An evilusion debate, the board is too quiet

[veritas]

 

I cheer for both sides.

[Sunshine]

Am sure when we bury you , your priest apart from praying that you rest in piece will quote Job, dust to dust and ashes to ashes
The same 'billion transformations' your body will go through after death is what God did from dust to make Adam
How many creatures do you turn into before decaying?
There is NO ROOM for millions of creatures between dust and Adam apart from your head. And you need to quit second-guessing God. He said dust not dust-mollusks-invertabrates-vertabrates-amphibians-Adam

Once again, how do I reconcile what with what?

God formed man from dust is not in disagreement, again repetition never made a fact. That dust could've gone through a billion transformations before it became Adam. So much for you false dust/creature dichotomy.

The "single" creation account, how do you reconcile it with your literalist reading?

Now, now, lets settle down. 

That is a silly analogy/point---don't even know what it is, but it makes no sense.  We would have to go through "all those reverse transformations" at death if they happened to Adam individually, but they didn't and not a single theory says it did, except your own instant evolution theory. By the way, if we were to follow your logic, then it means you believe that God used maggots, bacteria and all those things the human body becomes to form Adam? I thought you said no animal whatsoever was involved at no stage...make up your mind.

Everything that dies disintegrates. "Dust to dust" only signifies our finite existence, its not a scientific statement, and there's no reason why death should resemble creation. We all start from the fusion of sperm and ova and we all disintegrate. vooke, going through a thousand scriptures with the dust reference changes nothing. They are all saying we came from dust. And since no one is denying that, you simply wasting your time.

While you are at it, will you make even a half-hearted attempt at showing me how you reconcile the "single" creation event of Genesis if you believe Genesis is 100% literal?

[vooke]

vooke is silly, but DUST is not LIVING NOR  DEAD CREATURES NOR CREATURES DNA. DUST IS DUST.
If God wanted to tell us that Adam came from animals, He messed BIG

We are done here. You can have the final word so you come on top

That is a silly analogy/point---don't even know what it is, but it makes no sense.  We would have to go through "all those reverse transformations" at death if they happened to each of us individually, but they didn't and not a single theory says it did, except your own instant evolution theory. By the way, if we were to follow your logic, then it means you believe that God used maggots, bacteria and all those things the human body becomes to form Adam? I thought you said no animal whatsoever was involved at no stage...make up your mind.

Everything that dies disintegrates. "Dust to dust" only signifies our finite existence, its not a scientific statement, and there's no reason why death should resemble creation. We all start from the fusion of sperm and ova and we all disintegrate. vooke, going through a thousand scriptures with the dust reference changes nothing. They are all saying we came from dust. And since no one is denying that, you simply wasting your time.

While you are at it, will you make even a half-hearted attempt at showing me how you reconcile the "single" creation event of Genesis if you believe Genesis is 100% literal?

[Sunshine]

vooke is silly, but DUST is not LIVING NOR  DEAD CREATURES NOR CREATURES DNA. DUST IS DUST

We are done here. You can have the final word so you come on top

That is a silly analogy/point---don't even know what it is, but it makes no sense.  We would have to go through "all those reverse transformations" at death if they happened to each of us individually, but they didn't and not a single theory says it did, except your own instant evolution theory. By the way, if we were to follow your logic, then it means you believe that God used maggots, bacteria and all those things the human body becomes to form Adam? I thought you said no animal whatsoever was involved at no stage...make up your mind.

Everything that dies disintegrates. "Dust to dust" only signifies our finite existence, its not a scientific statement, and there's no reason why death should resemble creation. We all start from the fusion of sperm and ova and we all disintegrate. vooke, going through a thousand scriptures with the dust reference changes nothing. They are all saying we came from dust. And since no one is denying that, you simply wasting your time.

While you are at it, will you make even a half-hearted attempt at showing me how you reconcile the "single" creation event of Genesis if you believe Genesis is 100% literal?

That's very generous of you. If you did it out of humility, it might even be admirable. But seeing as you are doing it out of;

-inability to reconcile the apparent contradictions of Genesis with a literalist reading,
-running out of more ridiculous analogies to present as "points" without thinking them through and seeing if they are CONSISTENT with your own claims,
-inability to be honest about these two things

the motive is laid bare. I didn't know it was all about "coming on top", here I was thinking truth was your motivation. And of course, I did not call you silly. Just the analogy you tried to strain as a point. Enjoy your day, pastor. Ponder on the millions of maggots and bacteria that make up your body.

