The Fall!

[POI]

Otseng stated "Yes, I believe the fall is a thing. As for why, it is out of scope for the current discussion, but can be addressed later."

Your wish has been granted.

For debate: Outside the claim being made from an ancient human writing, why is the assertion of 'the fall' a real thing?

[Capbook]

But it's the old problem of the pot and the potter. If God made everything including angels and humans, and they turn out flawed, isn't that the fault of the maker?

Maybe one can argue (I've heard it) that God needed men (and angels, it seems) to have free will or their love and obedience meant nothing. But that was his choice and decision. Who else is going to be responsible for how they turned out and what they did? Like some trumpery dictator, God is the ole responsible, but refused to do anything but blunder on trying to correct His mistakes by wiping out most of creation and starting again with a select Best family (who of course were no better than the original creation). God at least shows some sign of remorse, but doubles down by being no better than his creation, picking one select tribe and treating them as bad as he treats the other people, and trying to fin a way out of the Sin he created by a sacrifice that really wasn't that didn't get really rid of the sin it was supposed to.

Fortunately, there is a way out of this mental tangle (other than by ignoring it and reciting the claims that it's all Perfect, he did nothing wrong, and it's everyone else's fault) and that's to recognise that it's all tall tales and made up stories to explain the way all things evolved, to survive, with either selfishness or empathy, and humans (understanding little before science) just invented big invisible humans (from Inzanami to Viracocha and Odin to Shiva to explain what they didn't understand, and that's why it makes no sense and conflicts with the evidence.

Of course, our valued poster you will deny all that, make faith -claims and cite Bibleverse as though that validated something or anything.

We debate here, so what you believe or what I believe is irrelevant. What seems to fit the evidence and reason is what counts, and the evidence is that Eden and sin was arranged by God to bring out man's innate created flaw of pride, disobedience, knowledge of facts rather than just accepting what lies they are being told. And the evidence is that virtually nothing in the first two books is actually true, even if Exodus is loosely based on the Hyksos expulsion.

The choice then is to deny the evidence - not only science, like life evolved over millions of years and wasn't made in one lump in a week, or the pyramids of Egypt or the Maya temples are nothing to do with Babelian ziggurats, but what the Bible itself says, like the daylight and night was made before the sun, or the women ran from the tomb after having met the risen Jesus (Matthew) or ran from the tomb having no idea what had happened (John), and to reject logic and reason, like the burden of proof being on the claimant or the validity of the more probable explanation, not the far -fetched undisprovable that one prefers to belief.

Because Faith is not a virtue, gullibility is not praiseworthy, and to deny evidence and reason as valid means that the faithbased argument has no logical or evidential validity.

And that is the 'choice' that we have, not to believe or not (which we can't choose) but to accept or deny evidence and reason, or choose Faith and Denial by preference.

May I know what is your evidence of your statement that Eden and sin was arranged by God?

A study was made by Brad Harrub, Ph.D. and Bert Thompson, Ph.D.
Titled: Do Human and Chimpanzee DNA Indicate an Evolutionary Relationship?
These two researchers concluded that homology (or similarity) does not prove common ancestry. Further, the concept of homology in terms of similar genes handed on from a common ancestor has broken down, they said. Yet textbooks and teachers still continue to proclaim that humans and chimps are 98% genetically identical and stop from there.

My question is why still continue to proclaim that?

Now this is off the top of my head, but we can look at this if you want. But humans actually have one less chromosome than apes. This was found to be because the ape DNA later had a fused chromosome, proving that the ape DNA evolved from the ape DNA. You cannot have a fused chromosome without an earlier unfused origin.

https://johnhawks.net/weblog/when-did-h ... me-2-fuse/

The study refers to (published by 'apologetics press' wanted to throw doubt on primate ancestry, so ignore the detail evidence (e.g retroviruses) and simply said 'that does not prove it'. It looks like a flawed, incomplete apologetics debunk, not a valid paper. Biologists continue to proclaim the evidence for the evolutionary relation between human and chims because that is what the evidence shows.


As to Eden, the scenario is that Life and knowledge were somehow incorporated into the fruit of two trees, which makes no sense, since Adam would continue to live all the time he ate from the tree of Life. But that morality was contained in a fruit seems absurd. If God didn't want Adam to eat from it, why even have it there? On top of that he w had a walking snake that was able to talk at least just for that scenario (so who gave it that ability?) and it told what was evidently the truth.having knowledge of morality would not cause Adam to die. It was God arranging that as a punishment.

Previous discussions have forced apologists to even suggest that God was working blind otherwise He could just have stepped in and prevented this. The strong conclusion is that God wanted this to happen so that sin could enter the world as well as death, as some game of his own.



