Long lives of the antedeluvian patriarchs

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_LittleNipper
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Re: Long lives of the antedeluvian patriarchs

Post by _LittleNipper »

spotlight wrote:
LittleNipper wrote:Spontaneous generation is not observable.

God is not observable. The act of creation by a god is not observable. So by your standard we can dispense with it.

Actually what you are doing is introducing your own private definition of what it means for something to be observable and demand that science follow your definition. Science will continue along just fine without considering your cult and its adherence to dogma. Just because something hasn't been discovered fully yet does not mean it cannot be discovered in the next decade and won't be. Much of the mystery of abiogenesis has been worked out and progress is being made at a reasonable rate in that area. Meanwhile life lacks a clear definition and the border between life and non-life seems incapable of being drawn.

Creation has NO evidence to support it. Looking at DNA it is overwhelmingly obvious that all life is related through a common ancestor. Do you believe now in evolution and that an act of creation was constrained to the common ancestor? Correct me if I'm wrong but I never perceived that to be your position.

One cannot see the wind and yet one can see what it does. The Bible knows you cannot see GOD but one can still see what GOD does. Evolution requires death, fighting, and destruction. When GOD created Adam and Eve and all living things, there was no death nor destruction. I do not see how all the various species could possibly have originated with one tiny life form. All animals depend on each other including bacteria and viruses to survive and continue to exist. And just because you don't see GOD doing anything for you at present, doesn't mean that you will not discover He does lots of thinks for you at some point in the future...
_spotlight
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Re: Long lives of the antedeluvian patriarchs

Post by _spotlight »

CG wrote:You obviously think religious knowledge shouldn't be vague whereas I think it has to start that way and, as with science, become less vague as we learn more. This to me is simply part and parcel of how humans learn and make judgments based upon incomplete information.

Science is not vague. Learning science is learning how not to be vague and how to get around vagueness with precise/narrow definitions of terms and getting to precise definite conclusions with the use of targeted experimentation, etc.
With science as we continue to learn we add to a well established foundation.

With religion we are indoctrinated typically in our youth. As we continue to "learn" we merely prune the tree of this or that possible meaning of an admittedly vague set of possible interpretations. Not quite similar at all to science. Religion is accepted without evidence or proof simply because when we think of a pleasant idea or concept the mind reacts with feelings of peace as a result. Science is accepted because discovered facts constrain us to accept certain ideas and ways of seeing the universe.

You may disagree with people who make decisions based upon incomplete information but if you think back to your time in your 20's I think you'll find most of your decisions were made in that fashion.

Yes, which is way I made the mistake of joining the LDS church as a youth in my early teens.

We continue to inquire and if as we learn more we find we were incorrect we make different decisions.

Yes again, which is why I left the church after getting a degree in nuclear physics at Berkeley.

Again I don't think there's anything particularly shocking about all this.

What's shocking is the failure of those who ought to know better who fail to make the transition out.

If you demand absolute knowledge to make a religious commitment that's fine. Just be aware most people don't. I'd also say that such a demand ends up entailing never making religious commitments.

That would be a good thing Clark.

After all I don't think any of us think we have absolute knowledge.

Which is why we are justified in believing in Santa.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "greater."

I mean any claim that requires more from you to accept. In this case the sacrifice of all you are and possess including life itself for the upbuilding of "the church and kingdom of god."

Now if you wish to change the discussion from epistemology to a discussion of risk and ethics I'm more than happy to do so.

You aren't establishing any defense of either for your beliefs. That's not a discussion. You just ramble on wiggling around points brought up by others without really addressing anything in any substantial manner. Maybe your name should be Mr. Wiggles.
Kolob’s set time is “one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest” (Abraham 3:4). I take this as a round number. - Gee
_spotlight
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Re: Long lives of the antedeluvian patriarchs

Post by _spotlight »

LittleNipper wrote:One cannot see the wind and yet one can see what it does.

Is this an instance of LittleNipper trying to sound profound by quoting what he thinks is profound?

It surprises me that you can apply this principle to an imaginary being but fail to see how it can be used in science. We can make solid conclusions about a great many things including those that are historical in nature based upon inferences from data that we collect.

The Bible knows you cannot see GOD

The Bible is a book and as such it doesn't know anything LittleNipper. The same goes for a rock.

but one can still see what GOD does.