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

Running commentary.

vooke's suggestion that the soil in genesis was sterile is a little rich.  I say this because If you pick up any soil on earth today, there's tons of living things in there.  Bacteria, germs, even earthworms.  Even though these things are not mentioned in genesis, one would think it is more reasonable to assume that at least some of them are in the soil. 

The reason we have this bizarre claim of sterile soil.  vooke's determination to exclude any mechanism not explicitly mentioned in genesis.  This is the only way he can exclude other reasonable possibilities of how the creation goes down.

My own view, when I still believed God, was that he jump started the whole process at the big bang and let it play out without further interference.  I thought that this sat rather well with my concept of free will and similar ideas.

[RV Pundit]

This is what happens when you take a stone age theory of the jewish people and try to fit into 21st century contemporary knowledge and science while hoping the stone age theory will remain relevant and convincing.

One thing is given..our universe is incredibly complex and we may never understand it all..but year in year out...scientist are putting hard work and top grade brains to understand it..they are succeeding in making incredible small steps forward....while religious zealots are stuck in really laughable stone age theories that some gawd created someone named adam from 'earth'...and their evidence is biblical scripts written apparently by some inspired authors.

What a waste of time and space. Trying to reduce an incredibly complex universe of possibly billions of planets and universes that has existed for billions of years...and maybe gazillions...into jewish god created man from earth in his image in some 6,000 yrs ago...is truly incredible bone-headiness.

Pick a book and learn gardening or something...not a stone-age religion of the jewish people.

This thread just illustrate how far religious indoctrination or witchcraft or superstition really impedes thinking and progress.

Of course everyone is free to believe in religious nonsense but superstition it's sister and witchraft is' brother is banned (mostly by religious zealots coz those truly were their real competitors in business of explaining the universe using magic...Church in Kenya waged serious war against competitor religion like witchraft,evil spirits and superstition...seem they didn't succeed in place like India whose stone age religion was rather strong...and now 1B indians believe their god is swimming in ocean of milk)...maybe we should consider banning religion until someone is 18yrs to be able to discern BS from Non-BS.

I think these kind religious nonsense will continue unabated because kids are recruited and indoctrinated (with fear of fire,death,brimstone,blampshey) as soon as they're born.  Such kind of indoctrination will take real brains and courage to get out of it like most atheist. The rest will need probably psychiatrist to exorcise the religious indoctrination of their parents and upbringing.

[veritas]

Science can't explain everything, whereas faith is absolute. It's divine. Religion is not on the same playing field as humans. You're talking about celestial entities with superhuman traits who interact with a select few humans. I don't think one could unpackage religion in human terms. Perhaps religion as a political entity is no different to relabelling politics as 'religion'. But religion as in true religion, I don't think we've even scratched the surface.

[RV Pundit]

Sound like witchcraft, magic and superstition to me. And yes we know the history of jewish religion. It a recent history. Let not confuse human natural inquisitive nature with religion. Religion is a crude form of what science do. Everybody is grappling trying to figure out this incredible universe and their role in in it. Religion provide the easy answers...science is more rigorous process.Religion is imagination and fiction couple with lots of conmen and conwomen astray.

Science can't explain everything, whereas faith is absolute. It's divine. Religion is not on the same playing field as humans. You're talking about celestial entities with superhuman traits who interact with a select few humans. I don't think one could unpackage religion in human terms. Perhaps religion as a political entity is no different to relabelling politics as 'religion'. But religion as in true religion, I don't think we've even scratched the surface.

[vooke]

Termie,
As I said, I have nothing to add but I have a right of reply.
Genesis vividly captures formation/creation of an organism from another, that is Eve from Adam. It appears the event was fast otherwise imagining Adam sleeping for 50,000 years insulting. I deduce that when God creates an organism from another, He says so. So when He says dust/soil, reading other creatures is stretching the verses into absurdity
Gen 2:21(ESV)
21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man

In short, soil/dust naturally eliminates possibility of pre-Adamic races and evilution. Termie was once upon a time in Kenia, now you are in Chi. I may not know how you got there but the distance between Nairobi and that place plus all that's between them excludes swimming. You never swam all the way.

Running commentary.

vooke's suggestion that the soil in genesis was sterile is a little rich.  I say this because If you pick up any soil on earth today, there's tons of living things in there.  Bacteria, germs, even earthworms.  Even though these things are not mentioned in genesis, one would think it is more reasonable to assume that at least some of them are in the soil. 

