Creation vs. Evolution

[alwight]

Dear alwight,

Which JC has the most statues and is portrayed upon the necklaces that men and women wear today? How many paintings and mosaics on stained glass windows, etc. Jesus Christ, not Julius Caesar. Do you see what I mean, Buddy??

Much Love & Cheerio, Matey,

Michael

Hi Michael,
You still seem to be missing the point whenever you can I notice. The evidence I was referring to was all contemporaneous to the time of Julius Caesar, not modern mass produced symbols of faith. Iow all made by people who either knew Caesar directly or who were living under his rule day to day, which counts as real evidence. Even the graffiti scratched onto walls by serving Roman soldiers at the time is good evidence.
It's nothing to do with all the later or more modern religious paraphernalia of Jesus which isn't evidence of anything. This is about real facts and evidence from the time, not how many people today own mass produced images of Jesus Christ. It's about verifiable contemporary evidence, not how many people today believe and have supposed pictures and images of Jesus even though, unlike Caesar, there is no evidence of what he actually looked like nor that he even did exist.

 

[alwight]

Wow Alwight,

You really know how to bum someone out. I am very distraught with you!! I should have known that you felt this way all along. How bogue of you to treat Jesus this way. You break my heart! I must admit that I've been wrong about you and should check my priorities again. I'm going to miss the closeness that we had, but we just don't mesh anymore. We are like fish without chips!! Or bready pudding!! I'm bummed!! I guess you really do not like me or care how I feel. I give up and wash this away!!! I am beyond words right now. I am very sad, to say the least!!

Michael

This is meant to be a rational discussion Michael, I have always been honest with you about what I believed or perhaps didn't. I see no reason at all for you to take it personally.

 

[alwight]

No, I used to be a believer in common descent. But then I looked at the evidence and realized common descent must be false.

Yes, that's all very interesting, but have you actually been able to falsify any of it other than just think you have?
If so please do remind me what it was.

 

[iouae]

Miracles

I have seen magicians do tricks which look like miracles to me.
However, magicians don't seem to require me to believe anything.

The Israelites leaving Egypt saw the 10 plagues fall on Egypt, walked through the parted Red Sea, witnessed the daily provision of manna for 40 years - every day except the Sabbath. Yet they were a dead loss.

Christ criticised some of the Israelite cities He did miracles in saying in Matthew 11:21 Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

At the end of Christ's miracle-working ministry, He seemed to be left with 11 disciples, a few women supporters and about five hundred true followers, to whom He appeared after His resurrection. (1 Cor 15:6)

Miracles, per se are fairly useless at generating worthwhile believers.
If there is no faith to view the miracles with, miracles have zero value. The Pharisees saw the miracles Jesus did and ascribed these to Satan.

Christianity took off when the miracles had largely stopped.

The whole book of Acts tells about the spread of Christianity and it is driven by one thing, the Holy Spirit WITHIN the believer. There is no outward manifestation of this in the sense that believers can be known and judged by their miracle-working power.

It is God's express purpose that Christianity is NOT miracle driven. If Christianity was miracle-driven, then no faith would be required.

The Antichrist who will arise before the end will "prove" his credentials as a "man of God" by producing miracles such as have not been seen since Christ.

2 Thes 2:8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

So, God grants to His opposition supernatural power to perform miracles to lure people, including believers, away from Him.

So God's team gets to play The Final with legs shackled, against Team Satan on steroids.

Any ideas why?

 

[alwight]

John 20:28-29 KJV -

It doesn't get too much more eyewitness than Thomas and Jesus after resurrection with the other 11, including John who wrote it !! It's ok if you don't believe, it's just meant to be.

Using a more secular and scientific reasoning Gospel John is thought to be the last one written of the four and well after the supposed events took place. The author's name is not known and like the three synoptic gospels is thought to use the name associated only as a convenience, not because an actual eye witness or disciple of Jesus actually wrote it. Thomas might well be an eye witness had he ever written about it but later hearsay by someone else just doesn't count.

