories available to us, that one is the least likely.
There are laws that govern the universe, many of which mankind has yet to discern, let alone comprehend. God made man and all the other higher animals instantaneously? He fabricated and placed the billions of galaxies with their billions of stars and trillions of planets and asteroids and nebulae and quasars and pulsars and black holes and dark matter and all the other stuff that makes up the universe in position and set them to expanding at great speed? And then, only then, he put in place laws that govern it all so that he would not need to intervene further? (Except that he did intervene and broke his own laws whenever he wanted to, according to the OT.) I don't know how sound minded people can accept this story, frankly, but I'm ok with it. To each his own.
Let's just say there is a God, for arguments sake. Would it not make eminently more sense that a mere 14 billion years ago, after the equivalent of trillions and trillions and trillions etc. of years of boring eternal existence, He said to Himself (since there would be nobody else around) "I shall create the Universe. Let there be a Big Bang" and He set it all in motion? 14 billion years, compared to eternity, is less than a dust mote of time. We all get so tied up in our puny human perspectives.
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Brotherdan seems like he really DID leave
by sabastious inhe was an interesting presence on this board.
he had integral knowledge about bethel and the like.
i am an emotional guy too so i can kind of relate to why he left.. but, you gotta get thick skin on the forum.
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Lion Cask
I'm probably out of my league here, since brotherdan left before I arrived, but I went back and read some of his topics, just out of curiosity. Certainly not all of it. What I read seems to indicate that he was, um, a bit of a woos? Dunno. He did an awful lot of crying on people's shoulders and garnered a great deal of sympathy from them. Maybe he was legitimately messed up, but maybe he was just playing games. Regardless, what I read (including Zid's post) shows that people on this board are sympathetic, empathetic and trusting (perhaps to a fault).
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Was It a Fig Tree From Which Eve and Adam Ate?
by snowbird inbook of jasher .
14 and it was in the fifty-sixth year of the life of lamech when adam died; nine hundred and thirty years old was he at his death, and his two sons, with enoch and methuselah his son, buried him with great pomp, as at the burial of kings, in the cave which god had told him.
15 and in that place all the sons of men made a great mourning and weeping on account of adam; it has therefore become a custom among the sons of men to this day.
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Lion Cask
Close. It was a figment-of-the-imagination tree.
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Moral Dilemma
by Mattieu inexcuse me so called holy spirit directed governing body; what do you do when you discover that a long term hospital liaison committee elder who gives talks at all1 day assemblies, 2 day assemblies & district assemblies and is quite prominent n the victorian/nsw circuit, is addicted to pornography, particularly under age and bestiality porno?
and oh, if you have print outs of his internet log ins and internet history fully detailing his log ins from his work computer???
and im not talking breach of privacy, im talking his breach of work usage of computers, of which im in charge of the it.
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Lion Cask
I would fire my IT guy if anything within my server or office was ever transmitted to someone not authorized to receive the information.
Goes to what trumps what, treadnh2o. Confidentiality within law has limits. Some things kept confidential by your IT guy when he knows it is illegal could land him in the courts. That said, if nothing illegal has happened, then the answer may be found in your IT guy's job description. With deference to Blondie's statement, if the IT guy is empowered to monitor internet activity within the firm, finds a problem and reports it to the boss, then he has done his job and that is all he is empowered to do. It is up to the boss to enforce the company rules, not the IT guy.
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Non-evidence reasons why people embrace Evolution.
by hooberus inevolutionists always claim that the reason why they believe in evolution and reject creation is due to "evidence".
they frequently use the opposite term "no evidence" in relation to any type of intelligent design, or creation, (and especially to genesis creation and flood history !).
their advocated beliefs always tend to include whatever is necessary to believe in to intellectually "explain" the existence of the universe, world, and its creatures without needing god).
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Lion Cask
But we still have all the same bacteria as we did 100 years ago.
Um, no, actually. Ever hear of the nylon-eating bacteria, MD? Found in Japan. It has experienced what is called a frame shift mutation that allows it to consume and metabolize nylon (which didn't exist 100 years ago). Yes, yes, it is still a bacteria. What do you expect? Legs and arms?
Let's be real, there couldn't be evolution without abiogenisis. One flows into the other. If the thought that we evolved from rocks or air is too painful or silly to bear, perhaps it is time to reconsider your reality.
And a singularity became the big bang and the big bang became energy and matter and energy and matter differentiated into elements and elements into compounds and compounds into replicating compounds and replicating compounds into life. One flows into the other. Abiogenenis is a prerequisite of evolution, it is no more the same as evolution as evolution is the same as the big bang.
As for the video above, it is interesting that you have to go to a kid that is not well informed and talking off the top of his head to make your point instead of going to someone that actually understands what creationists teach.
Yeah, it was easy picking for sure, MD. But watch the other 29 videos.
The fact you say this suggests either you have not studied the fossil record in great detail or you are choosing to ignore a heck of a lot of it.
For example?
A counter-argument implies that an initial argument was made. That didn't happen here. Hooberus simply made a valid observation on the frailty of the human condition.
I read the OP differently, TD. You may be right.