Posts by Shining One

94

The Skeptic's Worst Nightmare (S)

by Shining One in

check some of this out and you may see why there are two sides to the issues that are portrayed as so one sided here.

you will immediately smell the b.s.

emanating from the skeptic's book of bible stories!

Shining One

>Well, yes.I invite rebuttal.
Terry

The cross of Calvary stands like a beacon of light down through the ages. A savior became sin that those who would believe were imputed His righteousness and would gain life eternal. You see, Terry. God did not create puppets but men in His image: independently willed beings. He also willed that they would live into eternity, separated or not.
God prepared a saviour from the foundation of the world. He took the pain and the penalty for evil upon Himself. That is the ultimate rebuttal and you are so hard hearted you can't see His grace as it's being offered.
Rex

30

Anthropic Principal Debunks Naturalism

by Shining One in

the anthropic principle .

by dr. norman geisler .

the anthropic principle (greek: anthropos, "human being") states that the universe was fitted from the very first moment of its existence for the emergence of life in general and human life in particular.

Shining One

Dawkins you say? That is the stupidest analogy going....

For you and Satanus:
# Uncaused Cause
1. Objection: If something cannot bring itself into existence, then God cannot exist since something had to bring God into existence. Answer: Not so. You cannot have an infinite regression of causes lest an infinity be crossed (which cannot happen). Therefore, there must be a single uncaused, cause.
2. All things that came into existence were caused to exist. You cannot have an infinite regression of causes (otherwise an infinity of time has been crossed which is impossible because an infinity cannot be crossed). Therefore, logically, there must be a single uncaused cause that did not come into existence.
3. Physicists have determined that the universe is finite and had a beginning and is in fact slowing down.

BTW, (off topic) isn't Dawkins the one who said that abortion is justified because the unborn are non-persons? Then he went on to say that logically the parents or woman should be able to end the child's life after it was born up to about a month of age. There's the kind of reasoning you get with cold, hard logic. You can see that logic in the 'final solution' that the Nazis decided on. Atheistic forms of government have resulted in 200 million premature deaths as the result of war, famine and pestilence brought by war. Oh well, so much for the humanist manifesto, eh?
Rex

30

Anthropic Principal Debunks Naturalism

by Shining One in

the anthropic principle .

by dr. norman geisler .

the anthropic principle (greek: anthropos, "human being") states that the universe was fitted from the very first moment of its existence for the emergence of life in general and human life in particular.

Shining One

"Geisler's not a scientist"

Does one have to be a baseball player to know a lot about baseball? Geisler has more intelligence in his ear lobe that many have in their frontal lobes! LOL
Rex

50

C.S. Lewis statement....

by Shining One in

lewis says jesus' claim to be equal with deity leaves us only one other choice: .

a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

he would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the devil of hell.

Shining One

Why can't Alan see there are two sides to every argument?

I'm afraid he can't. He's been using the same tactics ever since he got naturalism 4-5 years ago. It's a pity what accepting such nonsense does to a person.
Amen

Rex

37

Shining One's Link To A Dishonest ICR Article

by AlanF in

in the thread "the skeptic's worst nightmare" ( http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/96102/2.ashx ) shining one gave a link ( http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&id=2464 ) to an icr (institute for creation research) artcle titled "evolution--impossible to embarass its believers" by the icr's founder henry morris.

why was the soft tissue preserved?

all it means is, "we don't accept what real scientists say.

Shining One

Of course, arguing with someone who has already decided

a/ They are right, and

b/ the evidence doesn't matter (see a/ above)

See about a dozen people on here who follow me around and try to silence others with derision and sarcastic comments.......of course, people who have their comfortable world-view challenged often react in that manner.
R.

30

Anthropic Principal Debunks Naturalism

by Shining One in

the anthropic principle .

by dr. norman geisler .

the anthropic principle (greek: anthropos, "human being") states that the universe was fitted from the very first moment of its existence for the emergence of life in general and human life in particular.

