Good reason

[nobspeople]

In a different thread (listed below), when discussing, in part, if the bible is true, TRANSPONDER said " It is a well known argument that asserting what is in the Bible is true because it is in the Bible is a fallacy. A Lawyer would know that a witness statement is not going to be accepted as true just because he or she has said it. Nor of course rejected without good reason."

The above bolded section caused me to think (not claiming this is TRANSPNDER's assertion): is there good reason to think the bible isn't true?

For discussion: Is there good reason (define what is 'good reason' to you) to think the bible is or is not true*?

*TRUE here being used as 'legitimate, real word of God which was written by men, inspired by God' - this would assume everything written in it is true and agreed upon by God - in other words, nothing written is personal opinion of the writer.



Reference viewtopic.php?f=8&t=38540&start=10

[We_Are_VENOM]

Now all we need is for someone to irrefutably demonstrate that said opinion expressed in the Bible is in fact true.

That could take all night. How much time do you have?

[TRANSPONDER]

Yes. Not all religions are YE Creationist. Not even Christianity is, always. They may accept the story of evolution but insist a god is behind it (name your own)

And that insistence, in my opinion, is also unwarranted. Evolution (macro) is a false theory, regardless of whether one believes a god is behind it or not.

to which we say 'Your evidence for that?'

Your evidence that reptiles evolved into birds?

Your evidence is apparently to ask what would be needed to create the basics from which energy/matter came. Essentially, there is no answer to that as yet.

Correction; there is no scientific/natural answer. There is an answer, though.

You can put a placeholder god in there if you want but then the question is 'where did that come from?'

cue 'God is eternal'. That is not 'where the evidence leads'.

Yeah, but there is never a problem with the statement "the universe is eternal".

Taxi cab fallacy.

That is a faith claim that simply ignores the question. We (goddless) could equally say: 'Whatever the basics were, they were eternal'. And not being complex, one doesn't have to explain (or ignore) how a complexity could exist without coming from anywhere.

Yeah, but then you would have an infinite regression problem, which isn't going anywhere regardless of how hard you try to ignore it (not you personally, but in general).

The evidence that evolution (macro) did happen is shown by the fossils and particularly the transitional forms, plus DNA and morphology. For instance birds' winds show hand/arm formations. At one time Archaeopteryx was the only reptile/bird transitional but there are many other examples now. But the best example of evolution (Macro) is the fossil sequence of a land animal to whales, both in the front flippers that were clearly once arms and in the progression of the nostils to lowhole in these transitional forms. When you have signal evidence of such a transition, the others, such as Tiktaalic and Australopithecus have that much more credibility.

Creationism has nothing but denial of the evidence.

The universe is not eternal. It had a start and will probably have an end. However the larger cosmos of 'stuff' from which it arguably formed, could be. That is the only way to solve the infinite regression problem. Claiming the existence of a complex creator -god (never mind which one) with no explanation as to origin is logically less likely.

[We_Are_VENOM]

We are well aware that, when all else fails, Theism resorts to 'Who made everything, then?'

Where 'science stops' - nobody knows how the Cosmos (not the universe, which began with the Big Bang) started - that is NOT where theology begins but knowledge ends. Theists would like to pop God into that gap in our knowledge but Gap for god faith -claims are a fallacy.

Tinkering about with semantics like there is no 'science' only the thoughts of humans is just playing with words. We all know that humans have only been able to do 'science' with the invention of writing. Before that there was technology - how to do things. But no science, what things are, how they work and why. That we've only done this in the last 4,000 years is beside the point.

To use science to explain the origins of science (nature) is circular logic. That would be like me asking you to explain the origins of your computer, but the answer you give has to lie internal within the computer...no external explanation can be given.

Can you do it? No, you can't. Yet, this kind of logic is used all the time with naturalists who just won't give the God hypothesis a chance.

[We_Are_VENOM]

I'm pretty sure the practice of science is limited to Homo sapiens, and (as brunumb pointed out) we're a very recent addition having appeared only during the last 0.0065% of Earth's existence (not even considering what existed before our solar system formed). No science was practiced before then because there were no humans, but science is a means of explaining how nature and other things work. The "laws" of physics, chemistry, etc. as we understand them today existed long before we came along ... there were just no animals around smart enough to be able to figure out how to study them and build a framework called science. It was certainly there to be played with though, but had to await evolution of a suitably capable brain (that's us).

We all have our theories, don't we?

However, something out there had to be big/powerful enough to create an entire universe.

And maybe it was a god being, or maybe it was just nature doing its thing (Big Bang, or ??). We can't confirm either at the moment, but one is a pure guess and one has at least some evidence for it that isn't just pulled from the hind end, or ancient holy books.

There are only two options..

1. God did it
2. Nature did it

If God didn't do it, then nature did it. If nature didn't do it, then God did it.