Only by arbitrarily ascribing it to god. You could just as easily and arbitrarily ascribe it to Zeus or Odin or to Dora the Explorer if you like. It would be just as logical and merit the same amount of respect.

Evolution requires death, fighting, and destruction.

Death and competition over limited resources are a part of the reality within which we exist, yes.

When GOD created Adam and Eve and all living things, there was no death nor destruction.

This is an unsubstantiated assertion on your part.

"That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” Christopher Hitchens

In this case however there is a mountain of evidence for the existence of death and dying prior to the time of existence ascribed to Adam and Eve according to your cult's dogma.


I do not see how all the various species could possibly have originated with one tiny life form.

I do not see how life could be created by a magic god. That doesn't seem to affect your belief. Why do you think that the fact that "you do not see how..." should affect my acceptance of the established science?


All animals depend on each other including bacteria and viruses to survive and continue to exist.

Which would be the result whether one supposes it created or accepts the mountains of evidence that it evolved. There is nothing about interdependence that contradicts evolution. But it makes for a very fragile creation and one that sans evolution would be very liable to break.

And just because you don't see GOD doing anything for you at present, doesn't mean that you will not discover He does lots of thinks for you at some point in the future...

Which is not in itself reason to believe in a god anymore than the statement that just because you don't believe that Thor, Odin or Dora the explorer is doing anything for you that you will not discover that you are wrong about that in the future.

Thanks for sharing the paucity of evidence and reasons for believing in your cult and its dogma with the rest of us LittleNipper.
Last edited by Guest on Sun Feb 19, 2017 8:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Kolob’s set time is “one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest” (Abraham 3:4). I take this as a round number. - Gee
_The CCC
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Re: Long lives of the antedeluvian patriarchs

Post by _The CCC »

It is entirely possible to be a believing Christian and accept science.
SEE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C ... technology
_LittleNipper
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Re: Long lives of the antedeluvian patriarchs

Post by _LittleNipper »

spotlight wrote:
LittleNipper wrote:One cannot see the wind and yet one can see what it does.

Is this an instance of LittleNipper trying to sound profound by quoting what he thinks is profound?

It surprises me that you can apply this principle to an imaginary being but fail to see how it can be used in science. We can make solid conclusions about a great many things including those that are historical in nature based upon inferences from data that we collect.

The Bible knows you cannot see GOD

The Bible is a book and as such it doesn't know anything LittleNipper. The same goes for a rock.

but one can still see what GOD does.

Only by arbitrarily ascribing it to god. You could just as easily and arbitrarily ascribe it to Zeus or Odin or to Dora the Explorer if you like. It would be just as logical and merit the same amount of respect.

Evolution requires death, fighting, and destruction.

Death and competition over limited resources are a part of the reality within which we exist, yes.

When GOD created Adam and Eve and all living things, there was no death nor destruction.

This is an unsubstantiated assertion on your part.

"That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” Christopher Hitchens

In this case however there is a mountain of evidence for the existence of death and dying prior to the time of existence ascribed to Adam and Eve according to your cult's dogma.


I do not see how all the various species could possibly have originated with one tiny life form.

I do not see how life could be created by a magic god. That doesn't seem to affect your belief. Why do you think that the fact that "you do not see how..." should affect my acceptance of the established science?


All animals depend on each other including bacteria and viruses to survive and continue to exist.

Which would be the result whether one supposes it created or accepts the mountains of evidence that it evolved. There is nothing about interdependence that contradicts evolution. But it makes for a very fragile creation and one that sans evolution would be very liable to break.

And just because you don't see GOD doing anything for you at present, doesn't mean that you will not discover He does lots of thinks for you at some point in the future...

Which is not in itself reason to believe in a god anymore than the statement that just because you don't believe that Thor, Odin or Dora the explorer is doing anything for you that you will not discover that you are wrong about that in the future.

Thanks for sharing the paucity of evidence and reasons for believing in your cult and its dogma with the rest of us LittleNipper.

Thor and Odin are only super men. They have all the lust, and frailty of a fallen nature. They do not possess perfection nor exhibit good character. Nor can they save humanity from eternal damnation. Interdependence supposes that multiple organisms of various kinds sprang into being at the very same time!!!!!!!!! Evolutionists cannot even create ONE from a rock, let alone a circus of organisms so they could survive off each other's contributions.

