Comments by "Philip Rayment" (@PJRayment) on "PragerU"
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@tomgachagan1347
"on a legal level it is marriage however."
Yes, various governments, in defiance of God, have declared that to be the case. But just as if they declared that 2+2=5, it doesn't make it so.
"give me an argument against same sex marriage that doesn't involve religion"
What about the argument I've already given? I've already said that I'm not claiming that it's "religious". I'm claiming it as so from history and design. History tells us that God designed people and designed us to be heterosexual and designed marriage as a life-long union of a man and a woman. My argument is from design, not "religion". That you want to put that label on it, and thereby somehow pretend that my main argument is irrelevant, doesn't change any of that.
But to address your point a bit more, as God designed marriage to be between a man an a woman, any forgery of that, such as so-called same-sex 'marriage', can not help but be inferior. So my argument would therefore be that true (God-designed) marriage is, logically, the better way to go in practice. In other words, go against the way that God designed and things will, inevitably, be worse, just like using a book as a hammer won't work very well because that's not what a book is designed for.
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@tomgachagan1347
"why would an all loving god allow us to kill each other in endless wars"
Because we rejected Him, so He gave us what we wanted: life without Him interfering too much. Besides, how do you know He's not actually stopping even worse things from happening? We are suffering the consequences of our own actions; you can't blame Him for what we do. Ergo, your argument completely fails to demonstrate that He doesn't exist.
"...let these horrific illnesses be a thing. a god that allows that to happen is no god I want to follow"
So you don't want to follow a God who has provided everything that you own and use and have access to (including food, life, free will, intelligence, love, happiness, friends, and so much more), plus He's provided a way, at great cost to himself, to be reconciled to Him, merely because He's not stopping us from suffering the consequences of our own actions? If you have a child who keeps doing bad things (throwing bricks through windows, attacking the cat, taking drugs, etc.) but you are somehow able to prevent any consequences to him for that (you pay for the neighbour's window; you somehow stop the cat being hurt (without stopping him from attacking it), you somehow prevent those drugs from having any bad effects), do you think he'll ever learn to be good? Won't he simply do worse and worse things, given that he suffers no consequences? And yet you seem to think that if God really did exist, he MUST, for some reason, stop all the consequences of what we do? Why can't you see that there might be a reason why He allows these things?
Ergo, you have not provided any evidence that He doesn't exist. Your faith in his non-existence is baseless. And yet you would have no coherent explanation of why we exist, of how life started, and so on, without invoking God.
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@loganmyers1489 No, don't link to pages upon pages of research. Link to one to start with, and I'll engage with it. And I'm not a sea lion.
Climate research (at least the questionable part) is mainly models about what will happen in the future, which is of questionable value in the first place, but then given that so many of them have been wrong, it's not just questionable but demonstrably unreliable.
By the way, here's what one of the experts, Christopher Dummit, said:
"The problem is: I was wrong. Or, to be a bit more accurate, I got things partly right. But then, for the rest, I basically just made it up. ... Everyone was (and is) making it up. That’s how the gender-studies field works."
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@NicolSD
"You just claimed that it is not true that the universe is older than 6,000 years old."
Yes, I did.
"Lemaître would dismiss your comment out of hand. Why? A claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
But I have evidence. True, I didn't give it in that comment, but it's readily available and examples are available from me for the asking.
"Especially since the speed of light was already known (for quite a while, might I add) and the distance to the various stars was known."
Yes, and mainstream science's supposed size and age of the universe are known and there has not been enough time for the temperature of the cosmic microwave background to have evened out as much as it is. This is known as the Horizon Problem.
Of course Big Bang theorists have come up with ways around that problem, but then creationist physicists have come up with ways around the problem you mention. So it's not necessarily a problem after all.
"He knew the universe was more than 6,000 years old..."
He believed that it was.
"...and he had no problem reconciling that with his faith."
Yes, well, cognitive dissonance is all too common. In order to 'reconcile' it, he needed to reject the clear statements about the age of the earth in the Bible. I don't consider that to be 'reconciliation'. It's closer to capitulation.
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"...religious people were also not okay with the big bang theory."
Unfortunately, many are okay with it. But true, many others are not.
"... if you don't address how anti-science religious people can be when the science threatens the dogma."
Which people are you talking about? There is no reason for Christians, who founded modern science as this video (and many scholars) points out, to be anti-science. There IS reason, however, for them to be anti-naturalism, a position that many scientists adopt.
"Hard to stay when they demand you try to believe in their set of unique truth claims."
Only if you don't accept those claims.
"I believe these kinds of arguments that justify a scientific or literal reading of the bible is just gross. I don't believe that is how the bible or any other ancient text was thought of when it was written nor do I think that is how it should bow be read."
