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Updated: added an excerpt from and a link to Cris Putnam’s blog post.
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LogosApologia | December 30, 2010
Everything that begins to exist has a cause.The universe began to exist. Therefore the universe has a cause.
Why couldn’t natural forces have produced the universe? Because there was no nature and there were no natural forces prior to the Big Bang. Because nature itself was created at the Big Bang, the cause of the universe must be something beyond nature—something we must call supernatural. It also means that the supernatural cause of the universe must at least be:
•spaceless because it created space
•timeless because it created time
•immaterial because it created matter
•powerful because it created out of nothing
•intelligent because the creation event and the universe was precisely designed
•personal because it made a choice to convert a state of nothing into something (impersonal forces don’t make choices).Turek & Geisler. I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist. CrosswayBooks; 2004.
Sproul, R.C. Not a Chance : The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000, c1994.
Thanks to Hugh Ross, Norman Geisler, Dr. Frank Turek, Dr. William Lane Craig, RC Sproul, as well as Dr. Henry F. Schaefer III.
Creation Is A Scientific Fact – Final Cut
***
Updated
My View On Creation it’s a fact!
by Cris Putnam
Logos Apologia
December 31, 2010
[…]
PERSONAL VIEW OF CREATION
I strongly believe the Christian worldview is more coherent with reality and science than the naturalistic one. I fall somewhere between the categories of “Historic Creationist” and “Literary framework/ Day age.” I usually say that I am a progressive or “old-earth” creationist. I believe in creation ex nihilo and that the big bang cosmology has decisively confirmed it. Paul writes in Romans One that God’s “eternal power and divine nature” have been made in self-evident in creation and that for this reason atheists are “without excuse” (Rom 1:20). Therefore, I believe that sound science and biblical revelation should not conflict. When there is a perceived conflict there is a problem with either our exegesis or the interpretation of the scientific data. Both must be up for scrutiny. By all appearances the earth appears very old. Without getting into the technicalities of radiometric dating, very easy to understand ice core samples show rings similar to a tree rings which strongly evidence that the earth is far older than young earth proponents imagine. These ice cores have been co related with known volcanic eruptions ash signatures and the dates match up.[i] This evidence is simple and compelling and reveals an earth orders of magnitude older that the young earth creationist model. Not to mention the evidence from geology and cosmology. The evidential case for a very ancient creation is overwhelming. I do not believe God would create the universe to appear old, when it was actually recent. That would seem to constitute a viable excuse, in effect negating Paul’s argument in Romans 1:20. Like many contemporary Hebrew language scholars, I believe that sound exegesis places the creation of the entire universe during an unspecified duration of time “in the beginning” (Gen1:1). I believe God designed and employs a limited amount of evolution but I do not accept common ancestry. Above all, I believe man was uniquely created and given God’s image.
[…]
from the archives:
There was and is, A CAUSE, prior to the big bang By Gunther Ostermann
Christopher Hitchens and David Berlinski Debate on Atheism, God and Religion (2010)
Dandelion Salad 
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OK, I watched did that the time to watch this video.
Ouch.
I’d estimate that 75% of the video is a strawman argument.
The majority of the rest is half truths, pure baloney and sheer lunacy.
I really find it disappointing that anyone would take this video seriously.
I was going to make a response to the outright lies this video presents but because of staggering number of them I gave up. If anyone could tell me what they found particularly interesting I would be curious to know what it is.
Erkd1 — as George Carlin used to say ”there is only problem with this : Logic.
what does logic demand ? it demands clear thinking , using a priori reasoning . in this case it is not so complex .
1 where there is a song , there is a songwriter .
2. where there is a home , there is an architect.
3.where there is a watch , there is a watchmaker.
4.where there is a creation , there is a ( fill in the blank). if it is not Creator , then logic stands against your strawman argument . things created so complex dont come about by accident . random sounds can be understood as accident. but when one hears Bach , one knows that his pieces are by design .
Hence –complex creation made by Creator . to pick up a swiss watch on the side of the road and say that it came about by accident is totally illogical . stare thru the hubbel telescope some time and then walk away staggering at the beauty that you have just seen and say that it came together by an accident . you will find that the words out of your mouth are hollow and illogical .
I can explain why I estimated that 75% of this video is a strawman argument, but why would you say I made a strawman argument? I’m really curious about that now.
By the way, I really doubt you want to trade George Carlin quotes on this subject as that will not work out well for you.
Erkd1 —
In regards to the strawman argument , the argument from the viewpoint of our existence as a chaotic event rather than one from design is just that –straw. it does not hold water. consider the recent studys on Chaos theory and the order found in chaos via ”fractal points”. the work of artist Jackson Pollack has helped clarify this .
you must understand , i am not defending a video , but rather a general worldview of Paley’s” Watch and Watchmaker” Theism as a more rational position .