Shining One

The Anthropic Principle
by Dr. Norman Geisler

The anthropic principle (Greek: anthropos, "human being") states that the universe was fitted from the very first moment of its existence for the emergence of life in general and human life in particular. As agnostic astronomer, Robert Jastrow, noted, the universe is amazingly preadapted to the eventual appearance of humanity.1 For if there were even the slightest variation at the moment of the big bang, making conditions different, even to a small degree, no life of any kind would exist. In order for life to be present today an incredibly restrictive set of demands must have been present in the early universe—and they were.

Supporting Evidence

Not only does the scientific evidence point to a beginning of the cosmos, but it points to a very sophisticated high tuning of the universe from the very beginning that makes human life possible. For life to be present today, an incredibly restrictive set of demands must have been present in the early universe:

1. Oxygen comprises 21 percent of the atmosphere. If it were 25 percent, fires would erupt, if 15 percent, human beings would suffocate.

2. If the gravitational force were altered by 1 part in 1040 (that’s 10 followed by forty zeroes), the sun would not exist, and the moon would crash into the earth or sheer off into space.2 Even a slight increase in the force of gravity would result in all the stars being much more massive than our sun, with the effect that the sun would burn too rapidly and erratically to sustain life.

3. If the centrifugal force of planetary movements did not precisely balance the gravitational forces, nothing could be held in orbit around the sun.

4. If the universe was expanding at a rate one millionth more slowly than it is, the temperature on earth would be 10,000 degrees C.3

5. The average distance between stars in our galaxy of 100 billion stars is 30 trillion miles. If that distance was altered slightly, orbits would become erratic, and there would be extreme temperature variations on earth. (Traveling at space shuttle speed, seventeen thousand miles an hour or five miles a second, it would take 201,450 years to travel 30 trillion miles.)

6. Any of the laws of physics can be described as a function of the velocity of light (now defined to be 299,792.458 miles a second). Even a slight variation in the speed of light would alter the other constants and preclude the possibility of life on earth.4

7. If Jupiter was not in its current orbit, we would be bombarded with space material. Jupiter’s gravitational field acts as a cosmic vacuum cleaner, attracting asteroids and comets that would otherwise strike earth.5

8. If the thickness of the earth’s crust was greater, too much oxygen would be transferred to the crust to support life. If it were thinner, volcanic and tectonic activity would make life untenable.6

9. If the rotation of the earth took longer than 24 hours, temperature differences would be too great between night and day. If the rotation period was shorter, atmospheric wind velocities would be too great.

10. Surface temperature differences would be too great if the axial tilt of the earth were altered slightly.

11. If the atmospheric discharge (lightning) rate were greater, there would be too much fire destruction; if it were less, there would be too little nitrogen fixing in the soil.

12. If there were more seismic activity, much life would be lost. If there was less, nutrients on the ocean floors and in river runoff would not be cycled back to the continents through tectonic uplift. Even earthquakes are necessary to sustain life as we know it.

As early as the 1960s it was explained why, on anthropic grounds, "we should expect to observe a world that possesses precisely three spatial dimensions."7 Robert Dicke found "that in fact it may be necessary for the universe to have the enormous size and complexity which modern astronomy has revealed, in order for the earth to be a possible habitation for living beings."8 Likewise, the mass, the entropy level of the universe, the stability of the proton, and innumerable other things must be just right to make life possible.

Theistic Implications

Jastrow summarized the theistic implications well: "The anthropic principle… seems to say that science itself has proven, as a hard fact, that this universe was made, was designed, for man to live in. It’s a very theistic result."9 That is, the incredible balance of multitudinous factors in the universe that make life possible on earth points to "fine tuning" by an intelligent Being. It leads one to believe that the universe was "providentially crafted" for our benefit. Nothing known to human beings is capable of "pretuning" the conditions of the universe to make life possible other than an intelligent Creator. Or, to put it another way, the kind of specificity and order in the universe that makes life possible on earth is just the kind of effect that is known to come from an intelligent cause.