Why do you think that? And yet Jesus and the other biblical authors treated the Bible (the parts they had at the time) as actual history. That the creation account meant to be understood as actual history is also the consensus of the top experts in the language.
"If church could focus more on becoming and less on knowing ..."
That sounds like you want it to have no hard claims—to stand for nothing—which kind of makes it useless.
"but as it is, they are so preoccupied with what they think they already know there is no room for any kind of growth or learning."
I can't speak for your particular experience, but it was the conviction of Christians about what they knew of God that led them to study his creation and learn. In fact the Bible says as much, instructing us to study and learn. But if you don't have any convictions that the Bible actually means that, why bother?
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@100percentSNAFU
"Well, many fundamentalists still do not believe in things like the big bang theory, evolution, etc, and believe the earth is 6,000 years old and every excerpt from the Bible is meant to be taken literally."
Yes and no. Those "fundamentalist" Christians acknowledge the existence of metaphors and other figures of speech in the Bible. But they also know, from studying the language, that the creation account and the other bits of history that provide the age of the earth are not figures of speech, but are meant to be taken literally. James Barr, Oriel Professor of the interpretation of the Holy Scripture at Oxford and no fundamentalist, said "… probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience, the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story, and that Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark."
"But yet of course such dogma does make it difficult to take organized religion seriously."
Why? Simply because you don't agree?
"I believe in God, and I also believe in the science, which I think is possible."
Given that modern science is based on a Christian worldview, it's definitely possible. What's questionable is whether you can be an atheist and accept science. Paul Davies said (my bolding) "In the ensuing three hundred years, the theological dimension of science has faded. People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature- the laws of physics - are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they come from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is rational basis to physical existence manifested as lawlike order in nature that is at least part comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological world view. "
"...the lessons it teaches and rules it gives to be a good and pious person in the eyes of God is pretty sound,..."
If they are not based on reality, what makes them sound?
"you can't really argue against teachings to be kind and honest and such..."
With a belief in no God (as many people have), why couldn't you? Evolution is about the survival of the fittest, which means the non-survival of the less-fit; it's 'nature red in tooth and claw'. If that's all you have to go on (i.e no God), that seems like reasonable justification to not be kind, but to be ruthless.
"But yeah, the ritualistic stuff turned me off, as well as the people who "went to church so they could be seen at church", which sadly I felt was most."
That's understandable. Evangelical Protestantism doesn't have much in the way of rituals, at least hard-and-fast ones (baptism, although not essential, and marriage being about the only ones). And of course even Jesus spoke against people just being seen to be good.
"I think just living a good and honest life is what is important,..."
Of course, you could be wrong. Much better would be to find out what God says is important. But for that, you'd have to believe what the Bible says.
"...it is hard for me to accept it is all just random."
As it should be. It being random just doesn't add up.
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@timpieper5293
"I encourage you to reconsider whether origins of life would require an intelligent designer after seeing how many steps in the process don’t require design."
Those episodes didn't mention one case (I believe) of any of those proteins and other molecules occurring naturally in nature outside of a living thing. They were all the result of intelligent scientists. If anything it only serves to show that intelligence is required.
"And an open question; how does a beginning to the universe imply a designer?"
It doesn't. However, a beginning to the physical universe—that is, going from nothing to something—requires a cause that is outside the physical universe. This implies a non-physical creator. The idea of a designer as opposed to just a creator comes from the arguments for fine tuning and of information in living things.
"…thus bringing on more deconstruction of such unsupported ideas in more places at more times."
The ideas are not unsupported.
"That would further undermine the harm done based on such ideas."
What harm?
"Some religious beliefs have some use."
That's understating it. Christian beliefs have been extremely positive for the world.
"I just don’t think there’s much use that religious or theistic belief offers that cannot be achieved without said beliefs,…"
History has shown otherwise. The beliefs provide the incentive, or motivation, to do something. Sure, people without those beliefs could do the same things, but why would they?
"I think there’s several ways that religious beliefs can be harmful, and used as the basis for harm."
Certainly! This is definitely the case for false religions, including atheistic ones.
"…the initial problem that religious beliefs aren’t reasonably justified."
Again, it depends on which religious beliefs you are referring to. One problem I have with atheists is how they stick every religious belief except their own in the one basket, as though they are all similar. In fact, they can be very different. Christian beliefs are justified, as they correspond to reality.
"Yes, I’m convinced human behavior and thought are determined."
So you're saying that you didn't choose to write that?
"…free will … doesn’t even seem apparent in our subjective experience if we pay close attention."
Close attention will see people choosing things almost every moment of their day.
"This doesn’t lower the value of attempting to persuade others of things, because the very act of attempting to persuade may yet deterministically persuade others."
