Are We Truly In The End Times?

[rumborak]

There's another interesting argument to be made: If human evolution got directed towards its current state, i.e. towards a being that can comprehend divinity enough to worship it .... why do we have hunter-gatherer bodies? Our bodies are incredibly ill-suited for the lifestyle that gave rise to Abrahamic religions. Or argued the other way around, if you take our bodies as guidance, our ideal lifestyle was in a time when there was no Christianity or other religions.

rumborak

[jammindude]

Our backgrounds are coming from *completely* different directions.    I don't believe there was ever a time in human history where there wasn't religion.   I do believe that Adam was created intelligently from the beginning.    As a matter of fact, far more intelligent than any of us could possibly comprehend...before he rebelled.   Abel was the first religious martyr....killed simply because he was trying to do the right thing, and in the process was making his brother look bad. 

I think you and I are just going to have to agree to disagree. 

[Rathma]

If there are infinite possibilities, any one of them occuring is mathematically impossible.

Just wondering but does this mean that there is mathematically a 100% chance that an outcome other than a singled out outcome will occur?

[theseoafs]

Our backgrounds are coming from *completely* different directions.    I don't believe there was ever a time in human history where there wasn't religion.   I do believe that Adam was created intelligently from the beginning.    As a matter of fact, far more intelligent than any of us could possibly comprehend...before he rebelled.   Abel was the first religious martyr....killed simply because he was trying to do the right thing, and in the process was making his brother look bad. 

I think you and I are just going to have to agree to disagree.

I'm confused. Are you arguing for creationism, or for intelligent design?

[kári]

If there are infinite possibilities, any one of them occuring is mathematically impossible.

Just wondering but does this mean that there is mathematically a 100% chance that an outcome other than a singled out outcome will occur?

Yes. For a continuous distribution (so not a discrete one like dice where the outcome is either 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, but one with an infinite amount of outcomes) the chance of any single outcome is 0.

[jammindude]

Our backgrounds are coming from *completely* different directions.    I don't believe there was ever a time in human history where there wasn't religion.   I do believe that Adam was created intelligently from the beginning.    As a matter of fact, far more intelligent than any of us could possibly comprehend...before he rebelled.   Abel was the first religious martyr....killed simply because he was trying to do the right thing, and in the process was making his brother look bad. 

I think you and I are just going to have to agree to disagree.

I'm confused. Are you arguing for creationism, or for intelligent design?

I don't attach myself to either "group" strictly.    Creationism teaches that the earth was created in six literal days.  The Bible doesn't teach that, so those people are just way out in left field.   

ID one of those things where the actual term itself is *incredibly* broad.   (basically, if you believe life had any intelligent cause, you believe in ID...whether it be aliens or God)  But most people tend to pigeonhole anyone who uses the term ID as a creationist anyway, so it's become just another nasty term.

I believe that The Bible's account of creation is extremely vague, and that too many humans who claim to be experts have smeared the Bible's reputation by misrepresenting what it says.  (like the old wives tale that the Bible teaches that the earth was created in six literal 24 hour days....it got started by ignorant people who didn't do any digging and made a bunch of assumptions.  Pretty soon everyone thinks that's what the Bible says when it doesn't.   We had this debate in another thread).     But I do think that what it DOES say is accurate....just not very detailed.   I mean, let's face it....the first countless millions of years of earth's creation are summed up in 2 chapters that take up just a couple of pages, and the first 1600+ years of human history (that's 7 times longer than the USA has been a country) is over and done with by chapter 10.    Not much detail at all.      I trust what it does say, I trust science to fill the gaps that The Bible doesn't say (which is quite a bit) and I reject where science directly calls the Bible wrong.   But I think theology is even worse.  Theology has done more things to sour people toward the Bible than anything science is perceived to have done.   Theology is one of the biggest crocks in the history of mankind.   I do trust science FAR *FAR* more than the snake oil people in theology.   But I place the Bible above all.

[rumborak]

Our backgrounds are coming from *completely* different directions.    I don't believe there was ever a time in human history where there wasn't religion.   I do believe that Adam was created intelligently from the beginning.    As a matter of fact, far more intelligent than any of us could possibly comprehend...before he rebelled.   Abel was the first religious martyr....killed simply because he was trying to do the right thing, and in the process was making his brother look bad. 

I think you and I are just going to have to agree to disagree.

If you are that fundamentalist, yeah, we should probably leave it at that.

rumborak

[Scheavo]

So, are we just gonna ignore my post about the for sure presence of most of the amino acids necessary for life? Ya know, the one that's actually scientific, and not a series of base assumptions with no proof behind them?

[jammindude]

So, are we just gonna ignore my post about the for sure presence of most of the amino acids necessary for life? Ya know, the one that's actually scientific, and not a series of base assumptions with no proof behind them?