It is just as simple as that. If I made a "Lego Man" from thousands of legos I have at my disposal, you wouldn't dare believe that "Mother Nature" assembled the pieces together, would you? You would recognize intelligent design, wouldn't you?

Yet, when it comes to entire human bodies, along with consciousness, all of a sudden we throw intelligent design in the toilet and flush it... and resort to "perhaps maybe Mother Nature pulled off this magnificent stunt".

Good ole taxi cab fallacy.

[brunumb]

Evolutionist: "Given enough time, anything can happen, such as a reptile evolving into a bird".

The only data I see is; dogs produce dogs, cats/cats, fish/fish.

A clear case of straw-manning.

The theory of evolution does not say that A reptile can/will evolve into A bird. Nor does it contradict the statement that dogs produce dogs, cats/cats, fish/fish.

If one wants to argue against evolution it behooves that person to argue against the actual theory and not some disingenuous misrepresentation of the theory. When done deliberately it is blatantly dishonest and probably reflects the actual paucity of arguments against the theory.

[brunumb]

Now all we need is for someone to irrefutably demonstrate that said opinion expressed in the Bible is in fact true.

That could take all night. How much time do you have?

Why don't you just make a start and see how far you get.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to We_Are_VENOM in post #129]

Evolutionist: "Given enough time, anything can happen, such as a reptile evolving into a bird".

Supported by actual evidence in the fossil record that this did, in fact, happen. You obviously don't believe it happened for religious reasons (presumably because it contradicts the biblical "kinds" narrative), but there is plenty of real world evidence that it did. And there are plenty of other examples besides reptiles to birds to show that what you call "macro" evolution is a real thing. Google and the World Wide Web are wonderful inventions (or your local library or university). Check them out.

Christian: "Given enough time, Jesus will return and welcome his followers to the kingdom of God".

Unsupported by anything but a holy book prediction with no time frame. Surely you can appreciate the difference between the Evolutionist and the Christian in your example. One is basing their view on physical evidence that fits within the big puzzle of what is currently known about how life diversified on Earth, and the other is basing their view on nothing but writings from 2000+ years ago when humans knew little to nothing about how nature works.


https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibra ... vograms_06

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-bird ... -20150602/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... ame-birds/

https://www.scienceofbirds.com/blog/the ... n-of-birds

https://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/evolution/

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to We_Are_VENOM in post #134]

Yet, when it comes to entire human bodies, along with consciousness, all of a sudden we throw intelligent design in the toilet and flush it... and resort to "perhaps maybe Mother Nature pulled off this magnificent stunt".

Don't start with human bodies and consciousness ... start with much simpler (although still very complex) single-celled organisms some 4 billion years ago. We have a viable explanation for how we got from there to human bodies a measly ~2 million years ago (say, Homo erectus). So the job is to explain how the first replicating cells that we'd today call "life" arose from collections of the right assemblage of molecules, light, water, heat, electricity (lightning or static), etc., or if these were brought to Earth from elsewhere by some means (panspermia), or ?? That is what we don't know the answer to yet, not the general process (evolution) that happened after these first populations of living things appeared which led to the animals and plants we have today. You're jumping the gun starting with humans.

[TRANSPONDER]

We are well aware that, when all else fails, Theism resorts to 'Who made everything, then?'

Where 'science stops' - nobody knows how the Cosmos (not the universe, which began with the Big Bang) started - that is NOT where theology begins but knowledge ends. Theists would like to pop God into that gap in our knowledge but Gap for god faith -claims are a fallacy.

Tinkering about with semantics like there is no 'science' only the thoughts of humans is just playing with words. We all know that humans have only been able to do 'science' with the invention of writing. Before that there was technology - how to do things. But no science, what things are, how they work and why. That we've only done this in the last 4,000 years is beside the point.

To use science to explain the origins of science (nature) is circular logic. That would be like me asking you to explain the origins of your computer, but the answer you give has to lie internal within the computer...no external explanation can be given.

Can you do it? No, you can't. Yet, this kind of logic is used all the time with naturalists who just won't give the God hypothesis a chance.

Sorry, but that's a false argument. Equivocation specifically - and a pretty obvious one.

(1) Science (nature)

(2) science - the study and explanation of nature.

Two different things.

If you don't see it

'crime'

(1) a crime

(2) investigation of it to show what happened.

Also your objection to 'explaining your computer' is just the usual 'infinite regression' objection that has already been addressed, when you think about it. Just making it a particular item in our world rather than our world itself is just a way of disguising the same question that has already been addressed.

[brunumb]

However, something out there had to be big/powerful enough to create an entire universe.

There are only two options..

1. God did it
2. Nature did it

If God didn't do it, then nature did it. If nature didn't do it, then God did it.

That is a fallacy known as a false dilemma. You have claimed there are only two options based on another, unsupported, claim that the universe was created. As much as we do know about the universe, we do not know its origin. There are hypotheses and speculations but we cannot say that the universe was in fact created.