Resurrections and hyperdimensions

[Volbrigade]

[Replying to post 169 by Volbrigade]

The problem with your replies is that you aren't providing rational evidence for any of your religious beliefs or claims.

All your posts amount to are the standard "preaching" techniques of this religious cult that tries desperately to denigrate anyone who refuses to join and support it.

It's not going to be productive to simply attempt to denigrate people who refuse to be convinced. In fact, that is actually in direct violation of the teachings of Jesus anyway. Jesus never instructed his disciples to argue with or accuse anyone of anything. To the contrary, he clearly instructed them to move on if people aren't interested in hearing the message.

I'm not sure whether you're lecturing or preaching here. A bit of both?

I fail to see where I have denigrated anybody. I did mention the "vague beliefs" expressed by those with opposing arguments. Is that what you refer to?

But that is exactly what they, themselves, express. "I don't claim to know what our origins are, or what our destiny is..."; "I am comfortable with not knowing...". Sound familiar?

So when a theist does nothing but argue to the bitter death with non-believers I don't see where they are paying attention to the teachings of Jesus.

All due respect, but if I am looking for insight into the "teachings of Jesus", I will look elsewhere than to a non-theist.

"Argue to the bitter death"? That's a colorful way of putting it, isn't it? From my perspective, I'm just visiting a message board dedicated to the discussion and debate of Christianity. And expressing my reasons for being a Christian. Which generates oppositional views, which I then address.

If by "bitter death", you mean until both parties begin to repeat themselves -- well, yes. am willing to engage to that point. A point we seem to have reached, in our discussion.

If I were going to preach to people I would at least follow Jesus' instructions and only preach to those who are interested in hearing the message.

Is that a nice way of saying "shut up"?

Again -- it is perhaps a good thing that the prohibition against "preaching" (however defined -- apparently, it means "sharing the Good News"; which is an odd injunction on a site devoted to Christianity...) does not extend to "lecturing", of which I cetainly have been the recipient of my share -- as here.

I think, in general, theists "preach" (against the rules);
non-theists "lecture" (within the rules).

Perhaps that has a bearing on the subject of the OP?

In the meantime, if you are attempting to argue or debate for why the religion has merit, I haven't seen where you have supplied any compelling arguments.

I certainly regret to hear that.

But I don't see where that is a compelling argument that I haven't made any.

[/quote]

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to Volbrigade]

How do you stand on dismembering and chemically burning helpless people? How about helpless, innocent people?

I am not in favor of it.

Well... something had an uncaused beginning. Something is an uncaused cause.

Energy can neither be created or destroyed, according to all observation. That energy had an uncaused beginning is another one of your declared assumptions. If it must be true that energy must have had a caused beginning, which you call God, then by the same logic God must have had a caused beginning as well. On the other hand, if it's possible for a thing to exist eternally and be uncaused, then it is possible that energy exists eternally and is uncaused. The difference is that energy actually exists; because among other things, it is us. energy is observable and quantifiable. God on the other hand has simply been imagined into existence. An extra step which is NOT observed to be valid has been arbitrarily introduced into the question, and declared to be the answer.

Unlike you, I am not making up an answer and declaring it to be the truth, the whole truth, and that's the end of it. In fact I am relying on what can be observed to be true, and then analysing the possibilities modern observation has provided for us. As opposed to developing presuppositions and then declaring these presuppositions to be established fact. But unlike you am am perfectly ready and willing to modify my opinions, or change them entirely, when and if the evidence warrants it.

Did anyone simply presuppose that computer they are are sitting at and cause it to not only exist, but to actually work? Or does it represent the result of centuries of scientific advancement at work? The laws of physics represent the highest state of confidence that we have attained in understanding the universe we live in. The laws of physics are derived from much observation and experimentation resulting in achieving exactly the same result repeatedly and without fail. The application of these laws have led to working computers, smart phone and all of the other technological marvels of our rapidly changing technological world. If the laws of physics are NOT inviolate as we now believe them to be, we are in the embarrassing position of having no idea why our technology works at all!

Ancient people worked on a different theory of how the universe works. Since they did not yet possess enough technology to acquire the information needed to explain the natural phenomenon going on around them, lightning, thunder, earthquakes and the like, they made up answers. They presupposed solutions for which they otherwise had no means to answer. Does you not notice a difference between careful observation and experimentation which leads directly to working technology, and presupposing solutions based entirely on assumptions and declarations AT ALL?

Presupposition is simply another word for make believe, is it not? Believers presuppose that humans, and the universe we exist in must have been created by an infinitely powerful Being whom they not only presuppose exists, but whom they presuppose exists without the need for such a creation Himself. And they made it all up, which is, as I have just pointed out, what presupposition is all about. There is another way of looking at the universe however. It's called the empirical method, and it involves investigating the physical evidence for what the physical evidence has to tell us. The empirical method entails close observation, much experimentation and direct experience, resulting in detailed conclusions that allow for the same results to be reached repeatedly. It requires that the results, when discovered, be accepted at face value even to the extent of completely abandoning centuries of make believe. This sort of research has also led us rather inextricably to the conclusion that EVERYTHING THAT OCCURS DOES SO FOR NATURAL REASONS which can be understood and even utilized for our advantage. The general term for this deeper understanding of the basis for how the physical universe operates is called quantum mechanics. Does the empirical method have credibility? Well, does that computer you are sitting at actually work? Do we have operating smart phones and all of the other modern technological marvels of this modern technological age? They are all based on a working understanding of quantum mechanics. They were NOT rendered extant by make believe.

So, where were all of these modern marvels in Jesus' time? The laws of quantum physics are exactly the same today as they were 2,000 years ago... or a billion years ago for that matter. However, by in large the ancients used a different method for reaching conclusions then the empirical method. They presupposed! What ancient peoples did not understand they simply made up reasons for. Gods and goddesses, elves, fairies, and the like. Whatever served to answer questions for which no obvious answer was readily at hand. This was the old "make it up and declare it to be true" method of reaching a preferred conclusion. It really had no practical value, other than to create the illusion of providing an answer, even though that answer had no connection to anything valid and true. Answers which had absolutely nothing to do with what was actually going on. Sadly, many people today still operate this way, applying made up solutions to questions they don't otherwise understand. Which is a shame, because the actual answers are most often readily available now, so make believe is no longer necessary. We have learned, through much trial and error, that the empirical method for accumulating genuine knowledge far surpasses the old "make it up and declare it to be true" presupposition method. So, I don't "presuppose" that there is no deity any more then I "presuppose" the existence of a multiverse. I simply rate these possibilities in order of how well they correspond to that which can be observed to be true. I see no point in arbitrarily making up the existence of an invisible Being with infinite powers where no such Being is obvious and then declaring the question to be at an end. In fact, the existence of an infinitely powerful invisible Being that possesses the power to manipulate the laws of physics at will seems to contradict everything we believe that we know about how the universe works. This is the inevitable face off between make believe and knowledge you see. Which do you suppose will win out over time, ancient ignorance, or modern science? This depends on how willing people are to take a stand for knowledge over ancient ignorance. Or, more accurately, what people prefer to believe as opposed to what the evidence seems to show.

I'll go with "God". You may go against Him, if you wish. That's part of the plan.

I am not "against God" in exactly the same way that I am not "against" Odin or Zeus.

If the Bible is propositional truth, imparted by the Creator of the universe, then to ignore it -- to deliberately say, in effect, "let's look for another explanation besides this one (The Bible). This one, we don't like so much..." is to choose the path of error.

Do you not recognize that any of the religious documents of other religious beliefs, past and present, can and do (or once did) make the same claim? And with just as much certainty as you are now making your claims. And yet all of these documents were produced by the hands and minds of humans beings. No gods were ever involved, just the unfounded assumptions of human beings attempting to answer questions that they, as yet, did not possess the necessary evidence to answer. The overwhelming majority of these religions, and their religious documents, have disappeared entirely. They were ancient superstitious nonsense when they were conceived of, and they are nonsense now. The difference is, we have far better evidence for explaining existence then our ancient superstitious ancestors did. Now, it may be true that the evidence that we are now gathering does necessarily not serve to provide anyone with warm and fuzzy good feelings. But you see, the truth is whatever it is. Warm and fuzzy good feelings are not owed to us.

The Big Bang (all of them; there are several theories. All have their problems; some contradict each other) actually supports the Bible. We now know that the universe had a beginning. The only question is: what caused it? You say "a singularity", but that is, of course, totally theoretical and unverifiable. I'll go with "God".

The big bang is currently the best model that fits the evidence. It's either true, or it is not. I have no emotional investment in the big bang. If a better explanation should surface I would walk away from it without a second thought.

Agree. If you include the secular, non-theist, materialist "religion" expressed in the belief system that says the universe created itself. And microbes magically morphed into men.

The same exact protons, neutrons and electrons that make up microbes also make up men. There is no difference. And if the law of conservation of energy is valid, then some of the the very same protons, neutrons electrons that once made up microbes are now contained in you.

The point is -- I've made this many times, but I understand that it doesn't sink in; and I understand WHY it doesn't sink in -- you have a choice. You have a choice as to which version you choose to believe. It has nothing to do with "physical evidence" -- that is the same for both sides. It is a question of which version is the most coherent, consistent, cohesive.

After considering both the religious and scientific versions of reality I have chosen the scientific version. The religious version makes claims that directly contradict all observation, logic and common sense. The scientific version of reality has produced all of modern technology. It was an easy choice. But then, I am only interested in what is true. Attempting to convince myself of an answer that serves to make me feel all warm and fuzzy hold no interest for me.

Yes. Mine is a faith statement. So is yours ("energy is uncreated, eternal").

My statement has absolutely nothing to do with faith. That energy can neither be created or destroyed is one of the primary laws of physics. It is based on centuries of observation and experimentation.

Sez you. I think you are wrong.

Jesus lived 2,000 years ago. Everyone who lived 2,000 died, and is still most reliably and undeniably dead. Despite 2,000 years worth of empty claims to the contrary, this remains an undeniable fact.

By the way -- the computer you're sitting at is convincing evidence that this universe follows knowable, predictable natural laws and rules -- evidence of design and order, which demands a Designer to order them. It is also a metaphor for the reality of what you are: software. Massless, volumeless, weightless. Inhabiting the hardware of your physical body. That "software", which is the real you (ubiquitous), is not subject to time. The drumbeat of your "hardware" -- the beating of your heart -- is all that stands between you (again, ubiquitous "you") and eternity.

These natural laws are known as the laws of physics. And they operate in accordance with quantum mechanics.

I am always open to facts.

Which is why I am providing them to you. What you do with them is up to you. You have a heavy emotional investment in a system of belief that promises you eternal life, reunion with dead loved ones, and the forgiveness of all your accumulated guilts. That is a lot for a dispassionate appeal to the facts to overcome.

Since Jesus Christ is truth, then everything that is true conforms to Him. Please show me where I have denied a single verifiable fact.

What you cannot contradict, you simply ignore. For example, which of these details taken from the Gospels do you deny?

1. The body of Jesus was given to Joseph and Nicodemus by Pilate on the Friday before Passover.

2. Joseph and Nicodemus were followers of Jesus.

3. Joseph took the body of Jesus to his newly made personal family crypt to wash and prepare it because the sepulchre was conveniently near to the place where Jesus was crucified.

4. The followers of Jesus left the tomb, covering the entrance with a large stone.

5. The next day the chief priests took possession of the closed tomb which they did not open and inspect.

6. It was a high holy day.

7. The following day the tomb was discovered to be empty.

If you cannot deny these details, then a very natural explanation for the empty tomb and missing body of Jesus is very easy to provide. And if a perfectly natural explanation is available, then an explanation which confounds all reason, logic and common sense is spurious.

No. I'm telling you that children are born malformed -- and every other evil, that is, calamitous, thing -- because I sinned.

Shame on you.

Are malformed children a part of God's plan... or did God fail to achieve what He intended to achieve?

Yes. A plan to make creatures of matter, who have the free will, the choice, to become eternal Sons of God, in the image of the risen Jesus Christ.

And yet no where has God offered humankind free will.

An image which the unfortunate creature in your picture will share, being unaccountable for its sins, as small children are. And if you choose to accept the grace and mercy afforded by Christ, then you will see that deformed infant as he truly is; not merely the hardware that he/she is trapped in: and he will be a glory to behold.

I hope all the malformed children find that you believe they are malformed because of their sinful nature to be comforting. Because I do not.

Everything that has a beginning must have a Cause...

Agreed.

I think the clearest example is in Genesis ch. 3, where Eve explains that God gave them a command NOT to eat of a certain tree, and she was deceived into eating it. Followed by Adam doing the same, of his own free will. That is the seed plot for the entire Bible. Everything else that follows expands upon this point -- e.g., the dreary litany of the nation of Israel, continually turning from God to idolatry. Out of their free will.