BTW — i had forgot who you are until Lo reminded me last night . i have always enjoyed having dialogue with you . you are smart and most all polite.
It was within a short time span that the world lost Molly Ivins, Kurt Vonnegut, Utah Phillips and George Carlin. All of those loses were sad for they all had unique voices. I read your article on Carlin and I would agree that he could generally be defined as a misanthrope and that there was shift from his more quirky beginnings but I’ve always enjoyed his work. You are a socially aware individual rocket, you know that if you spend enough time learning, reading or fighting against a lot of the world’s injustice it can be emotionally draining. Its a miracle Lo is not in a rubber cell somewhere! We really don’t know what degree of Carlin’s work you listed is schtick or catharsis, but I am sure it was the later for a lot of his fans like me.
As to my original comment, I was not using “straw” rhetorically as in a porous position that cannot hold water, I meant the logical fallacy known as a “strawman” as in: The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position.
A lot of the video above is about the “beliefs of atheism” and even at one point saying atheism is a itself a religion. All of those parts of the video, and there are a lot of them, are strawman arguments.
Someone might say “but atheism is a religion” and/or “atheism does believe that”. So to point at why this is a strawman I will give you a few examples. Lets say I made a video stating that modern day Christians want to execute gays. I could pepper it with Bible quotes, have speeches from Steven Anderson and video from Uganda and say thats the Christian world view. If you watched it as a Christian, and you do not want to execute gays, then I’d be attacking a position you do not hold. That’s a strawman.
Also in the video is quotes from Scientists that believe in God. Which doesn’t mean anything at all. If you held that as a metric, the more educated the population sample the less God belief there is. In fact, of those that retain belief in God and as they get more educated (as a group, not as a individual) the belief in a personal God diminishes and they are more associated with the belief in the God of Spinoza or Nature’s God or pantheism.
The above video’s main point is the Kalam cosmological argument which uses deductive reasoning. In deductive logic you make a premise which is either sound or unsound, if sound you make another premise which follows the same and then it leads you to your conclusion. A deductive argument is valid or invalid. You can make valid deductive arguments for both conclusions that God must exist and God cannot exist.
For example: The first line of the argument in this video is: “Everything that begins to exist has a cause.” This leads to God must exist.
If you change that first line to be “Everything that exists has a cause” or “Only things that begin to exist do actually exist” then you get the opposite conclusion. Thats why the Kalam is apologetics, its designed to create a conclusion.
You can also challenge if the premises are sound by holding the position that everything, including the universe, is just energy changing forms.
In the end, the Kalam at its best only gives a valid deductive argument for a “cause”. Which is, to say the least, ambiguous. Hard to find the “fact” there as stated by the video title.
And yes Rocket, I remember you too! Somewhere on this website is a few very long debates we’ve had 🙂 I value your input and certainly do not doubt your conviction or sincerity.
Erkd1 –first off allow me to say that the reason why Lo is not in a rubber room and why i am not worn with my activism is that we are not optimists. this is a very important point , because optimism like pessimism is not only devoid of , but opposed to real hope. the hope i refer to is the belief and personal knowledge that christ rose from the dead. Carlin’s later work never had that hope . it had as i said , a maturity in form but not in content . Carlin fell into what Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurilus said ” that which does not move forward goes into retrograde”. since Carlin’s interior state was in retrograde personally , he gave up and became a funny nihilist.
this sequeys into my next point in regards to nihilism . my view on Atheism is even as passionate and sincere as many atheists i have known and respected over the years personally , there seems to be an underlying nihilism there because of their insistence on positing a negative. they may be optimists ( many are) , but without hope. this is no ad hominum on their character , for they would agree with me that they dont believe in hope beyond the grave. what is interesting about the so called New Atheism movement , is that Sam Harris is moving in the direction of consciousness continuing after death , and remaining an atheist at the same time. see , or read the Harris/Hitchens debates on this .
In regards to your point about executing gays by christians . my objection would not be a personal one , but one of the objection of that manner of activity under the NEW covenant . it does not exist. in fact the opposite is stated in the text , ”he who is without sin , cast the first stone ”. the difference between my opinion and the text is crucial . though i happen to personally against the death penalty , to me the final authority of the new testament is against it too. so i am poting to a standard of behavior by which christians should live. what is the standard of behavior that the atheist have ? when the word ”good ” is used , what does that mean to an atheist ? or ethical ?
As far as cause and effect . Ancient causality in the 4 step Aristotle definition of the word has morphed thru history , and was not fully rejected until the modern age. now here comes Quantum to challenge them both .