 

[6days]

Why don't you take a look into the Quran instead, it's also "written testimony from eyewitnesses" who claim very clearly that big J was just a man.

The Qu'ran does NOT have eye witness testimony of Jesus.
The Qu'ran not only contradicts God's Word but is self contradictory.

Meanwhile God's Word is 66 different books, written by over 40 authors, over 1500 years and is internally and externally consistent. (And all done without the internet! Imagine!)His Word is confirmed by fulfilled prophecy, science and archaeology.

 

[Greg Jennings]

Dear Greg Jennings,

And I suppose that in a couple million years, there will be some apes ready to change into humans. Or one and one-half million years, or next week, etc. Don't you get it? It would be an ongoing thing, so that we would see it happening now ALSO, in our LIFETIMES!! You just do not understand. I don't know how to explain it any better to you. Do you understand what I'm saying here?

Praise The Greatness Of God!!

Michael

:angel: :cloud9: :rapture:

No, Michael. That's not how it works. I gave my best effort explaining it, but I'm afraid it was all for naught

 

[Greg Jennings]

The Qu'ran does NOT have eye witness testimony of Jesus.
The Qu'ran not only contradicts God's Word but is self contradictory.

Meanwhile God's Word is 66 different books, written by over 40 authors, over 1500 years and is internally and externally consistent. (And all done without the internet! Imagine!)His Word is confirmed by fulfilled prophecy, science and archaeology.

Explain to me how the Quran contradicts itself, and the Bible does not, please

 

[Greg Jennings]

Dear TheDuke,

So you really think there were a lot of children called Jesus in that time? It was a new name when Jesus received it.

Michael

"Jesus", or more accurately "Yeshua" or "Yehoshua", was the most common name given to boys in the region when and where Jesus Christ was born. He was certainly not the first to receive such a name. It was kind of like being named John today. Very common

 

[Greg Jennings]

Dear Greg J,

Wouldn't you think that it would happen every 13 years or so, then? I mean, us seeing changes in apes to humans? It wouldn't happen for a generation of humans and apes, and then not happen again for another generation of humans and apes. It would be happening constantly, every year, for humans and apes. Don't you GET IT??!! Make some sense!!

Praise The Lord!!

Michael

:rapture: :rapture: :rapture:

I'll try this again:

Every generation produces (at best) a tiny tiny change in any animal. You seem to think that at some point a momma ape just plopped out a baby human. That's far from how evolution works. Best case scenario, an ape could never turn into a human in less than hundreds of thousands of generations. And absolutely the shortest any generation would take for hominids is 13 years. So with those estimates, the very earliest that an ape could turn into a human would be 13 x (X)100,000. That's a minimum of 1.3 million years. And that's an absolute minimum in a repeating best case scenario for 100,000 generations in a row. In reality it would take much much longer because the best case scenario almost never happens in nature

 

[6days]

Explain to me how the Quran contradicts itself, and the Bible does not, please

For example the Qu'ran says that the Torah, Psalms and Gospel are given by Allah who won't allow them to become corrupted, and yet it claims things contradictory to the Bible such as denying the crucifixion. In other words, the Qu'ran says the Bible is correct and it says the Bible is wrong.

 

[6days]

Every generation produces (at best) a tiny tiny change in any animal.

Yes, based on pre-existing genetic information.

You seem to think that at some point a momma ape just plopped out a baby human. That's far from how evolution works.

Michael does not think that.

Best case scenario, an ape could never turn into a human in less than hundreds of thousands of generations. And absolutely the shortest any generation would take for hominids is 13 years. So with those estimates, the very earliest that an ape could turn into a human would be 13 x (X)100,000. That's a minimum of 1.3 million years. And that's an absolute minimum in a repeating best case scenario for 100,000 generations in a row. In reality it would take much much longer because the best case scenario almost never happens in nature

That's gibberish nonsense. Its pseudoscience.
To use your phrase "In reality" you are requiring up hill evolution, and observation is the opposite. Natural selection is incapable of removing the vast amount of slightly deleterious mutations. These mutations accumulate causing increasing genetic problems and disorders. Empirical science shows you have a false belief system.

