Why I believe Creation is factually accurate – The Reality!

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Do some more Research... (The Truth Must Be Rightly Divided) (Stay in Context)

www.wordworx.co.nz...

www.biblewheel.com...

www.theomatics.com...

100prophecies.org...

reply to post by madnessinmysoul



Be honest with yourself...And accept the TRUTH!

Dawkins and Steven Weinberg admit defeat and their hate for god,for atheists who have changed their mind after watching this video can check dr.hovinds material at his website ;Atheists Admit Defeat

reply to post by crimsonhead

Originally posted by crimsonhead
Any response Sigismundis?

Many times atheists, agnostics, or just plain bible skeptics come into threads and drop long posts full of "proofs" that the bible is a sham or the canon is inaccurate, etc.

They obviously have copied this info from their favorite "religion teacher" or "atheist website".

...and this is being said whilst a religious user in this very thread has repeatedly providing nothing more than external sources. And you can claim it's obviously copy pasted...but unless you can prove it?

And just as sure as believers believe that their bible is true, these atheists are 100% convinced that the bible is not true.

This is a distortion. We only reject that for which there is no evidence. Why? Because there's no evidence. We also reject that which is unsupported or contradicted by the evidence provided in a relevant field. Noah's flood? Geologic and genetic evidence lacking.

reply to post by crimsonhead

Originally posted by crimsonhead
madnessinmysoul,

Religious belief is not anything that is currently a "fact" or can be "proven" to the standards you are requiring.

Except...it sort of should be. If the claims of any of the world's religions had any validity they would be materially demonstrable. Noah's flood, the 6000 year old creation, the historicity of Jesus, the blitzkrieg of Canaan, the Exodus narrative, the claims of giants, etc etc.

No more than evolution from the big bang to what we see here can be proven by normal scientific standards or the usual scientific method.

...except that they can. And have. We've observed evolution under controlled circumstances and we've got enough evidence from the field of genetics on its own to prove it. The Big Bang is the only cosmological model that fits with the observed evidence. Technically, no scientific idea is 'proven'...so...yeah.

We both know we are here, and we both obviously have different opinions as to how we got here.

The difference is that yours is demonstrably wrong and mine is at the very least in line with the evidence.

You are sure that we evolved over millions of years from tiny cells to humans, and I am sure God created humans separately.

And the evidence supports my assertion and it refutes your assertion.

You use DNA "evidence" (similarity of man and chimps), fossil "evidence" to stake your claims. We use the bible to stake our claims.

Yes, I use external verification and you use the document from which you get your claim. The difference is that your argument is circular and my argument is not.

Our way may seem foolish to you, just as your way seems foolish to me.

...true. But yours is demonstrably illogical and mine is testable and verifiable and produces results. Like the computer you're using.

Neither side can "prove" anything beyond a shadow of a doubt.

That's irrelevant and sophomoric. Epistemological certainty is impossible in any matter, so what?

Faith is what all christians have. However faith is not something that will last forever. Faith is only faith until the realities that are "hoped for" actually occur. If that occurs as the bible says it will, then you will have your "evidence" at that time.

...well, there are plenty of things that the Bible claims have happened for which there is no evidence.

If you are correct, than we will all die and our conversations over this matter in the long run were quite trivial and accomplished nothing.

*Sigh* Pascal's wager? Again? Just...it's wrong. If you need me to tell you why this is silly, I will. But I'm not going to waste my finger motions.

But expecting those that believe in God to furnish you with definitive, physical proof is something you won't get from them at this time, so why bother?

To show them that the reason they can't furnish me with proof is that the belief is unsupported. It makes definitive claims that the all-powerful creator of the universe co-authored a book that is somehow internally contradictory and downright incorrect in some places as well as there being the claim that this same being regularly intervenes in the affairs of humans. If this being interferes in reality then it falls within the realm of the scientific method. This interference would be measurable.

I never figured this one out. Why evolutionists cling to these types of discussions.