Did God know that Adam and Eve would sin when He created them? Did God know that the serpent would sin when He created it? Did God know that by bring all parties together in the garden He was insuring that this great sin would occur? Isn't that what omnipotent means? Was that NOT God's plan all along? If so, was there ever any chance that Adam and Eve would not eat the fruit? If not, where is the "free will" in this tale? Very conspicuously God has not offered free will. The events of our lives are already written in God's book. According to your book of revealed truth, at any rate.

God either created evil as a part of His plan from "before the foundation of the world," or God did not create evil at all, and it's occurrence was entirely unplanned and unintentional. Again, fiend or failure, choose your poison.


I'll take choice "c" -- none of the above.

Explain choice "C" in greater detail. Because you seem to have skirted the question.

[Volbrigade]

[Replying to Volbrigade]

How do you stand on dismembering and chemically burning helpless people? How about helpless, innocent people?

I am not in favor of it.

Then you are against abortion. I applaud your consistency.

Well... something had an uncaused beginning. Something is an uncaused cause.

Energy can neither be created or destroyed, according to all observation. That energy had an uncaused beginning is another one of your declared assumptions. If it must be true that energy must have had a caused beginning, which you call God, then by the same logic God must have had a caused beginning as well...

No.

Something has to be uncaused. Something must have had no beginning. Something has to be eternal.

That is a real flaw with the non-theist position, imo. I am asked to believe that "energy" has just been endlessly floating around. And then one day, it decided to get its act together -- for no reason; inanimate matter-energy can't have a "reason": if it did, it would have a Mind, and would thus qualify as a "god" -- and embarked on an uncaused self-improvement program ("uncaused", because it is its own "cause"), which was launched with an explosion, and proceeded by mindless, random processes to turn itself into unimaginably complex order out of chaos; eventually making the categorical leap from inanimate to living; and from "simple" (no more complicated than, say, a small city) single-celled organisms (never mind the many "chicken-and-egg" dilemmas involved with that -- e.g., you need DNA to construct a cell; you need a cell to manufacture DNA) to multi-system organisms capable of building and operating digital computers, on which they can share views on how such a state or affairs came to be, and whether or not an all-poweful Deity was necessary for it.

All by those same mindless, random processes, of course.

That requires more faith than I am able to muster. And the mitigating ideas, made up to assuage the incredibility of such a proposal -- i.e., that there are an endless number of universes, and a few of them just happen, by chance, to be coherent -- that just seems silly, in addition to being ad hoc.

It makes much more sense, to me, that whatever it is that has existed eternally (that we call God) has a Mind, Will, and Intelligence. And that He created an environment out of His Intelligence; and that space, matter-energy, and TIME began with His utterance: "Let light be."

I'll go with "God". You may go against Him, if you wish. That's part of the plan.

I am not "against God" in exactly the same way that I am not "against" Odin or Zeus.

Nonsense. You are too intelligent to make such a gratuitously dismissive statement. It dismisses you as a serious respondent.

If the Bible is propositional truth, imparted by the Creator of the universe, then to ignore it -- to deliberately say, in effect, "let's look for another explanation besides this one (The Bible). This one, we don't like so much..." is to choose the path of error.

Do you not recognize that any of the religious documents of other religious beliefs, past and present, can and do (or once did) make the same claim? And with just as much certainty as you are now making your claims. And yet all of these documents were produced by the hands and minds of humans beings. No gods were ever involved, just the unfounded assumptions of human beings attempting to answer questions that they, as yet, did not possess the necessary evidence to answer. The overwhelming majority of these religions, and their religious documents, have disappeared entirely. They were ancient superstitious nonsense when they were conceived of, and they are nonsense now. The difference is, we have far better evidence for explaining existence then our ancient superstitious ancestors did. Now, it may be true that the evidence that we are now gathering does necessarily not serve to provide anyone with warm and fuzzy good feelings. But you see, the truth is whatever it is. Warm and fuzzy good feelings are not owed to us.

The evidence we are now gathering is fitting in with the Biblical account with credible precision. That development simultaneously defeats both the empty and impoverished non-theist view, and the ridiculous alternative "theisms" (e.g., pan-, ani-, poly- ) that have developed outside the Truth that God has imparted.

The Big Bang (all of them; there are several theories. All have their problems; some contradict each other) actually supports the Bible. We now know that the universe had a beginning. The only question is: what caused it? You say "a singularity", but that is, of course, totally theoretical and unverifiable. I'll go with "God".

The big bang is currently the best model that fits the evidence. It's either true, or it is not. I have no emotional investment in the big bang. If a better explanation should surface I would walk away from it without a second thought.

Have you investigated any of the theories that are electro-magnetic based, as opposed to the Newtonian gravity-based models -- i.e., the Big Bang?

Electro-magnetism is stronger than gravity by many, many orders of magnitude. If you're interested, you might google "Plasma Universe" or "Holographic Universe".

There are those that maintain that our universe is a sort of "digital simulation" of a "higher reality" -- a "metacosm", if you will.

This is a secular science idea; but it fits in perfectly what the Bible has said all along.

Agree. If you include the secular, non-theist, materialist "religion" expressed in the belief system that says the universe created itself. And microbes magically morphed into men.

The same exact protons, neutrons and electrons that make up microbes also make up men. There is no difference. And if the law of conservation of energy is valid, then some of the the very same protons, neutrons electrons that once made up microbes are now contained in you.

Your point?

The point is -- I've made this many times, but I understand that it doesn't sink in; and I understand WHY it doesn't sink in -- you have a choice. You have a choice as to which version you choose to believe. It has nothing to do with "physical evidence" -- that is the same for both sides. It is a question of which version is the most coherent, consistent, cohesive.

After considering both the religious and scientific versions of reality I have chosen the scientific version. The religious version makes claims that directly contradict all observation, logic and common sense. The scientific version of reality has produced all of modern technology. It was an easy choice. But then, I am only interested in what is true. Attempting to convince myself of an answer that serves to make me feel all warm and fuzzy hold no interest for me.

Science flourished in the Christianized West. It was stillborn everywhere else. Operational science that produces cars, planes, and computers validates itself. Theoretical science that makes an a priori dismissal of a Creator God, and manufactures claims that (e.g.) microbes magically morphed into men by random and mindless processes, is nothing more than mysticism. A fairy tale for grown ups.

Yes. Mine is a faith statement. So is yours ("energy is uncreated, eternal").

My statement has absolutely nothing to do with faith. That energy can neither be created or destroyed is one of the primary laws of physics. It is based on centuries of observation and experimentation.

I disagree. It is a faith statement, as I indicated earlier. And an empty faith, at that. Matter-energy just sort of hung around forever until it decided "hey -- it's about time to start time"? Come on, TotN. Open your mind.

Sez you. I think you are wrong.

Jesus lived 2,000 years ago. Everyone who lived 2,000 died, and is still most reliably and undeniably dead. Despite 2,000 years worth of empty claims to the contrary, this remains an undeniable fact.

That sounds a bit desperate to me.

By the way -- the computer you're sitting at is convincing evidence that this universe follows knowable, predictable natural laws and rules -- evidence of design and order, which demands a Designer to order them. It is also a metaphor for the reality of what you are: software. Massless, volumeless, weightless. Inhabiting the hardware of your physical body. That "software", which is the real you (ubiquitous), is not subject to time. The drumbeat of your "hardware" -- the beating of your heart -- is all that stands between you (again, ubiquitous "you") and eternity.

These natural laws are known as the laws of physics. And they operate in accordance with quantum mechanics.

"Quantum mechanics"? Is that a made-up term? (LOL)

Yes. We have given names to the laws and physical properties and constants that God spoke into existence at the beginning of time -- much as Adam named the animals.

I am always open to facts.

Which is why I am providing them to you. What you do with them is up to you. You have a heavy emotional investment in a system of belief that promises you eternal life, reunion with dead loved ones, and the forgiveness of all your accumulated guilts. That is a lot for a dispassionate appeal to the facts to overcome.

I have a heavy investment of every kind -- including emotional -- in the TRUTH.

Since Jesus Christ is truth, then everything that is true conforms to Him. Please show me where I have denied a single verifiable fact.

What you cannot contradict, you simply ignore. For example, which of these details taken from the Gospels do you deny?

1. The body of Jesus was given to Joseph and Nicodemus by Pilate on the Friday before Passover.

2. Joseph and Nicodemus were followers of Jesus.

3. Joseph took the body of Jesus to his newly made personal family crypt to wash and prepare it because the sepulchre was conveniently near to the place where Jesus was crucified.

4. The followers of Jesus left the tomb, covering the entrance with a large stone.

5. The next day the chief priests took possession of the closed tomb which they did not open and inspect.

6. It was a high holy day.

7. The following day the tomb was discovered to be empty.

If you cannot deny these details, then a very natural explanation for the empty tomb and missing body of Jesus is very easy to provide. And if a perfectly natural explanation is available, then an explanation which confounds all reason, logic and common sense is spurious.

There's a little more to the story. In fact, there are fulfillments of Old Testament references and prophecies concerning Jesus that make the idea that the story was concocted by renegade Jews, who gave their lives in defense of it, simply unbelievable. Not to mention the macro and micro coding embedded throughout the entire narrative, in a coherent and consistent manner; and the way the text -- compiled over 1,700 years -- continues to harmonize with our scientific understanding, with each new discovery; so that the evidence for it being an integrated message system from outside our time domain reaches critical mass. "Line by line. Precept by precept."

The tomb was empty because the man had entered into the metacosmic mode of existence that is referred to as "spiritual" -- and, in keeping with the topic, (at a bare minimum) "hyperdimensional".

No. I'm telling you that children are born malformed -- and every other evil, that is, calamitous, thing -- because I sinned.

Shame on you.

Are malformed children a part of God's plan... or did God fail to achieve what He intended to achieve?

Yes. A plan to make creatures of matter, who have the free will, the choice, to become eternal Sons of God, in the image of the risen Jesus Christ.

And yet no where has God offered humankind free will.

An image which the unfortunate creature in your picture will share, being unaccountable for its sins, as small children are. And if you choose to accept the grace and mercy afforded by Christ, then you will see that deformed infant as he truly is; not merely the hardware that he/she is trapped in: and he will be a glory to behold.

I hope all the malformed children find that you believe they are malformed because of their sinful nature to be comforting. Because I do not.

All due respect -- but it really doesn't matter what you believe. What matters is what's TRUE.

Everything that has a beginning must have a Cause...

Agreed.

I think the clearest example is in Genesis ch. 3, where Eve explains that God gave them a command NOT to eat of a certain tree, and she was deceived into eating it. Followed by Adam doing the same, of his own free will. That is the seed plot for the entire Bible. Everything else that follows expands upon this point -- e.g., the dreary litany of the nation of Israel, continually turning from God to idolatry. Out of their free will.

Did God know that Adam and Eve would sin when He created them? Did God know that the serpent would sin when He created it? Did God know that by bring all parties together in the garden He was insuring that this great sin would occur? Isn't that what omnipotent means? Was that NOT God's plan all along? If so, was there ever any chance that Adam and Eve would not eat the fruit? If not, where is the "free will" in this tale? Very conspicuously God has not offered free will. The events of our lives are already written in God's book. According to your book of revealed truth, at any rate.

God either created evil as a part of His plan from "before the foundation of the world," or God did not create evil at all, and it's occurrence was entirely unplanned and unintentional. Again, fiend or failure, choose your poison.


I'll take choice "c" -- none of the above.

Explain choice "C" in greater detail. Because you seem to have skirted the question.

Gladly.

Foreknowledge is not cause. If you knew, beyond certainty, that a bomb would go off in Berlin in 30 seconds, that does not mean you caused it to explode.

I think God created a space-time environment, for the reasons I have already stated -- poetically, to "increase the population of Heaven" with "little Christs". The manner to do that involved the making of matter(-energy), and creatures with free wills.

Because He knows the end from the beginning, being outside of time, He knew what would happen in the garden. And He knew what it would cost Him -- death on a Cross.

From His omniscience and infinite wisdom, He determined it would be worth the cost. Worth the suffering. Worth the pain. Not only ours, but His.

But that is why He created a temporal environment. The most painful, miserable life ever lived will come to an end at some point. As will every life (except for a number of them in the last generation -- but let's not get side-tracked).

And that is part of his plan. That unfortunate infant's condition -- a product of the entropy introduced at the Fall -- will be mercifully short-lived. And then he/she will spend eternity with its Creator -- a creature of glory and radiance, unencumbered by the presence of sin.

And this temporal environment is itself temporary. The universe itself will "melt with a fervent heat". And there will be a new heaven and a new earth, for those who recognized that this world is not their home; but merely a temporary environment; an opportunity to be redeemed, and manifested in an eternal mode of existence, like our Creator.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to Volbrigade]

Well... something had an uncaused beginning. Something is an uncaused cause.

Energy can neither be created or destroyed, according to all observation. That energy had an uncaused beginning is another one of your declared assumptions. If it must be true that energy must have had a caused beginning, which you call God, then by the same logic God must have had a caused beginning as well...

No.

Something has to be uncaused. Something must have had no beginning. Something has to be eternal.