Astronomer Alan Sandage concluded that "the world is too complicated in all of its parts to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception. The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some kind of organizing principle—an architect for believers…."10 And all of the conditions were set from the moment of the universe’s origin.

Stephen Hawking described how the value of many fundamental numbers in nature’s laws "seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life" and how "the initial configuration of the universe" appears to have been "very carefully chosen."11 In spite of the fact that only an intelligent cause can "carefully choose" anything, Hawking at this writing remains skeptical about God. He saw the evidence clearly and asked the right question when he wrote: "There may only be a small number of laws, which are self-consistent and which lead to complicated beings like ourselves who can ask the question: What is the nature of God? And even if there is only one unique set of possible laws, it is only a set of equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to govern?… Although science may solve the problem of how the universe began, it cannot answer the question: Why does the universe bother to exist?" Hawking adds, "I don’t know the answer to that."12

Albert Einstein did not hesitate to answer Hawking’s question when he said, "the harmony of natural law… reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."13

Even Nobel prize winner Steven Weinberg, an atheist, went so far as to say that "it seems to me that if the word ‘God’ is to be of any use, it should be taken to mean an interested God, a creator and lawgiver who established not only the laws of nature and the universe but also standards of good and evil, some personality that is concerned with our actions, something in short that is appropriate for us to worship."14

Thus, the Anthropic Principle is based on the most recent astronomical evidence for the existence of a superintelligent Creator of the cosmos. In short, it provides the evidence for an updated Teleological Argument for God’s existence.

50

C.S. Lewis statement....

by Shining One in

lewis says jesus' claim to be equal with deity leaves us only one other choice: .

a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

he would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the devil of hell.

Shining One

It's not Romans 2, Little Toe. R.

50

C.S. Lewis statement....

by Shining One in

lewis says jesus' claim to be equal with deity leaves us only one other choice: .

a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

he would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the devil of hell.

Shining One

Here is what I posted:
C.S. Lewis says Jesus' claim to be equal with deity leaves us only one other choice:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.**from Mere Christianity

Point one: Jesus claimed to be God (son of God is of the same essence of God).
Point two: If he is not God then he is crazy or evil.
Pont three: Clearly you can't 'straddle the line' because of point one!
Point four: Sheeeesh!

Now parts of Leolaia's post:
*****You know, I love C. S. Lewis. He's a genius. No, not just a genius...he's a god!! In fact, I find his words so inspiring and heart-searching that I cannot believe he is anyone other than God himself. And I'm not the only one. In fact, I have a whole bunch of friends who think the same thing too. Some of them in their younger days even knew his former students (who have since died in the decades since).*****

Scripture says:
"After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep." How could Paul make that claim if it were not true? He is appealing to eyewitness testimony and your sarcastic analogy shows how foolish you are.

Leo again:*****"In fact, our faith is so strong in the deity of C. S. Lewis that we'd die for our faith."***

Eyewitnesses who lived and died FOR the belief in Jesus, they saw Him alive after He had risen,
ACCORDING TO SCRIPTURE, which means BY PROPHECY. Any reasonable person can see that people who are involved in a conspiracy do not die for a lie. Witness the analogy given by Chuck Colson in his book, "Born Again". I'll let you read it. If you are so intelligent you will be able to figure this one out.

******I know our faith is true because of the way I feel his presence when I worship him. Now, one of my friends, this very spiritual dude named John, wrote a very inspiring biography about C. S. Lewis which explains not only how he touches our lives, but also where he came from and how he has given his loving gift of salvation (Oh may C. S. Lewis be praised!!).*****

No need to repeat any more of the details that Leolaia spews on and on........

