To Terry's (or Adam Douglass's) point, it's funny to think how small this window of opprotunity is. Our sun is only about 4 and a half billion years old. It wasn't always as hot as it is now, and it's hypothesized that Venus used to be alot more like earth a couple billion years ago, but then as the sun got hotter that was no longer sustainable, but then earth entered that goldilocks zone, and as time goes by the sun will actually get brighter and hotter and that goldilocks zone will move out past earth's orbit. Multicelled life has only existed on the planet for maybe a billion years. In another billion years the earth's oceans will have already boiled off as the sun continues to heat up, and earth will be like venus. Eventually the sun will become a red giant and may engulf the earth entirely leaving nothing. But for some reason, right now, this moment where things are just right for humans to exist, clearly this is the most important moment of monumental eternal significance....because we're here....at the moment...so obviously the entire universe was made for our benefit. Humans have been building civilization for ten thousand years, so CLEARLY this ever changing fourteen billion year old universe was made specifically for this reason...never mind the fact that life on the planet will be wiped out as quickly as it emerged, and humanity will have perished long before then....the universe was made for us.
JonathanH
JoinedPosts by JonathanH
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122
Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.
by nicolaou init's tiresome and it doesn't add up but it's one of the most popular arguments for god's existence, "the argument by design.
" jehovah's witnesses and other believers point out a wonder of nature like the eye and compare it to a 'lesser' mechanical wonder of human design like a camera.
the supposed conclusion is that this natural wonder is evidence of creation by a powerful designer; god.. .
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122
Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.
by nicolaou init's tiresome and it doesn't add up but it's one of the most popular arguments for god's existence, "the argument by design.
" jehovah's witnesses and other believers point out a wonder of nature like the eye and compare it to a 'lesser' mechanical wonder of human design like a camera.
the supposed conclusion is that this natural wonder is evidence of creation by a powerful designer; god.. .
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JonathanH
And PSsacramento, the problem with the comment
"Evolution doesn't answer the question of Why or How it all began, and design doens't answer WHY evolution is.
Instead of sticking to the either/or notion that both sides seem crazy-glued to, perhaps it is time for them to realise that both must be reconciled and not "ignored and hope it goes away"."
This is to assume that theology has any means of answering the questions you posit. It doesn't. After thousands of years of theological thinking and pondering theologians are no closer to understanding why the universe exists or how it came to be than their ancient breathren. Theology's big weakness is that it possesses no method of falsifiability. If six theologians come to different conclusions as to "why" evolution occurs, or different conclusions as to "why" god does the things he does, what method exists to see who is right and who is wrong? Why is John Haught's idea that evolution is just god's drama, any more right or wrong than any other idea about why things evolve? Why is Alan Lurie more right or wrong about whether or not the existence of god can ever be proven? Here is an excerpt from Roger Badham's book introduction to theology
A central question that haunts both Jewish and Christian post-Holocaust theology is that of theodicy. Why, if God acts in history, was the Holocaust permitted to happen? A God who has the power to intervene, but who does not, surely stands indictable of injustice. There are many attempted solutions: The classical Greek model of God is of a Being beyond time, an unrelated Absolute, immutable and static. Immutability and omnipotence remain at the heart of Augustine’s doctrine of God, but he stresses that God is in all parts of creation, and is by no means removed from it. Schubert Ogden claims that God’s “body is the whole universe of nondivine beings”: therefore, all creatures are effected by God and effect God, and experience levels of freedom. Paul van Buren, adopting this process model, argues for the self-limiting character of God through the creation of self-determining agents, after which even power is social—shared between God and humanity in covenant together. God’s power is not absolute, but is relational and persuasive, and can therefore be profoundly frustrated. Because God is relational, God is affected by, and suffers with, creation. Tillich’s Kierkegaardian approach is compatible: If moral freedom is an inseparable trait of being human, for God to restrain evil would be synonymous with taking away our humanness. God has provided us already with every gift possible by which the Holocaust was to be prevented. Tillich moves away from personalist or supernaturalist assertions about God as a superbeing or agent, and speaks instead of God as the ground of Being and as Being itself. God is therefore perceived as the ground of agency rather than as an agent, which profoundly changes one’s theological view of God. Put differently, H. Richard Niebuhr insists that “responsibility affirms—God is acting in all actions upon you. So respond to all actions upon you as to respond to [God's] action.”
