Jorge's opportunity to debate specific data

[klaus54]

No Jorge. You continue to conflate differing constructs and categories. Can't you comprehend that IF the days in Genesis are metaphors, no miracle is being denied? You certainly get that when it comes to the firmament. Why can't you get it when it comes to the period of time?

What are you conflating:

The first is "What kind of description is Genesis 1". This drives the conclusion the creation proceeded outside of natural processes and over 6 days which thus where 'miracles'. IF Genesis 1 is technical and the creation proceed in a literal 24 hours days as we observe them, then the process had to be disjoint from the natural (a miracle). But if not, if the days are metaphors, then the creation need not to have proceeded in that fashion, and the miracle of creation then is not related to its time frame, and is not denied by a billion year history when natural processes drove a large portion of its unfolding.

The second is that you can't seem to understand that the majority of the miracles described in scripture have no evidence that can shed light on how God implemented them. So we can't say, for instance, whether Christ multiplied the loaves and fishes miraculously, or if His prayer and the boy's unselfish act simply motivated people that were hiding what they brought to share it (or some combination of both).

And the third is that when a miracle is described in scripture, it does not necessarily mean that God did not use natural processes to implement them. For example, the plagues of Egypt. Some of them may have been directed natural phenomena. Does that make them less a miracle if we know a natural cause? I don't think so.

You've got to learn how to process the subtleties Jorge. As it is you are all confused and you keep lashing out at things that don't represent reality in the debate. To deny a 6 day period of time for creation is NOT to deny the miracle of creation. To allow science to help us understand the proper mode of interpretation of a text is not to deny its inspiration.


Jim

Again, I will bring up a point that wasn't addressed by Jorge.

If the correct meaning of the Genesis creation stories is different from Jorgian YECism, then he would be distorting God's Word(tm) in the same manner in which he vehemently accuses everyone with whom he disagrees?

Thinking about Socrates here...

Jorge, isn't it sufficient for you that the Genesis stories tell us that God creates rather than specifically how? I mean you can't even get to Ge 1:3 with an unambiguous literal reading.

K54

[klaus54]

That's a fair question. The "metaphysical commitment", as you refer to it, is inserted in places such as the one that I've highlighted above. Maybe it was once molten ... maybe, I don't know (nor does anyone else). But when you talk about studying volcanic areas today and then projecting what you see into "millions of years ago", you are exceeding what science can tell you because you must make one huge (metaphysical) assumption: that the time is actually there for you to extrapolate your present observations into. The calculations that you speak of all contain that same insertion (it's often so subtle that it goes unperceived, even by veterans in the field).

There's no way around it - every one of us must be founded on some metaphysic. Sadly, the modern "educational" system does a piss-poor job of actually educating people into the philosophical foundations of science and other intellectual quests. Today's "educational" system is almost exclusively oriented towards indoctrinating the student into a paradigm, a worldview, that is in the reigning status.

Jorge

Maybe you don't know but geologists do. Why on "Earth" would God create an obviously basaltic intrusion, knowing that we would discover cooling rates based on laws of heat flow, and do it a kiloyear time frame when it LOOKS like a megayear timeframe?

1) So much for YEC "science" and 2) that's no god I would want to be associated with.

So, why do you want to be associated with such a god?

K54

[rogue06]

Imagine that - an Atheist and a 'Christian' saying the same thing about God's Word. Who would'a thunk it?].

You mean like how you giddily leapt into bed with Richard Dawkins, agreeing wholeheartedly with him when he said that anyone who didn't read Genesis literally was "deluded"? You even started a thread on the pre-crash Tweb crowing about it.

Or how when I posted stuff from an ad that ran for several years in Skeptic magazine that attacked the validity of the Bible saying...

"The cosmos that is revealed in the pages of the Bible is an integral part of the narrative that unfolds in the Bible -- so much so that the credibility of the Bible is dependent upon the validity of its cosmology"

...and you announced how you profoundly agreed with the atheists that wrote it?

When I pointed out that you were agreeing with atheists about how to read and understand the Bible, you indignantly huffed

I'd agree with the Devil himself IF what he said was true.
Could you at least try to get a clue?

So it is perfectly alright for you ("a 'Christian'") to say the same thing about God's Word as an atheist but if anyone else does it then you jump into attack mode and condemn them for it in no uncertain terms.

I believe they have a word for that.

[rogue06]

Those are YOUR words, not mine, and also your attempts at vilification.

Poor little Jorge.

Poor, poor pitiful Jorge.

You whimper and whine about being vilified while you are the one who accuses oxmixmudd of hating God's Word and then proclaim from your judgment seat:

I am now genuinely believing that O-Mudd's faith is actually some pseudo-Christian cult which, as God warns us in 2 Timothy 3:5, "... having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away." If O-Mudd is not there, he is well on his way. I mean, what's next on O-Mudd's list of things to delete / alter from Scripture?

