Two potential creation scenarios

[agnosticatheist]

Let's assume for the sake of this debate that the following premises are true:

A: The Christian God exists

B: The Christian God created the universe

Now, let's consider two possible creation scenarios.

Scenario 1: God created each species in a separate creation event.

Scenario 1 questions for debate:

1. Why would God create each species in separate creation events and yet make it appear that each species emerged from earlier lifeforms? Wouldn't that make God dishonest?

2. The Bible says that God is trustworthy; can he still be trusted if he made it look like large-scale evolution has taken place when in fact it hasn't?

3. Why would God make it look like large-scale evolution has taken place when in fact it hasn't, knowing full well that this will cause many to doubt God's existence?

Scenario 2: God created the conditions in which carbon-based lifeforms could emerge and evolve on Earth, and eventually lead to the emergence of Homo Sapiens, which God would give a soul to (and perhaps make some other minor changes to), which would result in the creation of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, or Modern Humans.

Scenario B Question for debate:

1. Why would God go to all that trouble when he could simply create each species in separate creation events?

Here's a broader set of questions that apply to both scenarios:

Why would God create lifeforms other than humans? Clearly humans are important because they "house" the human soul. But what about Wolves? Crocodiles? Crows? Gorillas?

What is the role of non-human lifeforms in God's "plan"?

Do they have souls too? Consciousness/awareness is a state that people claim is possible due to the soul.

Well, the more we observe and study the non-human natural world, the more it seems that consciousness/awareness exists on a spectrum, from human-level awareness (or perhaps higher...), down to complete non-consciousness/non-awareness (e.g. bacteria). There isn't some absolute line where life is divided between conscious and non-conscious, except for maybe at the "lower lifeform levels", but definitely not at the "higher lifeform levels". Dogs are conscious, they just aren't conscious to the same degree that humans are.

So, why create lifeforms besides humans and have consciousness exist on a spectrum?

Why would God do this knowing full well that it would cause people to question his existence?

It just seems to be such an interesting coincidence that God created lifeform consciousness on a spectrum.

[Bust Nak]

Bust Nak: I am sorry. I have read your post 3 or 4 times, and am still uncertain as to its content, or what your question is.

Let me be more explicit: I was accusing you of contradicting yourself.

You accept the idea that an organism adapting to its environment, by selecting out existing traits that are non-advantageous, when you said beetle evolved into lots of species of beetles.

At the same time.

You reject the idea that an organism adapting to its environment, by selecting out existing traits that are non-advantageous, when you said God would not choose to evolved microbes into humans.

[Volbrigade]

[Replying to post 178 by Nobelx]

There are hundreds of different methods to determine the age of physical entities; methods that are independent of each other and that work together and give a coherent picture of the age of almost anything, from the universe itself down to fossils and DNA.

That is true.

The problem for the materialist, whose hope and faith is that there is no God, matter invented itself, and who has accepted a materialist fairy tale myth of microbes morphing into men, is that those methods point to a young earth, and the veracity of the Genesis account.

If I were to meet you, face to face, and wanted to ascertain your age -- and you didn't want to reveal it to me -- then I would have to make assumptions, based on the evidence in front of me, and by making comparisons between you, and people whose age I DO know the age of.

The problem with "dating" our planet and universe, is that we there is only one. There is nothing to compare it to. When you say "we know the age of the sun", that is based on certain presuppositional assumptions -- the first being "given that the Genesis report is untrue."

I have been through this ad nauseum on this thread and elsewhere, and am only responding because your are a newcomer to the party. Please feel free to read the entire thread, and if you have any specific questions, I will entertain them. But I don't intend to endlessly rehash the entire argument with the limitless stream of those who, for their own personal reasons, prefer to believe (e.g.) the universe is eternal, but God isn't; and who, in response to the fundamental problem of "what caused the universe?" simply make up an excuse of out wholecloth -- "it doesn't need one" (borrowing from another thread).

Volbrigade wrote:

Bust Nak: I am sorry. I have read your post 3 or 4 times, and am still uncertain as to its content, or what your question is.

Let me be more explicit: I was accusing you of contradicting yourself.

You accept the idea that an organism adapting to its environment, by selecting out existing traits that are non-advantageous, when you said beetle evolved into lots of species of beetles.

At the same time.

You reject the idea that an organism adapting to its environment, by selecting out existing traits that are non-advantageous, when you said God would not choose to evolved microbes into humans.

Allow me to be explicit, as well.

We're talking about diametrically opposed things.

In the first instance -- beetles -- you have an organism that was initially designed with the genetic diversity to speciate into numerous and diverse forms, in response to environmental pressure.