All of that is just assertions, and there is no means of demonstrating that any one of those attempts at explaining theodicy is more or less valid than any of the others. How is theology going to answer anything if all it is is a series of assertions that cannot ever be either proven or disproven, and in fact relish in the fact that they cannot be proven or disproven? Science and theology don't need to be reconciled, because only one of them is making any legitimate attempt at learning anything about the universe and our place in it. The other is just stroking it's chin and and guessing what an invisible non descript entity wants and is, and then claiming that it's critics just aren't sophisticated enough to understand it's importance.
And all of it is based on one major assumption. That there has to be a "why". There MUST be a reason that all of this is happening, and no, not some mathematical equation that just points to the universe existing, but one of deeper, poetic, meaning. It's impossible that we are just a brief chemical reaction that even as a species will be gone in the blink of the cosmic eye, organic chemistry being digested by a cold ammoral universe. No, that can't be. We must have some overarching purpose, we just have to. But maybe we don't, and there is no grand "why" to be asked. And if that's the case, then what is theology going to contribute to the world? Why does science need to reconcile itself to it when it hasn't even demonstrated that there is any validity to it's initial premise? Should chemistry also reconcile itself to alchemy since all it does is explain how chemicals work, but does nothing to explain the spiritual natures of the elements?
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122
Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.
by nicolaou init's tiresome and it doesn't add up but it's one of the most popular arguments for god's existence, "the argument by design.
" jehovah's witnesses and other believers point out a wonder of nature like the eye and compare it to a 'lesser' mechanical wonder of human design like a camera.
the supposed conclusion is that this natural wonder is evidence of creation by a powerful designer; god.. .
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JonathanH
The problem with your lis on what designed life would look like, hoffnung is that it's merely assertions without evidence or solid reason. Why would a designer leave behind a bunch of traces of trial and error, opposed to leaving only the successful attempts? Why would there be hard boundries as to what life can do rather than a broad range of synthesis, and why are those specific boundries (such as no animals can breathe carbon dioxide) the lines that can't be crossed?
The problem with coming up with a list of what designed life would look like is that it infers an understanding of what the designer would do. Which in essence means you can make the theory fit the facts. All you have to do is explain why the designer did it this way instead of that way. Are there traces of trial an error? Yes? That's because the designer was working out solutions, he didn't get it right on the first try. No? That's because he's an intelligent designer and didn't leave behind lots of mistakes. Either outcome is explainable by design just by changing the designer. A vague designer is a theory that will fit any fact. Which is why there hasn't been any kind of ID movement with a solid methodology for demonstrating something is designed rather than of natural occurence. Because to come up with a solid methodology for prediction, you would first have to make solid predictions about the designer involved. And no ID movement wants to do that.
But even with the list you made, it doesn't conform to our planet. Ecosystems for instance, are not spontaneous and stable. The planet is in constant flux, the continents are drifting around the planet, it shifts from ice age to thawed age, and back again, and there have been multiple mass extinctions on the planet, as well as a constant background extinction rate. You would have to infer, not a designer that made it and then watched it go, but a designer that is constantly at work, shaping and reshaping the world's ecosystems. But there again is the rub, either way all you have to do is change the designer to fit the facts. As long as you assume a priori that it was designed then it's easy to explain anything by design. You just have to say that's how the designer wanted and then make up a reason why. Which is really a reverse process. It would be more logical to try and understand the nature of said designer by examing the available data, rather than the other way around. But that is still assuming a priori that there was a designer to begin with.
And then the parts that do conform to the planet, such as having mechanisms such as disease, famine, and predation keep populations in check are explained easily by evolution by natural selection and don't require a designer. In these instances a designer is superflous. The entire concept as it stands is a bust. Before any kind of work could be done, somebody would have to say who the designer is, and give some kind of evidence that said designer even exists, otherwise you're just designing a designer to fit the available data.
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122
Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.
by nicolaou init's tiresome and it doesn't add up but it's one of the most popular arguments for god's existence, "the argument by design.
" jehovah's witnesses and other believers point out a wonder of nature like the eye and compare it to a 'lesser' mechanical wonder of human design like a camera.
the supposed conclusion is that this natural wonder is evidence of creation by a powerful designer; god.. .
