Rationalising The Irrational - Hardcore Theists Apply Within

"IF" Christianity is nothing but a belief system, it is no better than any other religious belief system, and in fact is much worse because the God of the Bible makes great promises to those who enter into the kingdom of God, promises that unbelievers cannot see or know if they are real.Those who truly repent of their sins and believe in the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins also "RECEIVE" exactly what God promises to those who believe.Blessings

I've been looking in all the papers John 10:10 and have seen no reports of mountains having been moved. You've had more then a week and I've seen nothing.

---

Genesis 2
17 But of the ponderosa pine, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou shinniest thereof thou shalt sorely learn of thy nakedness.
18 And we all live happily ever after.

Welcome to the real world John. Believers, as is implicit in the very terms 'believers', will believe that what they "see" and "know" regarding their god to be real.However simply believing that something is true in no way demonstrates that it actually is.You are back to your circular argument again John - "Those who beieve will have reason to believe" etc. etc. Those who BELIEVE in the Lord Jesus BELIEVE that they will receive exactly what God promises to those who BELIEVE.Round and round and round we go...............

The Merry Go Round stops here, Blessings

I would love to believe that this is true. But I have little faith that you will not resurrect the same circular argument elsewhere at some point in the future.It is too deeply ingrained for you not to. Well your argument has died and has been judged wanting. Given that you seem to consider it appropriate for me to burn in hell for all eternity because of the outrageous demand that I be given reason to believe something before actually believing in it.............well...."Blessings" just seems an odd thing to say.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I think DNA shows an intelligent mind at work much more than it shows abiogenesis.Think about that objectively for a moment. We see the ARRANGEMENT of matter producing organisms - not anything which is in the matter. Therefore if matter existed then became an organism, we are assuming that the arrangement of matter is irrelevant, and that there is something in the substance that answers for life. But there is nothing in the substance. It is only the arrangement that matters.Think a second. First you have to assume other universes, to answer for this one - and then you have to assume chance is prevailent outside this universe - then you have to believe that chance can ARRANGE designs from matter.Well, what is the point in assuming the impossible, by just giving things time?If I throw up a ten pence coin ten times and get heads ten times, given enough time - that might be impressive. But if I throw it up ten time, continously, for millions of years - it will never land with a third side.You see, the problem is that when you look at DNA, it makes sense to infer an intelligence atleast.It is rational because designs are an arrangement that only come from design. Look at a car - it is not the substance that makes the car - but the arrangement of the substance.If I make a stick toy figure of a little girl, it is the arrangement of the sticks that make the little girl, and it's only minds that recognise that it is a little girl.Substance itself has no desire to live for it is death. There are no reasons why substance would arrange itself unless there was a mind to recognise it's meaning. THINK about it a bit, without just skirting over my words. Think about information, matter, arrangement. PLEASE.

mike the wiz, you don't understand what you are talking about. I don't mean that as an insult, it is actually not a simple concept to grasp, and by not grasping it nearly all of your assumptions are wrong. Let's start from the beginning:Matter exists, and by its structure it has certain properties. Chemicals and compounds react with each other in ways defined by their structure, nothing more or less. It happens to be that Earth contains conditions which allow matter to form structures which tend to form similar structures in turn; sort of like a snowflake providing a nucleation site for another snowflake. The chemicals that make up this reproducing structure reacted because of what they are inherently; there was no choice or guidance, they simply behaved the way the rules of reality required. Once the structures are reproducing the fittest survive and reproduce better, and the chain of life begins.There is no reason to invent some mystical property to apply to matter forming a living creature, it simply works because of what it is. There is no reason to invent other universes. There is no reason to assume that DNA had an intelligence behind it. There *is* a reason that substances would arrange themselves, namely the physical properties that govern their behavior with other matter. Your logic fails because you cannot grasp the concept that organisms are formed purely through chemical means.

So are you saying that you do need empirical evidence to conclude God?Or not?If you would continue to believe even if it could be definitley demonstrated that life/DNA/whatever could form in the absence of God then why is any of this relevant to belief?If you would cease to believe in God if it could be definitley demonstrated that life/DNA/whatever could form in the absence of God then is it really justified to call you belief in God 'faith'?That is the question at hand here.

