God's Child responds to me:
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I guess my 7th grade teacher taught me wrong about the founding of our government. I was always taught that most of our founding fathers were devote Christians.
I cannot respond to whether your teachers were at fault or you did not heed their lessons well. The simple fact is that the religious attitudes of the founding fathers would be nothing like what we would call "Christianity" of today. A great many of them were Deists. And others were Unitarians. The predominant attutide of the time was that of the Enlightenment: The Mechanical Universe. "Providence" was the divine "first cause," but the universe tended to work all on its own after that without the direct intervention.
Jefferson, for example, re-wrote the Bible...taking out all of the supernatural aspects of Jesus.
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I know some of them were though because "in God we trust" is used often in government property.
That cae during the Eisenhower administration. We were talking about the founders, remember?
The motto of the US before that was "E Pluribus Unum," or "Out of Many, One." That's also on a great number of the government properties...including the money. Seems they had the idea that the focus of the country was our diversity.
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In the evolutionary tree I don't see a whole new species existing with only negative changes from the original species.
Why not? Of course, you'll have to define what a "species" is, but why is it a species can't be created by removing traits from another?
But then again, your comment is making me think that you think there is no such thing as a beneficial mutation.
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If the evolutionary tree didn't only progress then wouldn't we see just as many negative branches as positive?
No. Negative mutations tend not to survive. After all, if you are less likely to reproduce than I am, your genes are less likely to be passed on than mine.
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Maybe I'm misinterpreting the tree (probably am) but it seems to me that animals only evolve into something greater.
There is no such thing as "greater." There is only "adapted."
Which is "greater": A short, squat body that acquires fat and retains heat or a long, lean body that sheds fat and radiates heat?
Wouldn't that depend upon the environment in which you find yourself?
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Yes, I believe in extinction but I believe in a catastrophe accounting for most of the extinction.
And? What about those that aren't the result of catastrophe?
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I think that the gene pool is getting worse very slowly.
Why? There are more and more of us than ever before. How can the gene pool be getting worse when there are so many of us?
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As mutations occur from radiation then the genes get passed on and mixed. When two people have a child, that child can get the mutations of both parents.
You're talking about what would happen if the harmful mutations are there.
What makes you think there are? There are over six billion humans on the planet. How could we possibly become so numerous if the gene pool were getting worse and worse?
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Sure good mutations tend to survive better, but negative mutations do not always get eliminated.
Evolution does not optimize. I don't have to be faster than the bear. I only have to be faster than you.
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So far in humans more recorded history I've only seen negative mutations survive.
Then how did we get over six billion individuals if there are only negative mutations?
Have you considered the possibility that you don't know enough about what mutations exist to make a valid claim?
For example, consider the reason why you would know about a mutation. Which do you think is going to be more likely to show up on anybody's rader: A mutation that makes a person sickly or a mutation that makes a person hardy? Do you ever stop to think about why you feel good in the morning or do you only wonder when you're not feeling well?
There's a current problem going on in the sports world concerning "genetic doping." That is, one trait of endurance athletes like cyclists is that they have a higher red blood cell count than normal people. So, one way to improve endurance in athletes is to give them drugs to increase their red blood cell counts. If the counts are "too high," one could infer that the person was using drugs to artificially increase his red blood cell count.
But there's a problem: There is a genetic trait whereby people naturally have an extremely high red blood cell count. The existence of a high red blood cell count is not enough to say that a person is taking drugs. It could very well be a natural occurrence.
And if we ever get to the point of being able to do genetic therapy, what will that mean for athletes? If I alter my genetic structure, is that "doping" or not?
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For instance genetic tumors are becoming more abundant because every time a family with this condition has more than 2 kids the condition is being spread.
Sources, please? Remember, we've got six billion people. How did we possibly get that many if the genome is getting worse and worse? If those tumors are becoming more abundant, we should see fewer and fewer people because they would be less and less able to survive to reproduce.
It doesn't matter how many deformed children you have if they can't grow up to reproduce on their own.
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Show me something in humans recorded history that promotes your idea of only good characteristics surviving (besides the geologic column because it's hypothetical).
I've done the former and your latter statement is incorrect.
Again, you can go to North Dakota and see the entire geologic column in a single location. It extends nearly 15,000 feet and goes all the way to the Pre-Cambrian.
There are more than two dozen places on the earth where you can find the entire geologic column.
The Geologic Column in North Dakota
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As for the monopoly thing read message 47.
I did. That's crashfrog's response and he agrees with me (or so I think).
You may not like my analogy, but you haven't shown why it isn't effective.
Monopoly is a man-made game with man-made rules played by humans who enforce them.