This principle has been exhaustively proven by both natural, and artificial selection. It involves the selecting out of the information for existing traits; not the introduction of new information (and please -- may I be spared the tired, hackneyed complaint that the term "information" is "anthropocentric"? Semantical games will not alter the latent reality that DNA is an information code).

Example: a pedigreed dog breed will have been selected, due to specific traits in its genome, to the exclusion of others (of course, in artificial selection, certain mutations may be cultivated that would prove disastrous in the wild -- e.g., the deformed heads of certain breeds of bulldogs). If you mate a mongrel with a pedigree, you have introduced genetic diversity into the offspring that make it useless as a example of the desired breed (though perhaps generating a "better dog" ). Are we together to far?

But you will never cultivate the emergence of wings on a canine species. That information does not exist in its genome. You cannot get blood from a turnip, as the saying goes.

But that is exactly what m2m requires.

From the initial "turnip" of a randomly assembled living cell (which could never occur; matter "acting according its properties" always acts toward entropy and chaos; not the spontaneous generation of information. And certainly not the spontaneous generation of complex information, such as the structures and functions of a living cell), you must not only magically generate blood: but muscle, nerves, bone, circulatory and respiratory systems; and organs exquisitely designed for their function -- eyes, ears, wings... and on and on and on.

Gentlemen -- and ladies, of course -- I am delighted to inform you that the whole charade is stuff and nonsense, top to bottom. There is a better explanation; one that conforms to the truth of our existence; and I invite you to abandon the simplistic myth of your upbringing, and embrace the exhilarating reality that we are made for a purpose, in a universe that was designed for our existence, by a God that is sovereign, and who loves us enough to experience death on our behalf.

[Danmark]

The problem for the materialist, whose hope and faith is that there is no God, matter invented itself, and who has accepted a materialist fairy tale myth of microbes morphing into men, is that those methods point to a young earth, and the veracity of the Genesis account.
....
But you will never cultivate the emergence of wings on a canine species. That information does not exist in its genome. You cannot get blood from a turnip, as the saying goes.

But that is exactly what m2m requires.

You continue to demonstrate you do not have a clue what a 'materialist' [I would say 'naturalist'] believes. 'God' is simply irrelevant to him, since there is no evidence of God in the natural world. He does not have 'faith' there is no God, he just doesn't believe in goblins, gremlins or gods.

You also continue to demonstrate you completely misunderstand the process of evolution. The theory does not contend microbes 'morphed' into men. It does not contend dogs may grow wings. You are arguing against strawmen, while constructing fantasies about how radiometric dating, geological forces, biology and perhaps all of science works.
Fairies and fantasies are your field, not science. You claim to believe in the 'God hoax' and are projecting it on to science.

[Volbrigade]

[Replying to post 182 by Danmark]

LOL -- against my better judgment, I'm going to bite --

You continue to demonstrate you do not have a clue what a 'materialist' [I would say 'naturalist'] believes.

Well, I have to challenge that statement, being as I was once a materialist myself.

Now, if you want to claim I have no idea what YOU, specifically, believe -- you will get no argument from me.

Do you know what you believe?

Do you have a coherent, explanatory belief system as to what your purpose is in this life?

Can you explain why the world exists? Can you provide any explanation for why you are of any more intrinsic value or worth than the bovine I consumed for lunch yesterday? Can you provide scientific evidence for any claim you make in that regard?

'God' is simply irrelevant to him, since there is no evidence of God in the natural world.

The entire natural world IS evidence of His existence. The failure, or refusal, to see that merely underscores an a priori atheopathic bias.

The only question in that regard is whether that bias is deliberate; or ingrained, indoctrinated, unconscious.

Either way -- it is totally opaque, and antithetical, to the truth.

[Clownboat]

[Replying to post 171 by Clownboat]

For me, humans sacrifice to god concepts is enough of a reason to reject religious tales, but for the Mayans and Aztecs, this would not have been so off putting.

Our western, materialistic, "scientific" culture is hardly innocent on that count.

Since 1973, over 50 million humans have been "sacrificed" at the alter of sexual permissiveness, in the USA alone. The justification for this slaughter has been, at heart, that there is no God to bestow upon these lives value and and worth; nor to endow them with inalienable rights.

Those same criteria apply to each of us, under the parameters of m2m evolutionism.

Why should you be upset that bags of chemicals sacrifice other bags of chemicals to non-existent "gods"? They are merely doing what they are determined to do, by the same evolutionary circumstances and conditions that turned microbes into men.

"It's all good", bro.

FYI -- the sacrificial system put in place in anticipation of the one accomplished on Calvary, was of animals, not humans. Judeo-Christianity insists on marking the difference, you see.