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JonathanH
I just want to comment on the last part of the last post "looking for traces of a designer in the origin of life and believing in the God of the bible are miles away from each other" is not really true. The only reason anyone is looking for design for life is because of the hypothesis that "god" created it. Those that are pushing the ID movement are all religious in nature, and though they attempt to deny that they are speaking about any deity when they say "Intelligent designer" they are full well aware of how disingenous that is.
The starting point for any ID hypothesis is always always a religious belief, because if you remove the idea of god why would you assume that life is designed? Why would that even be a hypothesis? The question itself seems bizarre if you take religion out of the question. Outside of religion we never try to answer difficult problems about the universe by saying "Well something intelligent just made it happen." An ecologist never asks "well this lake is here, I wonder how it formed? I have an idea, this lake was designed by some intelligent designer, possibly supernatural in origin." A geologist never says "Interesting how these strata are layered....I wonder if they were layered like that because some intelligent entities designed the planet this way." Astronomers don't look at venus and say "The pattern of the winds on the north and south pole are astoundingly complex and mysterious...I bet there is some intelligence at work on that planet!" Assuming that some designer specifically created some over arching aspect of nature is never an explanation unless religion firsts enters the debate. Were it not for the religious trying to marry doctrine to the science of the day there would be no ID movement. Why would we be looking for design in life if we didn't first posit a designer?
And to comment just on the topic of ID itself, ID movement has provided no means of ever falsifying it's claims, or even demonstrated some methodology of testing it's claims. How would designed life differ from non designed life? How do you test design, or predict what is designed and natural occuring? So far all they can come up with is "well we haven't explained how trait A evolved, so it must be designed" or "B appears complex, so it must be designed" when neither of those are consistent, or even logical means of deciding whether or not anything, let alone life has an intelligent designer. The whole venture is an exercise in making an assumption, and then trying to justify the assumption by searching for facts that fit the conclusion.
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2011 Miss USA Contestants Answer: Should Evolution be Taught in Schools?
by leavingwt in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay7srp7lole.
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JonathanH
At least the winner was one of the very few who said unequivocally that yes, evolution should be taught in school.
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151
Why do I no longer get attacked and persecuted by the demons, since I left JW,s ?
by pedal power inmost jw.s really believe that they ( as we once did ) are promoting gods will, but what if they really are ?
is it possible that god is supporting them even though they (governing body ) lie, because most jw,s are ignorant of the lies told on their behalf, ?.
when i was a jw i got attacked by the demons bigtime, but not now, and i can only assume that they (demons ) are happy that i am no longer a jw and are now leaving me alone, cant think of any other reason, has god ever supported a group who were similarly found wanting ?.
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JonathanH
Also the experience of taunting the demon is easily explainable by a group all believing and being afraid of the same thing. One's fear then feeds the others and they agree that they were all witness to the same thing. Then later in memory this becomes more vivid, and with further discussion more clear and agreed on.
If a preacher in a pentacostal church started looking into an empty spot in the back of the room and yelling that this demon is not welcome here, the rest of the church would no doubt join in yelling at this "demon" that isn't really there, and then interviewed about it later they would all insist that a demon was in their church and they expelled it with holy spirit. If you let them talk about it together they could probably even collude to come up with some details about the experience. It doesn't mean there was a demon in the back of the church, it means that they all had the same cultural beliefs that when activated were able to create a group experience that was totally in their own minds.
I can picture the exact same scenario happening for our Pedal Power here. Feeling emotional or creeped out on a bible study, and suddenly feels like there is a demon in the room, starts yelling at "it", the bible studies that also fear demons start telling him to stop taunting the demon assuming there must be a demon in the room if this bible teacher is yelling at it, and then in hindsight memory adds detail to the experience that was never really there to begin with. If there was a videocamera in the room when this happened, odds are all we would see is a guy yelling at an empty spot in the room, and some bible students being really freaked out.
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Why do I no longer get attacked and persecuted by the demons, since I left JW,s ?
by pedal power inmost jw.s really believe that they ( as we once did ) are promoting gods will, but what if they really are ?
is it possible that god is supporting them even though they (governing body ) lie, because most jw,s are ignorant of the lies told on their behalf, ?.
when i was a jw i got attacked by the demons bigtime, but not now, and i can only assume that they (demons ) are happy that i am no longer a jw and are now leaving me alone, cant think of any other reason, has god ever supported a group who were similarly found wanting ?.