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Natureboy, you are welcome to start your own blog where you can say whatever you like. I recommend: http://wordpress.com/
http://cnreviews.com/life/society-culture/internet-freedom-of-speech-not-guaranteed_20090426.html
http://www.urbanscout.org/censorship-vs-rewilding/
I ask yet again:
Have you or have you not read Hawking’s new book & Have you or have you not investigated the link I supplied to MLK’s Theology?
They are relevant.
Natureboy, as I said on my post today, MLK’s sotierology cannot be glossed over. Concerning Hawkings’ new book, I plan on reading it soon. Lately I’ve been wrapped up in Shakespeare and haven’t had the time. I have read The God Part of the Brain, and would love to lock horns with you on this one.
Dang it, Lo, the premise doesn’t even make any sense. I am not going to waste any precious minutes of my life watching any of this.
You (and yours) assume I am anti-spiritual. I am spiritual. Spirituality is personal, as is truth.
Love,
Janet
PS ~ Have a great life, Lo! Thought we were in synch on some stuff, but apparently was wrong.
Hi Oop, where did I say that you are not spiritual?
And where did I even give my opinion on this video? I haven’t. I posted it for discussion purposes.
I have no idea how the Universe began although I do have personal beliefs.
Too bad you are deciding not to watch the video but instead criticize it without watching it. “Contempt prior to investigation.”
Most people don’t understand the big bang theory anyway – talking like it was an “explosion” of stuff appearing in empty space out of nowhere and flying out into empty space – highly erroneous description. People assert their gods always existed, so why not assert the same for the universe? So don’t strain yourself. Just assert whatever you want about reality like you assert whatever you want about your gods. Science will move on without you. Assert away.
You should all know by now that Descartes was incorrect: I AM; therefore I think not the other way round.
Yes, thinking, belief, intuition, feelings, spiritual awakening are non quantifiable, but that does not preclude them having TRUTH.
Science likes the quantifiable – and what we are dealing with here is the unquantifiable, yet obvious to some NOT to others.
I believe that below the layers of hurt, pain, dissociation, betrayal, abuse – in the human “heart’ is The Knowing – something some benign and loving presence put inside us that can never be ruptured or lost. It just IS. And it (love? unity? ONEness?) connects us to all living/vibrating things. Our choices make up that level of vibration we connect with and color our “perceptions.”
So my ASSERTION is – unblock, heal, move on to a place whereby you try with all your might to be of service to everyone, as you are able.
If a “personal saviour” concept helps this, then hey! groovey. Works for me and millions of others since we’ve lost our old spiritual connection with the coming of collective agriculture, tribalISM, etc. For years I fought the concept of Jesus – he was NOT a woman, not abused, not modern, ie, not like me. But I have searched and searched for answers and came back to looking at verifiable parts of the Gospel (is this not science) – and at documents in the Nag Hammadi library that the (hierarchal) Catholic Church shunted out. The inability to come to terms with Mary Magdalan has hurt Xianity to the CORE. It’s not a this v. that, it was incorporation of both sides of a coin to REALize the concept of male/female.
I still get mad at any commentary that smacks of Patriarchy (The Course in Miracles drives me nutz in this regard) But I find much of solace in this video, people like Karen Armstrong, Elaine Pagels, and this – which some of you may like –
http://www.bobbrinsmead.com/t_The_Scandal_of_Joshua_Ben_Adam_Pt1.html.
As for the death and persecution of Jesus, Og Mandino wrote a great book with speculations: The Christ Commission. Fun read, but sad, too.
We do not have to have an immature spirituality, but it does take some searching out to get out of it! I thank God I never gave up.
I intend to post some more comments on the video after I watch it a second time.
VIRGINIA , your points against Decarte are well said . but as christian practitioner in the exoteric tradition as opposed to the Gnostic one that Pagels , and Jonas write about , allow me to make my case against the findings at Nag Hammadi.
in those findings you dont have a Jeus who suffers. you have one who was apparently human but not fully human . the 2nd treates of Seth points out that he was above the cross not suffering .
in the gospel of Mark he only says one thing on the cross ”my God my God , why have you forsaken me ”?
regarding the myth of Patriarchy in the new testament . almost all the men look like fools in the 4 gospels , and the almost all the woman get it . they understand christ. they were the first Apostles at his tomb being ”sent out ” to preach to the 12.
this is why Neitzche says that the gospel of christ is ”a womanly religion ”.his contempt proves my point .
you state that Christ was not a woman . oh really ? according to the gospel of Luke he was conceived by the Holy Sipirt and born of a Virgin . why does that tell you >? it tells the reader that he had no male flesh in him . this is called Logospermotokos. he was a male with only female flesh , fully divine , fully human .
concerning the Magdeline –another fallacy . she was the FIRST APOSTLE . the word Apsotle means in greek ”sent one ”. this all four of the canonical gospels agree on. this the Church canonized. as you read more Catholic feminists like Rosemary Ruether , and Dorothy Day , you will begin to see this paradox.
if you think that your suffering has been great inlife , it cannot begin to come close to Christ suffering . see that , see how he really understand you and me and all of us more than we can even comprehend . see the ultimate vulnerability of the God-human Jesus on the cross really suffering for us all , and you will receive a healing that surpasses the mind that science cant even understand if they tried.