Here is what 1 Cor. 15 says:
Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.
After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

Those are 'lines of evidence' started in a clear and concise manner. The evidence is backed up by people who witnessed and could testify to the veracity of Paul's claims. All of the NT was written before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE with the exception of John's gospel, letters and Revelation. The dating is in dispute in many circles since you have no reference to the destruction of Jerusalem. Liberals date the books later of course, to give the idea that enough time had elapsed in order to concoct myths. Natualists will always date them later due in part to their presupposition that 'no real prophecy or supernatural can occur'.

Her post is so convoluted that I am not even sure wheter she was trying to bring in Watchtower ideas or scripture or both! People can twist scripture out of context to make 'straw man' arguments. They are either deliberate or foolish in their efforts along these lines of misinterpretation. There is no need to answer such disingenuous arguments. Here they are used to bring oneself acclaim from the rest of the clique that dominates this board. Not much has changed in ex-Watchtowerland!
Rex

10

Without the "bodily reserrection of Jesus" there goes the "Trinity"

by booker-t in

the other day i ran into a jw elder that i knew many years ago as a teenager when i was a "devout" jw and he who has been a "devout" jw for over 40 years started to debate with me.

i tried to avoid him because i have basically stopped debating with jw's on the bible but since we both were at the "dmv" there was a long waiting period.

the elder started on the "trinity" doctrine and said that "born-again christians" hold onto the "bodily reserrection of jesus" doctrine not because they believe it but because they use it as a"magic wand" whenever that cannot answer scriptures that show jesus is less than the father.

Shining One

John 1.14-15 :The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, `He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.'"

(The Word became flesh......sounds like a man to me.)

John 1.1 :In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

(Sounds like deity to me.)

John 20:19-31 :On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

(Again, Jesus is a man. One of the reasons that John wrote the gospel was to counter heretics like the Ebionites and the Doceitans. One taught that Jesus was not truly a man but only 'appeared' to be flesh, the other taught that Jesus was a mere man and not God.)

Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it." A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."
Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

(Flesh and blood man and God incarnate)

Let's go to Luke 24:36-44 now (Another link in the chain of Biblical interpretation that shows the foolish nature of Watchtower doctrine.):

While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet.And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, "Do you have anything here to eat?"
They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence. He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms."

Jesus Deity is claimed by scripture!
John 9.35-38
Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" "Who is he, sir?" the man asked. "Tell me so that I may believe in him." Jesus said, "You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you." Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him. (The Watchtower uses 'obeisance' here to obscure the deity claim to Jesus by scripture.)

John 8.52-59
52. At this the Jews exclaimed, "Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that if anyone keeps your word, he will never taste death. 53. Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?" 54. Jesus replied, "If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. 55. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and keep his word. 56. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad." 57. "You are not yet fifty years old," the Jews said to him, "and you have seen Abraham!" 58. "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"
(The words spoken "Eigo Eime", means "I exist" and are the greek form of the hebrew words in Exodus 3.14 "hayah". This is why the Watchtower intentionally mistranslates the original. They have to avoid the deity claim by Christ to fit their own axioms.)

Luke 1.1-4: Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
John 21: 24. This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. 25. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
(Telling statements by Luke and John.)

The 'tinity' means 'tri-unity' and it is a theological term that came about when heretics attempted to dispute that which had been evident to the Apostles and the original disciples: God has revealed Himself in three persons, who each fullfil a unique role in the life of the believer, yet work in concert to bring about man's salvation.
Rex

37

Shining One's Link To A Dishonest ICR Article

by AlanF in

in the thread "the skeptic's worst nightmare" ( http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/96102/2.ashx ) shining one gave a link ( http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&id=2464 ) to an icr (institute for creation research) artcle titled "evolution--impossible to embarass its believers" by the icr's founder henry morris.

why was the soft tissue preserved?

all it means is, "we don't accept what real scientists say.

Shining One

Hey Pist,
You aren't even in the ballpark. You need to replace the picture of 'Blondie' (Eastwood) with one of 'Tico' .....LOL.
Rex