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JonathanH
I don't understand why pedal power can't or refuses to see the inherent contradiction in saying that demons in the JW are because they are enemies of satan and demons in every other religion is because they are friends of satan. This sort of double think suggests that still has the cult thinking that allows for this sort of contradiction to be held. A person free of that thinking would rightly ask "Is the fact that witnesses are so plagued with demons evidence that they are friends with satan" rather than being paranoid that it is the opposite.
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Why do I no longer get attacked and persecuted by the demons, since I left JW,s ?
by pedal power inmost jw.s really believe that they ( as we once did ) are promoting gods will, but what if they really are ?
is it possible that god is supporting them even though they (governing body ) lie, because most jw,s are ignorant of the lies told on their behalf, ?.
when i was a jw i got attacked by the demons bigtime, but not now, and i can only assume that they (demons ) are happy that i am no longer a jw and are now leaving me alone, cant think of any other reason, has god ever supported a group who were similarly found wanting ?.
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JonathanH
Now to comment on the skeptical side of things again.
Benny Hinn got ridiculously rich showing both the educated and uneducated, the simple and the smart, the mentally disturbed and the mentally healthy supernatural feats. And he was a crook and a fraud. Simply saying that you are a sane person not prone to flights of fancy is meaningless. James Randy is an ex-magician that works to disprove supernatural phenomenon, he says his background as a magician helps because even scientists can be taken in by illusion if they aren't careful. The reason for this is because belief in our personal experience is hard to fight, even though it is one of the worst gauges of reality. It took thousands of years to come up with the scientific method, a means of removing person experience from the equation by relying only on that which is verifiable, quantifiable and predictable amongst a peer group using a solid methodogy meant to remove the uncertainty of personal experience. Prior to that reasoning on the world was done by experiencing it and then rationalizing those experiences. That's when we lived in a demon haunted world. Once we actually started reasoning rather than rationalizing, the demons, and gnomes, and mystical forces magically began to disappear. And the one's that remained were consistent only with the cultures and ideas of the people that experienced them.
Your hypothesis that skeptics never see demons because Satan is hiding from them is also disproven just by the fact that at least one atheist in this topic has experienced "spirits" or whatever, and there are others in the topic that have experienced "wierd things" but do not attribute them to demons. Your hypothesis would only be true if the nature of the demonic visit was expressedly unambiguous. The demon would have to say "Good evening sir, I am a supernatural entity you call a demon (A biblical one, not a hindu, or wiccan, or other kind of demon, those are make believe), now if this is a good time for you, I will proceed to haunt you. Don't take it personally, I'm only doing this because you do not have the divine protection of the Father (that's the christian god.), let's proceed with the haunting." If I had a book that wouldn't burn, my first thought would not be "holy crap, it's a demon, let me get my bible.". My first thought would be "this is highly interesting, let me remove it from the fire and begin documenting this and testing to find an explanation as to why this is so." Strangely enough no person having demon experiences ever seems to have the presence of mind to take this tack, and instead they do something that immediately ends the demon encounter, once again restoring natural order.
Furthermore that brand of reasoning renders any statement equally true. The only reason YOU don't know that our government is run by aliens is because they don't want you to. But that guy in the tin foil hat, he knows the truth. The only reason you haven't seen any hobbits is because they are so good at hiding from humans, but that chubby guy at comic con wearing the Gandolf costume, he's seen them, tolkien saw them too that's why he wrote about them. See how easy it becomes to justify anything if the reasoning behind it is that there is a concious agency that doesn't want you to know about it? When things patently false can be justified using a line of reasoning, then the line of reasoning probably should not be relied on because it lends no credence to that which you are using it for.
With phenomenon that are consistent with what you'd expect from psychologically and culturally motivated experiences such as demon attacks or talking with god, or monsters or visitors from the stars it always comes down to the individual insisting that everyone else may have mental problems, or are easily fooled, or are deluded in some way, but not me, I am not like that, my experiences were for real...and they all say that....which is what you would expect from psychologically motivated experiences.
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Why do I no longer get attacked and persecuted by the demons, since I left JW,s ?
by pedal power inmost jw.s really believe that they ( as we once did ) are promoting gods will, but what if they really are ?
is it possible that god is supporting them even though they (governing body ) lie, because most jw,s are ignorant of the lies told on their behalf, ?.
when i was a jw i got attacked by the demons bigtime, but not now, and i can only assume that they (demons ) are happy that i am no longer a jw and are now leaving me alone, cant think of any other reason, has god ever supported a group who were similarly found wanting ?.