Fortunately I don't have to struggle with (or simply dismiss and ignore) such conclusions, because it is simply a fairy - tale to explain how and why we are as we are, when God should have made us perfect (and God already got the angels wrong, too).

I was shown by POI of Kenneth Miller in YouTube explaining about chimps and human chromosomes.
Miller, a devout Catholic and evolutionist, believes God and science can coexist in the chapel and the lab. The key, Miller says, is to set aside the assumption that science and religion rule each other out.

My question is why rule the Bible out? My arguments are quoted from the Bible.
And the belief of some scientists that science is the only source of truth is not even a scientific idea.

[TRANSPONDER]

But it's the old problem of the pot and the potter. If God made everything including angels and humans, and they turn out flawed, isn't that the fault of the maker?

Maybe one can argue (I've heard it) that God needed men (and angels, it seems) to have free will or their love and obedience meant nothing. But that was his choice and decision. Who else is going to be responsible for how they turned out and what they did? Like some trumpery dictator, God is the ole responsible, but refused to do anything but blunder on trying to correct His mistakes by wiping out most of creation and starting again with a select Best family (who of course were no better than the original creation). God at least shows some sign of remorse, but doubles down by being no better than his creation, picking one select tribe and treating them as bad as he treats the other people, and trying to fin a way out of the Sin he created by a sacrifice that really wasn't that didn't get really rid of the sin it was supposed to.

Fortunately, there is a way out of this mental tangle (other than by ignoring it and reciting the claims that it's all Perfect, he did nothing wrong, and it's everyone else's fault) and that's to recognise that it's all tall tales and made up stories to explain the way all things evolved, to survive, with either selfishness or empathy, and humans (understanding little before science) just invented big invisible humans (from Inzanami to Viracocha and Odin to Shiva to explain what they didn't understand, and that's why it makes no sense and conflicts with the evidence.

Of course, our valued poster you will deny all that, make faith -claims and cite Bibleverse as though that validated something or anything.

We debate here, so what you believe or what I believe is irrelevant. What seems to fit the evidence and reason is what counts, and the evidence is that Eden and sin was arranged by God to bring out man's innate created flaw of pride, disobedience, knowledge of facts rather than just accepting what lies they are being told. And the evidence is that virtually nothing in the first two books is actually true, even if Exodus is loosely based on the Hyksos expulsion.

The choice then is to deny the evidence - not only science, like life evolved over millions of years and wasn't made in one lump in a week, or the pyramids of Egypt or the Maya temples are nothing to do with Babelian ziggurats, but what the Bible itself says, like the daylight and night was made before the sun, or the women ran from the tomb after having met the risen Jesus (Matthew) or ran from the tomb having no idea what had happened (John), and to reject logic and reason, like the burden of proof being on the claimant or the validity of the more probable explanation, not the far -fetched undisprovable that one prefers to belief.

Because Faith is not a virtue, gullibility is not praiseworthy, and to deny evidence and reason as valid means that the faithbased argument has no logical or evidential validity.

And that is the 'choice' that we have, not to believe or not (which we can't choose) but to accept or deny evidence and reason, or choose Faith and Denial by preference.

May I know what is your evidence of your statement that Eden and sin was arranged by God?

A study was made by Brad Harrub, Ph.D. and Bert Thompson, Ph.D.
Titled: Do Human and Chimpanzee DNA Indicate an Evolutionary Relationship?
These two researchers concluded that homology (or similarity) does not prove common ancestry. Further, the concept of homology in terms of similar genes handed on from a common ancestor has broken down, they said. Yet textbooks and teachers still continue to proclaim that humans and chimps are 98% genetically identical and stop from there.

My question is why still continue to proclaim that?

Now this is off the top of my head, but we can look at this if you want. But humans actually have one less chromosome than apes. This was found to be because the ape DNA later had a fused chromosome, proving that the ape DNA evolved from the ape DNA. You cannot have a fused chromosome without an earlier unfused origin.

https://johnhawks.net/weblog/when-did-h ... me-2-fuse/

The study refers to (published by 'apologetics press' wanted to throw doubt on primate ancestry, so ignore the detail evidence (e.g retroviruses) and simply said 'that does not prove it'. It looks like a flawed, incomplete apologetics debunk, not a valid paper. Biologists continue to proclaim the evidence for the evolutionary relation between human and chims because that is what the evidence shows.


As to Eden, the scenario is that Life and knowledge were somehow incorporated into the fruit of two trees, which makes no sense, since Adam would continue to live all the time he ate from the tree of Life. But that morality was contained in a fruit seems absurd. If God didn't want Adam to eat from it, why even have it there? On top of that he w had a walking snake that was able to talk at least just for that scenario (so who gave it that ability?) and it told what was evidently the truth.having knowledge of morality would not cause Adam to die. It was God arranging that as a punishment.