*Sigh* I'm going to have to bump my thread again. Evolutionist is an idiotic word. Or are you a 'circuitist' because you're using a computer?

If I believed as you did, I wouldn't waste a single second of my life on these types of issues. Why do so many cling to it with such passion and animosity (in many cases)?

Because you're rotting people's minds with an attack of the core principles of reason and science that gave us the wonderful world we have today, including the computer that you are attacking those principles with.

reply to post by Faith2011

Dawkins and Steven Weinberg admit defeat and their hate for god,for atheists who have changed their mind after watching this video can check dr.hovinds material at his website ;Atheists Admit Defeat

...Kent Hovind (whose misleading use of his degree-mill title in Christian education is revolting) is someone whose position is so weak that he doesn't even know what the definition of evolution is.... And the quoted statement is a misrepresentation of the video's material.


I'm going to go point by point in the video.

0:15
No, an ad hominem attack is predicating the validity of an argument on the character or characteristics of a person.

Example: Bob: "I love BMWs"
Steven: "You would, being of German descent"

Or

Bob: "I think that we should spend more money to encourage childhood reading"
Steven: "You can't believe him, he was arrested for drunk driving!"

0:19
They're saying that invoking a deity (probably within the context of explaining why 'God of the gaps' is silly) doesn't explain anything, not that they can't explain it, nor are they claiming that the deity doesn't exist. They are claiming that they don't believe in such a deity. Dawkins himself says that he can never be 100% certain and qualifies himself as an agnostic atheist.

0:38
..ok, I'm already starting to think that the caption cards have nothing to do with the video presented. And the claim "Belief there is no god despite all the evidence" is...ridiculous. Atheism isn't a belief that there is no deity, it's not believing in a deity. Two different things.

0:55
This is getting ridiculous..."You hate god os much that you can't admit.God fine tuend the universe for us to live in it." I'm sorry, but claiming that the individuals hate a deity because they don't accept the horrendously illogical 'fine tuning' argument is an outright personal attack.

1:00
"Here is the proof that Steven Weinberg hates God"
...and a horribly overedited quote mine follows. I'd like to see the sourced material in full, thank you very much. Both statements clearly catch Weinberg mid-sentence, without the context of the full beginning of the statements made.

1:12
Ok, I'm going to start smacking my head against the wall...theories and facts are two separate things, a theory is a valid concept which explains a fact. A good example of a theory that you, myself, and every other ATS user relies on the validity of is circuit theory. It's not "circuit fact". Facts are things like "The sky is blue" and a theory would explain why it is blue. Furthermore, Dawkins is explaining how a theory that is even plausible works out better than not having an idea at all or just inserting a catch-all supernatural explanation. And there may be ways of testing pre-Planck time ideas...we just may not have the means at the moment.

1:51
"Atheists admit that the universe is intelligently designed and fine tuned for life." ...then why is the vast majority of it uninhabitable? And they don't. Aside from the fact that this statement was taken out of context and the word 'seemed' was thrown out there.


I'm done. It was such a stupid and frankly dishonest video.

reply to post by Faith2011




This Hovind? You can't be serious

Dr Dino

reply to post by MrXYZ



True Faith Will See TRUTH!


"UBC Lecture Dawkins Delusion"

Hi Crimsonhead -

I'm not sure where to start with you....but here goes....

Like 'emdc' you seem to be operating under the mistaken impression that there existed only ONE single version of the "Hebrew bible" as if other versions of the Hebrew scriptures never ever once existed in antiquity (only to be voted out of existence by a series of raucous councils who had to VOTE on what books were in and which were out…)

You also seem not to be aware that the earliest Coptic Christians in Alexandria (one of the oldest Christian congregations in the world) held the 'Book of I Henoch' and 'The Testament of the 12 Patriarchs' as canonical, i.e. part of their sacred canon of the Bible.