It kind of does lower it, actually. While I understand that attempting to persuade others in a free-will-free environment could very well have a consequence, the very concept is at odds with what it's trying to achieve.
"I can see that I am not authoring my next intention or thought,…"
Who or what is authoring it? And what's your evidence for that?
"…I’m unable to act on on anything other than my intentions thoughts…"
I'm not sure that makes any sense. If you have the thought to jump, you can't skip instead? Why not? Or is it a case of if you choose to skip instead of jump, then you do so because you've had the thought to skip? The point is, you have chosen to change your thought. Anything else would be chaos, where you go to pay the shopkeeper for your purchases, but shoot him instead, because you did something without that being a thought that you had.
"I have no reason to think matter in human brains is any less deterministic."
What makes you reject the idea of an immaterial mind residing in your brain is not so deterministic?
"There’s no topic other than free will and determinism in those videos, so it’s unclear how you came up with “ideology”."
I don't know how 123mneil came up with it, but it was apparent to me too (I only watched the two shorter videos) because there was a complete absence of any discussion on a human soul, being made in the image of God, etc. It's effectively all done from an atheistic perspective.
"The confidence that a fundamentalist has is not grounded in good reasoning;…"
Depending on who/what you are meaning by "fundamentalist", that is false.
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@Tim Pieper
"Each section below is in response to your corresponding chronological section of text."
1. Chronological? 2. To help if there is a next time, I've added numbers (probably too many, but ...)
"Origin of life experiments are replications of natural environments."
3. Only to a greater or lesser extent. The Miller-Urey experiment included a reducing atmosphere or methane and ammonia which is not known to have been the case, because they knew an atmosphere with with oxygen wouldn't work.
4. They also had an unrealistically-high concentration of organic matter, and a trap to gather the products before they could be destroyed, something that would not have been the case in a natural environment.
"The rise of each step of abiogenesis isn’t engineered or intentionally put together; each happens on their own on the simulated environment."
5. No, they don't happen on their own. The scientists assembled the required environments.
"How did you come to believe that there was a change from nothing to something?"
6. Because that is what is taught (except when they equivocate). Discover magazine described on the views of a leading Big Bang researcher this way: "The universe burst into something from absolutely nothing—zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. How is that possible? Ask Alan Guth. His theory of inflation helps explain everything."
"The fine tuning argument assumes the constants could’ve been otherwise, but no proponents have ever shown this."
6. Prima facie, they could have been otherwise. Nobody has ever shown that they couldn't have been.
"As far as I can tell, “information” just means non-random patterns."
7. In a sense, yes. But non-random means designed, unless there is a physical process that can generate it, but we know from observation that information only comes from an intelligence.
"Life is biochemistry, honed over billions of years of evolution."
8. Yes, that is the mainstream naturalistic view. That's not a rebuttal to my argument, though.
"Given every new discovery in original of life research, its origins don’t seem to need intelligence."
9. Every new discovery shows how hard it is to occur naturally. 10. The Miller-Urey experiment, for example, produced a racemic mixture of amino acids, which is not conducive to life. (11. Reed attempts to counter this by citing a test that showed that an already-existing RNA molecule could handle the insertion of some right-handed molecules. 11. They also selected "promising" ones. That is, the scientists had a goal that nature wouldn't have had, and used artificial selection. I don't know much about this test; I'm going on what Reed said.)
"This is a short list of harm done on the basis of, or given cover by the undue reverence caused by, religious beliefs:"
12. Your list comprises things that are not based on Christian ideas, but on how some individuals apply their beliefs, or things that you haven't even shown are harmful, but are things that you simply don't like. There is nothing in your list that is actual harm that is due to Christian ideas. Your claim was baseless.
"No, I don’t think so. Net-negative impact overall, in my view."
13. Yet the scholarship disagrees with you. Christianity is the basis of Western Civilisation, and has introduced public hospitals and many charities, introduced universal education, founded modern science, elevated the status of women, abolished slavery, spread democracy, promoted the concept of human rights, and more. 14. To give one example of the scholarship, Rodney Stark wrote:
"Christianity created Western Civilization. Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand copied scrolls. Without a theology committed to reason, progress, and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800: A world with many astrologers and alchemists but no scientists. A world of despots, lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys, and pianos. A world where most infants do not live to the age of five and many women die in childbirth–a world truly living in "dark ages."
"The modern world arose only in Christian societies. Not in Islam. Not in Asia. Not in a "secular" society–there having been none. And all the modernization that has since occurred outside Christendom was imported from the West, often brought by colonizers and missionaries."