And that something, according to all observation, is energy.

That is a real flaw with the non-theist position, imo. I am asked to believe that "energy" has just been endlessly floating around. And then one day, it decided to get its act together -- for no reason; inanimate matter-energy can't have a "reason": if it did, it would have a Mind, and would thus qualify as a "god" -- and embarked on an uncaused self-improvement program ("uncaused", because it is its own "cause"), which was launched with an explosion, and proceeded by mindless, random processes to turn itself into unimaginably complex order out of chaos; eventually making the categorical leap from inanimate to living; and from "simple" (no more complicated than, say, a small city) single-celled organisms (never mind the many "chicken-and-egg" dilemmas involved with that -- e.g., you need DNA to construct a cell; you need a cell to manufacture DNA) to multi-system organisms capable of building and operating digital computers, on which they can share views on how such a state or affairs came to be, and whether or not an all-poweful Deity was necessary for it.

Upon what do you base your supposition that prior to the big bang "energy has just been endlessly floating around?" What was God doing, prior to creating the universe, by the way? "Just floating around?"

That requires more faith than I am able to muster. And the mitigating ideas, made up to assuage the incredibility of such a proposal -- i.e., that there are an endless number of universes, and a few of them just happen, by chance, to be coherent -- that just seems silly, in addition to being ad hoc.

It makes much more sense, to me, that whatever it is that has existed eternally (that we call God) has a Mind, Will, and Intelligence. And that He created an environment out of His Intelligence; and that space, matter-energy, and TIME began with His utterance: "Let light be."

The actions of quantum foam insure that everything which is possible gets a chance to become realized over the course of vast amounts of time.

Nonsense. You are too intelligent to make such a gratuitously dismissive statement. It dismisses you as a serious respondent.

Perhaps this will make more sense to you then. I am not an opponent of God in exactly the same way that I am not an opponent of Santa Claus.

The evidence we are now gathering is fitting in with the Biblical account with credible precision. That development simultaneously defeats both the empty and impoverished non-theist view, and the ridiculous alternative "theisms" (e.g., pan-, ani-, poly- ) that have developed outside the Truth that God has imparted.

Have you investigated any of the theories that are electro-magnetic based, as opposed to the Newtonian gravity-based models -- i.e., the Big Bang?

Electro-magnetism is stronger than gravity by many, many orders of magnitude. If you're interested, you might google "Plasma Universe" or "Holographic Universe".

Electro-magnetism is stronger over short distances. Gravity however is constant over vast distances, making it much a much more influential force on the universe.

There are those that maintain that our universe is a sort of "digital simulation" of a "higher reality" -- a "metacosm", if you will.

This is a secular science idea; but it fits in perfectly what the Bible has said all along.

There are those who believe that we are living in a computer simulation comparable to the world imagined in the movie, "The Matrix," as well. They, like you, are unable to provide any compelling physical evidence either, however.

Agree. If you include the secular, non-theist, materialist "religion" expressed in the belief system that says the universe created itself. And microbes magically morphed into men.

The same exact protons, neutrons and electrons that make up microbes also make up men. There is no difference. And if the law of conservation of energy is valid, then some of the the very same protons, neutrons electrons that once made up microbes are now contained in you.

Your point?

The same point I have been making all along. Protons and neutrons are made up of quanta; vibrating bits that form the basis of energy. Neither these quantum bits, nor the protons and neutrons that they form are living. Protons, neutrons and electrons combine to form stars and planets. The very same protons, neutrons and electrons also combine to form microbes. Even the most simple microbe is considerably more complex than a rock. And the very same protons, neutrons and electrons that once formed rocks, can become, over time, complex enough to form microbes, and then, over still more time, complex enough to form humans. All driven by the unrelenting driving force that is quantum mechanics. And vast amounts of time. Essentially, anything that is possible becomes statistically probable given enough time and an unrelenting driving force. And the universe has all of the time in the world.

Science flourished in the Christianized West. It was stillborn everywhere else. Operational science that produces cars, planes, and computers validates itself. Theoretical science that makes an a priori dismissal of a Creator God, and manufactures claims that (e.g.) microbes magically morphed into men by random and mindless processes, is nothing more than mysticism. A fairy tale for grown ups.

Science only flourished in the west after the protestant revolution provided pockets of investigation protected from the control of the Catholic church. Prior to that, men who attempted to investigate objectively and publish conclusions which contradicted the official doctrine of the church were eradicated, often in very creative ways.

At the battle of Tours in October of 732, a Christian army under the command of Charles Martel defeated and turned back a Muslim army, thwarting what very well could have been a Muslim takeover of all of Europe. At that point in time the Muslims had the best scientists, mathematicians and physicians in the world. They seemed poised and entirely capable of making another go at taking over Europe. Instead however the Muslim world began a slow retreat from the worldly and into religious contemplation that shunned science and scientific investigation as unnecessary next to the study and contemplation of religion. Essentially Islam entered into a dark ages from which it has yet to fully emerge.

Meanwhile, in the west, once the yoke of the church and it's rigid religious suppression of objective scientific investigation was broken, a rebirth of the sciences known as the renaissance was begun. Ancient superstition is forever waiting drag us all right back into ignorance again, I am afraid.

My statement has absolutely nothing to do with faith. That energy can neither be created or destroyed is one of the primary laws of physics. It is based on centuries of observation and experimentation.

I disagree. It is a faith statement, as I indicated earlier. And an empty faith, at that. Matter-energy just sort of hung around forever until it decided "hey -- it's about time to start time"? Come on, TotN. Open your mind.

"Open your mind," he says as he uses the fruit of the very science that he disparages. But you see, I don't "have faith" the technology is going to work. I simply turn it on and use it.

Jesus lived 2,000 years ago. Everyone who lived 2,000 died, and is still most reliably and undeniably dead. Despite 2,000 years worth of empty claims to the contrary, this remains an undeniable fact.

That sounds a bit desperate to me.

And yet it is an undeniable fact.

"Quantum mechanics"? Is that a made-up term?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics
http://www.livescience.com/33816-quantu ... ation.html
http://www.pbs.org/transistor/science/info/quantum.html
https://www.britannica.com/science/quan ... cs-physics
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/phy ... um-physics
https://phys.org/tags/quantum+mechanics/
https://phys.org/physics-news/quantum-physics/

These are just a few of the references to quantum mechanics that I turned up simply by typing the term "quantum Mechanic" on Google. Would you like to know what a search of the term "metacosm" produced?

Angels Volume 3
The Denizens of the Metacosm
by Dr. Chuck Missler

The Metacosm is the domain of transdimensional creatures such as angels (fallen and unfallen), demons, and—surprisingly—UFOs and other ostensibly hybrid forms encountered in the Scriptures.

As we have in our previous articles explored the limits of the boundaries of our reality, and recognized the limitations of the Macrocosm[1] as well as the limits of the Microcosm,[2] and thus highlighted that our reality is but “a shadow of a larger reality,�[3] we have dubbed this exterior hyperspace as the “Metacosm.�

The Metacosm is the domain of transdimensional creatures such as angels (fallen and unfallen), demons, and—surprisingly—UFOs and other ostensibly hybrid forms encountered in the Scriptures.
http://www.khouse.org/articles/2013/1153/

Since Jesus Christ is truth, then everything that is true conforms to Him. Please show me where I have denied a single verifiable fact.

What you cannot contradict, you simply ignore. For example, which of these details taken from the Gospels do you deny?

1. The body of Jesus was given to Joseph and Nicodemus by Pilate on the Friday before Passover.

2. Joseph and Nicodemus were followers of Jesus.

3. Joseph took the body of Jesus to his newly made personal family crypt to wash and prepare it because the sepulchre was conveniently near to the place where Jesus was crucified.

4. The followers of Jesus left the tomb, covering the entrance with a large stone.

5. The next day the chief priests took possession of the closed tomb which they did not open and inspect.

6. It was a high holy day.

7. The following day the tomb was discovered to be empty.

If you cannot deny these details, then a very natural explanation for the empty tomb and missing body of Jesus is very easy to provide. And if a perfectly natural explanation is available, then an explanation which confounds all reason, logic and common sense is spurious.

There's a little more to the story. In fact, there are fulfillments of Old Testament references and prophecies concerning Jesus that make the idea that the story was concocted by renegade Jews, who gave their lives in defense of it, simply unbelievable. Not to mention the macro and micro coding embedded throughout the entire narrative, in a coherent and consistent manner; and the way the text -- compiled over 1,700 years -- continues to harmonize with our scientific understanding, with each new discovery; so that the evidence for it being an integrated message system from outside our time domain reaches critical mass. "Line by line. Precept by precept."

The tomb was empty because the man had entered into the metacosmic mode of existence that is referred to as "spiritual" -- and, in keeping with the topic, (at a bare minimum) "hyperdimensional".

The Jewish priests went out and took possession of Joseph's closed tomb, which they did not open and inspect. The tomb proved to be empty the next morning. Fully and fairly explained, even a five year old can recognize that the probable answer to the empty tomb and missing body of Jesus is that the tomb was already empty when the priests took physical possession of the tomb. And the obvious suspects, the disciples of Jesus, were the last one's to be in clear physical possession of the body. Metecosmical hyperdimensional space notwithstanding.

All due respect -- but it really doesn't matter what you believe. What matters is what's TRUE.

You have yet to cite chapter and verse where God offers humankind free will. And that's the honest truth.

Foreknowledge is not cause.

God had foreknowledge of what Adam and Eve would do before He ever created them. God had foreknowledge of what the serpent would do before He ever created it. God brought both sides together with perfect inerrant foreknowledge of what would occur. There was never any question that God's intentions would be carried out. That is NOT free will.

Or to put it another way, if I hold a bowling ball over your head and release it, the bowling ball technically becomes a complete free agent once out of my grasp. So who is REALLY the ultimate cause of the huge dent in your skull, the bowling ball, or gravity? Or could it be the one who planned, conceived and carried out the event?

In truth of course, I do not have perfect inerrant foreknowledge of what will occur. There is always a chance that I might miss. God has no such restriction. God only either gets exactly the results He intends to get, or He FAILS to get the result He intends to get.

Now, some people might suggest that one should allow a baby to pick up a burning ember, so that the lesson will be learned the hard way. But you see, I am a father, and I always considered it my duty to shield my children from pain and suffering as best I could, and to then explain the lesson to them, rather than allowing them to experience pain and suffering. But then, I am not a psychotic fiend. Unnecessary tough love is not "love" at all. It's masochism.

[Volbrigade]

[Replying to Volbrigade]

Well... something had an uncaused beginning. Something is an uncaused cause.

Energy can neither be created or destroyed, according to all observation. That energy had an uncaused beginning is another one of your declared assumptions. If it must be true that energy must have had a caused beginning, which you call God, then by the same logic God must have had a caused beginning as well...

No.

Something has to be uncaused. Something must have had no beginning. Something has to be eternal.

And that something, according to all observation, is energy.

That is a real flaw with the non-theist position, imo. I am asked to believe that "energy" has just been endlessly floating around. And then one day, it decided to get its act together -- for no reason; inanimate matter-energy can't have a "reason": if it did, it would have a Mind, and would thus qualify as a "god" -- and embarked on an uncaused self-improvement program ("uncaused", because it is its own "cause"), which was launched with an explosion, and proceeded by mindless, random processes to turn itself into unimaginably complex order out of chaos; eventually making the categorical leap from inanimate to living; and from "simple" (no more complicated than, say, a small city) single-celled organisms (never mind the many "chicken-and-egg" dilemmas involved with that -- e.g., you need DNA to construct a cell; you need a cell to manufacture DNA) to multi-system organisms capable of building and operating digital computers, on which they can share views on how such a state or affairs came to be, and whether or not an all-poweful Deity was necessary for it.

Upon what do you base your supposition that prior to the big bang "energy has just been endlessly floating around?" What was God doing, prior to creating the universe, by the way? "Just floating around?"

You miss the point. How could we possibly know what an infinite eternal Triune Being would "do", before it decided to create the space-time environment which we inhabit, and He is transcendent of? Perhaps that is one of the things we'll discover when we enter our eternal habitation.

OTOH, you ask me to believe that mindless, random "energy" just up and exploded itself into unfathomable design and order one day. What did it do -- get bored with being in some nameless undifferentiated state? Or a state of infinite density with a made-up name -- "singularity"?

Sorry. I'll go with "Energy"-- capital "e"-- with Mind, Purpose, and Will, invented "energy"-- lower case "e"-- as we are able to know and measure and experience it in our physical environment.

I don't have the faith it takes to accept the alternative; and am not afraid to humble myself before an all-powerful God.

That requires more faith than I am able to muster. And the mitigating ideas, made up to assuage the incredibility of such a proposal -- i.e., that there are an endless number of universes, and a few of them just happen, by chance, to be coherent -- that just seems silly, in addition to being ad hoc.

It makes much more sense, to me, that whatever it is that has existed eternally (that we call God) has a Mind, Will, and Intelligence. And that He created an environment out of His Intelligence; and that space, matter-energy, and TIME began with His utterance: "Let light be."

