Summations Only

Do you know what an internet troll is?

An internet troll is someone who posts just to provoke an emotional response from other members. Is that what you are doing?

If so... stop! It's nonsense, unproductive and unbecoming of a professing Christian.

HBD

Percy writes: Except that Michael Ruse objects to being quote-mined like this.

Except that I read your link and while the quote is an extract from the 5 pages it is representative of what Ruse said, and as such is not quote mining. Ruse's quotes from Stephen J Gould continue to reinforce the theme that many evolutionists give religious overtones to the theory of evolution

quote:

---

The language of Stephen Jay Gould is hardly more tempered. We learn that evolution "liberates the human spirit," that for sheer excitement evolution "beats any myth of human origins by light years," and that we should "praise this evolutionary nexus -- a far more stately mansion for the human soul than any pretty or parochial comfort ever conjured by our swollen neurology to obscure the source of physical being."

Mr. Gould ultimately rejects traditional readings of evolution for a more inspiring, liberating version: "We must assume that consciousness would not have evolved on our planet if a cosmic catastrophe had not claimed the dinosaurs as victims. In an entirely literal sense, we owe our existence, as large and reasoning mammals, to our lucky stars." If this is not to rival traditional Judaeo-Christian teaching -- with its central belief that we humans are not just random happenstances, but a major reason why God created heaven and earth -- I do not know what is.

---

Ruse did qualify it toward the end by saying

quote:

---

There is no need to make a religion of evolution. On its own merits, evolution as science is just that -- good, tough, forward-looking science, which should be taught as a matter of course to all children, regardless of creed.

---

Ruse wrote what he wrote. The quote is fair.

There is no reason why a person who accepts evolutionary theory as the best explanation of how life on earth came to be so diverse can't also believe in miracles.

Do you believe in miracles?
Which ones?

God arranged to have his Word recorded in written form to preserve its accuracy down through the centuries.

That's your fallible interpretation.

Human intelligence is infallible? I didn't know that!

Nor does Ringo, because he didn't claim that. He never claimed all errors are corrected and ,of course, if human intelligence were infallible there wouldn't be any errors to correct.

Dredge writes: God arranged to have his Word recorded in written form to preserve its accuracy down through the centuries.

Yet what was written down is filled with fallacies, contradictions, absurdities and records an evil, mean, not all that bright God.

If God wanted accuracy you would think he could do better than what is recorded in the Bible.

So... you think God created some species of animal and it thrived for a time and then died out so God created a new species that was very similar to the original species but had some modifications, but that also died out after a number of years, so God tried again... and again... and again... until he finally hit upon a suitable design - and those are our modern species

All in a few thousand years. But wait... didn't all those animal exist at the time of the Fludde?

Except that I read your link and while the quote is an extract from the 5 pages it is representative of what Ruse said, and as such is not quote mining.

Eminent biologist hits back at the creationists who 'hijacked' his theory for their own ends

Did you read that link?

Do you know better than him what he meant?

But using the "starting point" of a young earth is no worse than using evolution as a starting point, which is what most atheists do.

There is evidence for one "starting point" but not for the other. In fact, the evidence flatly contradicts a young earth.

Dredge writes: I can't accept that Gould would not consider "sudden appearance" and "stasis" to be evidence of creation. If not "sudden appearance" and "stasis", then one wonders, what would he consider to be evidence of creation?

A few off the top of my head:

A rabbit in Cambrian strata.
A species with a mixture of bird and mammal features.
A mammal with many genes that have nearly 100% homology to jellyfish, but a lack of those same genes in other mammals.

Faith writes: Except writings inspired by God Himself.

It makes no difference who or what inspired the writings. All writings are subject to the failures of human understanding.

Duplicate

Edited by ringo, : No reason given.

Dredge writes: As I have already explained in a previous post, it would seem that demons, or Satan, are not capable of "speaking" to humans in an audible voice.

Demons and Satan are also not literal. Notice how you have to make up rules like, "They can't speak in an audible voice," which is just as silly as snakes that can speak in an audible voice.

Dredge writes: God arranged to have his Word recorded in written form to preserve its accuracy down through the centuries. An oral method wouldn't work as it would be very prone to mistakes when being passed from one person to the next.

Written accounts are just as prone to error: copying errors, mistranslation, outright redaction.... the list goes on and on. The difference between oral and written transmission is that the errors in the written version are easier to detect. We ca see what King James' translators did to their "originals" but we have no recordings of Moses telling bedtime stories to his grandchildren. If you want to claim that one method is better than the other you should choose oral because the evidence of the changes has been lost.

Dredge writes: The Jews went to extreme lenghts to ensure that each and every word was accurately copied from one Bible copy to the next.

But the Christians didn't. They had a lot of axes to grind.

Dredge writes: Human intelligence is infallible?

I didn't say that. I said it's correctable, even self-correcting, if you like. Intelligence is the ability to learn, to recognize mistakes and not make the same mistakes over and over again.

It's the opposite of literalism. Intelligence recognizes that there are errors in the Bible. Literalists try to twist reality to fit the errors.

All writings are subject to the failures of human understanding.

Except those inspired by God.