You only date fossils by the strata they are found in and the strata by the fossils found in it. Talk about circular reasoning. Dig 6 feet down in a graveyard. What is the age of the dirt being excavated? Does that mean that a body turned to soap is the same age as a fossil found in the digging of the grave? So why is it that when GOD chooses to bury the animals killed in the flood suddenly they are the age of the strata they are found in?
_spotlight
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Re: Long lives of the antedeluvian patriarchs

Post by _spotlight »

LN wrote:Thor and Odin are only super men.

No LittleNipper, they are imaginary entities like your god.

They have all the lust, and frailty of a fallen nature.

If you do not like your nature, live without sinning as defined per your dogma. But please stop passing the buck and blaming it all on an imaginary fall and using that and an imaginary atonement as a get out of jail free card to do what you supposedly despise without owning it.

They do not possess perfection nor exhibit good character.

That's because they don't really exist.

Nor can they save humanity from eternal damnation.

Nothing saves us from death Little Nipper. Eternal damnation doesn't exist because we don't exist but for the brief flicker of mortality.

Interdependence supposes that multiple organisms of various kinds sprang into being at the very same time!!!!!!!!!

No it does not. For example an organism that depends upon one source of food may evolve to depend upon an alternate source of food. The alternate source of food may not have existed when the first organism first existed living on the first form of sustenance.

Evolutionists cannot even create ONE from a rock, let alone a circus of organisms so they could survive off each other's contributions.

Nature is not "an evolutionist." Besides I don't know how this excuses you from asserting that Thor, Odin or Dora the Explorer did it using unexplained magic simply because that is the dogma of your cult.

You only date fossils by the strata they are found in and the strata by the fossils found in it.

Not true LittleNipper. Your ignorance here is not my responsibility to continually correct. Especially am I disinclined to continue doing so since you have shown yourself incapable of comprehending even basic science.

Talk about circular reasoning.

Ok let's. The Bible is true because it says so right in the Bible. Well there is no Biblical reference to the Bible per se but that's a different point.

Dig 6 feet down in a graveyard. What is the age of the dirt being excavated? Does that mean that a body turned to soap is the same age as a fossil found in the digging of the grave? So why is it that when GOD chooses to bury the animals killed in the flood suddenly they are the age of the strata they are found in?

Because by the principles of chemostratigraphy we know that the geologic column was NOT layed down all at the same time. That is not the only evidence but one of the stronger proofs. But you wouldn't understand this because for you the Bible is more important than understanding geology. So you spend your time cutting and pasting its contents thinking that somehow it is a valuable use of the brief time you have to exist.
Kolob’s set time is “one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest” (Abraham 3:4). I take this as a round number. - Gee
_Choyo Chagas
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Re: Long lives of the antedeluvian patriarchs

Post by _Choyo Chagas »

LittleNipper wrote:When GOD created Adam and Eve and all living things, there was no death nor destruction.

was you there?
where is your information from?

from "words of god", written by analphabetic members of an antediluvian tribe?

from books of moses written by moses?
the fifth one wrote:5. And Moses, servant of the Lord, dieth there, in the land of Moab, according to the command of Jehovah;
6. and He burieth him in a valley in the land of Moab, over-against Beth-Peor, and no man hath known his burying place unto this day.
got it?
in his fifth book moses described his own death and burial...


this is better:
First one and then another pair of eyes followed the minister’s, and then almost with one impulse the congregation rose and stared while the three dead boys came marching up the aisle, Tom in the lead, Joe next, and Huck, a ruin of drooping rags, sneaking sheepishly in the rear! They had been hid in the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon!
(The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain)
Choyo Chagas is Chairman of the Big Four, the ruler of the planet from "The Bull's Hour" ( Russian: Час Быка), a social science fiction novel written by Soviet author and paleontologist Ivan Yefremov in 1968.
Six months after its publication Soviet authorities banned the book and attempted to remove it from libraries and bookshops.
_LittleNipper
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Re: Long lives of the antedeluvian patriarchs

Post by _LittleNipper »

Choyo Chagas wrote:
LittleNipper wrote:When GOD created Adam and Eve and all living things, there was no death nor destruction.

was you there?
where is your information from?

from "words of god", written by analphabetic members of an antediluvian tribe?

from books of moses written by moses?
the fifth one wrote:5. And Moses, servant of the Lord, dieth there, in the land of Moab, according to the command of Jehovah;
6. and He burieth him in a valley in the land of Moab, over-against Beth-Peor, and no man hath known his burying place unto this day.
got it?
in his fifth book moses described his own death and burial...


