Here are two more good ones from Ard Lewis:
greatest show on earth
by unstopableravens 273 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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cofty
CA - I watched the video that featured Polkinghorne. I have/had his book "Belief in god in an age of Science".
His position is that evolution is of course a fact and that at some point Homo sapiens became aware enough to have a relationship with god.
He discusses the "Fall" as humans choosing to go it alone without god.
He asserts that humans can't succeed without their creator as if that isn't an argument that needs any justification.
Considering the abject moral failure of both Israel and the church its a big leap is it not?
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PSacramento
I tend to agree with most of what polkinghorne says.
Wright is one of my favorit NT scholars.
Biologos is one of my favotite sites.
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PSacramento
The Jews would have read much of Genesis very differently than the Biblical literalist today.
Indeed, probably because it was written by them, for them and within THEIR cultural context.
To take an ancient text literally means to take it as its literary genre demands.
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Pterist
This review on the book sums it up for me IMHO.
Dawkins stresses that we should not be deceived by the appearance of design; it is an illusion:
The body of a human, an eagle, a mole, a dolphin, a cheetah, a leopard frog, a swallow: these are so beautifully put together, it seems impossible to believe that the genes that program their development don’t function as a blueprint, a design, a master plan. But no…it is all done by individual cells obeying local rules. (220)
http://www.apologetics315.com/2009/10/greatest-show-on-earth-by-richard.html
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cofty
Pterist - Have you read the book or just a critical summary of it?
By "design" scientists simply mean the corelation between form and function.
Natural selection is a very powerful design tool.
In the quote that you mined out of context Dawkins is discussing how cells orgaganise in the human embryo. The chapter is called "You did it Yourself in Nine Months"
He uses the example of a murmuration of starlings. To watch them it appears that there must be an organising force that orchestrates their movement.
in 1986 Craig Reynolds wrote a computer program to attempt to replicate this kind of behaviour. They key, it turned out was to forget about trying to choreograph the whole flock; instead it is necessary to write the program for only one bird. Give robo-starling detailed instructions on how to fly, how to react to the presence of nearby birds depending on their distance and relative position. Build in rules on how much weight to give to the behaviour of neighbours and how much individual initiative to endow your prodigy with. Endow your cyber-bird with a certain tendency to vary it’s rules at random.
Now the really important part; copy and paste thousands of copies of this single bird and set them free. The result was a wonderful duplication of the starling’s dance. No leader, no plan, no choreographer. Order, organisation or structure – these all emerge as by-products of rules which are obeyed locally and many times over, not globally.
This happens to be an excellent analogy for how embryology works. The body of a human, an eagle, a mole a dolphin, these seem so beautifully put together that it is difficult to believe there is no overall design, no blueprint or master plan. Like the starlings it’s all done by individual cells obeying local rules, the cells of a developing embryo wheel and dance around each other like starlings in a gigantic flock forming three dimensional shapes from sheets of tissue that swell or shrink due to local patterns of cell growth and death.If you like I will happily summarise the details for you but the important thing is to grasp that design is a bottom-up rather than a top-down process.
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Christ Alone
Considering the abject moral failure of both Israel and the church its a big leap is it not?
Consider the morality of anyone and everyone. Whether one claims to be atheist or Christian, morals will fail with man. This is demonstrated over and over again. The issue is not the moral guidance itself. The issue is humans following it. The guide is perfect. But human nature fights it. Abraham was a polytheist originally. And I see the reason why this would seem beneficial for the ancients. Polytheism promised things immediately. That is why they had a god for every issue. A god of fertility. A god of agriculture. The monotheistic God took a long time according to them. He let Abraham wait YEARS after His promise of a seed, until Sarah became pregnant.
Anyway, it is easy to forget free will. The free will of Israel and certain members of the church do not disprove God. This proves that no matter what our morals are, we are broken. Some would take issue with this. But even they see it, whether they deny it or not. They will be mean to another person, whether they want to be or not. They will do things that they know are "wrong". They will hurt people. Christian or atheist. However, we are given the guide to follow if we want to be happy and free and give that to others. We won't follow it all the time. And Israel and the church are examples of this. Does that make it unnecessary for God to give us His desires? Of course not. Morals are not just an evolutionary impulse. God's law is written on our hearts. We KNOW what is good. We KNOW what God desires for us. Not because we learned it genetically over millions of years. But because we were created that way. We were created to love others. We were created to be concerned with those less fortunate. We were created with a God vaccum in our hearts. Many can and will deny this. But it doesn't make it any less so.
God does not want forced service. He tries to get us to come to Him, but He will not force it. We can choose what we want. How sad would it be to reject God, and then have Him force us to love Him. He doesn't do this. We can choose for ouselves. He has clearly told us what the options are. It is OUR choice. Appearing in the sky, forcing us to serve Him, and not letting us have a choice is not love. And He does not desire this. He lets us choose. Loving based on force is not love anyway. I wouldn't want someone to love me because I forced them to. Neither does God.
You and others have rejected God and His love. That is your choice. And I won't condemn you for it. You say there is no proof. And again, that is your decision. Maybe one day you can tell God (if He exists) that you were not given enough proof. You had no reason to believe in Him. And He will answer you then. Maybe He will agree. Maybe He won't. But my resolve is that it would take more faith for me to believe that there was no cause to a beginning, than to believe in a creator. It sounds much more reasonable to me. And maybe that is delusion. But I don't think it is.
And we will someday either see...or we won't. Either we will die and nothing will happen, or we will die and be looking into God's face, and think..."Oops...", or we will die and be thankful that we were counted as delusional by the wise, yet still had faith.
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cofty
CA - I disagree with EVERY sentence of that sermon but that's for another thread.
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xchange
It answers the big question of beginnings, which atheism cannot answer.
Theism answers the cause for the effect. Atheism does not. For atheism, there was either no cause, or this universe is one of an infinite number, and thus is able to avoid confronting any beginning cause, or what happened before the beginning.
Just another gentle reminder for our readers. Atheism is only a position in the disbelief in the claims ('there are gods') made by theists. It has no position on how the universe came to be. Subtle distinction but an important one. Atheism doesn't answer questions, it does the questioning.
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Christ Alone
:-D
I thought you would, cofty. You did agree at one time, though.
I'll pick one sentence. Do you disagree with this one (since you said EVERY single sentence) -
Whether one claims to be atheist or Christian, morals will fail with man.
or this one
You and others have rejected God and His love.
or this one
Appearing in the sky, forcing us to serve Him, and not letting us have a choice is not love.
Were all those sentence you disagree with? Don't you believe that morals are a purely biological evolution that are only based on natural selection, and nothing else? Do you actually believe that we can fully and constantly be good to others without hurting them? All of us, all the time? No? Why? Will we one day evolve enough so that we don't hurt the weak and hurting?
I would like your response on this thread, since we are talking about evolution and how it proves belief in God wrong...