The reason we have this bizarre claim of sterile soil.  vooke's determination to exclude any mechanism not explicitly mentioned in genesis.  This is the only way he can exclude other reasonable possibilities of how the creation goes down.

My own view, when I still believed God, was that he jump started the whole process at the big bang and let it play out without further interference.  I thought that this sat rather well with my concept of free will and similar ideas.

[vooke]

Whatever definition you have of science and technology, it has not been powered by atheists alone or to any significant extent. You may have zero regard for Christianity but Christianity is not the opposite of science and tech

This is what happens when you take a stone age theory of the jewish people and try to fit into 21st century contemporary knowledge and science while hoping the stone age theory will remain relevant and convincing.

One thing is given..our universe is incredibly complex and we may never understand it all..but year in year out...scientist are putting hard work and top grade brains to understand it..they are succeeding in making incredible small steps forward....while religious zealots are stuck in really laughable stone age theories that some gawd created someone named adam from 'earth'...and their evidence is biblical scripts written apparently by some inspired authors.

What a waste of time and space. Trying to reduce an incredibly complex universe of possibly billions of planets and universes that has existed for billions of years...and maybe gazillions...into jewish god created man from earth in his image in some 6,000 yrs ago...is truly incredible bone-headiness.

Pick a book and learn gardening or something...not a stone-age religion of the jewish people.

This thread just illustrate how far religious indoctrination or witchcraft or superstition really impedes thinking and progress.

Of course everyone is free to believe in religious nonsense but superstition it's sister and witchraft is' brother is banned (mostly by religious zealots coz those truly were their real competitors in business of explaining the universe using magic...Church in Kenya waged serious war against competitor religion like witchraft,evil spirits and superstition...seem they didn't succeed in place like India whose stone age religion was rather strong...and now 1B indians believe their god is swimming in ocean of milk)...maybe we should consider banning religion until someone is 18yrs to be able to discern BS from Non-BS.

I think these kind religious nonsense will continue unabated because kids are recruited and indoctrinated (with fear of fire,death,brimstone,blampshey) as soon as they're born.  Such kind of indoctrination will take real brains and courage to get out of it like most atheist. The rest will need probably psychiatrist to exorcise the religious indoctrination of their parents and upbringing.

[RV Pundit]

Christianity, Islam, Budhism, Hinduism and all that are relatives of witchcraft, superstition and all archaic belief systems. Science is something else. Yes they are people who dabble in many or all of them. CJ Mutunga believes in probably all of them. Boko Haram strictly on Sharia. Some waganga forbid their kids to go to schools.

Bottomline...i can only engage in scientific debate...or historical debate (regarding religion or christianity)...it certainly beneath my intelligence to discuss the stupid stone age theories of your bible.

But you're free to start  yet another 100 page thread of biblical nonsense....but for me humanity or Nipate.org will not have advanced an INCH.

Whatever definition you have of science and technology, it has not been powered by atheists alone or to any significant extent. You may have zero regard for Christianity but Christianity is not the opposite of science and tech

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

This is what happens when you take a stone age theory of the jewish people and try to fit into 21st century contemporary knowledge and science while hoping the stone age theory will remain relevant and convincing.

One thing is given..our universe is incredibly complex and we may never understand it all..but year in year out...scientist are putting hard work and top grade brains to understand it..they are succeeding in making incredible small steps forward....while religious zealots are stuck in really laughable stone age theories that some gawd created someone named adam from 'earth'...and their evidence is biblical scripts written apparently by some inspired authors.

What a waste of time and space. Trying to reduce an incredibly complex universe of possibly billions of planets and universes that has existed for billions of years...and maybe gazillions...into jewish god created man from earth in his image in some 6,000 yrs ago...is truly incredible bone-headiness.

Pick a book and learn gardening or something...not a stone-age religion of the jewish people.

This thread just illustrate how far religious indoctrination or witchcraft or superstition really impedes thinking and progress.

Of course everyone is free to believe in religious nonsense but superstition it's sister and witchraft is' brother is banned (mostly by religious zealots coz those truly were their real competitors in business of explaining the universe using magic...Church in Kenya waged serious war against competitor religion like witchraft,evil spirits and superstition...seem they didn't succeed in place like India whose stone age religion was rather strong...and now 1B indians believe their god is swimming in ocean of milk)...maybe we should consider banning religion until someone is 18yrs to be able to discern BS from Non-BS.