The actions of quantum foam insure that everything which is possible gets a chance to become realized over the course of vast amounts of time.

Your response merely reinforces both my statement responded to, and the one prior to this one, above.

It's funny -- in a manner of speaking -- the extremes people will go to, in order to deny the self-evident case for a Creator. It was the great Chesterton who said "'When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in everything."

Infinite universes; "time + chance = everything", etc.

I'll take "Let light be."

Nonsense. You are too intelligent to make such a gratuitously dismissive statement. It dismisses you as a serious respondent.

Perhaps this will make more sense to you then. I am not an opponent of God in exactly the same way that I am not an opponent of Santa Claus.

Fair enough.

I am opposed to mindless randomness being the source of our ordered universe, operating under consistent and coherent natural laws, in exactly the same way I am opposed to a tornado roaring through a junkyard and assembling a 747 airplane.

The evidence we are now gathering is fitting in with the Biblical account with credible precision. That development simultaneously defeats both the empty and impoverished non-theist view, and the ridiculous alternative "theisms" (e.g., pan-, ani-, poly- ) that have developed outside the Truth that God has imparted.

Have you investigated any of the theories that are electro-magnetic based, as opposed to the Newtonian gravity-based models -- i.e., the Big Bang?

Electro-magnetism is stronger than gravity by many, many orders of magnitude. If you're interested, you might google "Plasma Universe" or "Holographic Universe".

Electro-magnetism is stronger over short distances. Gravity however is constant over vast distances, making it much a much more influential force on the universe.

There are those that maintain that our universe is a sort of "digital simulation" of a "higher reality" -- a "metacosm", if you will.

This is a secular science idea; but it fits in perfectly what the Bible has said all along.

There are those who believe that we are living in a computer simulation comparable to the world imagined in the movie, "The Matrix," as well. They, like you, are unable to provide any compelling physical evidence either, however.

Maybe not. But the Big Bang hypotheses are so full of problems, the "solutions" for which are purely theoretical, and have "no physical evidence" (e.g., an inflationary period in which the speed or light was orders of magnitude faster than now measured; dark matter, etc.), that some have begun to search for other explanations for the existence of a universe. The classic and traditional gravity-based models build off of Newton, circa 17th century; gravity is a force that is subject to the inverse square rule, diminishing over distance, weakening as the inverse square of the distance.

As a model, our nearest neighbor star, Alpha Centauri, is 4.5 light years away. If you imagine the two stars as golf balls, a scale model would put them 700 miles apart.

How much gravitational force do you think two golf balls, 700 miles apart, exert on each other?

By contrast, the EM models, which build on the 19th century work of James Clerk Maxwell, incorporate the rules of quantum theory, which state that every photon in the universe is connected with every other photon -- in real time.

Something to consider. If you can bear the implications...

Agree. If you include the secular, non-theist, materialist "religion" expressed in the belief system that says the universe created itself. And microbes magically morphed into men.

The same exact protons, neutrons and electrons that make up microbes also make up men. There is no difference. And if the law of conservation of energy is valid, then some of the the very same protons, neutrons electrons that once made up microbes are now contained in you.

Your point?

The same point I have been making all along. Protons and neutrons are made up of quanta; vibrating bits that form the basis of energy. Neither these quantum bits, nor the protons and neutrons that they form are living. Protons, neutrons and electrons combine to form stars and planets. The very same protons, neutrons and electrons also combine to form microbes. Even the most simple microbe is considerably more complex than a rock. And the very same protons, neutrons and electrons that once formed rocks, can become, over time, complex enough to form microbes, and then, over still more time, complex enough to form humans. All driven by the unrelenting driving force that is quantum mechanics. And vast amounts of time. Essentially, anything that is possible becomes statistically probable given enough time and an unrelenting driving force. And the universe has all of the time in the world.

Disagree. It has all the time that God gives it.

But you bring up an interesting point. The atoms that compose our bodies are completely fungible, making a complete turnover in a certain number of years, via the biological processes informed by the information program of our DNA.

We are not made of matter. Only our hardware is. And that fungible hardware will be replaced by something else -- something beyond the realm of "physical evidence".

Science flourished in the Christianized West. It was stillborn everywhere else. Operational science that produces cars, planes, and computers validates itself. Theoretical science that makes an a priori dismissal of a Creator God, and manufactures claims that (e.g.) microbes magically morphed into men by random and mindless processes, is nothing more than mysticism. A fairy tale for grown ups.

Science only flourished in the west after the protestant revolution provided pockets of investigation protected from the control of the Catholic church. Prior to that, men who attempted to investigate objectively and publish conclusions which contradicted the official doctrine of the church were eradicated, often in very creative ways.

At the battle of Tours in October of 732, a Christian army under the command of Charles Martel defeated and turned back a Muslim army, thwarting what very well could have been a Muslim takeover of all of Europe. At that point in time the Muslims had the best scientists, mathematicians and physicians in the world. They seemed poised and entirely capable of making another go at taking over Europe. Instead however the Muslim world began a slow retreat from the worldly and into religious contemplation that shunned science and scientific investigation as unnecessary next to the study and contemplation of religion. Essentially Islam entered into a dark ages from which it has yet to fully emerge.

Meanwhile, in the west, once the yoke of the church and it's rigid religious suppression of objective scientific investigation was broken, a rebirth of the sciences known as the renaissance was begun. Ancient superstition is forever waiting drag us all right back into ignorance again, I am afraid.

The medieval Church is NOT Christianity. Christianity is not meant to be a system of government, except over the individual. Nor can Christianity EVER be compulsory, as it was once it became an organ of the state, under the Romans.

Speculations regarding Islam notwithstanding, the facts are in evidence. The Muslim world sat on an ocean of petroleum for centuries, unaware and uncaring about a resource for which they had no use. Until western technologies, which stand on the shoulders of the giants of modern science -- Newton, Kepler, Bacon, Pascal, Linnaeus, Herschel, Mendel, Pasteur, et.al, -- many of whom were not just Christians, but Creationists; and whose science grew from their faith in an ordered and ordained universe: those technologies developed the internal combustion engine and infrastructure for which that petroleum is the perfect fuel.

None of which is by accident, btw.

In my opinion.

My statement has absolutely nothing to do with faith. That energy can neither be created or destroyed is one of the primary laws of physics. It is based on centuries of observation and experimentation.

I disagree. It is a faith statement, as I indicated earlier. And an empty faith, at that. Matter-energy just sort of hung around forever until it decided "hey -- it's about time to start time"? Come on, TotN. Open your mind.

"Open your mind," he says as he uses the fruit of the very science that he disparages. But you see, I don't "have faith" the technology is going to work. I simply turn it on and use it.

We both share an appreciation for operational science, and its fruit of technology. It's good to agree on something. Of course, as mentioned, that operational science has its roots in the faith of the giants of modern science which I provided a very partial list of. Not materialist fairy tales such as "once there was 'energy' that exploded into space time", and "microbes + lots and lots of time + chance = men".

Jesus lived 2,000 years ago. Everyone who lived 2,000 died, and is still most reliably and undeniably dead. Despite 2,000 years worth of empty claims to the contrary, this remains an undeniable fact.

That sounds a bit desperate to me.

And yet it is an undeniable fact.

Oh, please. It is a very deniable opinion. If I'm not mistaken, haven't you accused me several times of stating my opinion as fact? "Sauce for the goose..."

"Quantum mechanics"? Is that a made-up term?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics
http://www.livescience.com/33816-quantu ... ation.html
http://www.pbs.org/transistor/science/info/quantum.html
https://www.britannica.com/science/quan ... cs-physics
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/phy ... um-physics
https://phys.org/tags/quantum+mechanics/
https://phys.org/physics-news/quantum-physics/

These are just a few of the references to quantum mechanics that I turned up simply by typing the term "quantum Mechanic" on Google. Would you like to know what a search of the term "metacosm" produced?

Angels Volume 3
The Denizens of the Metacosm
by Dr. Chuck Missler

The Metacosm is the domain of transdimensional creatures such as angels (fallen and unfallen), demons, and—surprisingly—UFOs and other ostensibly hybrid forms encountered in the Scriptures.

As we have in our previous articles explored the limits of the boundaries of our reality, and recognized the limitations of the Macrocosm[1] as well as the limits of the Microcosm,[2] and thus highlighted that our reality is but “a shadow of a larger reality,�[3] we have dubbed this exterior hyperspace as the “Metacosm.�

The Metacosm is the domain of transdimensional creatures such as angels (fallen and unfallen), demons, and—surprisingly—UFOs and other ostensibly hybrid forms encountered in the Scriptures.
http://www.khouse.org/articles/2013/1153/

Since Jesus Christ is truth, then everything that is true conforms to Him. Please show me where I have denied a single verifiable fact.

What you cannot contradict, you simply ignore. For example, which of these details taken from the Gospels do you deny?

1. The body of Jesus was given to Joseph and Nicodemus by Pilate on the Friday before Passover.

2. Joseph and Nicodemus were followers of Jesus.

3. Joseph took the body of Jesus to his newly made personal family crypt to wash and prepare it because the sepulchre was conveniently near to the place where Jesus was crucified.

4. The followers of Jesus left the tomb, covering the entrance with a large stone.

5. The next day the chief priests took possession of the closed tomb which they did not open and inspect.

6. It was a high holy day.

7. The following day the tomb was discovered to be empty.

If you cannot deny these details, then a very natural explanation for the empty tomb and missing body of Jesus is very easy to provide. And if a perfectly natural explanation is available, then an explanation which confounds all reason, logic and common sense is spurious.

LOVE Chuck Missler. Thanks for the excerpt. "Meta" + "cosmos" -- I'm sure you can do the math.

"Quark". Made up term? How about the names "charm", "strange", "up", "down" as applied to them?

We get into very strange things at the frontiers of our realty. And even stranger ones -- as Dr. Missler mentions -- beyond that frontier.

Open your mind, my friend!

There's a little more to the story. In fact, there are fulfillments of Old Testament references and prophecies concerning Jesus that make the idea that the story was concocted by renegade Jews, who gave their lives in defense of it, simply unbelievable. Not to mention the macro and micro coding embedded throughout the entire narrative, in a coherent and consistent manner; and the way the text -- compiled over 1,700 years -- continues to harmonize with our scientific understanding, with each new discovery; so that the evidence for it being an integrated message system from outside our time domain reaches critical mass. "Line by line. Precept by precept."

The tomb was empty because the man had entered into the metacosmic mode of existence that is referred to as "spiritual" -- and, in keeping with the topic, (at a bare minimum) "hyperdimensional".

The Jewish priests went out and took possession of Joseph's closed tomb, which they did not open and inspect. The tomb proved to be empty the next morning. Fully and fairly explained, even a five year old can recognize that the probable answer to the empty tomb and missing body of Jesus is that the tomb was already empty when the priests took physical possession of the tomb. And the obvious suspects, the disciples of Jesus, were the last one's to be in clear physical possession of the body. Metecosmical hyperdimensional space notwithstanding.

Remember when I said that the evidence is 50-50? (I can't remember if I said that to you or DI...) That the feather weight of our free will is the determining factor with regard to faith?

Of COURSE there are other explanations. The Bible says so -- "And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day." (Mt. 28:15b)

The ever-present question is: "what is truth?" What is the BEST explanation?

I'll go with the fungible atoms of Jesus' body were replaced by "metacosmic" elements. A fate which awaits the body of every believer -- called "glorification" (not a made up term, btw ).

All due respect -- but it really doesn't matter what you believe. What matters is what's TRUE.

You have yet to cite chapter and verse where God offers humankind free will. And that's the honest truth.

Where is the chapter on Baptism? On redemption? On sanctification? On heaven? The Bible is an "integrated message system", skillfully designed so that if information is removed by "hostile jamming", it maintains its integrity. Simply put -- you tear a page out of the Bible, and you may lose resolution on a particular doctrine, but you do not lose the overall theme of redemption, nor any of the major sub-themes associated with it. They are infused throughout the entirety of Scripture -- just another evidence of its origin from outside of our time domain.

Foreknowledge is not cause.

God had foreknowledge of what Adam and Eve would do before He ever created them. God had foreknowledge of what the serpent would do before He ever created it. God brought both sides together with perfect inerrant foreknowledge of what would occur. There was never any question that God's intentions would be carried out. That is NOT free will.

Or to put it another way, if I hold a bowling ball over your head and release it, the bowling ball technically becomes a complete free agent once out of my grasp. So who is REALLY the ultimate cause of the huge dent in your skull, the bowling ball, or gravity? Or could it be the one who planned, conceived and carried out the event?

In truth of course, I do not have perfect inerrant foreknowledge of what will occur. There is always a chance that I might miss. God has no such restriction. God only either gets exactly the results He intends to get, or He FAILS to get the result He intends to get.