Previous discussions have forced apologists to even suggest that God was working blind otherwise He could just have stepped in and prevented this. The strong conclusion is that God wanted this to happen so that sin could enter the world as well as death, as some game of his own.



Fortunately I don't have to struggle with (or simply dismiss and ignore) such conclusions, because it is simply a fairy - tale to explain how and why we are as we are, when God should have made us perfect (and God already got the angels wrong, too).

I was shown by POI of Kenneth Miller in YouTube explaining about chimps and human chromosomes.
Miller, a devout Catholic and evolutionist, believes God and science can coexist in the chapel and the lab. The key, Miller says, is to set aside the assumption that science and religion rule each other out.

My question is why rule the Bible out? My arguments are quoted from the Bible.
And the belief of some scientists that science is the only source of truth is not even a scientific idea.

You can say that again. science makes no pronouncements about the philosophy of truth, only the method of detection we rely on every day as being the way to do it. It is theists trying to denigrate science that accuse it of claiming to be the only source or truth, which is really projection of their own position (faithbased) and fails because they can't even agree which Faith it should be.

"There are many religions; there is only one science". Why should we rule the Bible out? You tell me. Why rule out the Quran or the Bhaghavad Gita? Well, we know why, because the Bible claims support from the 'science' of history. But if anything, the Quran is better based on history. hardly anyone doubts that Muhammad spread Islam through conquest. That is a better record than on whether the Biblical Jesus is historical.

I can respect the views of those scientists who still believe in 'god'...sorta. At best, they keep science and faith apart, but there is always the threat that the religion will sneak in and compromise the science.

It's like this, we can tolerate mechanics who believe that engines run because of invisible engine gnomes, so long as they do their job as though they didn't.

[POI]

A study was made by Brad Harrub, Ph.D. and Bert Thompson, Ph.D.
Titled: Do Human and Chimpanzee DNA Indicate an Evolutionary Relationship?
These two researchers concluded that homology (or similarity) does not prove common ancestry. Further, the concept of homology in terms of similar genes handed on from a common ancestor has broken down, they said. Yet textbooks and teachers still continue to proclaim that humans and chimps are 98% genetically identical and stop from there.

My question is why still continue to proclaim that?

Are you familiar with the Dover trial of the mid 2000's? If not, here you go... Kennith Miller, a Roman Catholic, went onto the witness stand in court, and presented the following, The video is a recap of his testimony given in court:

Miller, a devout Catholic and evolutionist, believes God and science can coexist in the chapel and the lab. The key, Miller says, is to set aside the assumption that science and religion rule each other out.

Then why rule the Bible out? As my arguments are quoted from the Bible.

My response is to show that we DO share a common ancestry. How do you now (navigate or pivot) your faith, while now knowing this new nugget of information?

[TRANSPONDER]

Thanks for that. Miller put it well, he believes in a god, but not a deceptive one. He would not make it all look like it was not what the Bible tells just to test our faith or something like that.

It is also significant that he is a Christian but also an evolutionist. It is not a matter of (supposing this is an idea that Creationists have) one is either a Bible literalist or one is an atheist.

I would love to know why Miller is a Christian - not just a theist, but a Catholic, but there we, evolution is pretty much proven, even if we cannot simulate a high speed replica of it in a laboratory, and which would be rejected as 'It didn't need to have happened that way' even if it was done.

P.s. I did have a look at a talk by Dr Miller (1) which lightly touched on maintaining Faith. It was poor stuff I have to say. He is an expert in Biology but to suggest that there is something wrong with the idea that the universe doesn't care whether we live or die. "How does he (Dawkins) know?" because we know that most of the universe a fair chunk of earth is not designed to suit human life is getting the burden of proof wrong and ignoring the evidence.. We can manage on earth, but not on any other planet. There was a hint at the Big bang as an act of creation, sure, but a planned creation? Where is the burden of proof? I'd say that a god or not is open to discussion. So that is an unknown, but Dr Miller ought to know that an unknown is logically evidence of nothing either way. To even make a god the go - to hypothesis is invalid, never mind making it a faith - claim and even that does not get us to a particular religion. The same goes for his effortto make the 'evil' (morality) argument. That hasn't worked for the last 30 years.

Dr Miller is of course stretching Faith up to and beyond breaking - point.

Sure, he can cite Faith and argue the Bible as reason to credit Christianity. He is wrong there, too.

But though he is entitled to have Faith, he ought to be honest that Faith is not evidence and neither are gaps for God. I thank him for his theistic evolutionism but I am not impressed by his reasons to be a Theist, never mind a Christian.

(1) I'll post it here in case anyone wants to go through it. I hopped through looking for his reasons for Theism, anyone who finds that he has made better reasons would be thanked for posting them.

[SiNcE_1985]

Otseng stated "Yes, I believe the fall is a thing. As for why, it is out of scope for the current discussion, but can be addressed later."