[HMS_Beagle]

There's no way around it - every one of us must be founded on some metaphysic. Sadly, the modern "educational" system does a piss-poor job of actually educating people into the philosophical foundations of science and other intellectual quests. Today's "educational" system is almost exclusively oriented towards indoctrinating the student into a paradigm, a worldview, that is in the reigning status.

The reigning paradigm has a name Jorge. It's called reality. Scientists have been using it for centuries because it works. It produces positive results. It gets the job done.

If you want your YEC fantasy to replace it then you need your fantasy to outperform the scientific method used now. It won't because it can't, and everyone here including you know it. That's why you flap your beak and run from every challenge to test your YEC "science".

[Jedidiah]

I can see why you might be confused here. The Socrates we were referring to was a YEC poster from years gone by. He was intelligent and responsive. That is why the comparison.

Socrates was one who used logic to reason out both the tangible and the intangible. The putative founder of the Gedanken. I see no similarity between that great thinker and Jorge.

Confused.

Santa Klaus54

[Jorge]

Poor little Jorge.

Poor, poor pitiful Jorge.

You whimper and whine about being vilified while you are the one who accuses oxmixmudd of hating God's Word and then proclaim from your judgment seat:

There is no "judgment" here, Dodo. O-Mudd's own words testify for themselves. In a later post O-Mudd confirms this by suggesting alternative versions of what the stories may mean (e.g., the people brought out food that they had hidden and so on). Reminds me of the many blasphemous, anti-biblical stories that folks like yourselves have concocted in order to retain their beliefs (e.g., the Red Sea parted "because of a gale-force wind" or the Jews crossed at "a shallow section of the sea" or Christ didn't die, He "swooned" and many others). O-Mudd does not wish to admit it but he is amongst these people, practicing the same as they do.

BTW, the very same applies to you since your tent is set up squarely in O-Mudd's campground.

So take your "poor Jorge" elsewhere ... you're just making a prize donkey out of yourself, R06.

Jorge

[Jorge]

I can see why you might be confused here. The Socrates we were referring to was a YEC poster from years gone by. He was intelligent and responsive. That is why the comparison.

Santa Klaus is confused in many, many more ways than this.
Just as you may be (regarding me), but in a different way.
Oh well, something has to make you feel 'empowered'.

Jorge

[TheLurch]

That's a fair question. The "metaphysical commitment", as you refer to it, is inserted in places such as the one that I've highlighted above. Maybe it was once molten ... maybe, I don't know (nor does anyone else).

I'd like to dive a little deeper into this. We can easily melt basalts in the lab and study how they cool (there's even a group at Syracuse who melts it in the Geology Department parking lot and have posted videos on YouTube). And we can examine the physical process of cooling as it happens, and then determine how that shapes the resulting rocks, etc. And, based on this, we can see clear parallels between what happens in the lab and what we see in the natural world.

Are you trying to imply that these lab results can't be used as evidence regarding what's happened in the natural world? And, if so, where are the limits to this restriction? Can nothing we do in the lab have applications outside of it?

But when you talk about studying volcanic areas today and then projecting what you see into "millions of years ago", you are exceeding what science can tell you because you must make one huge (metaphysical) assumption: that the time is actually there for you to extrapolate your present observations into. The calculations that you speak of all contain that same insertion (it's often so subtle that it goes unperceived, even by veterans in the field).

I can see where you might conclude that, but the process is actually quite different (or maybe i'm misunderstanding you). The process doesn't involve any projection. It's simply a matter of "We have a volume x of substance y with heat retention properties z - how long will it take to reach ambient temperature?" The answer ends up being in the millions of years, but the logical process itself was time agnostic - there is no a priori commitment to any particular timeframe.

Given that lack of a priori commitment, i'm still not seeing any metaphysical baggage being smuggled into the reasoning process. Which makes me suspect that the issue is in the parti i discussed in the first half of this post, although you're clearly in a better position to clarify that than i am.

[JonF]

I can see why you might be confused here. The Socrates we were referring to was a YEC poster from years gone by. He was intelligent and responsive.

Opinions differ on that.

He was a well-known YEC. I won't out him but his real identity was an open secret.

[Omniskeptical]

Could well be, in Hebrew, but 'unicorn' in the KJV comes from unicornis in the Vulgate, which was translating μονόκερως in the LXX. Despite the attempt to translate from the original languages, a surprising amount of the KJV is indebted to older English translations, which were in many parts still based on the Latin. Translators almost always cheat.

How do they cheat? Do they let dogma win all the time by any chances?

[klaus54]

...
Given that lack of a priori commitment, i'm still not seeing any metaphysical baggage being smuggled into the reasoning process. Which makes me suspect that the issue is in the parti i discussed in the first half of this post, although you're clearly in a better position to clarify that than i am.