Did you not know that we cannot speak of 'Christianity' in the singular, but only 'Christianities' in the earliest period, each one located in different 'city states' (e.g. Antioch, Corinth, Jerusalem, Galatia, Rome etc.) in the 1st century, and each with their OWN list of sacred books (i.e. before the later councils voted in which books were sacred and which were not) ? Check out Bart Ehrman's series of books written for the general audience (he started out as a right wing fundamentalist baptist 'Christian' who even attended Moody Bible College - then grew up and went to Yale and examined all the NT manuscripts very closely - and - shock and awe - he was shocked by what he found when he looked at the textual evidence - and now, has now been promoted to a academic agnostic.

(www.bartdehrman.com...)

Ah, well. Examining Biblical Textual Evidence VERY CLOSELY and then taking the time to think deeply (for decades !) about the implications can often have life changing ramifications..but his Aha ! moment took years to sink in - he had to de-program himself from all the propaganda he was raised with since he was 3 years old !

You, like edms, also seem ublissfully unaware that the 'sacred canon' of Hebrew Scriptuers (which Christians call the 'Old Testament' to the chagrin of many of to-day's Jews !) came into existence as the direct result of 'imported' Babylonian Rebbes (like Gamaliel II) who came from OUTSIDE PALESTINE to vote on and IMPOSE their own list of which 'sacred' books actually were to be held sacred i.e. 'defiled the hands' (an odd expression if there ever was one, to describe a holy inspired text !) and which VERSION of the texts was THE sacred & correct one - and which ones were not - all decided at the Rabinnic Council at Javneh in AD 90 - long after the Dead Sea scrolls were hidden away in their cave time capsules at Seccacah (overlooking modern day Qumran) and long after the execution of R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean ('Iesous').

In other words, Iesous and his 'disciples' did not have a single authoritative list of books in a single Bible between two covers during their lifetimes and no one single version of those texts - therefore no OFFICIAL canon of scripture - witness the mess in the Caves of the Dead Sea Scrolls which show the most fluid contradictions in both the number of books considered 'defiling the hands' by 1st century Jews and all the different textual versions (even of the Torah and the prophets) all laying side by side as if they could not decide which was the real McCoy.

You are aware, aren't you, that modern English translations of the "bible" today (with so many Manuscripts coming to light for both the ‘old’ testament and the ‘new’) have to freely pick and choose from various contradictory manuscripts arbitrarily on whatever passage any editor considers ‘what MUST have been the original reading’.

It is a fact thtat BEFORE the year 200 AD, the Hebrew Consonantal text of the Torah, Prophets and Psalms were copied BY HAND without counting the 'middle letters' on a column of Hebrew text - which meant that the result was comparatively ‘fluid’ by modern standards--not just different whole words were used or spelled differently but whole sentences were added or subtracted e.g. the Scroll of the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, which is 13 WHOLE CHAPTERS shorter in Palestine tin the 1st century AD han it was in the versions produced at Babylon (see the helpful book (for non specialists) entitled THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS BIBLE put together by Martin Abegg, Peter Flint & Eugene Ulrich which you can get on Amazon.com) - so much for the Inspired word of 'god !

Modern textual editors of this mess have to’ pick and choose between all the contradictory texts since there is no single ‘original text’ between two covers that they can use---just a mess of late copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of texts that were corrupt and heavilly redacted over time to begin with.

AGAIN, as I mentioned to edmc – there is NO SINGLE BOOK between two covers in existence that matches the complex textual ‘soup’ that existed for the Hebrew Scriptures in Antiquity – the Dead Sea Scrolls proved that a thousand times over.

And the situation of the textual mess for the ‘new testament’ is even worse (5446 Greek MSS no two exactly alike).
The older a text is, the more ‘fluid’ it is – and texts of the Hebrew Scriptures have to be divided into pre-AD 90 (pre-Javneh Council) and post-AD90 (post-Javneh Council) – the Javneh council was held among the ruins of western Palestine after the 1st Jewish War when the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed, and the survinving Jews in the Diaspora had to decide once and for all what writings were to be considered sacred/canonical/defiling the hands and which did not.

