Dredge

I have no problem with God being a "cosmic dictator". And you're right - one reason I strive to comply with God's moral standards is to enhance my chances of gaining eternal life in Heaven ... and this is certainly a "self-serving paradigm" - but so what? I want to go to Heaven, not hell; and I will do whatever it takes to get there. Guess what? We are all "self-serving", every second of every day - breathing oxygen is self-serving. Eating food and drinking water are self-serving. Not stepping in front of a bus is self-serving. Survival is self-serving. Seeking happiness is self-serving. Falling in love is self-serviing. But there's more to complying to God's morality than just being self-serving - I love God and don't want to offend him by sinning against his laws. Plus God gave me life, so I express my thanks and respect for him by obeying him.

It seems to me that Darwin's theory of natural selection is, in effect, a "feral" application of the principals of artificial selection - principals that animal and plant breeders had already been employing for millennia. Darwin used natural selection to explain how heritable changes in a population could occur in a natural ("wild") environment, ie, without human interference. But has 150 years of Darwinism actually advanced the knowledge and capabilities of animal and plant breeders? Darwinism's theory of Common Descent provides atheists with cosy bedtime stories about whales evolving from deers, etc, but a tool of science, it's as useless as a fairy tale. I suspect "long ages" have been read into theories pertaining to geology and cosmology in order to accommadate Common Descent. Ditto for radioactive dating methods. Allusions to Darwinism are everywhere in science because the scientific comminity is dominated by the intellectual cult of atheism. Darwinism has convinced scientists that life is possible anywhere in the universe where conditions are favourable. So they sent instruments out into space to look for it. If they can find life, this will serve to vindicate Darwinsm, and in turn, atheism. I think of SETI as an atheist project.

Because I believe the earth was created before the "six days" of creation mentioned in Genesis 1. If by "evolutionists", you mean those who accept Darwin's theory of Common Decent, then my opinion is they are victims of an elaborate, demonic hoax.And if by "God", you mean the God of the Bible, then those evolutionists who don't believe Adam and Eve were real, historical figures would find that such a belief is incompatible with Scripture - if they bothered to look. And even if the incompatibility was apparent to them, a lot of them would conclude that the Bible must be wrong. If the Bible is wrong, why are they are silly enough to still be Christians?

Everyone. If life is the result of a series of mindless, random accidents, then it cannot have meaning. If you believe it can, then I suggest you are suffering from some kind of delusion.

I wonder how evoution - which is basically the law of the jungle - produced human beings, who don't live by the law of the jungle? This is a bit like trying to the question: How did evolution - which has no intelligence - produce cretures that have intelligence? Believe it or not, such questions are a non-issue to many atheist folks.

Huh?

I need to believe that God exists and that he created me and loves me. I, in turn, need to love God. I also need to believe that God promises me eternal life with him in a heavenly paradise. If I didn't believe all these things, my life would have no meaning and I would want to die as quickly as can be arranged. Any suggestions as to how I might go about it? But even rats learn to act in the interests of their own well-being. Do rats do morality? That sounds reasonable. Yes, but I believe the moral teachings of the Church are infallibly directed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Well, one one hand you have an eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, loving God who is the Author of life and created all that exists out of nothing but his own divine energy - including man, whom he created in His own image, and to whom He promises eternal life in a Heavenly paradise. Since God is the Boss of Eveything that exists and will ever exist, he also has the sovereign right to impose his morality on man, morality that He takes very seriously and expects man to likewise take very seriously. In this scenario, morality is very important. On the other hand, you have a mindless process of random accidents producing a machine called a human being, that lives for a few years and then dies into eternal oblivioin. He comes from nothing and goes back to nothing (so he is nothing, imo). It doesn't matter if a man lives his life as a murderous monster or a loving saint, his future is the same - six foot under. In this scenario, morality is as irrelevant as dust on an elephant's back - if the dust is there, it doesn't matter; if the dust isn't there, it doesn't matter. If you can't see the difference in these two scenarios, then I'm probably wasting my time trying to answer your question.

So goes the spiel of the greatest con-job in the history of mankind. Athesit theology - regardless of how desperatley it is believed and how dogmatically, widely and arrogantly it is preached - does not necessarily equate to a scientific fact.

To address some of the points you make in this post, I will borrow an argument you used in one of your other posts: An appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.

Well, Darwinism has certainly wasted a lot of time and resources - think of the time, effort and taxpayers' dollars that have gone into 150 years of - not just biology - but paleontology, geology, cosmology, etc, gathering and discussing "evidence" to support for the utterly useless theory of Common Descent. How much money has been wasted on SETI, for example, which is a direct consequence of Darwinism?

I can see no reason why a Creationist who categorically rejects Darwinism's theory of Common Descent cannot be a perfectly competant practitioner of applied biology. So now I wondering if all of Darwinism is superflous to applied biology.

It sounds to me like the genome doesn't tell the whole story. So there is much more to be learnt. I'm showing my ignorance here, but just the other day I learnt about the C-value Paradox - what a strange thing! How can the genome of a certain amoeba be larger than the genome of a human being? My fragile, egg-shell mind is struggling to compute that one.

Okay, this sounds like a fair point. But of what use was this information to animal or plant breeders, for example, or to any other form of applied science? You see, I need to be convinced that Darwinism has done more than just provide atheist bedtime stories about how whales evolved from deers, etc.