This will take me awhile to respond to, but I think you are missing my point(s). So just a few brief ones while I think about what you say a bit more.
If you really think that Christ was the ultimate sufferer, you truly do NOT understand child abuse at all. You are entitled to your opinion, but I have a real guess that you would not have liked growing up as me in the least. – nor it’s aftermath. What the study of Jesus did for me was to see that BEing good, serving others, would ameliorate my own very REAL pain …
There really is no percentage in being spiritually smug. It is very difficult to get to a fatherly idea of God when your own fathers are so awful and it does lead to infantile Christianity as projection will run rampant, even if subconsciously. I brought the point up precisely because I wanted to show this thread something that might be holding them back from embracing the unseen aspect of cosmology.
What studying Jesus’ life IN DEPTH did for me was to show me that there was a whole lot more to the message than the churches I attended ever exposed me to.
I studied esoterISM, many religions, church history and the Course in Miracles – and I suggest you might read Ken Wapnick – who some are kind of aghast at – and then take a look at the other Course commentators. It is entirely possible that Christ DID laugh at the crucifixion. The problems of duality and views about the world, flesh and the DEVIL are still in need of discussion … The concept of resurrection demands we take a very long AND informed look of at them in a historical fashion. Also, most (all?) translations of The Bible leave much to be desired !
More on the video tomorrow . . .
And I will hold to my position, Mary Magdalen has NEVER been accepted by the church any more than Peter accepted her as being the first to see the risen Christ, or have conversation with him.
thanks Virginia for your plain honesty about your life. what i am referring to is not just about his teachings but by the healing that happens with the encounter of the risen Christ. there is nothing like that first hand encounter.
in regards to the other traditions that are Gnostic , that is what i believed until my encounter. during my encounter, i saw him by a spiritual epiphany that he was not laughing on the cross , but that he was cut off from God for my sake . that is the ultimate suffering . no suffering can compare to this . and the reason why was to reconnect us back to God . not a God of gender , or race , or tribe , but the eternal loving One , the living flame of love that burns away all pain and deep interior hurts.
something else to consider on the gender issue of all of this is this : the way Christ came into the world from the orthodox viewpoint , was by bypassing the Patriarchy of male sperm . also , Christ used female images of God like at the end of Matthew 23 –” i would gather you like a Mother gathers her chicks , but you would not have me ”.
concerning the Magdalene . the fact that all 4 gospels were actually canonized by the Church that she was the first Apostle sent out from the tomb is proof positive that they put the stamp of approval on her . but then you may ask –what about her being the ”beloved disciple ”? many think it was her or John . but it never says who it is . my own take on it for what it is worth is that the beloved disciple is a concept for us all to aspire to for intimate union with christ in the here and now .
St. John of the Cross who wrote the dark night of the soul said that the Magdalene was THE perfect example of the soul in pure and driving desire to be with her spiritual beloved . he points out that her coming to the tomb in john’s gospel , she did not even notice the angels . now that is impressive. all she wanted to know is where have you laid him ? where is he ? she understood spiritual deep union with christ . and that should be our goal . to be like her and be the bride of Christ would was slain for us . she saw his suffering . she got it .
Virginia, one more thing . we must remember that the davinci code is fiction , and that having been one for many decades that has moved in catholic mystics circles and studies ..how high a premium the Church puts on St. Mary Magdalene.
you might want to read online Catherine of Emmerich ‘s famous work on Mary Magdalene . i mentioned St. John of the Cross. there are many many others. all approved of by Rome . http://www.ccel.org/ccel/emmerich/lifemary.toc.html
she is someone we look to and pray to for guidance . she is called ”The Passionate One ”. of course this is all spiritual stuff ..never to be confused with this new age watered down prattle of Jesus and the Magdalene having some kind of sexual thing . it never happened . This passion , is involved deeply in the suffering paradoxical joyful Passion Christ . a mystery indeed.
This all seems to be heresy on first hearing. but that just goes to show that real Orthodoxy is the ultimate heresy .
Why not . . .Lemaitre did. Genesis, Catholic interpretation, writ new like a grade schooler’s essay. The arguable interpretation of the word currently presented as ‘created’ (out of nothing?) has become PC (Popular Cosmology.) as he ‘prolly hoped.