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JonathanH
Alright, I'm going to leave the skeptic track for a second, and reason on the second part of what you're saying, pedal power. The part about maybe they are leaving you alone because the JW are being used by god. This on a logical basis makes zero sense.
This is your hypothesis.
1.Demons attack the JW because they are the true religion.
Evidence of this hypothesis?
2.When you left the Witnesses the Demons left you alone.
Explanation of this evidence?
3.They no longer cared about you because you were no longer one of god's people, they were happy that you left.
Now to reason on this, let's ask some questions.
Do other religions have demonic experiences? Yes. Most of them have their stories about demonic attacks. Then why are the demons attacking them? You could say because they are false religion. But this idea makes premise (1) unfalsifiable. Because if demons attack it is now evidence of both true and false religion.
But now let's ask if Demons leave people alone if they enter or leave other religions. And the answer to that is yes. You can find plenty of testimonials of people who were plagued by demonic attacks until they became born again, pentacostal, catholic. And even more confusing the watchtower and awake have experiences of people that were haunted by demons until they became witnesses. Why would this be, why would demons haunt you until you became a witness? Is it because god offers you protection from demons? If this is the case then (2) Is also unfalsifiable. Both joining and leaving the same religion are both grounds for a demon to attack you, and the water is further muddied by the fact that leaving and joining many religions have the same effect.
So now what you're left with is the fact that JWs experience demons is evidence of them either being true or false religion, and the fact that it stopped when you left is either evidence of God or Satan being happy that you left.
Your premises are not strong enough to draw any conclusions. The fact that you came to the conclusion that you did based on the evidence you have is more likely because you are simply afraid that you made a bad choice.
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151
Why do I no longer get attacked and persecuted by the demons, since I left JW,s ?
by pedal power inmost jw.s really believe that they ( as we once did ) are promoting gods will, but what if they really are ?
is it possible that god is supporting them even though they (governing body ) lie, because most jw,s are ignorant of the lies told on their behalf, ?.
when i was a jw i got attacked by the demons bigtime, but not now, and i can only assume that they (demons ) are happy that i am no longer a jw and are now leaving me alone, cant think of any other reason, has god ever supported a group who were similarly found wanting ?.
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JonathanH
Now before you put too much stock in your own experiences, think about other people who have supernatural experiences that you would find absurd.
Watch this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ0373FD5f4
To us, this looks like insanity and stupidity. Nothing supernatural about it. But if you interviewed the people in this church, they would probably remember things differently. They would probably remember all sorts of wierd things happening that they couldn't explain (though to be honest, I agree there are some wierd things happening that I cannot explain in that video), all sorts of supernatural occurences. But when we watch that video we just see ordinary people seduced by their culture and psychology to experience wierd things that are totally real to them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3ggIkJxSps&feature=related
Or this video of an exorcism of a gay teenager. It's a kid rolling around on the ground while people yell at him. And these people are 100% convinced that this was a real exorcism and it worked. That this was a true example of demonic possession. If you asked them do you think they would say "Well, sure I mean, I was there and it looked like it was just a kid rolling around while we praised god." Or would they say "I know what I experienced, it was real. You weren't there and wouldn't understand. The spirit filled the room and the demon was shouting at all of us, and the poor kid was contorting in unnatural ways and floating off the ground. I know fantasy from reality, I'm not stupid, I was there. This was real."
Actually seeing these things on video, knowing full well that these people believe 100% that they were experiencing something supernatural, do these things look remotely supernatural? Or do they look mundane, and kind of sad and creepy? For those here saying they experienced all sorts of these things, what would a video camera have shown people on youtube? Wierd astonishing events, unexplainable except through slick hollywood special effects? Or just some people acting wierd, and creeped out before resorting to their superstition of choice to save themself? Not to single you out Found Sheep (I think you're a lovely person), but Would we actually see an unburnable book that relinquishes to the word "Jehovah" or would we see a woman freaked out burning a book and saying "jehovah" to herself? People's supernatural experiences always seem amazingly natural when caught by the cold detached eyes of a videocamera, rather than filtered through the incredibly biased and fragile memory of the person that experienced it.
Edit: lol, I like this Benny Hinn compilation set to momma said knock you out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWOTNpKxE3k&NR=1
Just another example of people that would totally claim that unexplainable supernatural things were happening, but was just psychology and culture at work.