Your wish has been granted.

For debate: Outside the claim being made from an ancient human writing, why is the assertion of 'the fall' a real thing?

There is no objective "fall of man" beyond the Biblical scope.

[TRANSPONDER]

Otseng stated "Yes, I believe the fall is a thing. As for why, it is out of scope for the current discussion, but can be addressed later."

Your wish has been granted.

For debate: Outside the claim being made from an ancient human writing, why is the assertion of 'the fall' a real thing?

There is no objective "fall of man" beyond the Biblical scope.

There is. Instinctive behavior, both in animals and humans.selfish and selfless and like and dislike. Animals do it, we do it. It is far more sophisticated in us, just as tool use is more sophisticated than when animals use tools. If the discussion is better discussed in terms of Biology, that is as 'objective' as you get.
Biblcal morality does not even look good, never mind objectivity.

The Fall makes no sense other than as something God did to make sure we had finite lives and imperfect morals. Because that is what we have and how can the perfect God's perfect creation fail to be perfect? It has to happen to us and Man has to take the blame for what God allowed to happen, not least in giving us the free will that would sooner or later make it happen. But that's ok, the blame can be offloaded onto man and that was the only point in the whole story.

[POI]

Thanks for that. Miller put it well, he believes in a god, but not a deceptive one. He would not make it all look like it was not what the Bible tells just to test our faith or something like that.

It is also significant that he is a Christian but also an evolutionist. It is not a matter of (supposing this is an idea that Creationists have) one is either a Bible literalist or one is an atheist.

I would love to know why Miller is a Christian - not just a theist, but a Catholic, but there we, evolution is pretty much proven, even if we cannot simulate a high speed replica of it in a laboratory, and which would be rejected as 'It didn't need to have happened that way' even if it was done.

P.s. I did have a look at a talk by Dr Miller (1) which lightly touched on maintaining Faith. It was poor stuff I have to say. He is an expert in Biology but to suggest that there is something wrong with the idea that the universe doesn't care whether we live or die. "How does he (Dawkins) know?" because we know that most of the universe a fair chunk of earth is not designed to suit human life is getting the burden of proof wrong and ignoring the evidence.. We can manage on earth, but not on any other planet. There was a hint at the Big bang as an act of creation, sure, but a planned creation? Where is the burden of proof? I'd say that a god or not is open to discussion. So that is an unknown, but Dr Miller ought to know that an unknown is logically evidence of nothing either way. To even make a god the go - to hypothesis is invalid, never mind making it a faith - claim and even that does not get us to a particular religion. The same goes for his effortto make the 'evil' (morality) argument. That hasn't worked for the last 30 years.

Dr Miller is of course stretching Faith up to and beyond breaking - point.

Sure, he can cite Faith and argue the Bible as reason to credit Christianity. He is wrong there, too.

But though he is entitled to have Faith, he ought to be honest that Faith is not evidence and neither are gaps for God. I thank him for his theistic evolutionism but I am not impressed by his reasons to be a Theist, never mind a Christian.

(1) I'll post it here in case anyone wants to go through it. I hopped through looking for his reasons for Theism, anyone who finds that he has made better reasons would be thanked for posting them.

Yes, at the end of the day, it boils down to cognitive dissonance. We all carry it in one aspect or another. Case and point, I have a cognitive dissonance in continuing to not be a vegan

[POI]

Otseng stated "Yes, I believe the fall is a thing. As for why, it is out of scope for the current discussion, but can be addressed later."

Your wish has been granted.

For debate: Outside the claim being made from an ancient human writing, why is the assertion of 'the fall' a real thing?

There is no objective "fall of man" beyond the Biblical scope.

Can you please elaborate a bit? Are you saying Jesus did not need to come down to "redeem" us, or other?

[TRANSPONDER]

Otseng stated "Yes, I believe the fall is a thing. As for why, it is out of scope for the current discussion, but can be addressed later."

Your wish has been granted.

For debate: Outside the claim being made from an ancient human writing, why is the assertion of 'the fall' a real thing?

There is no objective "fall of man" beyond the Biblical scope.

Can you please elaborate a bit? Are you saying Jesus did not need to come down to "redeem" us, or other?

I think he is making argument from morality; outside the Fall, there is no explanation for human evil nor any remedy for it outside the Bible. I say Morality (evil) is better understood in terms of evolutionary biology, and the Bible is a remedy for nothing except maybe keeping a door shut.

[SiNcE_1985]

I think he is making argument from morality; outside the Fall, there is no explanation for human evil nor any remedy for it outside the Bible.

I wouldn't have framed it quite that way.

But in essence, that is my point.

I say Morality (evil) is better understood in terms of evolutionary biology, and the Bible is a remedy for nothing except maybe keeping a door shut.

Opinions.