Fred Hoyle gave Lemaitre’s “Hypothisis of the Primeval Atom” it’s nickname the ‘Big Bang ‘. . . neither complement nor acquiescence intended.
yeah doc –science moved on without us in the 1940s and gave us the atom bomb . i will take the myths any day to lust for knowledge that invents and destroys and annilates whole human citys . and now science is messing with our genes. genetic engineering into a blade runner universe . ever heard of bio ethics. or is that too much of a strain for us to care about ?
Wow, yet another cloud of horsefeathers carried aloft by by windweaving.
So, anything specific in this video that made you comment, John? You did watch the whole video, yes?
Yes and no. The visuals are beyond silly . . . I found my eyes closing involuntarily. I concentrated on listening to the audio to the extent that I could hear it over the background sonic obfuscation (sorta like a 30’s ‘silent’ movie with a drunken organist at the keyboard.) The commentary is relentless hokum. It reminds me of my Dad’s saying: “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.” Or Tolstoy’s comment on to the effect that modern man has become quite scientific but this has not prevented him from a quite superior idiocy. So many vacuous allusions are made that I would be hard pressed to pick a ‘specific.’ Mistaking rhetoric for reason and grammar for logic is tragicomic. Funny peculiar, not funny amusing. (Mathamatics is language too, and can range just as easily across the gamut of relative veracity as Arabic.) BTW, have you guys ever read an objective translation of the oldest available Genesis'(s) first few ‘chapters?’ To sum up I will use another favorite comment of ‘ol Dad’s: ‘You’re full of prune juice.’
Thanks for watching some of the video. Other than not liking his presentation, is there anything in particular he said that you’d like to comment on? How do you think the Universe came about?
Albert E remarked, as I recall, that there are only two things that are infinite . . . the universe and human stupidity. But, he said that he was not absolutely sure about the universe. That said, I have no opinion on why, never mind how, there is anything. The subject jams my mensal gearbox. TAO
horsefeathers ! ?? you must be confusing a Marx brothers movie with serious cosmological discussion.
Thanks for the laugh . . . you were kidding weren’t you? It’s good to find occasional amusement in this Age of Incurious, where ignorance is celebrated and massacre is mundane. As Old Jack remarked (In McKinley Kantor’s book of the same name) about the early Yuppies: ‘Settle for the half-assed, and then, by God, admire it.” But if Serius cosmological stuff is your forte, try -A Different Approach to Cosmology- [Hoyle, Burbridge & Nerlikar] For more comment by ‘scientists’ less ‘out of context’ ogle -Mind. LIfe and Universe- [Margulis & Punset.
why blimy mr. Bland , is not Aristotle enough for you ?
granted , ancient causality isnt perfect , but the postmoderns are tied up in string theory between Einstein and Quantum like the blind leading the naked.
Well, i hate to disappoint you, so i’ll say a bit about the text you present. Thank you for bringing up interesting points of view in a thoughtful way. A beginning of any type is an event horizon, where our usual forms of thought, logic, language, and reasoning do not apply, so i see it as unimportant to speculate or try to apply our usual forms. Those who wish to may, and i wish them a happy time of it, but i do not wish to. i am here now, and there’s plenty of mystery wrapped up in that, direct experiences, accessible through my body and its kinship with the soil, its lung-mediated continuousness with the entire atmosphere. Beyond the text here, i won’t comment, because i’m not spending 45 minutes on a video about distance. i don’t go to videos, the internet, blogs, no, not even books, for contact with God, Goddess, the Gods, Mysteries, or Causality: i go outside, where the living creation is (and deeply inside, in another sense). We are part of it and its effulgence suffuses us, and we can know this directly without doctrine. Events like a beginning are very far away in spacetime. God as imagined by most English-speakers is, despite the protests of some, also very far away, not to mention male and singular. Now, if you want to present material that speaks of the living divinity shining back at me from every pair of eyes and every root and leaf and cell and mycelial thread, or if you want to help convince today’s faithful that they have an obligation to the most threatened of life forms and to creation, or if you want to widen the perception of materialist activists to techniques and phenomena that can deeply empower and regenerate them and their work, or if you want to link transcendence with immanence, then you’ve captured my interest. i’ll meditate next to you, or join you in worship of a deity (or deities!) that is/are present, immanent, and compatible with physics and especially biology, and i’ll welcome you doing holy magic with me as we face tear gas at a protest, but i won’t join into arguments, nor try to make anybody else wrong. You want comments, but won’t make one on the subject? i’ll goggle with you in awe for a moment at a photo of a galaxy, or wonder with you and Arthur at the religious sophistication of preconquest peoples, or link with you in a ritual calling a numinous causal agent nearer or bringing supernal opposition to war further into the world of people, but the interesting parts of cosmology and theology come in where they enter this minute, this place, this breath. Far away, they can’t generate more than a few minutes of interest for me online.