What consonantal version of the Hebrew scriptures that eventually became the MT – the so-called Masoretic consonantal text in the middle ages was the same BASIC (though not exact) family of proto-MT manuscripts that was finally chosen at Javneh in AD 90 (although the Rebbes did not get full closure on what eventually became 39 books - they were still arguing as late as AD 130 whether the Book of Esther and The Song of Songs defiled the hands or not.

All other families of MSS were either destroyed in the War against Rome (everything in Jerusalem was burned to a crisp by the Romans in AD 70), or hidden in the Qumran Caves unbeknownst to Rabbi Gamaliel II and others at the Javneh Council who had come from Babylonian synagogues abroad (where they were untouched by the failed Jewish War against Rome, and thus claimed to have Divine Protection and Authority over the Judaean survivors !) to force their own proto-Masoretic ('babylonian Jewish text family') version of the Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures on the rest of world Judaeism.

We would have to divide Jewish sacred texts from antiquity into two groups - Pre AD 90 and Post AD 90 versions.

Hebrew Texts that were copied before AD 90 (Council of Javneh) show hundreds of competing readings and contradictory versions – from the Torah to the Psalms to the Prophets (compare the SamPent with the Hebrew underlays to the Greek LXX and Aquilla, and Theodotion and Symmachus with the proto-Masoretic, then compare THOSE with the competing versions of the Dead Sea Scroll copies which sometimes follow Theodotion’s source Hebrew, other times follow the consonantal Hebrew underlay to the ‘standard’ Greek Septuaginta (LXX), at other times, seem to follow their own path almost like an Aramaic targum paraphrase, and other times follow Symmachus and at still other times, follow the Hebrew consonantal underlay to Aquilla’s Greek texts.

On the other hand, Hebrew ScriptureTexts that were copied AFTER the 2nd failed Jewish revolt against Rome (The Bar Kokhba Revolt, c. 136 CE) i.e. post AD 90 Javneh Council, show a much more consolidated almost ‘single’ version of all these texts, the socalled protoMasoretic text which later became standard, and Jews began to ‘count middle letters’ after AD 300 to make sure that the text did not wander from what the council voted in as ‘the sacred version of the scriptures which defile the hands’

You cannot believe in a literal "anything" unless you have that "literal object" in front of you from which you may derive your belief (in this case a LITERAL text of the Bible) and you would have to examine that same text very carefully before boasting that you know for a positive fact that this very text is the only "Word of God" (by which presumably you mean YHWH the god of post-Exilic Israel) and you have to do this BEFORE you can claim that you believe every word of it, since DIFFERENT texts contain DIFFERENT words.... and when it comes to the BIBLE, you are certainly DEALING WITH DIFFERENT TEXTS that DO NOT MATCH EACH OTHER very closely.

"Literal" means "by the letter" (from the Latin "Litera" meaning "letter of the alphabet”) .

To believe the "bible" "literally" you gave to show me ALL THE EXACT LETTERS of the whole single text that you believe in. And you cannot do that, simply because there are too many ancient manuiscript copies in existence that just do not match each other very closely, i.e. if you count letter for letter.

The person referred to by Christians as "Jesus” (from the Greek ‘Iesous’ = R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galielan Nazir, 12 BCE to 36 CE) judging from all the strange Greek words placed into his mouth in the canonical Greek Gospel material (e.g. ‘Matthew’ whoever he was) also knew and quoted freely from many books "not in any Hebrew bible you are familiar with" and he freely quotes from loose Aramaic Targum like paraphrases of the Hebrew scriptures, which DO NOT match the Masoretic Text of the ‘old testament’ word for word - here's one example from dozens

"Tell Yohanon [bar Zechariah] that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the Ebionim (‘poor ones’) have the good news [i.e. of the Kingdom] preached to them..."