I think these kind religious nonsense will continue unabated because kids are recruited and indoctrinated (with fear of fire,death,brimstone,blampshey) as soon as they're born.  Such kind of indoctrination will take real brains and courage to get out of it like most atheist. The rest will need probably psychiatrist to exorcise the religious indoctrination of their parents and upbringing.

That's true if also harsh.  It took a while for me realize that God was not logical.  In fact illogical.

Hominids are a religious species.  The only one to my knowledge.  They are gifted with great capacity for logic.  Yet.  Irrationality is a byproduct of this wiring.

If you use a software analogy.  Most animals are programmed using early binding.  Humans are late binders.  With potential that would be put to no use once their primal needs are taken care of.

Natures abhors a vacuum.

Once the capacity for survival is catered for, the excess brain power is consumed with creative pursuits.  Some lead to new insights.  Others just consume excess cycles; Religion is just one of those.

Overall, I think Christianity has been positive.  I think mostly due to their tolerance of diverse view points.

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

Termie,
As I said, I have nothing to add but I have a right of reply.
Genesis vividly captures formation/creation of an organism from another, that is Eve from Adam. It appears the event was fast otherwise imagining Adam sleeping for 50,000 years insulting. I deduce that when God creates an organism from another, He says so. So when He says dust/soil, reading other creatures is stretching the verses into absurdity
Gen 2:21(ESV)
21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man

In short, soil/dust naturally eliminates possibility of pre-Adamic races and evilution. Termie was once upon a time in Kenia, now you are in Chi. I may not know how you got there but the distance between Nairobi and that place plus all that's between them excludes swimming. You never swam all the way.

Running commentary.

vooke's suggestion that the soil in genesis was sterile is a little rich.  I say this because If you pick up any soil on earth today, there's tons of living things in there.  Bacteria, germs, even earthworms.  Even though these things are not mentioned in genesis, one would think it is more reasonable to assume that at least some of them are in the soil. 

The reason we have this bizarre claim of sterile soil.  vooke's determination to exclude any mechanism not explicitly mentioned in genesis.  This is the only way he can exclude other reasonable possibilities of how the creation goes down.

My own view, when I still believed God, was that he jump started the whole process at the big bang and let it play out without further interference.  I thought that this sat rather well with my concept of free will and similar ideas.

I think that is a self servingly narrow interpretation.  Soil on earth, even in the most sterile places has living organisms in it.

[kadame]

Christianity, Islam, Budhism, Hinduism and all that are relatives of witchcraft, superstition and all archaic belief systems. Science is something else. Yes they are people who dabble in many or all of them. CJ Mutunga believes in probably all of them. Boko Haram strictly on Sharia. Some waganga forbid their kids to go to schools.

Bottomline...i can only engage in scientific debate...or historical debate (regarding religion or christianity)...it certainly beneath my intelligence to discuss the stupid stone age theories of your bible.

But you're free to start  yet another 100 page thread of biblical nonsense....but for me humanity or Nipate.org will not have advanced an INCH.

Whatever definition you have of science and technology, it has not been powered by atheists alone or to any significant extent. You may have zero regard for Christianity but Christianity is not the opposite of science and tech

Pundit, you know if you find religious topics stupid, you don't have to participate in them. You don't even have to read. It really is a free world.

[Kichwa Mbaya]

There is really nothing to debate about religion-its a belief system. You either believe in Xyz or you don't. This guy tried to sell me a  brand of Christianity at the mall where apparently Jesus had a holy mother in heaven that is yet to be revealed.  His concept of the holy trinity includes Mother, Father and the son.   I was like, "if that is what you believe in then fine" .  What ticks me off with these religious folks is how  adamant they are  that what believe in is the truth and that everybody else has it wrong.

[kadame]

Not to be drawn into the debate  but I think the serpent in genesis is literal not symbolic. As we now know, satan can use anything or appear as anything even disguised as a person.

Mya, that's true. He can do that.

Yet it is narrated that God punished the serpent (the animal) by making him crawl on his belly. It is understandable that Adam and Eve could've been fooled by Satan's disguise, yet the same cannot be said for God. But if you read that literally, then it seems like God does not differentiate the animal from the tempter. I am therefore disinclined to treat that literally, but instead figuratively.

Remember, Genesis doesn't really tell us that it was Satan anywhere. This is something that has universally been understood regardless, that the serpent is the devil, who is called the deceiver and the tempter all over the scriptures. That tells me this was a symbol that everyone understood to be a reference to Satan as a tempter of humanity and not a literal occurrence involving a real snake. I see it the same way I see the dragon in revelation. These are generally symbols for Satan. St Peter also compares him to a roaring lion roaming the earth seeking whom he may devour. So satan is compared in many ways to animals deemed dangerous by the human psyche.