I generally don’t comment on the blog posts on Dandelion Salad for 2 reasons, 1) I don’t have the time to do so as I’m busy running the blog; and 2) it’s not my personal blog.
Sorry you didn’t watch the video.
you say you are interested in linking transcendence and immanence…then i give you the paradox of the God-human Jesus of Nazareth .
not the fictitious jesus of new agers , nor one of the Euro centric fundamentalists , but the one who lives in the hearts of humans , very present NOW , here in the world , yet paradoxically beyond it .
Jesus? Wasn’t he the pretty wise guy who said things very much out of line with the old testament? Things like that the birds of the field and such things didn’t need fancy clothes but looked better than humans in their most splendid garments?
Wasn’t Jesus the guy who was killed by those in power for being a troublemaker, only to be integrated in religion by those in power again after that to co-erce people into being tame and to accept that the world isn’t fair because those in power are going to abuse the hell out of them at every point?
I’m sorry guys, I have decided not to watch this video. And I have decided that I will write no more on this subject either, because I’m bound to become intentionally offensive because I just think creationism is very very very silly. Either believe in the written word as it is written, or don’t! If you believe in creationism, then you must believe that a lot of what is written in the bible is complete nonsense. What a basis for a religion.
Ah, you see, I’m becoming offensive already.
Zot, how I would LOVE to do all those wonderful things you talk about with you and with anyone else interested. It IS all about the real world: the one we were born into, the one we live on and the one in which we will be laid to rest eventually again. The one of which we are made and the one we will give everything back to again when we go, to be integrated into the world again and go on to live on in the living things that come after us. I don’t want to go to a place far away from this planet once I die. I want to stay here and sustain the planet which has sustained me from well before I was born!
Arthur, how Christophobic of you!
I just love being stereotyped as a typical mindless Caucasian Christian Fundamentalist. Remember pal, Jesus the troublemaker was crucified by men protecting their tribes. It’s time to come out of the dark ages into to the light of true universalism.
Oh dear, I can’t stop after all. I thought Jesus was crucified by the Romans and the ruling religious class, and not by the people really. Well yeah, the priets and scribes and farizees did a great job in getting the mob all bloodthirsty and in a rage, so they were co-erced in the killing, but I think even in the bible it would be quite easy to point fingers at a few who were particularly guilty of bringing his death about. They would all be people high up in the pyramid of civilization: rich and powerful people. That does not fit in with tribes, but with civilization.
It remains interesting that Jesus was later accepted to be the son of god by the same religion that killed him in the first place. I know the difference between the Jews and the countless different christian faiths, but they do all stem from the same trunk, right? I always found it odd that if this god is so omnipotent and all, that he failed so miserably to make clear to those he created what true belief in him should be like!
True universalism sounds like hell to me. Depends on your definition perhaps though. What I hear in this is that you are for one faith for the whole planet. That doesn’t make a single bit of sense to me. You think there should be one faith that tells all people around the globe how to live. Thing is that the way to live is mostly dictated by your surroundings. You have to adapt to the land and all its other inhabitants, and then you can live well. One way of life suggests that the world has to be adapted to humans, which is of course what civilization has been doing for about 10.000 years now, and see where it brought us: to the edge of a steep cliff. The natural world and civilization both are in the middle of collapse because civilized people are all trying to live in roughly one universal way. And it’s the wrong way at any rate, even for one small tribe. Thinking that you are above your fellow species in the community of life soon leads to the exploitation of the rest of the community, and ultimately to the death of the whole community, humans included.
If by dark ages you mean the times when small bands of people lived as contributing parts of the community of all life rather than as an occupying force, then by all means, let the dark ages come back as soon as possible please!
This ‘bedtime story for Creationists’ is entertaining, but not convincing. Shorn of the Mickey Mouse montage, Christian fundamentalist sophistry, anti-Islamic bigotry and distracting music, it is based merely on the speculation that the universe is finite. (If it isn’t a closed or isolated system, the second law of thermodynamics has no force; ‘heat death’ — and maybe quasi-medieval, neo-Malthusian dogma! — dies.)
If the ‘Big Bang’ (BB) mysteriously brought us space and time (hence nothing existed ‘before’ it), the universe becomes incomprehensible. Since explosions generally increase entropy, a prime violator of the 2nd Law is needed to make the BB produce order and constant expansion … ie, God.
God is conveniently an eternal and external being to whom the limitations of logic do not apply; a deus ex machina apparently NEEDED to make the BB theory work. Otherwise, despite its observational confirmations it is preposterous. The Steady State (SS) theory in that sense is at least no worse.
Indeed, one might as well believe the universe is infinite and eternally creative as believe that an infinite and eternal (but transcendent) being ‘created’ it ex nihilo. Creation out of nothing by something or out of nothing by nothing are just as bad logically.