15. Meanwhile, what has atheism done? 16. Well, in the 20th century it has slaughtered millions under Stalin, Mao, and others, and 17. it has taught that humans "live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." (Carl Sagan), are "just a bit of pollution,... We’re completely irrelevant." (Laurance Kraus), are "just a bit of slime on the planet" (Peter Atkins), and have "no ultimate meaning to life" (William Provine). But, I guess teaching people that does no harm, does it? 18. Whereas teaching people that "If you want to have a massive reason why human beings are special, here it is: God became one." (John Lennox) must be harmful, I guess.
"They provide the incentive to do horrid and unintelligent things,…"
19. Things other than the ones you've already listed which are no such thing?
"But you can see secular people doing the same charity and love that religious people do, for example The Scathing Atheist and Cognitive Dissonance podcast audiences recently raised upwards of $400,000 for the charity modest needs."
20. Copycats. Except that they rewarded some of the people for donating! 21. Christians have been doing it for 2000 years (without rewards). 22. A study in America by Arthur Brooks showed that religious people gave more of their money, time, and blood than non-religious people.
continued...
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@timpieper5293
...continued
"No, the bare minimum Christian belief, that Jesus rose from the dead, isn’t justified."
23. It is definitely justified, being one of the most-documented events in ancient history, and something that changed the world.
"There’s no data anyone can cite that isn’t consistent with Paul having a brief, possibly guilt-induced hallucination on the Damascus road,…"
24. What about the fact that his companions also heard the voice? 25. What about being blinded in the process?
"…stories in the gospels being 30+ years of legend development."
26. What 30+ years and 27. what legend development? 28. And 30 years is not that long for this sort of thing anyway.
"Resurrections are not even close to as common as people developing legends, even from a Christian worldview."
29. So you're arguing that a rare event is probably wrong simply because it's rare?
"I’m saying that my choice to write this was determined…"
30. If it's determined, it's not a choice.
"How does it lower it? How is the act of attempting to persuade at odds with belief in determinism?"
31. If what a person thinks is determined by brain chemistry, how could he be persuaded of anything? 32. Yes, maybe the discussion will change the brain chemistry in some way, but why would that change be along the lines of the point that is being argued? 33. What's the mechanism that turns that cause into that particular effect?
"Just before you stated such, I had already explained how they aren’t at odds."
34. You expressed a view; it only barely qualified as an explanation.
"My brain’s neurochemistry is creating my intentions and thoughts."
35. That is supposition.
"The many direct connections between brain matter and consciousness, whether it be from the effects of drugs, to brain damage survivors, to split-brain patients, to the differences in the mental capacity of species with different brains; all point to consciousness being the product of brains."
36. No, it doesn't. It does point to damage affecting the mind-holder. 37. An analogy to what you're arguing is that the information (concepts, explanations, etc.) contained in a printed book are the product of the chemistry of the paper and ink because damaging the paper changes the information. A physical alteration to the paper and the ink can indeed corrupt the information, but it simply doesn't follow that the chemistry of the paper and the ink created the information in the first place.
"You’ve seen the two short videos explaining this so you should understand."
38. I understand, but don't agree that they make their case. 39. You can't choose to do anything that you haven't thought to do, but having the thought to do something else IS choosing to do that something else.
"See the section above the previous one."
40. That doesn't answer it.
"Why would they mention a soul?"
41. Because we have one. 42. Atheist ideology, on the other hand denies this. 43. That's why the videos were based on ideology. 44. If they weren't, they'd at least consider how well a soul would explain the evidence. But it's not even considered.
"The soul isn’t evident,…"
45. Lot's of things aren't evident, but there's evidence for them anyway.
"…the myriad of things I’ve listed previously point to a material origin of consciousness."
46. No, they are interpreted in that framework.
"I’m certainly talking about creationists, and those who find fault with sound science."
47. Creationists don't find fault with sound science, so that's a contradiction, and your previous claim was therefore false.
"Their confidence against science is not grounded in good reasoning;…"
48. Creationists created science!. They are not against it. You are constructing a strawman.
"That’s not even an atheist-take; digital footballer and 321mneil are not atheists and they see this too."
49. They've been brainwashed to believe it, more likely. It's a common view promulgated by atheists. They invent lies to spread misinformation like this. 50. An example is the lie that the church used to believe in a flat earth. Complete fabrication.
"Creationists will almost always ignore or twist the evidence for evolution,…"
51. False and false, unless you want to supply some evidence of that scurrilous charge.
"…and almost never characterize evolution accurately as they are victims of the harmful miseducation done by their religious leaders and family members."
52. That claim is contradicted by the facts that many creationists were taught evolution in university, were evolutionists themselves, some even taught evolution, and a few even wrote textbooks on it, before changing their minds because of the evidence that it doesn't work. Your claim is nothing but slanderous invention, albeit a common one.
"Even the most valuable purposes of a justice system, like rehabilitation, restraint, restitution, and deterrents, don’t require free will to make sense."