Now, some people might suggest that one should allow a baby to pick up a burning ember, so that the lesson will be learned the hard way. But you see, I am a father, and I always considered it my duty to shield my children from pain and suffering as best I could, and to then explain the lesson to them, rather than allowing them to experience pain and suffering. But then, I am not a psychotic fiend. Unnecessary tough love is not "love" at all. It's masochism.

[/quote]

A poor analogy.

We are not talking about a baby. We are talking about adults, to whom was given understanding and free will, who lived in an environment that was perfect, and perfectly suited to, them; an environment that I believe was "dimensionally different" than our fallen one (yes, that is conjecture); and who had intellectual abilities far beyond ours, being unfallen.

They were given a choice; and told what the consequences would be of choosing poorly.

They are dreadful.

Ever lost a loved one? Painful, isn't it?

Death is a constant reminder of the consequences of sin. And sin is our constant companion, in our unredeemed state.

This is a very, deadly serious affair we are engaged in, in this temporary, temporal environment.

You may CHOOSE to ignore the reality you are in -- that you were put in, without your consent or consultation, and in which you (ubiquitous) are the "pawn, prey, and prize."

But if you do, you are still confronted with that deformed baby.

Only it has no purpose, and no meaning.

Because there is none. To anything. Just randomness and mindless "energy".

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to Volbrigade]

You miss the point. How could we possibly know what an infinite eternal Triune Being would "do", before it decided to create the space-time environment which we inhabit, and He is transcendent of?

On the one hand, of course we can not possibly know what "an infinite eternal Triune Being would 'do' before it decided to create the space-time environment which we inhabit, and He is transcendent of." Since the concept has been put forth as the result of what you imagine to be true, there is no access to any information one way or the other. On the other hand however, since you simply made the entire concept up, your "infinite eternal Triune Being" can easily be charged with accomplishing whatever intentions and tasks your imagination is capable of conjuring up for an infinite eternal Triune Being to accomplish. Unfortunately we do not, as yet, have any direct information concerning what the energy of the universe was engaged in doing prior to the big bang. Based on observation of the way it has behaved SINCE the big bang occurred, I can only speculate that prior to the big bang energy was doing exactly what energy does. Which is to constantly form and reform itself, in accordance with the principles of quantum mechanics. I wouldn't call that "just floating around" at all.

Perhaps that is one of the things we'll discover when we enter our eternal habitation.

In other words, perhaps you will find out when you die. Because in your imagination death is NOT the end of our personal existence, as it is observed to be. And your imagination is perfectly capable of conjuring up all of the perfectly wonderful things you will experience AFTER your personal existence has ended. Many Muslims famously imagine that if they die a martyr's death they will be rewarded with 73 virgins after their physical existence has ended. If one is going to imagine what the experience of reaching the end of one's personal existence will be like, I suppose that one might as well make the imagining really really good.

Imagination is a wonderful thing. I have an imagination too. I have noticed, however, over the course of my life, that the things that I can imagine have very little effect on the real world. But then I prefer the real world to living in an imagined delusion.

OTOH, you ask me to believe that mindless, random "energy" just up and exploded itself into unfathomable design and order one day. What did it do -- get bored with being in some nameless undifferentiated state?

I am only offering what is observed to be true, in contrast to what you have imagined to be true. As proof of the validity of what has been observed to be true, I offer modern technology, which has been created and constructed utilizing the principles of quantum mechanics. You imagine that the universe operates in accordance with the intentions of an infinite eternal Triune Being. As proof of what you imagine to be true you offer a 2,000 year old empty claim. Without being too overly smug about it, it seems it couldn't be more obvious then that I win.

Or a state of infinite density with a made-up name -- "singularity"?

The term singularity was originated to describe the hypothetical state in which all states of energy have been reduced to a single point. Admittedly, I am unconvinced of it's potential for existing myself. But the singularity is simply a possible model. It's not gospel, although unfortunately it is often treated as such.

Sorry. I'll go with "Energy"-- capital "e"-- with Mind, Purpose, and Will, invented "energy"-- lower case "e"-- as we are able to know and measure and experience it in our physical environment.

Because, as we have already affirmed, you prefer an imaginary state to an observable state.

I don't have the faith it takes to accept the alternative; and am not afraid to humble myself before an all-powerful God.

I do not accept "the alternative" as rigid and fixed. "The alternative" is simply the place all observation and research has currently led us to. We are still learning. Nor am I afraid to NOT humble myself before an all-powerful God. I notice that my results are exactly the same as your's.

It's funny -- in a manner of speaking -- the extremes people will go to, in order to deny the self-evident case for a Creator. It was the great Chesterton who said "'When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in everything."

This is essentially true. Not imagining a specific thing to rigidly believe in opens up the possibility of everything. And this is exactly the principle science is founded on.

Infinite universes; "time + chance = everything", etc.

I'll take "Let light be."

Declaring that "God did it, I believe it, and that settles it," is many times more easy that studying, understanding and attempting to keep up with scientific discoveries, I will grant you that. The unwillingness and even renunciation of current knowledge by many however is dividing the U.S. into a country of the well educated technologically proficient elite with their high paying jobs, and the poorly educated service worker majority who provide services for them at minimum wage.

I am opposed to mindless randomness being the source of our ordered universe, operating under consistent and coherent natural laws, in exactly the same way I am opposed to a tornado roaring through a junkyard and assembling a 747 airplane.

Being opposed to it has no effect on it.

Maybe not. But the Big Bang hypotheses are so full of problems, the "solutions" for which are purely theoretical, and have "no physical evidence" (e.g., an inflationary period in which the speed or light was orders of magnitude faster than now measured; dark matter, etc.), that some have begun to search for other explanations for the existence of a universe. The classic and traditional gravity-based models build off of Newton, circa 17th century; gravity is a force that is subject to the inverse square rule, diminishing over distance, weakening as the inverse square of the distance.

All of the conditions that went into producing the big bang are not yet understood.

As a model, our nearest neighbor star, Alpha Centauri, is 4.5 light years away. If you imagine the two stars as golf balls, a scale model would put them 700 miles apart.

How much gravitational force do you think two golf balls, 700 miles apart, exert on each other?

Theoretically gravitational influence extends into infinity. There is a distance at which gravitational attraction is diminished to the point where gravitational attraction is simply "background," however. Essentially gravitational attraction of any one distant object becomes indistinguishable from any other distant object.

By contrast, the EM models, which build on the 19th century work of James Clerk Maxwell, incorporate the rules of quantum theory, which state that every photon in the universe is connected with every other photon -- in real time.

Something to consider. If you can bear the implications..

Science is clearly NOT always intuitive. Which is why it is often ridiculed and disparaged by those with the least true understanding of it. Often this ridicule takes place using instruments which were constructed using the very principles developed by the science that is being ridiculed. But I freely acknowledge that some of the implications based upon what we seem to observe are truly mind boggling. When one gets to the edges of what is currently understood, the possible answers become increasingly obtuse and confusing. Light, for example, seems to be able to detect our ability to observe it, and to change it's behavior accordingly. And gravity is still mind boggling. The details of exactly how gravity works are still in the process of being worked out. Because "what goes up, must come down," was never a good enough answer. And scientists are defined by their insatiable curiosity.

The universe has all of the time in the world.

Disagree. It has all the time that God gives it.

Another of your declarative assumptions with no actual evidence provided to support it.

But you bring up an interesting point. The atoms that compose our bodies are completely fungible, making a complete turnover in a certain number of years, via the biological processes informed by the information program of our DNA.

According to you, there exists an invisible omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being who creates energy with a word, and who exists in an invisible realm. When you die an invisible part of you will journey to the invisible realm to dwell with the invisible Being. What is the consistent thread that connects this belief together? Well let me say that "obvious" and "invisible" do not go hand in hand.

Because here is what is obvious. There was a period of time before either of us existed. We were not happy or sad. We were not brave or frightened. We simply did not yet exist. But all of the various particles that would eventually become a part of our bodies when we were conceived, and during the course of our lives, already existed. And when we die, all of the particles that were a part of our bodies will go on to be other things. We, however, will not be made happy or sad by this condition. We will not be brave or frightened. The discreet individuals that represent you and me will simply no longer exist. Imagination will have no effect on this.

The medieval Church is NOT Christianity. Christianity is not meant to be a system of government, except over the individual. Nor can Christianity EVER be compulsory, as it was once it became an organ of the state, under the Romans.

Spoken like a true anti-Papist. I have no affection for the Catholic church myself, I freely admit. But the fact is that the Catholic church, and Catholic simply means universal, was created under the direct order of Roman emperor Constantine in the early fourth century specifically to create a "universal" form of Christianity. Because once Constantine made Christianity legal, Christians immediately began slaughtering each other over conflicting points of doctrine. Christians continued the practice of slaughtering each other over conflicting points of doctrine until relatively modern times, in fact.

Speculations regarding Islam notwithstanding, the facts are in evidence. The Muslim world sat on an ocean of petroleum for centuries, unaware and uncaring about a resource for which they had no use. Until western technologies, which stand on the shoulders of the giants of modern science -- Newton, Kepler, Bacon, Pascal, Linnaeus, Herschel, Mendel, Pasteur, et.al, -- many of whom were not just Christians, but Creationists; and whose science grew from their faith in an ordered and ordained universe: those technologies developed the internal combustion engine and infrastructure for which that petroleum is the perfect fuel.

Muslim clerics considered any study that was not directed at the Qur'an to be not only frivolous, but potentially heretical. And often still do.

The early men of science were often devout Christians, this is true. One of the great historical ironies is that James Clerk Maxwell, the great British scientist, whose work was so fundamental to the formulation of the law of conservation of energy (energy can neither be created or destroyed), was a firm and devoted Christian. Maxwell went to his grave in 1879 without the slightest inkling that his work would undermine the concept of the existence of God. That is because he did not understand that all matter IS energy. It would take Einstein's famous equation E=MC2, first published in 1905, to establish that. And as 20th century science blossomed, the number of self avowed devoted Christian scientists dropped precipitously. Even Einstein, a devout Jew in his teenaged years, had developed into an agnostic/atheist by the time he died.

Where is the chapter on Baptism? On redemption? On sanctification? On heaven? The Bible is an "integrated message system", skillfully designed so that if information is removed by "hostile jamming", it maintains its integrity. Simply put -- you tear a page out of the Bible, and you may lose resolution on a particular doctrine, but you do not lose the overall theme of redemption, nor any of the major sub-themes associated with it. They are infused throughout the entirety of Scripture -- just another evidence of its origin from outside of our time domain.

These assumptions are contained in your book of revealed truth. Which I have read. Does the Bible represent propaganda? Yes, of course it does. It was written to convince. You have suggested that my response to what you and the the Bible say represents "lecturing." What form of response would you suggest I make?

My question was, "where does the Bible indicate that God has offered humankind free will." Your response seem to be, "I believe that it is implied." An implication is not really the same thing as an open and undeniable offer though, is it. So stop insisting that God has promised humankind free will. Because no such promise is found in the bible. Like so much else, you have simply declared it to be so.

Or to put it another way, if I hold a bowling ball over your head and release it, the bowling ball technically becomes a complete free agent once out of my grasp. So who is REALLY the ultimate cause of the huge dent in your skull, the bowling ball, or gravity? Or could it be the one who planned, conceived and carried out the event?

A poor analogy.

In my analogy I held a heavy object over your head and released it, in full knowledge of what the probable outcome would be. In your belief system God created Adam and Eve and the serpent with full and certain foreknowledge of what they would do. He brought them together in the garden with full and certain knowledge of what the outcome would be. I am merely pointing out the one who planned and set the events in motion is the one who bears responsibility for the outcome. Your interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve is that they are responsible for what occurred. But that is like suggesting the you are responsible for the huge dent in your skull for allowing you head to be in the way.

We are not talking about a baby. We are talking about adults, to whom was given understanding and free will, who lived in an environment that was perfect, and perfectly suited to, them; an environment that I believe was "dimensionally different" than our fallen one (yes, that is conjecture); and who had intellectual abilities far beyond ours, being unfallen.

There you go with the free will allegation again. And yet there was never any way that the events were not going to turn out exactly as God planned and intended that they would when he created the world. Nor has God ever promised anything else.

Ever lost a loved one? Painful, isn't it?

Death is a constant reminder of the consequences of sin. And sin is our constant companion, in our unredeemed state.

The knowledge that all living things die is the penalty that we humans must bear for the privilege of having sentient thought. At my age (68) death is a much less abstract concept than it once was. But if I still have the ability to worry about it, I'm not dead yet. Once I have lost the ability to worry about it, I simply will no longer care.

Death is a constant reminder of the consequences of sin. And sin is our constant companion, in our unredeemed state.

You can go to your death telling yourself that you were nothing but a wretched sinner if you choose. My own conscience is clear.

But if you do, you are still confronted with that deformed baby.

Only it has no purpose, and no meaning.

Purpose and meaning are to be found in those things that give our lives purpose and meaning. I have never for a moment regretted my ability to perceive the universe around me, and to contemplate it with sentient deliberation. I have never felt the need for any greater purpose than that. I did manage to produce a couple of offspring that turned out pretty well. I consider that the icing on the cake of my life.