Both BB and SS theories can be made compatible with the existence of a God (though maybe not a Christian, Judaic or Islamic God), as both theories ultimately are forced to reject the Second Law of Thermodynamics and universal entropy — if the universe is a closed system, something else must not be.
SS theory does not require the existence of a transcendent God, but instead that of an immanent one. But the latter lacks the property many atheists — and non-theists without a Faith in ‘no-God’, just not Faith in the God(s) offered by the various religions — reject in the conservative concept of God: blind obedience to an omniscient and omnipotent ruler, one with absolute power gained from being able, as it were, to stand outside the universe, in a way a ruling class might wish to (but cannot) stand outside of society. The real debate here is political.
However, I imagine few people on either side would reject the idea that the universe is intricately ordered (‘fine-tuned’) and would hardly exist otherwise. So why not say the universe IS God? And we are part of it.
How can the fine-tuning come about without an external creator/regulator? Chance events can lead to the growth of a system which is not governed by chance; my parents met on a blind date for example! Seriously, there is nothing about the BB or SS theories which compels belief in a Biblical God, or the nonexistence of that God. An immanent ‘God’ of some kind, where that notion is equated with order, maybe even a moral order, is another matter. But originating design by a supernatural being is not necessary to that proposition.
Thanks for your comments, Robert, and for watching the whole video.
Robert, Carnot’s 2nd law of Thermodynamics does not necessarily disprove the philosophical proposition of creation ex nihlio, because entropy cannot destroy anti-matter. Entropy deals with matter only which brings Spinoza’s deus sive natura Monism into question. The eternality of radial energy needs to be re-personalized and non-politicized in regards to the possibility of a living God. You are right in the lack of logic in regards to nothing producing something and something producing something. Both are equally absurd propositions but as Kierkegaard points out the objective uncertainty is held fast by virtue of the absurd. Those of us on the faith side of the issue are more than willing to admit our absurdity and the Kantian proposition of the limits of pure reason. But most rationalists remain unreasonable in not admitting the absurdity of their position.
Ironically, as recent discoveries of fractals have shown that there is order in chaos, exploding chaos theory it would not be too far of a reach to propose teleology if one hears random sounds one would hear them as indeterminate. But hearing a Bach cantata determinacy and order is irrefutable. Such brilliant composition proves that there is a composer. Need I say more?
So, anyone who watched this like to comment?
Right… for a while I thought that there must be a twist in this article somewhere, where it shows how insane the claims in the text (and in the first minutes of the video I watched) are. The twist didn’t come. This is serious then? What a disappointment!
I’m somewhat tempted to debunk these claims which are presented as scientifically proven facts. It wouldn’t be difficult, because there is just no right logic in any of it. From experience, however, I know that no amount of reason is going to make a change, so I’m not too bothered to waste time on this.
But still I would like to make one point.
Pre-agricultural people were animists. This was a worldwide thing. It means that these people saw sentient beings in all animals, plants, but also in rocks, rivers, mountains, the sun and moon and stars, winds, etc. These people had a great understanding of all life around them, and saw them quite often as something compared to brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, etc. I suppose that most agreeing with the text above will see this as silly superstition rather than of these people having a great understanding of the living world around them. Then, about 10.000 years ago, agriculture was invented and the non-human world suddenly was divided in those species which were useful and those which were competing with you for those useful species. The useful ones were to be tamed and cultivated, and the useless ones had to be kept at bay, or outright killed. That was the start of property and the start of the faulty and unreal dividing line between humans and “nature”. This distancing from the rest of the world made for a very unfortunate theological development: a deity which either protected you and your valuable property from nature, or one that punished you for doing something wrong by throwing nature’s claws and fangs at you. The property side of the story means the emergence of the haves and have-nots. The have-nots had to work hard to be able to survive, often abuses in many ways by the haves. From this rather stupid belief, all the modern big religions have sprung. Time on earth is bound to be terrible, but you must bear it, and if you do that well, you’ll end up in a better place somewhere in space or a paralel universe (that’s what it boils down to, right?). In other words, this is where the idea of a Saviour comes in. This ONLY makes sense in the civilized hierarchical world of totalitarian agriculture. No tribe would have understood the need for a Saviour, because life was usually pretty good, and this earth was all they needed. What use did they have for a heaven? Moreover, time and again they emphasise the division between humans and nature, stating it as a fact, whereas we of course really are just another ape, just as unique and sacred as all other species on earth.
Oh damn, now I DID waste time on all this…
ethnocentric tribalism must be super ceded by christic -universalism . animism and tribalism belongs to a world that was in the process of an evolving consciousness . but as the Axiel age of pre-Christ era has come and gone , Christ came to bring the Archimedean point of further evolution . it is time to cease the resistance to the Risen One and move forward to a Christo-Genesis as Teliard de Chardin points out .