 

[Greg Jennings]

For example the Qu'ran says that the Torah, Psalms and Gospel are given by Allah who won't allow them to become corrupted, and yet it claims things contradictory to the Bible such as denying the crucifixion. In other words, the Qu'ran says the Bible is correct and it says the Bible is wrong.

I think you're right about the Quran. I also think you're wrong about the bible not contradicting itself. For example, every one of the four gospels contradicts the other about who discovered Jesus's tomb.

Interestingly, those contradictions don't take from the authenticity of the gospels, but actually add to it. If the story had been the exact same from four different sources, that would look like they had all conspired to create the same story. As it is, it seems that the different authors were trying to say, "No, I saw him first." And that's exactly what you'd expect in a real world situation

 

[Greg Jennings]

Yes, based on pre-existing genetic information.

Michael does not think that.

I'd like him to explain what he does believe then

That's gibberish nonsense. Its pseudoscience.
To use your phrase "In reality" you are requiring up hill evolution, and observation is the opposite. Natural selection is incapable of removing the vast amount of slightly deleterious mutations. These mutations accumulate causing increasing genetic problems and disorders.

Natural selection has no way to eliminate deleterious mutations, huh? Seriously? Then how do you explain organisms made weaker by deleterious mutations having their genes removed from the pool by dying early and not reproducing? If a mutation is truly so bad that it is debilitating, it will absolutely get removed within 1-3 generations. That's just common sense

Empirical science shows you have a false belief system.

Empirical science disagrees with you

 

[6days]

For example, every one of the four gospels contradicts the other about who discovered Jesus's tomb.

Uh..... Not really contradict. They do mention different details though and tell what they witnessed in their own words. (Sort of what you said in your following paragraph)

 

[6days]

Natural selection has no way to eliminate deleterious mutations, huh? Seriously? Then how do you explain organisms made weaker by deleterious mutations having their genes removed from the pool by dying early and not reproducing? If a mutation is truly so bad that it is debilitating, it will absolutely get removed within 1-3 generations. That's just common sense

Sure.... I've got a busy day ahead celebrating our Christmas. I will explain later why you are wrong. Natural selection only is capable of detecting critical mutations. Its common sense or else life would not exist.
I will get into it more later today but we likely have a few hundred mutations per generation. Most are considered neutral although geneticists will often call them slightly deleterious. They say we likely have 3 harmful mutations that are passed on with each generation..... Gotta run...later

 

[alwight]

Natural selection only is capable of detecting critical mutations. Its common sense or else life would not exist.

What is a "critical mutation"? :liberals:
You couldn't be making this stuff up...? :think:

Truth is that Natural Selection simply selects whatever works best, it doesn't have a rulebook on what it can and can not do.
Common sense actually suggests that it would not somehow be able to exclude any beneficial mutation that happened to come along, that indeed beneficial adaptions would be built on previous beneficial adaptions. So in fact beneficial mutations clearly are positively more selectable and thus more likely to be transferred to the next generation, despite their initially relatively smaller numbers.

 

[Daniel1769]

One day when my dog gets pregnant and gives birth to something other than puppies, I might consider evolution. Until then, I cannot seriously consider a claim so absurd, so nonsensical, so baseless, so ridiculous as evolution.

 

[alwight]

One day when my dog gets pregnant and gives birth to something other than puppies, I might consider evolution. Until then, I cannot seriously consider a claim so absurd, so nonsensical, so baseless, so ridiculous as evolution.

Well, if anything like that ever did happen then it would have just falsified Darwinian evolution and I for one would give it up and start believing in creation. lain:


The wilful ignorance is strong with this one.

 

[Daniel1769]

Well, if anything like that ever did happen then it would have just falsified Darwinian evolution and I for one would give it up and start believing in creation. lain:


The wilful ignorance is strong with this one.

A puppy with a horn or something. That's evolutuon. lolol