53. The most valuable purpose of a justice system is to make it clear that we expect certain standards (such as no theft) be met. The things you mention are secondary. If you set a standard and don't enforce it, it's not a standard.
"Accepting that our actions are determined allows for a more compassionate view of those who commit crimes. There is no reason for hate or blame on determinism, and so there is no reasonable justification for vengeance or punishment for the sake of getting some sadistic pleasure. That’s a good thing determinism offers."
54. What do you mean by "blame"? 55. A dictionary definition is "feel or declare that (someone or something) is responsible for a fault or wrong." 56. So if a person robs a shop, with determinism we shouldn't declare that the person is responsible for robbing the shop? 57. Actually, that's the very problem with determinism: not putting blame where it belongs.
58. With free will, there is no reason to hate or vengeance or getting sadistic pleasure either. 59. You're drawing a false dichotomy there. 60. As for punishment, that is simply doing what I said: showing that the standards must be followed.
"Another big difference it makes is It undercuts the fairness of religious views on how some get to heaven and others hell,…"
61. I'm not sure you meant to say that, but yes, that is a problem: it undercuts fairness.
"If our experience was somehow able to show an ability to think about what thoughts we could have or choose our desires, maybe that would convince me."
62. I was scared of heights even on things like fun park rides, but I chose to accept the empirical evidence that they were safe and got rid of that fear. 63. I don't like the taste of coffee, but believe that if I chose to do so, I could come to like it.
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@timpieper5293
13. Stark is basing his assertions on his study of the history of Christianity and Western Civilisation, which he has written extensively on. He looks at the evidence, rather than start with an opinion, as you are doing by labelling them 'counterfactual' before even knowing where the ideas came from.
And as I said, he is just one example. Given your baseless dismissal of him, here's another, from journalist David Aikman:
"The eighteen American tourists visiting China weren’t expecting much from the evening’s lecture. They were already exhausted from a day of touring in Beijing. But what the speaker had to say astonished them.
'One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world,' he said. 'We studied everything we could "from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next, we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.'
This was not coming from some ultra-conservative think tank … This was a scholar from China's premier academic research institute, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing in 2002."
Or maybe you'd like an Indian source. Vishal Mangalwadi:
"'Devout Christians cultivated their minds by copying, preserving, and studying great books because they believed that to be God-like meant to develop the intellect, to grow in our knowledge of all truth—whichever individual or culture discovers it first. That is what made the West a thinking civilization. Amputation of its soul cannot but lead to the closing of the American mind."
"Hardly a Christian phenomenon, as it was influenced by several different ideas then able to be spread at far greater rates by the relatively new printing press."
I don't know what you are referring to. Much of what Stark refers to predated the printing press, which in any case was invented over 300 years before the so-called Enlightenment.
16. I didn't say that atheism caused them. Atheism says that we are not answerable to God. That means that we can decide right and wrong for ourselves. If you have the power, and no higher authority that you're answerable to, you get results like that. Atheism enabled it.
17. I beg to differ. First, it was not a claim about what the universe thinks, as the universe doesn't think. It's a claim about our worth as people. Second, which is more uplifting? That we are significant to a few other people who are as insignificant as us in the grand scheme of things, or that we are significant to the creator of that entire, vast, universe? Third, Australian statistics show a good correlation between the introduction of teaching evolution and the rise of youth suicide.
24. Most translations for Acts 22:9 say that the men did not understand the voice; not that they didn't hear it. So no contradiction. To understand why this is the case, see the article "Does Acts 9:7 contradict Acts 22:9 ?" on the Apologetics and Agape website.
I don't know why you're mentioning Corinthians. Are you presuming that this is the same event as Paul experienced on the Damascus road? There seems to be little support for that idea.
25. It wasn't momentary. It was three days, and only ended after God instructed Ananias to see Paul. Also, Paul explicitly says that he was blinded by the brightness of the light.
26. I guess that does answer the question "what 30 years", although I still don't know why they think it was necessarily that long. Also, that surely doesn't exclude earlier written records being used as a basis for the books after 30 years.
Of course what those scholars also often say is that oral repetition was common and, unlike today where it's not, was done accurately. So no, not evidence of legend development.
What suspension of the laws of physics? Also, why is legend development a more parsimonious explanation than it being done by an infinite being? Apart from not wanting to believe in that being, of course.
29. How is resurrection against the laws of physics? What physical laws are broken? After all, with modern medical equipment, we can revive dead people. Not after three days, but the point is that it's not against the laws of physics. Further, does Occam's Razor really select "God resurrected Jesus" better than "It didn't really happen, despite hundreds of people seeing Him alive after a very public crucifixion, and guarded tomb, plenty of people willing to call bull on it if they could find a way to, and disciples with a radically changed attitude who went to the grave holding that belief"? I think you're being selective and jumping to answers you prefer.