The sacrifices were a picture of the one to be made by Jesus; who was both a man, and the "very God of very God". And it perfectly fulfilled the atonement of sacrifice: the innocent for the guilty. Notice that even the Jews no longer engage in it, since the destruction of their Temple -- just as Jesus predicted. And Christians, of course, have no need of it any longer.

I am aware none of this means anything to you. That is not my affair.

You ask "what have I ('you') done that is so bad?"

The answer will be meaningless to you. But that does not mean it does not have meaning.

I have participated in the original sin of rejecting the Creator; of putting myself on the first order of magnitude in place of Him. That doesn't sound so bad, does it?

But it is the sin from which all others follow. Only by being justified with God can we overcome this inherent sin nature. Jesus provides that justification. For free. You don't even have to do anything: in fact, you can't. He did it all.

Besides -- from a m2m perspective, the whole concept of "good" and "bad", relative to human behavior, is a parasite on the "natural law" which is a shadow of God's Law; and of the Judeo-Christian ethos which has informed Western society (and through it, the world) for 2 millennia.

There is no "scientific" explanation for why anyone should do, or refrain from doing, anything.

Prove, scientifically, that you have any intrinsic value. Or that murder is anything other than one bag of chemicals doing something to another.

Dan--

It's good to see Baumgardner's theory getting attention from other scientists. Much research is needed to better understand the mechanisms associated with CPT, to either verify its validity, or to modify or reject it in search of more accurate models.

Objections from one or two scientists do not constitute a falsification of the theory, however.

Oh -- and I am well versed in the cultural relativism associated with the study of Anthropology, as undertaken by those with an m2m bias.

It has no more validity than the m2m hoax itself does.

Why did you quote me? You did not answer my question, but instead preached against abortion and some form of evolution that only exists in creationist circles. Then, ironically, you refer to this creationist made up term and call it a hoax. This all seems very odd to me.

I will assume you got stumped by the question, have no answer for the absurdity of human sacrifice to god concepts and are embarrassed and therefore your instincts led you to preach against your default issues (Evolution and now it seems abortion as well).

Thanks for addressing nothing and giving us your un-asked for take on abortion/evolution though.

I have no reason to believe that you are here to debate, therefore I will not waste my time asking the questions to you again and will instead link to your non-answers to provide as examples to people on the fence with their beliefs.

If you will not debate, you will likely be an example.

[Clownboat]

The problem for the materialist, whose hope and faith is that there is no God

At least you're consistent. Your accuracy of what a materialist is, is about as accurate as your description of Evolution.

"Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and consciousness, are the result of material interactions"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism

As you can see, faith that there are no gods is not an actual requirement. Do be aware that this source also claims that evolution is a hoax. You shall know them by their fruits.

Apparently in Volbrigades world, in order to be a Materialist, you must have faith that there are no gods. Makes me wonder what a "lollipop" really is according to him.

[Volbrigade]

[Replying to post 185 by Clownboat]

Apparently in Volbrigades world, in order to be a Materialist, you must have faith that there are no gods. Makes me wonder what a "lollipop" really is according to him.

Let me get this straight:

according to you, you can be a materialist, and believe in God?

Is God made of matter?

Of course the materialist believes in god. He confronts his every time he looks in a mirror.

[Clownboat]

[Replying to post 185 by Clownboat]

Apparently in Volbrigades world, in order to be a Materialist, you must have faith that there are no gods. Makes me wonder what a "lollipop" really is according to him.

Let me get this straight:

according to you, you can be a materialist, and believe in God?

Is God made of matter?

Of course the materialist believes in god. He confronts his every time he looks in a mirror.

You can leave me out of this. I posted the definition for a reason. My reason is to show that "you must have faith that there are no gods" is not found anywhere in the actual definition.

[FarWanderer]

Do you know what you believe?

Do you have a coherent, explanatory belief system as to what your purpose is in this life?

Can you explain why the world exists? Can you provide any explanation for why you are of any more intrinsic value or worth than the bovine I consumed for lunch yesterday? Can you provide scientific evidence for any claim you make in that regard?

I would like to hear you provide answers to these questions yourself. The way you're talking, we're sure to be blown away.

[Volbrigade]

Do you know what you believe?

Do you have a coherent, explanatory belief system as to what your purpose is in this life?

Can you explain why the world exists? Can you provide any explanation for why you are of any more intrinsic value or worth than the bovine I consumed for lunch yesterday? Can you provide scientific evidence for any claim you make in that regard?

I would like to hear you provide answers to these questions yourself. The way you're talking, we're sure to be blown away.

I will courteously allow you to go first.