It's not a matter of the amino acids existing...it's arranging the correct ones in the correct order.   It's like having a huge, *thoroughly mixed* pile of an equal amount of red and white beans...also, there are over a hundred different varieties of beans.    If you plunged a scoop into that pile, what do you think you'd get?  In order to get the correct "beans" to make up a single protein, you'd have to scoop up ONLY red ones...no white ones at all.   On top of that, you'd have to have only 20 specific varies of the red beans, and they would have to be arranged a certain way inside the scoop.   Any variation whatsoever, and the protein won't function properly.

[Adami]

So, are we just gonna ignore my post about the for sure presence of most of the amino acids necessary for life? Ya know, the one that's actually scientific, and not a series of base assumptions with no proof behind them?

It's not a matter of the amino acids existing...it's arranging the correct ones in the correct order.   It's like having a huge, *thoroughly mixed* pile of an equal amount of red and white beans...also, there are over a hundred different varieties of beans.    If you plunged a scoop into that pile, what do you think you'd get?  In order to get the correct "beans" to make up a single protein, you'd have to scoop up ONLY red ones...no white ones at all.   On top of that, you'd have to have only 20 specific varies of the red beans, and they would have to be arranged a certain way inside the scoop.   Any variation whatsoever, and the protein won't function properly.

And given the billions of years they had, the amino acids chances of being arranged the way they did is pretty fine I'd say.

[rumborak]

Yikes, when is the "irreducible complexity" argument every going to die out? This isn't the 1950s anymore.

EDIT: Additionally, it is horrendously biologically ignorant to say that a protein will stop working once a single amino acid is changed. There are shitloads of SNPs that result in no changed behavior, or very little. Proteins are nowhere near those perfect edifices as you make them out to be.

rumborak

[Jaffa]

If there are infinite possibilities, any one of them occuring is mathematically impossible.

Just wondering but does this mean that there is mathematically a 100% chance that an outcome other than a singled out outcome will occur?

That'd be a correct assessment, yes.  Or, at least, that is my understanding of jammindude's logic. 

Many of you are getting caught up in the mathematical probability...and it's really a McGuffin.   The point REALLY is....what is more reasonable to believe?   That it was strictly by chance, or there was intelligent thought behind it?

If that is really the point, then maybe you should stop dwelling on mathematical probability.  I was only dwelling on it because you were. 

As for your new question, of which is more reasonable to believe... well.  'Reasonable' is subjective.  That's not really an arguable point.  For me, I am capable of observing random chance, but I am not capable of observing a greater being planning a universe based on intelligent design.  So for me, it is more reasonable to believe in what I can observe.  But again, this is subjective.  I was never trying to deny you your right to believe what you believe; I was only trying to refute your assertion that random chance is an impossible explanation for life. 

[theseoafs]

Our backgrounds are coming from *completely* different directions.    I don't believe there was ever a time in human history where there wasn't religion.   I do believe that Adam was created intelligently from the beginning.    As a matter of fact, far more intelligent than any of us could possibly comprehend...before he rebelled.   Abel was the first religious martyr....killed simply because he was trying to do the right thing, and in the process was making his brother look bad. 

I think you and I are just going to have to agree to disagree.

I'm confused. Are you arguing for creationism, or for intelligent design?

I don't attach myself to either "group" strictly.    Creationism teaches that the earth was created in six literal days.  The Bible doesn't teach that, so those people are just way out in left field.

It does teach that, actually.

The thing is that if you're going to support Intelligent Design by saying that evolution was guided by a greater force, you can't also talk about Adam and Cain and Abel as if they were actual people. There's no historical record of their existence.

[jammindude]

Our backgrounds are coming from *completely* different directions.    I don't believe there was ever a time in human history where there wasn't religion.   I do believe that Adam was created intelligently from the beginning.    As a matter of fact, far more intelligent than any of us could possibly comprehend...before he rebelled.   Abel was the first religious martyr....killed simply because he was trying to do the right thing, and in the process was making his brother look bad. 

I think you and I are just going to have to agree to disagree.

I'm confused. Are you arguing for creationism, or for intelligent design?

I don't attach myself to either "group" strictly.    Creationism teaches that the earth was created in six literal days.  The Bible doesn't teach that, so those people are just way out in left field.

It does teach that, actually.

Umm...I'm sorry.  No...it doesn't.    Deeper research into the Bible itself shows very plainly that the creative days were NOT 24 hour days.   It doesn't say how long they were....they could have been any length of time...possibly even millions of years long from a human viewpoint. 

[theseoafs]

This has been discussed on this board before. Although the Hebrew word "yom" can potentially have many meanings, it means "24-hour day" in all of the other places in The Bible where it's used.