31. But "convincing them" implies thinking and the ability to choose, not determinism. When you flip a light switch to turn a light on or off, you're not doing any "convincing".
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@timpieper5293
51. Aaron Ra? Oh please. He's not a reliable source. The first few minutes of the first video was a lot of bald assertions that basically dismissed the biblical view out of hand, with ridiculous claim such as "nothing can be shown to be true theologically" (blatantly false; I figure he means that nothing theological can be shown to be true, which is a massive hand-wave anyway), arguing on the basis of his own views (e.g. things that can't be shown to be true are not 'truths'; well of course not, but he hasn't established that they can't be shown as true), and that therefore there is no truth in Genesis (so I guess it's not true that living things reproduce after their kind, i.e. cats don't give birth to dogs, etc. and also not true that humans come in two forms, male and female).
The Gibbon video was too long to spend the time watching in full, and it was done in a very unscholarly and unprofessional way, and clearly trying to find fault even where none existed. The first comment when it finally got into the video went off on a tangent and didn't actually find fault. The second comment responded to the question of whether Lucy was our ancestor or "just an extinct ... ape". Gibbon said that "well she's both". But it can't be both, the way the question was framed. Note the "just" in "just an extinct ... ape". So no actual fault there, either. But then she said "She is of course an ape, because we are, of course apes". This is a typical illogical argument, where the creationist view is not compared to the facts, but to the competing view! In other words, the Bible is wrong because the secular view is right! Of course, by that logic, the secular view is wrong because the Bible is right. But of course if a creationist ever used that logic, they'd be pilloried no end.
The video wandered and side-tracked in a way that made things hard to follow. 18 minutes in they'd only covered 65 seconds of the creationist video.
Gibbon criticised a creationist reconstruction of Lucy, one of the criticisms being that the face structure appeared more gorilla-like than chimp-like, adding that it was probably intentional to distance it more from humans. She then took exception to the video pointing out that reconstructions of Lucy show white eyes, which only humans have, a claim that she later stressed was "so dumb!". After yet another side-track, she got around to 'debunking' the claim that only humans have white eyes by showing images of chimps with white eyes (no references or indications of where the pictures came from) and an image of a paper with the title "Gorillas with white sclera: A naturally occurring variation in a morphological trait linked to social cognitive functions", which she just showed for a few seconds as if that was the final word on the subject. What she didn't mention or point out was that the paper had the following introduction: "Human eye morphology is considered unique among the primates in that humans possess larger width/height ratios (WHR), expose a greater amount of visible sclera (SSI; width of exposed eyeball/width of visible iris), and critically, have a white sclera due to a lack of pigmentation. White sclera in humans amplifies gaze direction, whereas the all-dark eyes of apes are hypothesized to conceal gaze from others." Oops.
She then justified portraying Lucy with white eyes on the grounds that "this seems to be the evolutionary trend". In other words, evolutionists are portraying Lucy in a way that favours their view, but when the creationists portray Lucy in a way that favours the creationary view, that's bad. Double standards.
I doubt that the criticisms of Meyer are any more valid than those, but he's not even a creationist, so I skipped that one.
The first Paulogia video was a pain to watch (so I gave up six minutes in) not being clear on just what they were disagreeing with the creationists on. Again, it was also quite unprofessional and unscholarly.
The second Paulogia video was no better. At about the 1:50 mark they knock down a strawman.
I assume you're referring to the claim that they didn't read the research about language acquisition, because they referred to a turkey that wasn't in the research. However, as the video admitted, the word was used in the article about the research. The "failure" was not that they didn't read the research; the failure was that the referred to something in the article about the research. But how is this a problem? Unless you're scratching to find something to criticise. Further, they weren't trying to debunk anything! You're also inventing criticisms!
"There’s consistently no recognition of how isochron dating verifies the accuracies of radiometric dating,"
So now you're criticising them for not agreeing with the mainstream view? Well, duh! That's why it's a competing view!
"...or explaining index fossils, or endogenous retroviruses, or nested hierarchies in taxonomy from creationists."
Ho hum. More of the same. They don't agree with the naturalistic view, so they must be wrong.
So, in summary, you've provided no evidence that withstands scrutiny for your scurrilous charge that "Creationists will almost always ignore or twist the evidence for evolution,…"
"You will struggle long and hard to find me a creationist who can adequately articulate evolution or engage with the evidence for it."
Utter nonsense, that I have already refuted, in No. 55. Why are you repeating it?
And a comment you made to 122mneil:
"I just want to point out that the effort to become better is perfectly consistent with determinism, ..."