[Volbrigade]

[Replying to Volbrigade]

You miss the point. How could we possibly know what an infinite eternal Triune Being would "do", before it decided to create the space-time environment which we inhabit, and He is transcendent of?

On the one hand, of course we can not possibly know what "an infinite eternal Triune Being would 'do' before it decided to create the space-time environment which we inhabit, and He is transcendent of." Since the concept has been put forth as the result of what you imagine to be true, there is no access to any information one way or the other. On the other hand however, since you simply made the entire concept up, your "infinite eternal Triune Being" can easily be charged with accomplishing whatever intentions and tasks your imagination is capable of conjuring up for an infinite eternal Triune Being to accomplish. Unfortunately we do not, as yet, have any direct information concerning what the energy of the universe was engaged in doing prior to the big bang. Based on observation of the way it has behaved SINCE the big bang occurred, I can only speculate that prior to the big bang energy was doing exactly what energy does. Which is to constantly form and reform itself, in accordance with the principles of quantum mechanics. I wouldn't call that "just floating around" at all.

Opinion noted.

Perhaps that is one of the things we'll discover when we enter our eternal habitation.

In other words, perhaps you will find out when you die. Because in your imagination death is NOT the end of our personal existence, as it is observed to be. And your imagination is perfectly capable of conjuring up all of the perfectly wonderful things you will experience AFTER your personal existence has ended. Many Muslims famously imagine that if they die a martyr's death they will be rewarded with 73 virgins after their physical existence has ended. If one is going to imagine what the experience of reaching the end of one's personal existence will be like, I suppose that one might as well make the imagining really really good.

Imagination is a wonderful thing. I have an imagination too. I have noticed, however, over the course of my life, that the things that I can imagine have very little effect on the real world. But then I prefer the real world to living in an imagined delusion.

As do I. And the reality is that our temporal, finite space-time environment is but a subset of a hyperdimensional metacosm. I look forward to entering it. But I'm in no particular hurry. As I get older, however...

OTOH, you ask me to believe that mindless, random "energy" just up and exploded itself into unfathomable design and order one day. What did it do -- get bored with being in some nameless undifferentiated state?

I am only offering what is observed to be true, in contrast to what you have imagined to be true. As proof of the validity of what has been observed to be true, I offer modern technology, which has been created and constructed utilizing the principles of quantum mechanics. You imagine that the universe operates in accordance with the intentions of an infinite eternal Triune Being. As proof of what you imagine to be true you offer a 2,000 year old empty claim. Without being too overly smug about it, it seems it couldn't be more obvious then that I win.

Not to be overly smug myself, but the idea that mindless, random "energy" somehow produced natural laws and order and the precise engineering of the universe, and of life within it, is somewhat comical. And attempting to validate such an absurd conclusion by throwing a blanket phrase such as "quantum foam" over it just ups the humor quotient.

Or a state of infinite density with a made-up name -- "singularity"?

The term singularity was originated to describe the hypothetical state in which all states of energy have been reduced to a single point. Admittedly, I am unconvinced of it's potential for existing myself. But the singularity is simply a possible model. It's not gospel, although unfortunately it is often treated as such.

It is a theoretical state, for which the evidence is basically that the universe exists.

Sort of like the rationale for God.

The singularity has no Mind, Will, or Intelligence.

God does.

I'll take God.

Sorry. I'll go with "Energy"-- capital "e"-- with Mind, Purpose, and Will, invented "energy"-- lower case "e"-- as we are able to know and measure and experience it in our physical environment.

Because, as we have already affirmed, you prefer an imaginary state to an observable state.

You are quick with "affirmations".

Wrong, too. Just as you are with you presuppositions.

I prefer logic and reason and truth.

All flow into the vast reservoir of the eternal God.

I don't have the faith it takes to accept the alternative; and am not afraid to humble myself before an all-powerful God.

I do not accept "the alternative" as rigid and fixed. "The alternative" is simply the place all observation and research has currently led us to. We are still learning. Nor am I afraid to NOT humble myself before an all-powerful God. I notice that my results are exactly the same as your's.

And those results are?

It's funny -- in a manner of speaking -- the extremes people will go to, in order to deny the self-evident case for a Creator. It was the great Chesterton who said "'When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in everything."

This is essentially true. Not imagining a specific thing to rigidly believe in opens up the possibility of everything. And this is exactly the principle science is founded on.

Very poetic. Sincerely. And that is from someone who appreciates poetry, and who views our universe as a creative act -- a poem, a song, a picture, a dance, "written" or "spoken" or formed by the Master Artist.

"Metaphors reign where mysteries reside." -- Chuck Missler

Unfortunately, I got the quote wrong. I copied it off a search page, thinking "that's not how I remember it." The quote actually ends with "anything" -- not "everything". Which changes the meaning drastically.

I apologize for my sloppiness. I almost went with a paraphrase -- "when man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing; he believes in anything." And wish I had, instead of doing a search.

Infinite universes; "time + chance = everything", etc.

I'll take "Let light be."

Declaring that "God did it, I believe it, and that settles it," is many times more easy that studying, understanding and attempting to keep up with scientific discoveries, I will grant you that. The unwillingness and even renunciation of current knowledge by many however is dividing the U.S. into a country of the well educated technologically proficient elite with their high paying jobs, and the poorly educated service worker majority who provide services for them at minimum wage.

Ooooo... well now.

I actually like that. But then, arrogance doesn't bother me as much as it does most people. And not nearly as much as haughtiness bothers God.

I'm smiling as I write this -- the notion that believing in random mindless "energy", instead of God, as the Cause of the universe, in order to value and practice science, is too clever by half.

I am opposed to mindless randomness being the source of our ordered universe, operating under consistent and coherent natural laws, in exactly the same way I am opposed to a tornado roaring through a junkyard and assembling a 747 airplane.

Being opposed to it has no effect on it.

Neither does logic or reason have an effect on it.

Other than to preclude chaos producing order.

Maybe not. But the Big Bang hypotheses are so full of problems, the "solutions" for which are purely theoretical, and have "no physical evidence" (e.g., an inflationary period in which the speed or light was orders of magnitude faster than now measured; dark matter, etc.), that some have begun to search for other explanations for the existence of a universe. The classic and traditional gravity-based models build off of Newton, circa 17th century; gravity is a force that is subject to the inverse square rule, diminishing over distance, weakening as the inverse square of the distance.

All of the conditions that went into producing the big bang are not yet understood.

That is an understatement.

But then, it's hard to understand something that didn't happen.

As a model, our nearest neighbor star, Alpha Centauri, is 4.5 light years away. If you imagine the two stars as golf balls, a scale model would put them 700 miles apart.

How much gravitational force do you think two golf balls, 700 miles apart, exert on each other?

Theoretically gravitational influence extends into infinity. There is a distance at which gravitational attraction is diminished to the point where gravitational attraction is simply "background," however. Essentially gravitational attraction of any one distant object becomes indistinguishable from any other distant object.

That sounds about right.

By contrast, the EM models, which build on the 19th century work of James Clerk Maxwell, incorporate the rules of quantum theory, which state that every photon in the universe is connected with every other photon -- in real time.

Something to consider. If you can bear the implications..

Science is clearly NOT always intuitive. Which is why it is often ridiculed and disparaged by those with the least true understanding of it. Often this ridicule takes place using instruments which were constructed using the very principles developed by the science that is being ridiculed. But I freely acknowledge that some of the implications based upon what we seem to observe are truly mind boggling. When one gets to the edges of what is currently understood, the possible answers become increasingly obtuse and confusing. Light, for example, seems to be able to detect our ability to observe it, and to change it's behavior accordingly. And gravity is still mind boggling. The details of exactly how gravity works are still in the process of being worked out. Because "what goes up, must come down," was never a good enough answer. And scientists are defined by their insatiable curiosity.

Umm... okay. Sure -- "go, science!" and all that.

That insatiable curiosity is leading to the abandonment of the gravity-based Big Bang, which requires that everything we know of the universe is based on a 4% sample (the rest being dark energy/matter), because gravity is not sufficient to hold the visible universe together.

And the embrace of EM models, which assigns the principle state of matter to electric plasma.

The ramifications of which are... intriguing.

The universe has all of the time in the world.

Disagree. It has all the time that God gives it.

Another of your declarative assumptions with no actual evidence provided to support it.

Wow. You sure know how to hurt a guy.

Tell me again about now "energy" decided to Bang itself in a Big way -- into an ordered, coherent, cohesive universe where life and intelligence arose?

But you bring up an interesting point. The atoms that compose our bodies are completely fungible, making a complete turnover in a certain number of years, via the biological processes informed by the information program of our DNA.

According to you, there exists an invisible omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being who creates energy with a word, and who exists in an invisible realm. When you die an invisible part of you will journey to the invisible realm to dwell with the invisible Being. What is the consistent thread that connects this belief together? Well let me say that "obvious" and "invisible" do not go hand in hand.

Because here is what is obvious. There was a period of time before either of us existed. We were not happy or sad. We were not brave or frightened. We simply did not yet exist. But all of the various particles that would eventually become a part of our bodies when we were conceived, and during the course of our lives, already existed. And when we die, all of the particles that were a part of our bodies will go on to be other things. We, however, will not be made happy or sad by this condition. We will not be brave or frightened. The discreet individuals that represent you and me will simply no longer exist. Imagination will have no effect on this.

"Another of your declarative assumptions with no actual evidence provided to support it."

The medieval Church is NOT Christianity. Christianity is not meant to be a system of government, except over the individual. Nor can Christianity EVER be compulsory, as it was once it became an organ of the state, under the Romans.

Spoken like a true anti-Papist. I have no affection for the Catholic church myself, I freely admit. But the fact is that the Catholic church, and Catholic simply means universal, was created under the direct order of Roman emperor Constantine in the early fourth century specifically to create a "universal" form of Christianity. Because once Constantine made Christianity legal, Christians immediately began slaughtering each other over conflicting points of doctrine. Christians continued the practice of slaughtering each other over conflicting points of doctrine until relatively modern times, in fact.

Let's go into Church history on some other thread. I'd love to trot out "The Seven Letters to the Seven Churches."

Speculations regarding Islam notwithstanding, the facts are in evidence. The Muslim world sat on an ocean of petroleum for centuries, unaware and uncaring about a resource for which they had no use. Until western technologies, which stand on the shoulders of the giants of modern science -- Newton, Kepler, Bacon, Pascal, Linnaeus, Herschel, Mendel, Pasteur, et.al, -- many of whom were not just Christians, but Creationists; and whose science grew from their faith in an ordered and ordained universe: those technologies developed the internal combustion engine and infrastructure for which that petroleum is the perfect fuel.

Muslim clerics considered any study that was not directed at the Qur'an to be not only frivolous, but potentially heretical. And often still do.

The early men of science were often devout Christians, this is true. One of the great historical ironies is that James Clerk Maxwell, the great British scientist, whose work was so fundamental to the formulation of the law of conservation of energy (energy can neither be created or destroyed), was a firm and devoted Christian. Maxwell went to his grave in 1879 without the slightest inkling that his work would undermine the concept of the existence of God. That is because he did not understand that all matter IS energy. It would take Einstein's famous equation E=MC2, first published in 1905, to establish that. And as 20th century science blossomed, the number of self avowed devoted Christian scientists dropped precipitously. Even Einstein, a devout Jew in his teenaged years, had developed into an agnostic/atheist by the time he died.

Einstein went to his death unsatisfied by unsolved aspects of his general theory. Aspects which were solved by Yang and Mills, who like Einstein, solved them by going up one dimension, form 4 to 5.

Current theories require 10. Is the metacosm the 11th?

We live in hyperdimensional environment, my friend. Open your mind.

Where is the chapter on Baptism? On redemption? On sanctification? On heaven? The Bible is an "integrated message system", skillfully designed so that if information is removed by "hostile jamming", it maintains its integrity. Simply put -- you tear a page out of the Bible, and you may lose resolution on a particular doctrine, but you do not lose the overall theme of redemption, nor any of the major sub-themes associated with it. They are infused throughout the entirety of Scripture -- just another evidence of its origin from outside of our time domain.

These assumptions are contained in your book of revealed truth. Which I have read. Does the Bible represent propaganda? Yes, of course it does. It was written to convince. You have suggested that my response to what you and the the Bible say represents "lecturing." What form of response would you suggest I make?

My question was, "where does the Bible indicate that God has offered humankind free will." Your response seem to be, "I believe that it is implied." An implication is not really the same thing as an open and undeniable offer though, is it. So stop insisting that God has promised humankind free will. Because no such promise is found in the bible. Like so much else, you have simply declared it to be so.

Umm... so you don't think we have free will?

I guess that has something to do with believing matter/energy created itself -- sorry, is uncreated -- and then created us?