Where in your version of the Masoretic text of the OT Bible does it say specifically that "the Dead are Raised "in the Scroll of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah ?

According to your own Greek New Testament Gospels, he is actually using a rare text very similar to the copies of Isaiah (newsflash, there were TWO versions found there) in Qumran among the Dead Sea Scroll Fragments, the socalled 1Q-Is-B text (which differs from the Great Isaiah Scroll by as much as 15 % in places !) .

The much later MT-Masoretic Text (Leningrad, AD 950) which protestants and Jews use for the ‘Old Testament’ is based on a single manuscript does not include this passage in Isaiah at all --- it is therefore NOT in your bible to-day - but it was once in it, preserved in the Greek Old Testament known as the LXX Septuaginta, the Hebrew consonantal textual underlay (i.e. source Hebrew document) of which many like documents were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (copied BCE 350 to 68 CE), i.e. 1000 years OLDER than the version of the OT that you read and think is ‘the inspired Word of the clan-god of Yisro’el’ ) .

So ‘Iesous’ is actually quoting an earlier and quite different consonantal Hebrew textual tradition of his own old-testament type scruptures "bible" than the one you use - close study of the words placed into his mouth when citing the 'scriptures' shows that he prefers the Aramaic Targum paraphrase versions, and not the Masoretic text or even the Hebrew textual underlay in the Greek OT LXX - especially in the Gospel of 'Matthew' whoever he was.

You REALLY need to take a hard look at the texts you claim to believe in----many persons who style themselves ‘Christians’ tend to believe in some arbitrary pseudo post-modern hotchpotch textual construct of the ‘bible’ which was in fact pasted together from greedy publishers who make $$ in selling "bibles to the masses"

Scholars have known for centuries (and many clergy also know, but aren’t telling their sheeple, as usual) that ‘Iesous’ also quotes ‘as scripture’ freely from books that are not in the protestant Old Testament including the Scroll of the Testament of the 12 Patriarchs, the Testament of Moses, I Henoch, the Wisdom of Solomon and many other quotations taken from Aramaic texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And contrary to all the lies you've been told by Rabbis, Priests & Ministers about the "accuracy" of the Bible as it is compared with all those pesky earlier Dead Sea Scrolls (mangled texts of Hebrew scruptrues that do not closely matchethe official canonized "received" Masoretic text of the Old Testament - including at times, even the Torah) - at least 3 contradictory Hebrew Scripture ‘text families’ were being copied out side by side by the Dead Sea Scroll Community between BC 170 and AD 68...as if one version of any given text had no special ‘authority’ over another – the scribes just copied the text that came to them - where it can be seen that whole sentences and whole paragraphs were added and deleted in any given part of the text----in other words, it was "open season in terms of an exact text---

As I mentioned to edmc earlier, for your reference: here are the main textual families of the Torah and the Prophets (not counting all the various Aramaic Targums or the Syriac Pesh ita, which is ALSO DIFFERENT from these)

l. The Samaritan Pentateuch (SamPent) dating from around 440 BC

2. The Hebrew Vorlage (underlay) to the Greek LXX Seputaginta (dating from around 250 BC) = the LXX was the basis for the Catholic OT which does not match the Masoretic MT Rabinnical version used by Jews and Protestants to-day - and the Hebrew consonantal Vorlage underlay to the Greek of Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion - all show consonantal differences between them

3. The various Dead Sea Scroll Families (between BC 250 and AD 68)

4. and the LATE Masoretic Text (MT) which dates from around 780-850 AD and is based on a SINGLE manuscript from Leningrad (although scraps of texts found at Masada dating from AD 136 show that there was a PROTO MASORETIC text which was being formed between the end of the Jewish Revolt against Rome (AD 72) and the end of the 2nd Jewish Revolt (AD 138)---in other words the Rabinnical Council of Javneh/Jamnia around AD 90 which decided once and for all that the Masoretic (or socalled Babylonian imported 'received') text would be the one and only official version to be copied, to the suppression of all others.