The punishment to crawl on the belly seems to represent some kind of punishment or curbing of his powers by God; some way that his leeway in man's world is diminished as a result of his causing man to fall.

Even the proto-evangelium--the curse God uttered to the serpent--has been historically interpreted to be a promise of salvation to Adam immediately after the fall of man. So God says "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (Genesis 3:15). That clearly announces the coming of Christ who will crush the serpent's head. After all, he may have lost his legs but yet he still roams free and can even "bruise the heel" of man still.

The tree of life is unmistakably a symbol for Christ, the bread of life, and Christ speaks of himself in the identical terms in which the tree is described, "eat and live forever".

The tree of knowledge of good and evil represents some kind of independence from God, which is why Adam is told not to eat from it. Eating from it means deciding good and evil for oneself instead of placing filial trust in God as one's Lord. It's basically the essence of rebellion, or desiring/becoming one's own God.

So for me, and I understand for many early church fathers, the story of the fall as narrated is not a literal story but a symbolic narration of the fall of Adam and Eve from grace.

[kadame]

There is really nothing to debate about religion-its a belief system. You either believe in Xyz or you don't. This guy tried to sell me a  brand of Christianity at the mall where apparently Jesus had a holy mother in heaven that is yet to be revealed.  His concept of the holy trinity includes Mother, Father and the son.   I was like, "if that is what you believe in then fine" .  What ticks me off with these religious folks is how  adamant they are  that what believe in is the truth and that everybody else has it wrong.

I know that church, its new. Its in Korea, I think. A couple stopped me at school and tried to preach to me about "God the mother". They even showed me her picture. She's the head of their church, a pretty Korean woman dressed in traditional far eastern dress. I think this is them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Mission_Society_Church_of_God 

[vooke]

What is selfserving is belief that dirt formed itself and then it formed life UNAIDED over billions of years. The belief that somewhere in Genesis your belief must and has been captured. The belief that failure by Genesis to capture your belief makes it a substandard and unintelligent record of history

If dirt can mean animals,then the scriptural integrity breaks and ANYTHING can mean ANYTHING or NOTHING.

I think that is a self servingly narrow interpretation.  Soil on earth, even in the most sterile places has living organisms in it.

[vooke]

You can't wish Christianity away. You usually come off like a negro who is insecure in their atheism. Like you wish everyone was so you can be many. There are intelligent and dumb Christians who are more productive than you will ever imagine both here and elsewhere

Christianity, Islam, Budhism, Hinduism and all that are relatives of witchcraft, superstition and all archaic belief systems. Science is something else. Yes they are people who dabble in many or all of them. CJ Mutunga believes in probably all of them. Boko Haram strictly on Sharia. Some waganga forbid their kids to go to schools.

Bottomline...i can only engage in scientific debate...or historical debate (regarding religion or christianity)...it certainly beneath my intelligence to discuss the stupid stone age theories of your bible.

But you're free to start  yet another 100 page thread of biblical nonsense....but for me humanity or Nipate.org will not have advanced an INCH.

Whatever definition you have of science and technology, it has not been powered by atheists alone or to any significant extent. You may have zero regard for Christianity but Christianity is not the opposite of science and tech

[RV Pundit]

The same way you cannot wish away withcraft and uganga..is the same way we have to tolerate christianity..which i find to be such a waste of time and energy.

In-secured when i have been an atheist nearly all my life. If you met me in primary school..i was an atheist. In high school too. In university the same. I was instinctively atheistic since i was young kid. The only theory i grappled with when i was 10yrs is that earth was round...this i was told by Kiplimo who was in std 8....i agonized how that was possible until we were thought in std 7 about earth...but i knew bible stories were bunch of nonsense very early in my life..and ate all my sadaka (offering)...until i became rude about 10yrs old and completely refused to go to sunday school..1shs sadaka was less an incentive compared to hunting rabbits and other fun things i could do on sunday,

My beef is simple....i am gutted that otherwise intelligent people can spend 10 threads discussing NONSENSE. I know it not my energy or my time..but i would feel the same way if i found somebody running aimless up and down a hill.

The bible is the most concentrated BULLSHIET EVER PUBLISHED.

You can't wish Christianity away. You usually come off like a negro who is insecure in their atheism. Like you wish everyone was so you can be many. There are intelligent and dumb Christians who are more productive than you will ever imagine both here and elsewhere