Or to put it another way, if I hold a bowling ball over your head and release it, the bowling ball technically becomes a complete free agent once out of my grasp. So who is REALLY the ultimate cause of the huge dent in your skull, the bowling ball, or gravity? Or could it be the one who planned, conceived and carried out the event?

A poor analogy.

In my analogy I held a heavy object over your head and released it, in full knowledge of what the probable outcome would be. In your belief system God created Adam and Eve and the serpent with full and certain foreknowledge of what they would do. He brought them together in the garden with full and certain knowledge of what the outcome would be. I am merely pointing out the one who planned and set the events in motion is the one who bears responsibility for the outcome. Your interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve is that they are responsible for what occurred. But that is like suggesting the you are responsible for the huge dent in your skull for allowing you head to be in the way.

We are not talking about a baby. We are talking about adults, to whom was given understanding and free will, who lived in an environment that was perfect, and perfectly suited to, them; an environment that I believe was "dimensionally different" than our fallen one (yes, that is conjecture); and who had intellectual abilities far beyond ours, being unfallen.

There you go with the free will allegation again. And yet there was never any way that the events were not going to turn out exactly as God planned and intended that they would when he created the world. Nor has God ever promised anything else.

True. But foreknowledge isn't causation. All happens by His will, or His permission.

And all things work to the good, for those who love Him, and are called according to His purpose. And that could include you. "This day", if you like.

Ever lost a loved one? Painful, isn't it?

Death is a constant reminder of the consequences of sin. And sin is our constant companion, in our unredeemed state.

The knowledge that all living things die is the penalty that we humans must bear for the privilege of having sentient thought. At my age (68) death is a much less abstract concept than it once was. But if I still have the ability to worry about it, I'm not dead yet. Once I have lost the ability to worry about it, I simply will no longer care.

Death is a constant reminder of the consequences of sin. And sin is our constant companion, in our unredeemed state.

You can go to your death telling yourself that you were nothing but a wretched sinner if you choose. My own conscience is clear.

But if you do, you are still confronted with that deformed baby.

Only it has no purpose, and no meaning.

Purpose and meaning are to be found in those things that give our lives purpose and meaning. I have never for a moment regretted my ability to perceive the universe around me, and to contemplate it with sentient deliberation. I have never felt the need for any greater purpose than that. I did manage to produce a couple of offspring that turned out pretty well. I consider that the icing on the cake of my life.

Well and good.

If that works for you, God will allow it. Jesus Christ never forced anyone to do anything.

But the entire universe is infused with meaning.

We are in a spiritual war, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

And "there is not one square inch of neutral territory."

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to Volbrigade]

Not to be overly smug myself, but the idea that mindless, random "energy" somehow produced natural laws and order and the precise engineering of the universe, and of life within it, is somewhat comical. And attempting to validate such an absurd conclusion by throwing a blanket phrase such as "quantum foam" over it just ups the humor quotient.

Quantum mechanics is a force of constant change. Ongoing unrelenting change. Beings such as ourselves who can, at best, experience only a hundred years, can scarcely appreciate the full impact of the possible changes that can occur over the course of billions of years when driven by an ongoing source of ongoing unrelenting change.

It is a theoretical state, for which the evidence is basically that the universe exists.

Sort of like the rationale for God.

The singularity has no Mind, Will, or Intelligence.

The question often arises, what occurred prior to the big bang? The universe is currently observed to be expanding. This gives rise to the conclusion that, running the expansion in reverse, all of the energy of the universe once existed in an extremely concentrated state approximating, at least, a condition referred to as the singularity. What occurred prior to that? We have no way to observe this directly. We can observe possibilities however.

What happens when massive stars explode? The lightest elements are blown away and their heaviest elements are then reduced by the force of gravity into something approximating a singularity, from which not even light can escape and which then disappears from our plane of existence. Leaving only gravity for us to mark their passage. The question "Where did the energy for our universe come from" is echoed in the question, "Where did the energy in a black hole go?" The obvious answer in both cases is someplace else. Someplace beyond the plane of our existence which we can not, as of yet at least, perceive. It IS clear however, that the energy in a black hole WAS DERIVED FROM OUR UNIVERSE. In other words, A CONDITION WHICH THE ENERGY EXISTED IN PRIOR TO THE FORMATION OF THE BLACK HOLE. This and the law of conservation of energy implies, at least, that the energy of our universe existed in a condition prior to the big bang.

So what occurred prior to the condition approximating, at least, the singularity which then led to the abrupt expansion called the big bang which led to the formation of the currently expanding universe? Perhaps, the collapse, through the force of gravity, of matter/energy which led to the state approximating the singularity which then led to the big bang which then led to the currently expanding universe. An ongoing cycle of energy reshaping and reforming itself driven by the unrelenting force that is quantum mechanics.

Is there an intelligence involved in this? Not necessarily. Only ongoing change.

I do not accept "the alternative" as rigid and fixed. "The alternative" is simply the place all observation and research has currently led us to. We are still learning. Nor am I afraid to NOT humble myself before an all-powerful God. I notice that my results are exactly the same as your's.

And those results are?

I have had a life. The only real difference that I can see between my life and the life of believers is that I have not spent any appreciable amount of my time (other then as a child) conversing with invisible friends and asking the invisible friends for favors. The results seem indistinguishable from those who do, however. And in truth I am acquainted with Christian believers whose lives have seen a series of catastrophes. I have had a life. And a reasonably smooth life all in all, with no real major catastrophes to relate. All without ever asking any favors from invisible friends.

Declaring that "God did it, I believe it, and that settles it," is many times more easy that studying, understanding and attempting to keep up with scientific discoveries, I will grant you that. The unwillingness and even renunciation of current knowledge by many however is dividing the U.S. into a country of the well educated technologically proficient elite with their high paying jobs, and the poorly educated service worker majority who provide services for them at minimum wage.

"arrogance doesn't bother me as much as it does most people. And not nearly as much as haughtiness bothers God.

I have been accused of arrogance on more than one occasion in the past for the offence of simply rattling off facts. Apparently one person's conception of arrogance is another person's grasp of the facts. In any case, I am unrepentant.

I'm smiling as I write this -- the notion that believing in random mindless "energy", instead of God, as the Cause of the universe, in order to value and practice science, is too clever by half.

As I already pointed out, I have concluded that the currently popular method for increasing our store of knowledge by using empirical observation and experimentation as a means of gathering data has proven ever so much more effective than the ancient method of make it up and declare it to be true. One method has led to robots on Mars, while the other has led to a story of a flying reanimated corpse. So I stand by my conclusion.

Neither does logic or reason have an effect on it.

Reason and logic are not intended to have an effect on an event or a claim. Reason and logic serve to explain and either prove or disprove the causes of an event, or the viability of a claim. Did the corpse of Jesus really come back to life and fly away as claimed? Well, has Jesus ever really returned as promised. Or, on the other hand, is it not undeniably true that everyone who lived 2,000 years ago is still quite dead.

Did the U.S. really manage to land a man on the moon nearly 50 years ago? I watched it happen on live TV. Or at least I thought I did. Do we currently really have robots on Mars? Well, does our experience with functioning technology leave us with physical evidence that the technology to have accomplished these marvelous feats is apparently real and valid? On the other hand, at some point 2,000 years worth of empty claims should effectively prove something. Just as working technology proves something.

Other than to preclude chaos producing order.

Order is in the eye of the beholder. If the big bang is valid, then the closer the conditions got to representing a true singularity, the more ordered things were. A state in which everything has become a single thing is as ordered as it is possible to be. But quantum mechanics is also a force of unrelenting change. Change that resulted in perfect order changing into disorder. A type of disorder that has allowed for, among other things, us.

That is an understatement.

But then, it's hard to understand something that didn't happen.

Oddly enough for something that didn't happen, we have fit together a remarkable number of pieces of the puzzle that indicates that it did. But since you don't accept that working technology is evidence that science is on to something, whatever your imagination prefers to suppose that the causes are will serve to satisfy you. I would like to point out however, yet again, that using the fruit of the very science that you ridicule seems more than a little hypocritical.

Umm... okay. Sure -- "go, science!" and all that.

Well, we do tend to concentrate more on learning how the universe actually works these days, instead of hanging and burning thousands of women as witches, and the like. So enlightenment brought on by science has effected SOME improvements in society.

That insatiable curiosity is leading to the abandonment of the gravity-based Big Bang, which requires that everything we know of the universe is based on a 4% sample (the rest being dark energy/matter), because gravity is not sufficient to hold the visible universe together.

The gravity-based big bang has hardly been abandoned. This has been an ongoing dispute among physicists for many decades now. Is the universe open, or will gravity close it off? And consensus opinion has flip-flopped repeatedly. Something we don't fully understand yet seems to be driving the expansion of the universe, when it seems that the force of gravity should be causing it to slow down. Is the universe receiving an influx of additional energy? This could conceivably undo the law of conservation of energy. Unless of course the additional energy already existed is is being accreted from somewhere else. Or unless gravity from a source we cannot see is driving the expansion. Does the expanding universe prove the existence of energy external to our universe? Essentially indicate that the multiverse is real?

Well maybe. But not necessarily. First we would have to exclude the possibility that the the current observed expansion is not the result of energy which already exists in our universe. Something that has been termed as "dark energy." What could be the source of this energy? Where is it coming from? Does it already exist? It would have to already exist, or invalidate the law of conservation of energy. So does such an abundant source of energy already exist? And the answer is YES! We refer to it as MATTER;[/U] energy in an extremely concentrated form. And so, perhaps, so called dark energy and dark matter are really simply two aspects of the same phenomena; matter which is currently in the process of giving it's energy back to the universe. And in doing so continuing to drive the expansion. Will all matter then ultimately give it's energy back to the universe? Are there other universes? Good questions. Stay tuned while humankind attempts to find answers to these sorts of inquiries.

Tell me again about now "energy" decided to Bang itself in a Big way -- into an ordered, coherent, cohesive universe where life and intelligence arose?

I have told you repeatedly. It called quantum mechanics. "Ordered, coherent and cohesive" are your terms. You consider the current conditions to be "ordered, coherent and cohesive" because they are the sort of conditions necessary for your (our) sort of existence. Things have not always been this way however, and will not always be this way. Because change caused by quantum mechanics is unrelenting.

Because here is what is obvious. There was a period of time before either of us existed. We were not happy or sad. We were not brave or frightened. We simply did not yet exist. But all of the various particles that would eventually become a part of our bodies when we were conceived, and during the course of our lives, already existed. And when we die, all of the particles that were a part of our bodies will go on to be other things. We, however, will not be made happy or sad by this condition. We will not be brave or frightened. The discrete individuals that represent you and me will simply no longer exist. Imagination will have no effect on this.

"Another of your declarative assumptions with no actual evidence provided to support it."

People die. And when they do their bodies decay and return back to the universe. The person is gone. This is no assumption. This is well known, well observed fact. I did not choose things to be this way and declare it to be so simply to contradict what you would prefer to believe. Things simply are the way they are.

Einstein went to his death unsatisfied by unsolved aspects of his general theory. Aspects which were solved by Yang and Mills, who like Einstein, solved them by going up one dimension, form 4 to 5.

It is the nature of science to build on itself and progress. Einstein would be pleased.

Current theories require 10. Is the metacosm the 11th?

We live in hyperdimensional environment, my friend. Open your mind.

Current estimates are that many, if not all, of the extra dimensions exist as incomprehensibly small knots which we are unable to perceive.

Umm... so you don't think we have free will?

No, I do think we have free will. It's a completely natural state of existence, at least within the limits of the circumstances and conditions that we are confronted with. I don't suppose that it is the gift of a non existent God, however. I do notice that Christians claim that free will is a gift from God, despite the fact that their belief system insists that humans were created by an infallible omnipotent omniscient Being who only produces the results He intends to produce. Meaning that everything that occurs is ultimately the result of what He intends those results to be, and who nowhere has extended the offer, or promise, of complete free will.

I guess that has something to do with believing matter/energy created itself -- sorry, is uncreated -- and then created us?

Their is a distinct difference between being "created by," and being "the result of." We both have reached the conclusion that something must have existed eternally. My something is observable. It's called energy. Your something can only be imagined.

True. But foreknowledge isn't causation. All happens by His will, or His permission.

Explain the difference between "permission," and "intention."

Well and good.

If that works for you, God will allow it. Jesus Christ never forced anyone to do anything.

But the entire universe is infused with meaning.

We are in a spiritual war, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

And "there is not one square inch of neutral territory."

The "spiritual war" may well be in the process of sputtering to an end. At least for Christianity. In much the same way the "spiritual war" between Zeus and his opponents sputtered to an end simply by falling into disbelief and apathy. Europe has already drifted into a condition where non belief is now approaching the majority opinion. In the U.S. non belief has risen from about 5% 20 years ago, to roughly 25% today. Non belief in the U.S. is currently rising at about 1% per year. By the middle of this century, at current rates, the U.S. will also be made up of a majority of non believers. Believers of course profess that they will never give up their beliefs. But people die. The current trend is that are fewer and fewer believers to take their places. By the beginning of the next century, when Christianity has largely passed into history as it's predecessors did, those who live in those future times will consider it a relic of an ancient superstitious age in much the same way that we consider stories of Odin or Osiris relicts of an ancient superstitious age.