Don't tell me all this is 'News' to you, too?

reply to post by Faith2011


Well, you posted a Hovind video that is demonstrably pure garbage...yet he had faith. Which proves your claim is beyond ridiculous. Of course you'll continue to ignore this because you're so blinded buy faith, you can't even see reality

William Lane Craig has ZERO qualifications that would give him the knowledge about nature required to make an informed decision. Hell, he's talking about philosophy, which arguably can't prove god's existence.

No degree in biology, physics, geology, or any other field that would allow him to claim anything...you might just as well ask a farmer how to build the space shuttle

reply to post by Faith2011


William Lane Craig? Seriously? His cosmological argument (which is actually an old Islamic one) is based on a simple problem with the premises: Where is his evidence that the universe began to exist? Furthermore, his only reconciliation of the problem of regress would be to create a being that violates regress...which is a bit tricky from a logic point of view because it's entirely contradictory.


I've seen several of his debates...he parrots basically the exact same points. If I ever debated him myself I would bring ear muffs and I'd still be able to win the debate because he has the most predictable debate strategy ever.

Basically, I'm a third year university student and my minor is in philosophy and even I can see the holes of cosmic magnitude in this philosophy professor's arguments.

reply to post by MrXYZ

• The leading mathematicians in the century met with some evolutionary biologists and confronted them with the fact that according to mathematical statistics, the probabilities of a cell or a protein molecule coming into existence were nil. They even constructed a model of a large computer and tried to figure out the possibilities of a cell ever happening. The result was zero possibility! - Wistar Institute, 1966[60]

• Professor Edwin Conklin observed, "The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the Unabridged Dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop."[87]

• Under normal circumstances, creatures give birth to the same kind of creatures. It is established scientific fact that like begets like. On rare instances, the DNA in an embryo is damaged, resulting in a mutant child that differs in some respect from its parent. Although a few mutations have been scientifically observed that are beneficial, most mutations produce inferior offspring. For the theory of evolution to be true, there must be a fantastic number of creative mutations that produce new kinds of offspring which are better suited for survival, and therefore are favored by natural selection.[64]
• Darwinists claim that the reptile-to-mammal evolution is well documented. But for reptiles to evolve into mammals at least some of these transformations must have happened:
• Scales had to have mutated into hair.
• Breasts had to have evolved from nothing.
• Externally laid eggs had to evolve into soft-shelled eggs that were nourished by an umbilical cord and placenta in a womb.[64]

• It has never been observed in any laboratory that mutations can cause one species to turn into another. Despite this, evolutionists believe that given enough time, some animals will eventually evolve into other creatures.[64]

• Evolutionists claim that although we have not actually observed these things happening, that does not mean that they are impossible. They say it simply means they are extremely improbable. Evolutionists think the world has been around long enough for all these highly improbable things to happen.[64]

• Sir Fred Hoyle, of Cambridge University stated that statistically the chances of one cell evolving was the same as a tornado passing through a junkyard and giving you a fully functional Boeing 747.[5]

• Scientific evidence casts serious doubts on the theory of evolution, for example:

• The Fossil Record

• Living "Fossils"

• The Cambrian Explosion

• New T.Rex Discoveries

• "Missing Links"

• There are many creatures that defy evolution. All of the examples below illustrate complex and sophisticated biological structures. It is difficult to believe that these creatures could have evolved, since all of their systems had to have been in place at the start for them to survive.

Angler Fish Chicken Egg
Beaver Giraffe
Black And Yellow Garden Spider Incubator Bird
Bombardier Beetle Woodpecker

• "Science now knows that many of the pillars of Darwinian theory are either false or misleading. Yet biology texts continue to present them as factual evidence of evolution. What does this imply about their scientific standards?" — Jonathan Wells (Recipient of two Ph.D.s, one in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley, and one in Religious Studies from Yale University. Has worked as a postdoctoral research biologist at the University of California at Berkeley and the supervisor of a medical laboratory in Fairfield, California. Has taught biology at California State University in Hayward.)

www.straight-talk.net...

reply to post by Faith2011


You do realize that Professor Edwin Conklin died in 1952, right? All the data you present here is over 50 years old, you should really read up on scientific discoveries that happened since then

So Doctor Dino (Hovind) and data that's almost 60 years old is the best you can do? Really?

