OT - What's going on in the USA

I made a similar statement, probably less than a year ago, and someone told me about how scientists made life from scratch, so I looked it up. The article had in the title about how the scientists did NOT create life from scratch. They only made a genetic "program" for a cell, a great break through I'm sure but not even close to on par with the poster's claim.

So have they created life from non-living things or have they only created genetic code to control cells that they didn't create?

Also it's a very huge leap to go from what scientists can create in a laboratory environment, intelligent designers, to what will just naturally form by random chance on its own. We've been making automobiles for years but that doesn't prove that an automobile will just occur naturally if we give it billions of years. Actually if we give it a few hundred years, there won't be much evidence left of most automobiles.

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN
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Here's the article I referred to in my previous post.

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Reply to
RogerN

Correct. No miracles, no virgin birth, no divinity of Christ, and no holy trinity.

That isn't a "closed mind." That's just a sane scientific mind.

Correct.

Right. Which are all over the map, although they tend to agree that most of them were killed for teaching the word of Jesus.

Good question. One has to wonder about a lot of things that were included, excluded, canonized as the true word of God, or rejected -- like the Gospel of Thomas.

Atheism means "without a deity." There is no faith involved in it at all. It is about a lack of belief.

Those atheists who are also anti-theists may have faith in their beliefs. Most atheists are not anti-theists.

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Reply to
Ed Huntress

His mind was closed to miracles, virgin birth, divinity of Christ and the holy trinity, that's closed minded.

Did Jefferson know about the apparent old testament contradiction that the Messiah was to come through the kingly lineage of David but this lineage was cursed and the Messiah's bloodline couldn't come from that lineage? But the Messiah was to be from the bloodline of David and a king from the lineage of David. This makes an apparent contradiction that requires the virgin birth of the Messiah. Also in Genesis right after the fall of man, God speaks of the seed of the woman that would be struck by the serpent and stomp the serpents head, everywhere else in the Bible, the seed is from man. Jesus lineage is traced twice in the Gospels, once through Joseph through the cursed lineage, through Joseph he gets the rights to be king but because of the curse can't be a blood descendant of Joseph. His lineage is also traced through his mother where he is a blood descendant of David. Apparent contradiction solved, but did they just make it up to fit? Nope, the old testament also tells that the Messiah would be born of a virgin.

The old testament also tells us that the Jews would reject him and he would be accepted by gentiles, these things are still true to this day. So why did the Jews reject him? Their writings had other apparent contradictions, the messiah would suffer and die but would also be a king and rule the world forever. This apparent contradiction is solved in the 1st and 2nd coming of Christ, this wasn't clear to the people of that day until they saw the fulfillment of the Messiah coming as the lamb of God, on his return he will fulfill the prophecies about being the Lion of the tribe of Judah!

As for the trinity, in the Genesis story of creation, it's written that God said "let us create" plural, and "He" singular "created...". Even though it didn't define a trinity, it did refer to God as both singular and plural in the same sentence multiple times.

Do you think Jefferson had ever heard or considered these things? I wouldn't think so since he had already closed his mind to them.

I'm not sure about minority or majority, but it seems the most outspoken "atheists" are entirely faith based.

I don't have a problem with the definition, I first heard the faith based were atheists and the ones lacking belief in god were agnostics. The word "agnostic" would seem to break down to "no knowledge", they have no knowledge of or about God.

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

What is the official explanation for a married virgin?

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

No, it just means he considered it, examined the evidence, and decided it was false.

It's not that Jefferson was an atheist, nor was he opposed to religion. In his later years he adopted a view similar to that of Edmund Burke, who said it was essential for a healthy society. So Jefferson supported religion in general. He just didn't accept some of the core Christian beliefs. In fact, he thought their followers were false Christians, because he was a close follower and admirer of Jesus himself, and he rejected the centuries of superstition that had been built upon the history of his life.

A fine piece of sophistry!

Neat tricks!

If he did, he rejected that obsessively desperate casuistry with the insight and reason he applied to arrive at this statement:

"We find in the writings of his biographers ... a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications." -- Thomas Jefferson, to William Short, August 4, 1822, referring to Jesus's biographers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

They're the ones who write books and appear on talk shows.

Yes, that's the basic idea. The word "agnostic" was coined by Thomas Huxley in the late 19th century. It was a cryptic word that referred to the belief that, not only is the existence of God not known, but it is *impossible* to know. This is a bit of 19th century epistemology, and the "unknowable" part of the word's original meaning has gotten lost in the vulgar use of the word.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I dunno, didn't Muhammad marry a 9 year old or something like that? I'm not sure when they consummated the marriage.

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

What evidence was available to him to examine? Did he talk to any of the

500 eye witnesses that Paul wrote about? He made his decision based on what he knew. If I were to be that stupid I would have to decide the Statue of Liberty didn't exist because I've never personally seen it in thousands of miles of travel. Much of what modern science knows now would have been difficult to believe in Jefferson's day, I wonder if they knew gravity effects light? Thomas's Jefferson's life experience maybe brought him 1% knowledge from maybe 1% of the Earth and that's less than 1% of the galaxy but he can make decisions based on his 0.00001% knowledge and rule out the 99.9999% he doesn't know. His very decision that miracles are impossible based on his near zero knowledge of all things possibly knowable shows he's not very intelligent. He limited his beliefs thinking he was intelligent but he never even traveled to the moon, if fact he probably didn't think it was possible because of his closed mind. It's like having an erector set and thinking making anything beyond an erector set is impossible, he may be able to do great things with his erector set but that says nothing about what is possible beyond the erector set.

