Quote from: Stijn on December 30, 2014, 01:05:40 AM

Quote from: BADecker on December 30, 2014, 12:12:05 AM

Quote from: Stijn on December 29, 2014, 07:10:58 PM

There is plenty of evidence that humans evolved from non-human ancestors, that humans and non-human animals have common ancestors, and that no clear dividing line can be drawn between humans and non-human animals.

Wrong. There is only interpretation of a load of evidence.

indeed, interpretations, as is always the case when looking at evidence. But in the case of evolution it is an extremely coherent interpretation.

All evolution coherence is based on "if." What I mean is, when you get down to the basis of it all, the science says "if" this and that are true, then evolution happened. There is no foundation under evolution. Indeed, there are lots of void gaps between the various steps in evolutionary process.

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Looking at our ancestors, all intermediates between a human and a chicken once lived. And there is a possibility of human-animal hybrids, chimaeras and genetically modified humanlike beings. In other words; there is no essence related to homo sapiens.

Yet in all this, there are no provable links, where one form changed itself into another. That is interpretaion, wishful thinking, the stuff children's stories are made out of.

but there are plenty of fossils of intermediate species. With the fossils that are discovered, we can rather clearly see how species evolved. We can see how our ancestors looked like. Some 60 million years ago, our great great... grandfather looked like some kind of squirrel. http://news.discovery.com/animals/zoo-animals/first-human-ancestor-squirrel-121018.htm

The thing is, nobody knows if those are intermediate species. Which ones are the intermediate ones? Are they all intermediate ones? Perhaps they were all created as individual kind-begets-kind species, and the thing we see today is entropy increasing. More and more of our current species of life are dying out without anything coming in to take their place.

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1. There is a machine-like quality to the operation of the universe, in everything from inanimate objects to complex life. Machines have makers. The evidence for this is that man takes all his machine knowledge from the machine "knowledge" already planted in the universe... all of it. Man juggles the knowledge a bit, and comes up with some new forms of complex machinery. Complex machinery is designed by intelligence. Man hasn't come close to catching up to the complexity of the machinery in the universe. Whatever God is, He is there.

but then who created god? If he created our universe, he must be a very complex being...
And what about spontaneous emergence of complexity, such as we see in evolution?

Good questions. God is God. How do we know that He needed creating? We aren't far enough along in our investigations to even begin to view what He is personally like.

Can the ants in the terrarium, or the fish in the fishbowl, envision what the humans that take care and feed them are like?

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2. There is no pure randomness. Everything that we call random or probability is based on our inability to see the causes for some effects. The whole universe operates on cause and effect and always has. Even the quantum math that has been developed, which might suggest that there is pure random out there somewhere, has been designed using cause and effect thinking.

some models about the origing of the universe did not have a beginning and hence were not caused (e.g. Hawking Hartle no-boundary state http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartle%E2%80%93Hawking_state)

Again models... filled with holes and gaps... simply because we don't know enough to determine if they are even plausible or not.

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The fact that we humans think the way we do - about everything including science and art - has its base in cause and effect, because something caused us to think the way we do. What is the Great First Cause that caused the chain of effects?

and what is the cause of that? What caused god? What caused god to make a causal universe?

Again. We are barely getting an understanding of the way the universe works. And we are scratching the surface of this understanding. How can we understand God Who is eternal and never changes, and lives in light that is unapproachable, and with Whom there is no shadow of turning?

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3. Science doesn't have a handle on soul, spirit or consciousness.

soul and spirit are like the life force (elan vital) unscientific terms. But scientists are gaining knowledge on how consciousness works.

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4. Stand the history of the various religious writings and traditions side by side. Look at them all in detail. The others are all blown away by the strength of the Bible. The history of the Bible, including the validations for it made by the nation of Israel, shows that the Bible can't exist. There are too many "things" in and about the Bible that make it impossible to exist. Yet it exists among hundreds of millions of people all around the world.

so?

Perhaps I said it not so clear. I meant two things:
1. The Bible can't exist, yet it does. The history of the Bible shows this. Yet, Bibles abound around the world.
2. Non of the other religions approaches this impossibility of existing.

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At first, before there were mistakes made in this world, people were instructed to eat of the plants (except for the fruit of one particular tree, that they were instructed not to eat).

yes, acoording to the story, God made everyone vegan, even lions. But why did he put that particular tree in the middle of the garden of eden? Why did God ask for problems? If he didn't want humans to eat its fruits, why did he make it so tempting and easy for humans?