I'm expecting a bible quote incoming...likely one claiming I'll burn in hell

Take this quote for example:

It has never been observed in any laboratory that mutations can cause one species to turn into another. Despite this, evolutionists believe that given enough time, some animals will eventually evolve into other creatures.

Complete and utter nonsense...that quote is a blatant lie. We've observed speciation in the lab: LINK

PS: Welcome to the 21st century

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


There is no empirical evidence for natural selection no less evolution.

Originally posted by Faith2011
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

There is no empirical evidence for natural selection no less evolution.

You ignoring it vehemently doesn't mean it's a proven fact

You might wanna read up on biology and specifically the theory. If you believe the quotes you copy/pasted, you obviously have no clue whatsoever, and your knowledge is seriously outdated...

reply to post by MrXYZ

Dr. Richard Dawkins, holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, has become one of the world’s leading evolutionist spokespersons. His fame has come as the result of the publication of books, including The Blind Watchmaker, which defend modern evolutionary theory and claim to refute once and for all the notion of a Creator God. He said, “We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully ‘designed’ to have come into existence by chance.”7

There is no doubt that even the most ardent atheist concedes that design is evident in the animals and plants that inhabit our planet. If Dawkins rejects “chance” in design, what does he put in place of “chance” if he does not accept a Creator God?

www.answersingenesis.org...

"The Blind Watchmaker"

The Blind Watchmaker = Total Non-Sense! The Blind Leading The Blind!

Evolution is a Total delusion and Just Wishful Thinking... It just takes some longer to realize it's a dead END!

reply to post by Faith2011

If Dawkins rejects “chance” in design, what does he put in place of “chance” if he does not accept a Creator God?

Physics? Biology?

Scientists don't claim it was an accident, they say it's based on physical, chemical, and biological laws and processes.

Only creationists claim the alternative to god is an "accident"

reply to post by MrXYZ


But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him. 1John 2:11

It is my prayer that you have realized that there is nothing that can be a part of your life that God cannot help you overcome and that you also realize that there is no better time than right now to begin.

Sigismundis,

I appreciate you taking the time to type out the long post.

I picked one "bold statement" out of your last post, logically showed how that statement was not nearly as factual as you claimed, and asked you to clarify it. Instead of clarifying it, you instead went to another "laundry list" of "proofs".

These type of laundry lists are all that "borderline" people need to "slam dunk" this matter, and for their benefit, I'll look at some of your arguments.

These types of arguments are pretty common on the internet, but I hope to show that you made a bunch of very rash statements that are not factual.

I'm going to pick a few that I feel to be the most "shocking" (at least to a bible believer) and discuss them.

1. Your first statement is that the Alexandrian Coptic Church held "Book of 1 Henoch" and "The Testament of the 12 Patriarchs" as canonical.

First of all, understand that there is ZERO evidence that the Jews as a whole ever believed the book of Enoch to be canonical. What the Alexandrian coptic church felt regarding the book of Enoch (Henoch) is irrelevant. Churches began to believe all sorts of different and varied things starting even during bible times, and exploding from the 2nd century onward. The bible is routinely divided into the "books of Moses" and the psalms and the prophets. Josephus never believed in the canonicity of Enoch, and again, no evidence of a widespread belief of Enoch by the Jews.

Understand that if God inspired the book of Enoch, don't you feel he would have ensured that it would be there for christians to read? It's also claimed to have been written by Enoch, yet most scholars believe it was written just a few centuries before Christ.

As for Jude's quotation of it, I already went over that point.