Only if you describe determinism in a way that makes it indistinguishable from free will. Which is probably what you're doing: Free will is imaginary, it's actually determinism, which looks like free will. So if you can't tell them apart, how do you know it's determinism?
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@123mneil
"How are you so sure that you are not the one arrogantly claiming things that are not true and vilifying people that disagree?"
On the second point, because I make a point of attacking the argument, not vilifying the person. I never call them stupid, morons, liars, bigoted, deluded, uneducated, brainless, gullible, etc., which abusive ad hominems have often been levelled against me. And just to be clear, I wasn't accusing you of any of those things.
On the first point, because I back my claims with evidence, except when I'm replying to an evidence-free claim, in which case I provide as much evidence as the original claimant.
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@timpieper5293
26. Legend development doesn't explain so many of the details, including how dispirited disciples were suddenly reinvigorated and went on to change the world. It's only 'parsimonious' by leaving out bits it can't explain.
29. They ARE facts that need to be accounted for. Wishing them away doesn't change that.
You are describing it as a "religious creed" in order to not address the claim. The fact is recorded in one of the letters of Paul which historians agree was written by him around AD 53/54. He also records that most of them were still alive. This indicates that the claim was checkable.
There IS corroborating evidence for the tomb: three of the four gospel writers talk about it
"There’s no possible way anyone could recover Jesus’s dead body if it was thrown into a mass grave,…"
But it wasn't in a mass grave. It was in a tomb.
"…even if someone could, and they came to a church and said “hey I checked into it; the resurrection didn’t happen”, are you telling me that would actually stop the believers from persisting?"
No, because they had seen the risen Jesus. Why would they believe someone claiming that it didn't happen when they had seen it with their own eyes?
" “People could’ve checked if it was false, so it must be true” isn’t a good argument."
It is a good supporting argument, actually. If you want to make up something and have people believe you, make it something that can't be checked. Leaving yourself open to being checked helps credibility.
"The changed attitudes of the disciples are easily accounted for as legend, as there’s no independent or reliable source for their post-crucifixion attitudes."
One of the points of agreement by historians is that "James, Jesus’ unbelieving brother, became a Christian due to his own experience that he thought was the resurrected Christ;" Another is that "the Christian persecutor Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus) also became a believer after a similar experience." Historians consider the sources reliable enough for that. (See the article "Minimal Facts on the Resurrection that Even Skeptics Accept" by Gary Habermas.)
"The die for a lie apologetic can’t get off the ground without establishing any of them died for their faith."
That has been established.
31. I don't accept that being convinced is not a choice. You can choose whether or not to believe the evidence. Yes, the evidence is a big factor, but it's not deterministic. You can still choose whether or not to accept it. How many people hear the same evidence but come to different conclusions?
51 Which correction? I gave examples to show why he is not reliable, and you have ignored them.
"The concept of kinds are used by creationists to make arbitrary distinctions between parent and daughter Clades in taxonomy, so in that sense, kinds aren’t coherent or mappable onto reality."
Which shows that you have no idea what you are talking about, given that peer-reviewed research is conducted to determine which living things are in the same kind as each other.
"I’m sorry you haven’t seen an explanation of what an ape is, but it’s a fact that we are apes. That’s not a “view”. "
It absolutely is a view, a naturalistic one. Okay, you have a point. It's possible to arbitrarily define "ape" to include human. But doing so is based on the evolutionary view.
"You just take the criteria of all apes’ morphology as distinguished from every other taxonomic family, and we fit those criteria."
That's rather vague and also selective. Why just morphology? Why not genetics, or behaviour, or etc.? I think what you're claiming is that we have a number of features in common with many of the apes. However, those features are not necessarily unique to apes or ubiquitous among the apes, and you overlook differences. For example, your first video starts off mentioning some common features, but it's rather vague, and then it lists differences. An example of each: "We have a unique appendix" Unique to what? Humans? That's a difference, not a common feature. Or unique to apes? Except that the appendix is not unique to apes. "In our locomotion living apes are highly diverse. Suspensory adaptations, high-speed brachiation, knuckle-walking quadrupedalism and obligate terrestrial bipedality all characterise our family". Huh? So what we have in common is a lot of different ways of getting around? That in itself contradicts your claim.
But then there are the things not mentioned, such as the big toe of humans, or the hairlessness of us, or our ability to hold our breath, or our subcutaneous fat layers, and of course our ability to use complex language.
"Creationists don’t engage honestly with this. They can’t."
Nonsense.
"I pointed out that creationists don’t address the tests or method of isochron dating and your facile retort is “they don’t agree? Well duh!” "
That is a strawman. You didn't claim that they don't address the tests or methods, but that they don't give " recognition of how isochron dating verifies the accuracies of radiometric dating" (my bolding). Your comment was not about the tests or methods, but about the naturalistic conclusions.