The mistakes were not in the plan. God thinks in such different ways than we that the mistakes were taken into account, automatically, without even having been though about.

so god is not that smart? Even I am smart enough to know that planting a tree with delicious fruits in the middle of the garden of eden, guarded by a seducing talking snake, is asking for problems.

You missed it. God doesn't even think mistakes. God doesn't plan for failures. The failures and mistakes are automatically corrected. The corrections are built in.

The question for each of us is, Will I accept the correction, or will I push myself out of existence by not accepting the correction?

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God made man in the image of God so that man could recognize how good and great God is.

being extremely narcissistic is not my idea of being good...
It sounds silly: "oh, let's make toys that can adore me and see how great I am"

Except that, when you are as good as God, it is the only way to operate.

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Then later, long after mistakes came into the world (the original perpetual nature of the universe was destroyed), God gave the animals to man for food along with the plants.

which is an odd move of God. Humans did something wrong and therefore God said that they are from then on allowed to harm innocents? Why did he make a vegan world in the first place? Why did God suddenly turned 180°? A bit crazy.

It was not God Who turned. It was man.

no, God turned. First he created a vegan world, so he was against unecessary suffering. And after someone ate from a forbidden fruit, everyone is allowed to kill and eat someone else and cause unnecessary harm?

In the perfect world that God made, there wasn't any suffering. Such a thing as "unnecessary suffering" does not fit that world.

Cannibalism was never condoned.

Animals are not related to people in such a sense that cannibalism would apply.

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Part of God's plan always was blessings for man. Among the blessings was freedom of choice.

then why didn't he create a free world in the first place? A world where everyone is free to kill and eat someone else?

The idea was to give man the opportunity to be the best that he could be, not to give him the opportunity to fail.

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Man's turning from God was so great that God had it in mind to destroy all mankind. Noah and his family were the only ones who continued to worship God.

so God killed everyone who did not worship him? That is what an extremely bad dictator does.

God doesn't want anyone to be destroyed. But, that's how great God is. If people won't do the thing that they were made for, what good are they? Yet, God in His mercy gives them many second chances. And still they won't turn and accept God.

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In the Flood, where God saved Noah and his family, but destroyed the rest of the world, things of the world changed. The world was no longer the healthy place that it had been. Animals were given as food to man because there are times when the kinds of plant life that are suited to man are simply not available in abundance.

he's crazy, this god... Absolutely crazy. Gone mad beyond imagination.

I feel for you. Perhaps when you have the ability to create even the least bit of something, then you can call God crazy. Until then, you don't have the chance of "a nitrocelulos dog chasing an asbestos cat in hell."

Realize that it is not God that is crazy.

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This whole thing is not easy to explain.

it is easy to explain if we assume god is absolutely crazy...

View the Youtube videos that show how marvelously a living cell works to see about crazy.

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The whole purpose of the law is to benefit man. It isn't a thing to be picky about. The thing to be picky about is the direction in which a person goes in his life... in favor of God, or against Him. Why worry about the little imperfection of eating a few drops of blood, over against the big imperfection of attempting to fight against God?

but it was god who said we are not allowed to eat blood. He says it quite often, so it must be important to him: http://biblehub.com/genesis/9-4.htm

It IS important to Him. He doesn't allow failure in any way, even once. That's why His Son Jesus had to come as man, with the strength of God, to take the punishment for man, so that man can live. Jesus virtually nullified the effects of breaking the law, without nullifying the law itself. Look to Jesus and live.

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God's seeming inconsistency is based on the inconsistency of man. God will always help the man who accepts Him, is on His side, believes in the Savior, and proves it by his actions though they are flawed at times.

but there are a lot of believers who became victims of war, genocide, earthquakes, disease, bad luck,... So god does not always help the believers. In fact, he quite often does not help. It seems he acts a bit arbitrarily.

It is true that a lot of believers get what the unbelievers should be getting in this life, and vice versa. There will come a time when Jesus will return to raise all the dead to life, and to judge everyone with regard to how much right and wrong he did while living. Those who believed in Jesus for salvation will receive eternal life in the New Heavens and the New Earth that God will create (is creating?). Then this whole universe will be destroyed as though it had never been - never remembered or brought to mind.

You are welcome to come along.