Sorry, I don't know enough about God to answer this question. I would argue that it is immoral for human beings in any epoch to unilaterally (ie, without God's blessing) commit genocide. But I believe all God's judgements are righteous and just, including his judgements of genocide (what befell the Caanites was small-fry compared to genocide of the Flood, and if the current state of the world is anything to go by, I wouldn't be surprised if another global genocide is on the cards). If you are of the opinion that Yahweh's judgement of genocide is not righteous and just - but in fact, immoral - how can you prove that your opinion is the correct one and Yahweh's opinion is the false one? The foundation of my morality is the Catholic Church, and not my personal interpretation of the Bible. The Bible says "God is love" and that God loves humanity. It also says the ways of man are foolishness to God, so this suggests the potential for man's opinion on morality to be very different to God opinion. As for me, I choose to trust God, rather than man, even if at times I cannot understand the ways of God.

I disagree. Without God, morality is meaningless, because without God, life is meaningless (according to the implications of "science"). If life is meaningless, everything in life is meaningless - love, honour, truth, justice, morals, pain, pleasure. If your definition of immorality includes causing unnecessary pain and suffering, then a car crash is immoral.

Point taken. In the last few days I've been reading up on what Gap Theorist believe and I've come across some preety strange stuff, so like you, I am dubious about accepting the GT label. Yes, I agree. Day Four may describe the creation of our solar system? ... this sounds like a very reasonable conjecture and one which never occurred to me. But I like it and mght add it to my theory - thanks! (Hope this doesn't mean I've infringed your intellectual copyright law.)

The standard athesit response to this apparent conundrum is, "But imagine what can happen over billions of years - improbable things become probable.". The "billions of years" theory is the magic wand that turns scientific impossibilities into "fact". Yeah right ... dump a pile of a million bricks on some land, come back in a billion years time and the bricks may have arranged themselves into the from of 30-room hotel. Sounds so logical! I've noticed that many atheist "scientists" have become very reluctant to expalin how even a "simple" cell can form from inaniamate matter, so they've come up with a "piece-meal" approach - small parts of the cell form and then later other bits are added slowly over time to eventually form a cell. There is no evidence that such a thing is even remotely possible, of course, but atheist theology/pseudo-science doesn't have to be rational to be believed.

Yes, well, the literal interpretation is incomprehensible - to the human mind (read: science) - but so what? My attitude is: It's very mysterious and sounds crazy; nevertheless I accept it as the literal truth. What's being described in Genesis 1 is a miracle, so I accept it as I would any other miracle in the Bible ... that is to say, I have absolutlely no idea how that could possibly happen, but I believe it because it's the Word of God. God doesn't ask us to understand the miracles He performs - because it's utterly impossible to understand them! God asks only that we accept them as truth and as manifestations of His power and glory. I have changed my definition of "evolution" to .... Evolution = Biology + the atheist cult of Darwinism.

This is an old topic ... but a good one. Atheists online have often hurled the accusation at me that Yahweh is an immoral, genocidal monster; citing the extermination of the Caanaites as a prime example. I reply by asking them to prove that genocide is immoral, and also prove that their code of morality is superior to that of Yahweh. Since most atheists' worldview is based on naturalistic evolution, they have no basis for morality except their own opinion, so they have no means of proving that their code of morality is correct. So the accusation that Yahweh (or anyone else, for that matter) is immoral cannot be proven. (Christians can't prove that their morality is correct either, as it depends totally on the reality of God's existence.)

Hello, Mark. Nice to hear from you. Another atheist miracle is the fact that the alleged first "simple" cell reproduced. If the fsc was norhing more than a machine produced by mindless luck, why did it reproduce? Since when do mindless machines reproduce? Why would a mindless machine even need to reproduce? The fact of reproduction strongly suggests that life is not the result of luck, but of designed purpose.

God is awesome.

G'day Mike! Apparently you and I are Gap Theorists - a term I wasn't familiar with until I signed onto this site! The creation of the earth was a major, major event, so if it was created on the first day, why is there no mention of it whatsoever? A very curious ommission, I must say. However, I'm dead against thesitic evolution. It's a theological disaster zone.

Yes, I guess I am a gap theorist.

Thanks for your welcome, Dave. I don't know if my theory is worth starting a new topic over, as it is really based on a small and maybe weak premise - ie, there is no mention of the earth being created on the first day in Genesis 1, which I would expect if indeed the earth was created on that day. As for Goku's possible reference to the gap between when the earth was without form and void and the "six days", I don't have much to say about that either - except that I don't think my theory contradicts Scripture and I have no idea how long the earth existed before the six days. I accept Geneis 1 as the truth, but also as a deep mystery - for example, if the Sun was created on Day Four, what was the "light" that was created on Day One that led to the first evening and morning? On the other hand, there are many compelling and fascinating scientific arguments advanced by YECs. P.S. I just tired to start a new topic in Bible Q&A as you suggested, but couldn't get access. P.P.S. I love your signature! The "Christianity without Christ" bit, esp, sounds a lot like what mainstream Catholicism has been serving up for the last 40 years. They preach cultural Marxism and call it the "Gospel in action" or "Social Justice".