"…your comment just reeks of the very mentality you claim I haven’t provided evidence of…"
Your comment reeks of typical anti-creationist conflation of facts/evidence and conclusions.
"For an explanation of how this verification works:"
Or at least how it is supposed to work in theory.
"Creationists don’t engage with this honestly. They can’t."
And yet they do. If you search the creation dot com website for 'isochron dating' you'll find many articles and papers that 'engage with' isochron dating. And they do so honestly.
"You pull the same rewording with the creationists habitual refusal to engage with nested hierarchies."
You make the same claim that creations won't "engage" with various things, that presumably being a euphemism for not "agreeing", because they do in fact engage with with them. For just one example, that "unique appendix" of your first video link contradicts the nested hierarchy claim of evolutionists. According to an article on the Science website (i.e. they accept evolution), "They found that the 50 species ['now considered to have an appendix'] are scattered so widely across the tree that the structure must have evolved independently at least 32 times, and perhaps as many as 38 times.". This is of course known as convergent evolution, i.e. evolution that doesn't conform to a nested hierarchy.
"If you just call all the verifiable facts “the alternative view that creationists don’t agree with”…"
I'm not referring to facts, but to conclusions. I'm not referring to the methods of isochron dating, but the conclusion that it verifies the dates.
"…then you are proving my point again and again all on your own."
You're proving my point about conflating facts/evidence and conclusions.
"Here’s nested hierarchies explained with examples so you can see the facts you’re disagreeing with…"
I'm not disputing that there are, in general terms, nested hierarchies (in fact that's how the creationist Linnaeus was able to introduce the taxonomic system). I'm disputing the conclusion that it's good evidence for evolution.
"Creationists don’t engage honestly with this. They can’t."
You keep repeating a common anti-creationist mantra, with examples that are clearly false.
By the way, thanks for the timestamps on the videos.
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@archive2500
"If there is lack of evidence then what is the sense of claiming something."
You're the one claiming a lack of evidence, not me.
"Christianity has the story of the Garden of Eve which features a talking snake."
Yes, it does (sort of). But that's not what you claimed. That is, you didn't claim that the snake in the Garden of Eden couldn't talk. You implicit claim was that Christianity says that snakes (plural) talk (present tense).
Further, you ignore that it was actually Satan talking through the snake.
"If Adam and Eve is perfect then it would not make sense that 8 billion people right now would suddenly be imperfect, would it?"
No, but then nobody claims that they would "right now ... suddenly" be imperfect. Instead, the claim is that they deteriorated over time, as genetic defects accumulated. This is supported by science, which has shown that each new generation gains around 100 additional mutations.
"Make it make sense."
God created everything without any fault or error, but then man rejected God, so He withdrew a bit, and this allowed things to start running down. Including genomes. Ignoring whether or not there is evidence for that, it is a quite rational position to take and therefore it makes sense.
"...mutations happen throughout the generations, therefore, the lineage would slowly degenerate like the royal bloodlines."
Exactly. Which is why we have many, many, genetic defects today. One paper I've read says "The Human Gene Mutation Database currently [this was in 2014] contains records of more than 141,000 mutations. New ones are being discovered at a rate of over 11,000 per year. A September 2012 summary reported that of these about 6,000 constitute ‘disease associated’ and ‘functional’ polymorphisms (different versions of a DNA sequence)."
"Your never disproved my counterarguments."
I don't need to disprove your counterarguments. All I need to do is show that your arguments are faulty. Your arguments could be based on faulty reasoning and yet still be right. If I show that they are based on faulty reasoning, then I've shown that they don't constitute evidence, even if they happen to be correct. But what counterarguments did I not rebut?
"Stop being in denial."
Why? What if you're wrong? Denial would be appropriate.
"Science easily disproves these non-sense."
Do you mean empirical science based on observation, measurement, testing, and repeatability? The sort of science that cannot be done on events in the past? That's not so easy. And of course you haven't shown it to be nonsense.
"To start there, there is no evidence of Adam and Eve,.."
So again, an evidence-free claim of a lack of evidence. And common sense, to quote you, easily debunks that. There is, for starters, the Bible. The very fact that this highly-regarded, proven-reliable, book records it, IS evidence. You can argue that the evidence is faulty in some way, but saying that there is no evidence is just you being in denial.
"I could go on and on about these baseless claims. Just adding more points to my claim."
I'm sure you could go on and on. But can you actually show that they are baseless? That's the point. So far you've failed.
What you don't realise or ignore is that these "baseless" claims were actually the basis for Western Civilisation and many of the advances it has made, including founding science. That is, many intelligent people have believed those claims and they have been studied intensely for a long time, and yet many intelligent people still believe those claims. Because the evidence is actually there, contrary to your claims of no evidence.
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