Your knowledge will not be able to trump my wisdom. That does not follow.It does not follow that life came from chemical processes "because I don't know what I'm talking about". In the same manner it does not prove that God doesn't exist because a person has never heard of the bible. Nothing you said directly refuted what I said.How certain reactions occur according to physics will not remove the fact that you have not proven that these reactions lead to an organism. Please show the experiment which proves such a thing.Furthermore - you haven't thought enough about the penny example. Matter MUST become a third party.Even with matter reacting to other matter, it has no innate reason to become another "thing". 100% data says otherwise. There is no proof of abiogenesis. Using time alone is an EXCUSE for it together with the ToE. Without the ToE, the assumption of billions of years, it doesn't work. WITH those things assumed, it still does not make sense. Even what you say isn't enough to explain why reactions between matter would result in something more, - a whole system.What would happen if you sent me a lot of motorcycle parts? Now some of those parts might react well with eachother. Perhaps the rubber throttle will come together with the metal bar. Perhaps you will have whole structures - but you now need the DNA to arrange the motorbike. I AM that DNA. I put it together.I do not assume the miraculous friend, nor reason it. I SEE IT. It is fact. I stay with fact - not theory.

And it's a good question and invokes thought. Thankyou Sir. If this could be definitely demonstrated, I think it would certainly put my belief in God under the death rattles.The thing is - believers also have problems intellectually. I don't think God wants us to dive into the intellectual abyss.I have to admitt that I cannot prove that DNA can come about on it's own. I do however, genuinely admitt that there would have to be some strange property to life, that leads people to see design and cleverness in everything I observe. I would be tricked by the nature of existence. I WISH we did know, so I could avoid the painful incessant thoughts that plague me continually.Apologies for being so intermittent. I hope I can get some proper web access sorted in the future. TTFN

Can you conceive of, even hypothetically, a method of determining this?Does every aspect of the universe imply design?If not how can we distinguish between that which is designed and that which is not?If we construct a scale can you give examples of the following:1) Something that is definitely designed
2) Something that is probably designed but might not be
3) Something which may or may not be designed equally
4) Something that is probably not designed but arguably could be
5) Something which displays no evidence of design at allUnless we can recognise definite design over the appearance of design objectively any notion that apparent design is evidence of actual design is inherently subjective wouldn't you agree?So how can we tell design from non-design?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Of course it can. It always will if my knowledge is based on hard evidence and your wisdom is based on subjective experiences and hearsay. There is plenty of research that explains how the chemical reactions that occur in organisms drive their function. Just because we have not made them from scratch or explained every last chemical process does mean that your concept of a magical component is required. I have not thought about the penny example because it is stupid. The penny's third side is, like the magical quality of life, all in your head. You are looking at the string of ten pennies and concluding out of the blue that the only way to attain such a state is for your penny to land on the mystical 10-headed side. This is again a poor example. We don't have any precedent to believe that motorcycles breed in the wild, and we do have strong evidence that it was created (by us of course). In the case of life we have plenty of precedent to believe that life works the way that it does simply due to the sum of its physical parts, and we don't have any evidence that it was intentionally created. You keep going on about some required property beyond that of the constituent matter of the organism, some "spark of life" that is required to make an organism alive. Can you point to even one shred of evidence that proves such a property exists? Take a break from constructing straw men and actually support your argument rather than trying to prove it through attacking others.

I think what matters is that if something is designed, and another thing perhaps isn't, then what matters is the thing that is.Evolutionists say;"appearance of design". But that is infact a fact. DNA is a fact. The difference between a hand and a leg is in the DNA arrangement code, if you like. That's fact. Now people try to argue away the fact with theory, like abiogenesis.

Your first response to me was an argument from authority. My knowledge of biology is not relevant to the truth-value of a claim. That is basic logic. I put it to you differently. There is ZERO data that shows life can come from matter arranging itself and an inteligence solves this problem. We have something stronger than evidence. I define evidence as something which is weak, which makes a theory viable. i.e. the consequent of your modus ponen. If theory X then Y should follow.DNA is fact not evidence. It is a code gets designs, and information only matters to intelligence. It's why you recognise that these shapes on the screen are words, because of their arrangement.Now you must argue against the fact of information.I believe the facts around me - that the universe is miraculous is self-evident from the facts.

So can you give me an example of something that is not designed?I don't see how we can conclude design unless we have an objective means of determining what is designed and what is not?