[Divine Insight]

I wonder: where do your "standards" reside? And what is the source of your "morality"?

Just like every other human being on planet earth, I choose what I consider to be moral or immoral. And this includes all religious people.

Are they not every bit as fabricated and fictional as the Christian paradigm you judge as inferior to them?

They are indeed every bit as 'fabricated'. I see no point in calling them 'fictional'.

My moral values are as real as I am.

And yes I absolutely do judge the morality of the Christian paradigm to be inferior to my moral value. This is one of the many reason I reject the religion as clearly not having anything to do with any intelligent God. I would hope that if a God exists it would at least be as intelligent as me. And therefore it should have better moral values than me. But the God described in the Bible clearly doesn't.

With one categorical exception:

Christianity offers both a reason for the absurd state of our condition; and the hope for release from it:

The so-called "reason" is absurd. It's a logical contradiction based on an ancient tale that can clearly be seen to have been very poorly thought out.

The God in the story of Adam and Eve has displayed far greater immoral behavior than Adam and Eve themselves.

Your standards and morality offer no reason; and the only release comes in the form of the pursuit of pleasure, which is in short supply for most; and unfulfilling for almost all (ask the rich the famous): and death.

My standards of morality aren't "offering" anything. There just my opinions. You seem to have some need to make morality something more than this. That's your need, not mine.

Now: which of those paradigms -- the Christian, and yours -- is the most "moral", again?

Mine. No question about it. The God of Christianity is a self-confessed hateful jealous monster who makes it perfectly clear that he will be extremely mean and cruel to anyone he doesn't like. Just as he did to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and to Eve by cursing her with greatly multiplied pain and sorrow in childbirth. And this God has done all manner of immoral things all the way through the Bible.

In fact, have you ever noticed that everything the Biblical God has ever done has been extremely violent and has NEVER even solved any problem at all?

So yes, my moral values are far superior to the God described in the Bible. There is no question about that.

[Volbrigade]

[Replying to post 37 by Tired of the Nonsense]

Gentlemen — TotN, and DI —

In the interest of conserving time and energy, I’m going to address both of you simultaneously. You both share the view that the Biblical YHWH does not exist. TotN, because He is not needed. “Energy� has taken his job, according to some moderns. It, not “He�, is eternal, and quite capable of doing all the things formerly attributed to an Intelligent Designer.

DI, because He’s too mean to be. He doesn’t rule out the possibility of the supernatural, the spiritual, “god(s)� (or even “God{s}� ) — just not that bugger Jehovah. There are better, nicer, more competent Creators. Or at least, better ones can be imagined, as you both have indicated.

Of the two anti-Biblical stances (and I note here: DI’s does not qualify as strictly “anti-theist�; he seems, in fact, rather friendly to the pantheist paradigm — e.g., Buddhism), DI’s seems more emotional. It is clear he really does not like this thundering YHWH, with His imperious flushing of the human race — in fact, every living thing, save what was rescued (er, “saved�) on the Ark — down the toilet of a global catastrophic flood.

DI claims to be morally superior, but I can’t see how. His answer doesn’t address moral “standards� at all — just his choice as to what is or isn’t moral. I can’t for the life of me see how, on what grounds he is morally superior to a man who would cut his (DI’s) toes off, just to see what would happen: other than “I SAY I am more moral.�

All he is saying is “I have my own morality�. Fine. When he is able to present a moral standard that it adheres to, other than “whatever I call moral, is moral�, then we can compare how his morality matches up with YHWH’s.

TotN, on the other hand, has dismissed God, because "Energy" is God. He, I think, is on better footing; close enough that by reversing the phrase, you arrive in the neighborhood of truth. I am reminded of the Christian concept “God is Love�; wherein the reversal of the phrase leads to abysmal error. The same principle applies here — um, in reverse?

Energy, he tells me, is ever-changing, coming up with new combinations, unmindfully mindful of its unwritten, unthought, unordered rules to retain order; even within the infinitely close quarters where time, matter, and space share the same infinitely small point. It playfully creates patterns — stars, galaxies, planets; molecules banding together in endless combinations until — whoops! — self replication takes place. Talk about “change�! But we’re not done yet. Emerging from the endless possibilities of endless change, we see functional systems emerge — eyes and wings and skeletons and whatnot; and a brain to run them, which WILL change into abstract thought capability and questioning its own existence because — well, that’s what change and energy is all about.

It all sounds rather mystical, doesn’t it? Which is fine by me. I have already indicated that I am fine with the poetic and the lyrical and the mystical, in terms of understanding our reality (any Christian worth his salt should be, imo), in addition to the empirical and scientific. The latter two, it should be noted, are a bit dull and prosaic on their own. We NEED the mystical, the magical, the poetic and lyrical — because they are latent in our reality.

Nowhere does the fusion of the mystical, the magical, the lyrical, the poetic, the symbolic, the idiomatic, the thematic and the scientific occur more fully and completely — NOWHERE — than in the Person of Jesus Christ. “And the volume of the Book is written about Him.�

Besides — who’s to say the ever-changing Energy, which is capable of — well, everything, if not ANYTHING —didn’t generate fertilization in a virgin’s womb? Or zap a dead corpse through some sort of (as yet) undiscovered, undetected and rarified black (or white) hole, rendering Him into some novel mode of existence — that is, “Energy�?

I mean, if it can convert simple one-celled organisms into astronauts, over time…?

Don’t sell it short.

Is the verifiable evidence for the sorts of transformations needed to perform that last miracle, any more compelling than that for the Virgin Birth or Resurrection?

At a certain point, it is strictly a matter of opinion. 50-50. “Choose ye this day�.

I think the assigning of a Mind, Will, and Intelligence to the Energy — an assignation allowable, only if it is in accordance with the evidence — makes it a slam dunk. If the Energy has those qualities, it is God. And God can certainly do all of the things mentioned.

In fact, the boundless Energy that is God could make a universe out of His imagination in a nano-second, if that was His desire. Or in 6 days, for poetic, symbolic, artistic reasons. Why not?

So you see, TotN, you and I aren’t so far apart as it might seem.

I merely maintain that the Energy you describe is Living, Sentient, and Eternal. And Social, it tells us (as I believe it does) — an Infinite Triunity, existing in an eternal state of Love — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Talk about mystical…!

You, on the other hand, obviously prefer your energy to be deaf, dumb, and blind. And Mindless. And prone to horrible mistakes, like the one pictured -- as well as warfares and hatred and disease and death, and all sorts of miserable natural conditions. I could speculate as to the reasons you choose so, but I won’t, preferring you own disclosure in that regard. But I will say -- I don't like your "Energy" very much. It doesn't even have the courtesy to offer a release from its own mindless incompetence, other than the nullity of death.

The gulf between DI and me, however, is considerably wider…

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to Volbrigade]


Energy is capable of taking many forms. But to the best of my knowledge, none of the forms it takes are a God. The possibility that energy, and therefore the universe itself, is a type of intelligence is a very zen notion, and one Buddhists and Hindus would find familiar. Because human beings have been asking these questions as long as human beings have existed. And they have quite understandably been imagining answers which they found satisfying, and often deeply profound.

By the early 20th century however it began to become apparent that an actual physical explanation for the existence of the universe not only may exist, but that we may actually be able to discover it. Once the distinct possibility of discovering actual physical answers for the existence of the universe became apparent, make believe, no matter how comforting, was no longer satisfying. For scientists, generally speaking, the desire to know far outweighed, or outweighs, any desire to feel comforted. Actual answers represent the ultimate in profound.

It is possible to view the unrelenting changes brought on by quantum mechanics as in some ways similar to the way that water flows downhill. It follows the path of least resistance, taking unpredictable turns, even cutting it's own path as necessary, as it seeks it's own level. It is unrelenting. And there is no intelligence involved. Energy follows an unrelenting urge to interact with itself, forming and reforming relentlessly. And in the process giving rise to all sorts of unexpected and unpredictable possibilities. And yet there is currently, at least, no direct evidence that energy is any more intelligent than water flowing down hill. It is simply an insistent irresistible force of ongoing change.

It (energy) playfully creates patterns — stars, galaxies, planets; molecules banding together in endless combinations until — whoops! — self replication takes place. Talk about “change�!

Wikipedia
EVOLUTION

In March 2015, complex DNA and RNA organic compounds of life, including uracil, cytosine and thymine, were reportedly formed in the laboratory under outer space conditions, using starting chemicals, such as pyrimidine, found in meteorites. Pyrimidine, like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), the most carbon-rich chemical found in the Universe, may have been formed in red giants or in interstellar dust and gas clouds, according to the scientists.[76]March 3, 2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA#cite_ ... 0150303-76

Energy is not playful. It is simply unrelenting over huge expanses of time, increasing the possibility that whatever is possible has an opportunity to become extent. A trillion trillion inert compounds which lead to nothing can be produced in this manner, and only one single strand molecule that folds back on itself and contains just the right combination of proteins and carbohydrates to cause it to replicate itself needs to form to begin the rise of biology.

But we’re not done yet. Emerging from the endless possibilities of endless change, we see functional systems emerge — eyes and wings and skeletons and whatnot; and a brain to run them, which WILL change into abstract thought capability and questioning its own existence because — well, that’s what change and energy is all about.

Consider the eye spots of a planerium worm. They are little more that cells that can detect light, and, perhaps, some movement. They are very rudimentary, and yet a quantum (pardon the pun) evolutionary leap forward from creatures who have no such ability.



Now consider the eye of a hawk. The same principle as the planerium worm but many times more effective. The result of ongoing change, and the incessant pressure to do a thing more effectively that is called evolution.

It all sounds rather mystical, doesn’t it?

I can certainly see why it would seem mystical to any uneducated mind. And I can see why people in the past considered the things they did not understand to be mystical and unknowable. What could be more obvious to a terrified person that doesn't comprehend electrical theory then that thunder must the result of a furious mighty Being. But of course we know today that thunder has nothing whatsoever to to with the sound of a furious mighty Being. It occurs because electrons passing through the air heat the air and cause the air to suddenly expand. The thunderclap is simply the sound of the air crashing back in on itself. Because we have discovered that it is possible to understand the nature of the events that we experience. And what science has taught us, OVERWHELMINGLY, is that things occur for natural reasons which have nothing whatsoever to do with an intelligent "mighty Being." Everything that occurs, thunder being just one example, is the result of quantum mechanics in action. Believing that thunder is the sound of a furious mighty Being was really little more than make believe. Declaring that quantum mechanics is the result of a mighty Being in action is also little more than make believe.

Is the verifiable evidence for the sorts of transformations needed to perform that last miracle, any more compelling than that for the Virgin Birth or Resurrection?

At a certain point, it is strictly a matter of opinion. 50-50. “Choose ye this day�.

Okay, let us make a list of some of the Biblical claims.

1. The basic claim of Christianity that the corpse of Jesus returned to life (by WHATEVER means) and then subsequently flew away.

2. The guy that rides around inside of a fish for several days story.

3. A guy and his family manages to gather together a mating pair of every species of land animal from all over the earth while at the same time constructing a boat large enough to not only contain these millions of animals, but enough food to sustain them for some months.

4. Hordes of dead people come up out of their graves and wander the streets of Jerusalem.

5. My personal favorite, a man (Joshua) commands the sun and moon to stop dead in the sky for about a 24 hour period, giving the Israelites sufficient time to hack to death all of the Amorites, right down to the last babe in arms. This indicates that the entire planet once stopped rotating for about a 24 hour period.

And of course there are stories of talking asses to consider, giants named Og, and various other tales.

And this is what you consider to be probable and potentially true by at least a 50-50 ratio?

I think the assigning of a Mind, Will, and Intelligence to the Energy — an assignation allowable, only if it is in accordance with the evidence — makes it a slam dunk. If the Energy has those qualities, it is God. And God can certainly do all of the things mentioned.

If the energy has a mind and will, then everything that occurs has meaning and purpose. Which allows you to sneak in the claim, or at very least the hope, of eternal life in paradise, reunion with dead loved ones, and the cleansing of all your perceived misdeeds. Do you suppose that these hopes have some influence on motivating you to prefer the 50% that assures you that your life isn't simply the result of random chance at work?

In fact, the boundless Energy that is God could make a universe out of His imagination in a nano-second, if that was His desire. Or in 6 days, for poetic, symbolic, artistic reasons. Why not?

According to the back story of Superman, Superman has super powers on Earth because he was born on another planet which orbited a red sun. Living now on the Earth with it's yellow sun gives superman super powers. Does this claim make any actual sense? No, none at all. There is no actual physical reason to suppose that such a thing would be true. But in the universe of imagination anything one can imagine can be claimed to be true.

So you see, TotN, you and I aren’t so far apart as it might seem.

I can't really agree with that conclusion I am afraid.