A final note on Enoch. Many consider the language and the elaborations in the book to be very far from the rest of the bible, though admittedly there are interesting parts of the book.

2. You said that "Jesus did not have a single list of books considered to be canon." Jesus was God's son. He came from above. I think he would have known which books were canon and which were not and not had to rely on a "list". He quoted from many of the OT. Not enoch! Not the other apocraphya!

Also, Josephus stated that "we do not possess myriads of inconsistent books, conflicting with each other. Our books....are but 2 and twenty". Yes, there were two councils by the Jews that excluded the apocrypha. What of it? Also, Jesus seems to imply that Zechariah was the end of the traditional Hebrew Canon.

Saying that Jesus knew of no "canon" is a bit ridiculous, and once again, pure speculation on your part. 100%. That is not to say that there weren't other books that they liked, read and may have enjoyed. The bible itself talks of many other books, and even shows that many writers PULLED INFORMATION FROM THOSE BOOKS. Today there are many fascinating non-biblical books. But God decided what is and what isn't the bible.

As for the dead sea scrolls, time is running out on me tonight.

Suffice to say that the dead sea scrolls are not what you say they are. The MT is a great history lesson for you. It is usually thought that the MT had great sources (that are gone now) that they copied from.

I've already found 3 areas in which I feel you are looking at this from a one-sided point of view, so for me to put the vast amount of effort in energy into fact-checking the back side of your post is something that I'd like to do, but may not have the time for a few days due to my schedule.

Anyone reading this can simply take the things Sigismundis' generalizations and statements of fact, plop them into google and find many varying opinions on both sides.

I of course believe that the bible is God's word and therefore he will provide us what we need.

Do I believe that we have the "word for word" bible just as it was originally written? No. I'm not naive.

However, we do have exactly what we need to benefit from.

Your use of exaggeration would lead people to believe that the canon is a huge mystery, that the dead sea scrolls should be taken accurately and are full of gigantic contradictions, etc... None of these will hold up under exhaustive study.

One other thing Sigismundis...

You've obviously been at this a long time, (as evidenced by the fact that a cut and paste of one of your paragraphs led me to a word for word copy of a paragraph by a different poster on this site in 2004. I'm sure that poster was you under a different name, so I'm not accusing you of plagiarism) so lets try to avoid the juvenile tactic of burying people under all the information you have in the hopes that they will give up. This tactic is so incredibly annoying. I know much of that info you used was stored on your PC just waiting for you to unleash.

It can be a much better discussion if we try and keep things to just a couple points, say 2-3, instead of you throwing 100 things out there and expecting someone to try and refute it all.

If I can refute the first 3-4 things I see, then it will be obvious to me that the rest is probably more opinion, idle speculation, etc.

Finally, your end of posts signoffs of "don't tell me all of this is NEWS to you, too!" is quite annoying. It's as if what you are saying is truth that everyone knows, and that you are providing for us. A cursory look at any of your statements will show that there is no unanimously held opinion on most of what you said. There are always other sides, other opinions and other things to consider.

Two people can look at the same event (Jude and 1 Enoch having an identical quotation) and come up with two very different reasons for why that may have occurred.

reply to post by Faith2011
You are like a child. Had you read the book or even searched google rather than your silly little creationist website, you would understand the absurdity with which that line is taken out of context. In fact, even without the context, it is 100% right. Who in their right mind would think blind chance could create intricate complexity as a whole, in an instant? Only those who manifest some pretend theory of evolution in order to refute it, thus retaining their need to feel stupid and happy.

Darwinism is the changing of the frequencies of alleles in a gene pool that emerge gradually over geological time by finite increments. The genetic mechanisms are obviously random, this has been proven 1000x over. Differential reproduction spanning millions of years is not random. Thinking otherwise, that there is some inherent property of sugar and phosphates that can assess the value of a resource, whether having arisen naturally or endowed by god, is utter nonsense, and hysterical at the same time.