Pfffffff, I’m sorry (oh no, I’m not), but this just makes me laugh. Animism and tribalism belong to a world that was in the process of evolving consciousness? You say that these people were not very conscious yet? Does that go for the few remaining tribal people too? Don’t let them hear you, mate, or they’ll be mightily pissed off!
The Christian is conscious? Conscious of the wars waged in the religion’s name? Conscious of the killing of the planet because Christianity sees civilized humans (white ones preferably) as being on top of the rest of the living world, so that the rest of the living world is there just for us to use?
You’re saying that Christianity improved things a lot for people and the rest of the living world? You’re saying that tribal people, with their great understanding of the land they lived on and with their much more egalitarian organisation, were just dumb beasts with no clue of what they were doing?
I can see already how you’ll counter all this. I’ve had these discussions too often already, and they always go the same way.
Damned, I’m pissed off. But fortunately I’m laughing at all this too. Silly….
By the by, I would say that we live in the least conscious age ever. People know more about tv programs than about the soil they live on. They care more about the fate of some made-up people in a movie than about the real people that live directly around them. They care more about their cars and mobile phones than about the non-human people who live directly around them. They know better how to find bargains in a supermarket than how to find natural medicine from the living world directly around them. They care more about the economy than the living world. And those who believe in any of the major modern religions care more for a made-up place far away from the real planet than about the living planet that sustains them, as it has their ancestors and will -if we don’t continue ruining it- our children.
Civilized people are not conscious at all. They live in a fantasy world and they kill the real world to feed their fantasies.
i am referring to Christ consciousness as the evolving process over the arc of time. i agree about the techno-autism of our age. but don’t think for one moment that going back to tribal wars and factions and animism is the antidote to the age of oblivion . the antidote and the raising of consciousness is to embrace the risen Christ. not to be confused with its perversion called Christianity .
That leaves me to wonder what you believe in then. If a lot of what Christianity stands for is a perversity, what parts of it did you choose to accept, and what parts not? And how did you make those choices?
As for tribal wars, that’s a common misunderstanding of tribal times. Never before has there been such violence as in post-tribal life, and never before as much as the last very few years. Civilized wars are about completely breaking and often annihalating another nation. Tribal warfare was as a rule much more like the modern day football matches. They were highly ritualized fights, where bravery mattered much more than killing as many others as possible. Sometimes people died, but hardly ever were whole other tribes killed off. Tribal wars functioned mostly to determine boundaries between tribes. Territorial behaviour as it were. That is quite different from modern warfare, which is to take over whole nations and kill or convert the people there to your own standards. There are plenty of examples of such warfare in the name of god in the bible.
Arthur — fair enough . how i came to the Jesus that is against Christianity , is that he came to me 36 years ago . this is all subjective and unprovable as creation it self , but then so are alot of things in life. one has to go with ones gut and a changed life .
as far as tribalism …verses my concept of christian universalism , i wrote a piece for a British blog Majority rights called ”Christian universalism verses ethnocentrism : parallels and opposites. it deals with the non violent early christian resistance to the roman empire and the early Ostrogoths violent tribal resistance to the same Empire. this is something you may want to check out for a few reasons –
http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/ethocentrism_and_christian_universalism_opposites_and_parallels/
1. tribalism is noble in the fact that it resists empire.
2. tribalism is not noble because it places a heavy emphasis on blood lines that cause conflict.
3. christian universalism seeks to transcend the bloodline human divide and unite people in a real unity , not a multicultural fake substitute that has no power in the long run to unite. this power that is needed goes ”beyond nature ” just as Christ resurrection living within a person , and or persons goes beyond nature , and ancient animism .
in regards to the god of the bible as you say , Jesus of Nazareth was not a part of any violence whatsoever. the whole idea of him being what is called the paradox of the God-man cannot be found in a common syllogism . if ..and this is a big IF .. the message is really true after all , i submit for your analysis that Christ alive is the evolving tipping point away from mankind in its youth where tribal , city state , nation state , Empire structures etc have had their day . it really is time to move on . i grant you that the IF is a big one .
Based on the title of this one, I’m so glad I lost the speakers to this PC! Trust I’ll spare my laptop the RAM. But still holding out hope, lo, that this is but a a sardonic snipe at creationists (sorry white man in the sky for non-existing you… But you do look good on Buonarotti’s ceiling nevertheless!)
Gee, I hope some people leave comments …
FASCINATING.
Thanks, Virginia, I was thinking the exact same thing. Lots of views but so very quiet in the discussion area.
Which probably is because most of the people reading this can’t believe that this is serious.