this is better:
First one and then another pair of eyes followed the minister’s, and then almost with one impulse the congregation rose and stared while the three dead boys came marching up the aisle, Tom in the lead, Joe next, and Huck, a ruin of drooping rags, sneaking sheepishly in the rear! They had been hid in the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon!
(The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain)


You forget Joshua ---- he replaced Moses and spoke with God, as did Moses.
God was there at the beginning and Jesus the Christ confirmed it while He was on earth. If I can trust Jesus for my eternal salvation, I see no logic in not believing Him in so insignificant a matter as creation. :ugeek: PS> I love Mark Twain ---- and Charles Dickens as well. “We forge the chains we wear in life.”― Charles Dickens
_Choyo Chagas
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Re: Long lives of the antedeluvian patriarchs

Post by _Choyo Chagas »

LittleNipper wrote:You forget Joshua ---- he replaced Moses and spoke with God, as did Moses.
no i don't. joshua has his own book. you know, jedem das seine...

did moses wrote his fifth book (deuteronomy) or didn't he?
did joshua rewrite moses' fifth book? (inserting moses' burial...)
did anybody rewrite any old testament book?


i repeat my question, please try to answer:
was you there during creation?

for bonus points:
was moses there?

for more bonus:
were anybody there?
Choyo Chagas is Chairman of the Big Four, the ruler of the planet from "The Bull's Hour" ( Russian: Час Быка), a social science fiction novel written by Soviet author and paleontologist Ivan Yefremov in 1968.
Six months after its publication Soviet authorities banned the book and attempted to remove it from libraries and bookshops.
_ClarkGoble
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Re: Long lives of the antedeluvian patriarchs

Post by _ClarkGoble »

spotlight wrote:Science is not vague. Learning science is learning how not to be vague and how to get around vagueness with precise/narrow definitions of terms and getting to precise definite conclusions with the use of targeted experimentation, etc.
With science as we continue to learn we add to a well established foundation.


Vagueness is when you know some properties of an entity but there are properties you don't know that are not open to your determination. Thus science is intrinsically vague. It's true that one of the strengths of science is being careful with terminology so that we are precise. But precision and vagueness are not logical opposites. Indeed precision lets us see our vagueness more accurately.

Some prominent vague conceptions in science are dark matter, dark energy, and some would argue entropy (certainly pre-statistical mechanics entropy when is was purely phenomenological was). Most phenomenological work (in the scientific not philosophical sense) ends up being a logic of vagueness. Within biology vague terms become much more common and arguably also inescapable due to the types of descriptions biologists use and the type of phenomena being investigated.

With religion we are indoctrinated typically in our youth. As we continue to "learn" we merely prune the tree of this or that possible meaning of an admittedly vague set of possible interpretations. Not quite similar at all to science. Religion is accepted without evidence or proof simply because when we think of a pleasant idea or concept the mind reacts with feelings of peace as a result. Science is accepted because discovered facts constrain us to accept certain ideas and ways of seeing the universe.


I don't think that describes how everyone encounters either science or religion. For the vast swath of the country science is not understood in terms of evidence. Now if you are speaking of people with scientific training or who love science you're right that it's different. But then there's no reason to treat religion the way you do either.

What's shocking is the failure of those who ought to know better who fail to make the transition out.


You know it might just be because they have different experiences. I'm certainly not going to say you are following a reasonable path given your experiences. Yet you are swift to make judgments about people whose background you are frankly pretty ignorant of and whose experiences you are even more ignorant of.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "greater."

I mean any claim that requires more from you to accept. In this case the sacrifice of all you are and possess including life itself for the upbuilding of "the church and kingdom of god."


That doesn't exactly clarify. More what? You're dealing in vagueness here. (grin) If you are making an economic argument then you're not doing epistemology and if you're doing epistemology you're not doing economics. So I think you're making a category error again.

You aren't establishing any defense of either for your beliefs. That's not a discussion. You just ramble on wiggling around points brought up by others without really addressing anything in any substantial manner. Maybe your name should be Mr. Wiggles.


I'm addressing the underlying philosophical principles. If you don't want to address that, that's fine. But the fact I'm not discussing what you want to discuss isn't really a criticism nor is it being wiggly. I already have said numerous times that in terms of public evidence such that you could believe passively I can give you nothing. So you've already been answered numerous times on that point.
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