Texas teen dies rock climbing, two hours later he revives: 'A literal miracle'

Is God fashioned after humans or are humans fashioned after God ?

 

Why do you have to link the theory of evolution to militant atheists? Would you be flabbergasted to know that there are evolutionists who believe in God? And the theory of evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life. It is a theory of how existing life evolves. There are other theories about how the universe and life began, but there is no scientific evidence of creation in the sense of God creating the universe. That is a matter of faith. I’ll never forget something that Billy Graham said when I heard him preach in person in the 1960s at Florida Field. He said, “I can’t show you God in a test tube.”

 

Well, did you go forward ?

 

God is fashioned after humans. What else should humans fashion him after? Do you know of any human who has ever met God? Moses doesn't count.

 

Do you mean have I evolved, or do you mean I answered a Billy Graham altar call? If the latter, I quoted the only thing I remember from his sermon.

 

Even Moses didn’t (allegedly) see god. Just a burning bush. I’ve seen lots of brush fires, burning buildings even a child on fire from Napalm but no god. Maybe he was delirious? The exodus must have been stressful.

 

Why doesn’t Moses count ? Is he injurious to your belief ?

 

The burning bush was just a sneak preview of the sneak preview …

And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.” (Ex. 33:19–23)

 

I don't believe everything in the Bible, such as the passage (can't quote chapter and verse right now) where Moses was allowed to get a peek at God as God was passing by. God looked like a yuge man. (It doesn't say he was orange.)

Edit: Thanks, you just quoted the chapter and verse in the post above this one.

 

I might nuance that. I don’t believe everything the Bible records as being literal. But I am inclined to believe (not excluding the occasional doubt) that the Bible is true regarding the truth it means to convey.

But if you are an errantist, one who believes the Bible is simply wrong in parts, how do you know the right parts to believe ?

 

Would YOU be flabbergasted if i told you that I do not dispute the theory of evolution?

Im not the one to invoke evolution in these discussions. Once again, all I ask of anyone in this context, is a mere acknowledgment that life is the fruit of intelligence, and IF one denies THAT, THEN they necessarily hold that life and intelligence came about accidentally. By chance. Mindlessly, following no design, no calculation, no purpose....just mindlessly fortuitous chemical reactions, accidentally resulting in life. And intelligence.

What comes back from that small ask, is inevitably, variations of darwin, natural selection, survival of the fittest, gravity, primordial soup....

....and how that somehow refutes what i said.

Key point for your post though, is that the association of evolution to militant atheists, is bc they almost always respond with that, whlie again i reiterate, evolution is a process that operates on existing life, and therefore presumes life.

Has next to no bearing on life developing from inanimate matter, accidentally.

 

I would believe the parts in which God is reflected as being worthy of the name.

 

Sounds quite subjective, don’t you think ?

 

I appreciate the in-depth response, 92. Here are some thoughts:


1. Militarism: To be fair to the natural selection militants, lack of intelligence is a core facet of the theory. The whole purpose of the theory was the explain how complexity could evolve without an intelligent designer. If we add in intelligence, it is no longer natural selection, but is instead more like Lamarckism. I don’t think someone should give of up a scientific theory without a scientific reason. Indeed, if I told you that I’d be willing to grant God and all the Christian tenets, but I just wanted you to accept that intelligence wasn’t involved in evolution, you’d clearly think I was crazy. In this way, you’d have to be considered just as “militant”.


2. Natural selection: I sense that we have different conceptions of the theory of natural selection. For me, it is a very creative process, coming in two parts: generation of variation and selection among the variants. Indeed, the second step of selection only reduces variation, but the first can lead to many new types. Our knowledge of genetics is very limited currently, but we still know about tons of meaningful variants. Eg there is a small genetic mutation that leads to six fingers in humans. Of course, it’s only a single base difference that confers resistance to malaria. We’ve recently identified 10,000 variants associated with human height (Science | AAAS).

Here, I think we already see that selection can have a ton to work with just by accidents in DNA replication. It should be noted that, while these DNA variations are random with respect to their later utility in survival and reproduction, their formation is determined by physical and chemical laws. Darwin employed the metaphor of a natural stone wall. The shape of the stones is determined by physical laws as they fall off the face of a cliff (origin of variation), but these shapes are random with respect to how they are later used in the construction of the wall (selection). I would not say that this wall was built by accident, but certainly the components were shaped by random chance.




3. The John Locke problem: I think you are still missing the crux of Locke’s reasoning. I understand that you find the theory of natural selection ludicrous and the reasoning of anyone that accepts it as absurd. However, our question is why should we take your judgement of their reasoning as the correct one? We cannot use the fact that you find these other people’s beliefs to be absurd as evidence of your correctness, as that simply presupposes the very thing -your correctness- that we are trying to verify. In order to get out of this tautological loop, we need an external reason to accept the infallibility of your brain and the absurdity of mine. If you are suggesting that the entire academic field of biology is undergoing a mass delusion, this should require more evidence than that it simply seems obvious to you.

 

Yeah, all of my thoughts tend to be subjective. I wish I could be omniscient.

 

I call it Evolutiondiditism …

 

That’s rather the whole point I would think, that maybe, just maybe we don’t have to be because someone is. It has to count as a live option, right ?

 

Good point. All Gods are made by men, thus their behavior takes on the cultural norms of the time. In this case, barbaric and heinous by today's standards, but par for the course in ancient times.

 

Im familiar with the spiel, though to your guy's credit, he did concede that the chances of all those ingredients happening in the same bacterium was 1/10....to the 40,000th power.

That's some faith right there!

...and btw, even that presumed the existence of RNA...and a cel somehow pre-equipped to self reproduce...

Btw, 2 weeks ago...a meteor found with RNA on it.

I take this as evidence of intelligence, somewhere out there (ie RNA being fruit of intelligence, and not some fortuitous matter accidentally capable of transferring complex information).

What do you make of it?

 

What?