I'm gonna take a wild stab at this. Jorge will say that the laws of physics we have known since Antiquity somehow were different during creation week, or during the Fludde, or some such thing.

This would be a corollary to the YEC assault on that there despised "metaphysic" of Uniformitarianism (~shudder~).

K54

P.S. Thanks Jed and Jon for the clarification on "Socrates".

[rogue06]

There is no "judgment" here, Dodo. O-Mudd's own words testify for themselves. In a later post O-Mudd confirms this by suggesting alternative versions of what the stories may mean (e.g., the people brought out food that they had hidden and so on). Reminds me of the many blasphemous, anti-biblical stories that folks like yourselves have concocted in order to retain their beliefs (e.g., the Red Sea parted "because of a gale-force wind" or the Jews crossed at "a shallow section of the sea" or Christ didn't die, He "swooned" and many others). O-Mudd does not wish to admit it but he is amongst these people, practicing the same as they do.

BTW, the very same applies to you since your tent is set up squarely in O-Mudd's campground.

So take your "poor Jorge" elsewhere ... you're just making a prize donkey out of yourself, R06.

Jorge

Ironic that I'm currently debating the most prominent YEC poster on another site who has said

When I teach home bible studies, I ask them who killed Jesus.

Some have been told something, like our misguided secular audience.

The answer I give them is no one. He couldn't litteraly be killed. God manifest in the flesh. His spirit left his body.

He was crucified. He shed blood. He is Alive! In my medical opinion, He was not capable of being killed. What he went thru would have killed a human hours earlier.

I point out that Christ himself said that he died

And this is verified elsewhere

The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree --Acts 5:30

And if Christ didn't die as you teach then by definition He couldn't have been resurrected noting that Paul informs us:

"and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain." --I Cor. 15;14

He refuses to comment, scurrying away and evading providing an explanation and instead prefers claiming how those who aren't YECs deny the Bible (along with a slew of weird and wild claims).

[Omniskeptical]

I point out that Christ himself said that he died

And this is verified elsewhere

The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree --Acts 5:30

A mistranslation of "you had executed" on the verb. Edit: διεχειρίσασθε Killed, G1315 V-AMI-2P

And if Christ didn't die as you teach then by definition He couldn't have been resurrected noting that Paul informs us:

"and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain." --I Cor. 15;14

He refuses to comment, scurrying away and evading providing an explanation and instead prefers claiming how those who aren't YECs deny the Bible (along with a slew of weird and wild claims).

He is an idolater who prefers creationism to Unitarianist Evolution. I prefer my Unitarianism without evolution, but really. This kid is under the delusion that he is Godly wise.

[oxmixmudd]

There is no "judgment" here, Dodo. O-Mudd's own words testify for themselves. In a later post O-Mudd confirms this by suggesting alternative versions of what the stories may mean (e.g., the people brought out food that they had hidden and so on). Reminds me of the many blasphemous, anti-biblical stories that folks like yourselves have concocted in order to retain their beliefs (e.g., the Red Sea parted "because of a gale-force wind" or the Jews crossed at "a shallow section of the sea" or Christ didn't die, He "swooned" and many others). O-Mudd does not wish to admit it but he is amongst these people, practicing the same as they do.

BTW, the very same applies to you since your tent is set up squarely in O-Mudd's campground.

So take your "poor Jorge" elsewhere ... you're just making a prize donkey out of yourself, R06.

Jorge

Jorge - you are on a witch hunt. As I've said many times before, I am so glad you have no real power.

I was defining parameters. I was not proposing those as alternative readings or explanations. We do not KNOW how Christ implemented the miracle. We do not KNOW what He did to make it happen beyond pray. It is arrogance and presumption that say "God did it this way", or "God did it that way" or "There was not even one ounce of human element". The Bible gives us nothing more than a record of the events. And it calls them miracles. No detail on process. So I was also simply showing that we don't have evidence in that case that allows us to determine any of the parameters of the miracle itself. We just know they started with two loaves and some fish, Christ blessed it, and in the end thousands were fed and they collected substantially more (12 baskets IIRC) than they started with.

We DO however have information that helps us understand both the type of literature we are dealing with in Genesis 1, and what some of the physical parameters of the creation are. And that basically divides the two instances into very separate categories which can't be simplistically made equivalent as you are want to do.

You don't listen. You don't even try to understand. You accuse and you malign.

How does that line up with 1 Cor 13, or Gal 5:22?


So what you believe about me is that I am evil. As I've said before. And you search each word for proof. And when you find words you think prove I am evil you pounce.

The problem here is that in your eagerness to say "Aha, I told you so 'witch Witch WITCH!!!!!", you forgot to read what I wrote with understanding. and you commit the sin of being the false accuser, a sin of which I can be quite confident you will not apologize.




Jim