Does that not show that it is possible to have a concept of morality, justice, and ethics without the need for a god to play Grand High Pooh-Bah?
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You're misinterpreting scripture by saying Adam and Eve now know when God does good and evil.
Then what, pray tell, did they gain when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?
And what, pray tell, is meant by Genesis 3:22 when it says "And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil:"
That seems to be a pretty direct statement: Adam and Eve are just like us: They know good and evil.
Therefore, if even god recognizes that humans know what good and evil are, then why do you not accept their opinion on the subject?
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They ate the fruit and realized what was evil but they were deceived by Satan.
What does that have to do with anything? I'm not talking about the devil...I'm talking about god. God directly states that Adam and Eve are just like him and his friends up in Heaven:
Genesis 3:22: And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil:
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Sure humans now are able of being aware what's good and evil but it doesn't mean they're perfect in judgment and able to judge God.
Yes, it does. God said so. In fact, god is so scared of the fact that Adam and Eve now are just as competent at comprehending good and evil that they get kicked out lest they eat from the Tree of Life and become immortal:
Genesis 3:22: And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
"As one of us," God's Child. What do you think that means? "To know good and evil," God's Child. What do you think that means?
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They can certainly interpret something as God doing something bad, but it's just a work of Satan.
You mean the Tree of Knowledge was a fake? It didn't provide knowledge of good and evil? God was lying to Adam and Eve when he called it the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?
Then why does he panic and directly state that Adam and Eve are now just like him?
Genesis 3:22: And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
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I cannot prove to you that it's a work of Satan, but you can't prove to me that something bad happening is a mistake God made.
I can if god admits it. Or haven't you read Genesis 2? God finds that Adam is lonely and decides to make a helpmeet for him...but he gets it wrong. God creates animals when what Adam really needs is a woman.
God admits he made a mistake in killing everybody off in the flood and promises never to do it again.
And since I am just as capable of determining good and evil as god is (after all, god directly says so in Genesis 3:22), then I am capable of determining when god screws up.
And god screws up when he is capable of preventing something bad from happening and doesn't.
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God allowed for free will therefore Satan's rebellion was not God's mistake.
Does not that free will also apply to god?
So if god through his own free will screws up, isn't that just as damning?
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Being nice to someone so they'll be nice to you isn't a very stable though. You need more motive than that to have a stable society.
Not quite. Everybody being nice to each other is an extremely stable state. It's the people who don't want to be nice that make things unstable.
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But those rules were created by humans. They are carried out by humans. They are maintained by humans. They are adapted by humans.
Before I respond: what rules are referring to?
If I recall correctly, it was the rules of society.
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Ok, so your opinion on winning is as much joy for yourself. By serving yourself you're not helping leave the world a nice place as you said you wanted to earlier.
Were you not paying attention?
If what I want is as much joy for myself, then I must be nice to you. The way I can most likely achieve my own happiness is to help you achieve yours. And, for you to most likely achieve your own happiness, you must help me with mine. Together, we will do better than if we go it alone.
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If younger people take example of you then they'll be living in the same world as your children and the people who took example of you will subtly take away from them as much as they can as long as they aren't caught. Are you thinking about how you leave the world when you're serving yourself?
Yes. Because in order for me to have the best possible world for myself, I have to buy into the system that says I leave a better world than the one I found it.
If I want to be selfish and maximize my own happiness, I'm best served by taking care of the people around me and them doing the same.
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God does not give up but He does stop taking initiative to tell you something is wrong if you refuse to learn.
But why does god refuse to present information in a way that is clear to those willing to learn?
If I'm trying to teach you how to do a timestep and you really wat to learn, why the insistence that you learn by counting when I know that you're a talker?
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God hasn't given up; He's just leaving it up to you more to come to Him because He already gave you several chances.
BZZZZT!
Pascal's Wager. I'm so sorry, God's Child. Johnny, tell him what parting gifts he has!
Well, Bob, God's Child has won himself a lifetime of anguish in someone else's hell! Yes, that's right. After spending all of his life fighting against Satan and worshipping the Christian god, God's Child gets a reward of going straight to Hades for his hubris. He'll be sentenced to solve a series of puzzles for which the instructions can be read in many ways. Every attempt to glean more information will be met with "Since it would just be a waste of my time to tell you, I won't." Of course, every proposed solution will conflict with something in the contradictory instructions. This being for his continued insistence that those around him are unworthy of explanations.
But, he won't get hungry because he'll have an afterlife-time supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat.
You didn't really think that the god that truly exists is the Christian one, did you?
If god knows how I learn, why does he refuse to adapt his message to my abilities?
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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!
™ Version 4.2