Like I said, he based his beliefs on what he found in the tiny shoe box of his life and times.

Him being removed by over 1,500 years and thousands of miles thought himself a better judge of what happened then and there than the people that were there at the time, first hand eye witnesses. Jefferson thought he knew what happened and didn't happen but the eye witnesses didn't know. Too bad Jefferson couldn't send his writings back in time to tell them what was happening. If Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were BS then they would have been thrown out with the other "lost" books of the Bible. It's very clear to see that Jefferson's conclusions were based on his very closed mind.

If you had something unusual happen to you at sometime in your life, if it didn't sound likely, would I be intelligent to say it didn't happen and you were lying? Would I know more about what happened to you than you do based on how likely I believed it was to have occurred? It's not likely for one person to buy one lottery and win the first time, but if it happened, would I be intelligent to say it didn't happen? Nope, I'd be a stupid as Jefferson thinking he knew more about Matthew and Johns life experience than they did.

Reply to
RogerN

Well said.

Best Regards Tom.

Reply to
azotic

Atheism, just another faith based religious belief

Reply to
Gunner Asch

It is apparent you do not have the scientific vocabulary to understand what I said.

If you consider viruses life, those have been created entirely from scratch as I said before. Several groups are actively working on making bacteria completely from scratch and are nearly there as I said before.

Again you are ignoring what I said before that several natural mechanisms for forming parts of cell have already been demonstrated. So to continue your metaphor, while it is not the case that we have shown how the whole car can be formed naturally, we have shown how the body panels, engine and starter motor could be formed.

Reply to
anorton

So liking the philosophy of Yeshua the Nazarene(which I do for the most part) isn't enough, I'd have to go for the dog and pony shows, too? Even though they have nothing to do with the philosophy? And are mostly borrowed from Mithraism and other local religions of the time?

Naw, I'll stick with agnostic pantheism this week, next week, I might try pantheistic agnosticism.

And, of course, the TRUE God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

All hail FSM!

David

Reply to
David R. Birch

So they are proving Intelligent Design is possible. Do you realize there are people with much more knowledge of evolution than you, and most atheists, that believe in God?

Here's from the FAQ at an evolution website:

Have Scientists Ever Created Life in a Laboratory?

As of the time of this writing, no, scientists have never created cellular life in a laboratory from scratch. The technology simply does not yet exist to manipulate molecules with the precision required to create all of the inner workings of a cell, built one atom at a time.

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RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

That's some argument you've built for yourself, Roger. A couple of days ago you said that Jefferson was too "intellectual" to get it; now you say he was too stupid.

Then you say that he was 1,500 years removed from the original events of Jesus's life, and that you know better, even though you're an additional 200 years farther removed.

Finally, you rely on our greater scientific knowledge, saying that he couldn't have known what we know now, yet, now that we know more, the percentages of atheists and "unaffiliateds" are rising as our scientific knowledge improves.

If I didn't know better, I'd say you were making up your argument as you went along. But then, I'm too open-minded to suggest such a thing...

Carry on, Roger. Believe whatever you need to. As Jefferson says, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Your reference does not contradict anything I said. You just do not seem to grasp much if it is too complicated and does not fit with your world view.

Reply to
anorton

Here's your global warming, and how to stop it without spending billions of taxpayer dollars.

Revelation 16: 8The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was allowed to scorch people with fire. 9They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

16:8-11 The heart of man is so desperately wicked, that the most severe miseries never will bring any to repent, without the special grace of God. Hell itself is filled with blasphemies; and those are ignorant of the history of human nature, of the Bible, and of their own hearts, who do not know that the more men suffer, and the more plainly they see the hand of God in their sufferings, the more furiously they often rage against him. Let sinners now seek repentance from Christ, and the grace of the Holy Spirit, or they will have the anguish and horror of an unhumbled, impenitent, and desperate heart; thus adding to their guilt and misery through all eternity. Darkness is opposed to wisdom and knowledge, and forebodes the confusion and folly of the idolaters and followers of the beast. It is opposed to pleasure and joy, and signifies anguish and vexation of spirit.
Reply to
RogerN

Yeah, that outghta do it. Screw science, just pray to some magical deity and all will be fine. No war, no famine, no man's inhumanity to man, -- oh wait; those are usually caused by religious zealots!

How about we forget the "magic" and actually work on real peace, less inhumane treatment, and more scientific means to reverse the greenhouse gasses we created (with no help from God) to reduce and eliminate hunger?

Reply to
G. Morgan

So during the various REAL global warming periods....who created those?

Fred Flintstone with his superduper razzmatazz stone wheeled car?

Reply to
Gunner Asch

All the Liberal's heads caught fire at the same time.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Oh. Is that why they're called Flamin' Liberals?

Reply to
Larry Jaques

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