[Scheavo]

So, are we just gonna ignore my post about the for sure presence of most of the amino acids necessary for life? Ya know, the one that's actually scientific, and not a series of base assumptions with no proof behind them?

It's not a matter of the amino acids existing...it's arranging the correct ones in the correct order.   It's like having a huge, *thoroughly mixed* pile of an equal amount of red and white beans...also, there are over a hundred different varieties of beans.    If you plunged a scoop into that pile, what do you think you'd get?  In order to get the correct "beans" to make up a single protein, you'd have to scoop up ONLY red ones...no white ones at all.   On top of that, you'd have to have only 20 specific varies of the red beans, and they would have to be arranged a certain way inside the scoop.   Any variation whatsoever, and the protein won't function properly.

As rumborak pointed out, with amino acids being as commonplace as they are, then giving something time and a lot of trials means it's going to happen, at some point.

There's also the theory regarding interplanetary/galaxy seeding, as that article mentioned. If that is true, then all those "lucky" occurrences wouldn't even have to happen on Earth, they would've just had to of happened sometime in the previous, what, 15 billion years or whatnot since we posit the universe began?

By the way, pointing to the number of combinations possible in a protein, like you're doing, doesn't say anything about the probability of those proteins coming forming. Chemistry could easily favor amino acids forming certain proteins, making their likelihood even that much more likely.

[jammindude]

This has been discussed on this board before. Although the Hebrew word "yom" can potentially have many meanings, it means "24-hour day" in all of the other places in The Bible where it's used.

Would that happen to include Gen 2:4...where all six days are referred to collectively as a "day"?

[theseoafs]

This has been discussed on this board before. Although the Hebrew word "yom" can potentially have many meanings, it means "24-hour day" in all of the other places in The Bible where it's used.

Would that happen to include Gen 2:4...where all six days are referred to collectively as a "day"?

Sorry, I meant that whenever "yom" is used with a number, it means 24-hour day.

[Adami]

This has been discussed on this board before. Although the Hebrew word "yom" can potentially have many meanings, it means "24-hour day" in all of the other places in The Bible where it's used.

Would that happen to include Gen 2:4...where all six days are referred to collectively as a "day"?

It's the same thing with english in this case. If someone says "this happened 3 days ago" it means it happened 3 days ago, not 6 billions years. However someone could also say "back in my day", which clearly doesn't mean "back in my 24 hours". Having day mean a period of time in the past doesn't hint that it could mean billions of years either. Considering hebrew has words for years, generations, centuries etc.

[Adami]

This has been discussed on this board before. Although the Hebrew word "yom" can potentially have many meanings, it means "24-hour day" in all of the other places in The Bible where it's used.

Would that happen to include Gen 2:4...where all six days are referred to collectively as a "day"?

Sorry, I meant that whenever "yom" is used with a number, it means 24-hour day.

This is a good point, the days are in fact numbered. Using the concept of days isn't necessary to display a sequence of events (as the bible doesn't need them other places to show a sequence of events). Numbered days are days, not unspecified periods of time.

[theseoafs]

At the end of the (24-hour) day, don't doubt the translators. Bible translators know what they're doing. If every major Bible translation decided that "day" was the most fitting term, then we can pretty much rest assured that that's what the author meant.

If you're still not convinced, Google "genesis 24 hour day" and check out the results. The vast majority are in agreement about this issue, and the ones that aren't are mostly ridiculously awful, like this one: https://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/genesis.html

[jammindude]

This has been discussed on this board before. Although the Hebrew word "yom" can potentially have many meanings, it means "24-hour day" in all of the other places in The Bible where it's used.

Would that happen to include Gen 2:4...where all six days are referred to collectively as a "day"?

It's the same thing with english in this case. If someone says "this happened 3 days ago" it means it happened 3 days ago, not 6 billions years. However someone could also say "back in my day", which clearly doesn't mean "back in my 24 hours". Having day mean a period of time in the past doesn't hint that it could mean billions of years either. Considering hebrew has words for years, generations, centuries etc.

2 Pet 3:8

"one day with the Lord [is] as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day;"

And it seems to me by context alone that this not a literal measurable 1000 years to the day....but rather gives us a perspective that the way God counts days is NOTHING like the way we count days.

And I know I have people who disagree with me....but Hebrews 4:1-11, God shows us that his day of rest is still going on right now (6000 plus years after it started) and that it still remains for people who want to be reconciled to God to enter into his rest.... The writer even *specifically* quotes Genesis in these verses.  This isn't a stretch.     So if we are STILL IN the seventh day...there's no telling how long the first 6 were.

[jammindude]

And don't get me started on theology.   I'm really interested in science....but theology is about as bad as "faith healers" and snake charmers in my book.   

[Adami]

Paul didn't write Genesis, nor did he write in Hebrew. I have no reason to assume his writing style should shed any light what so ever on Genesis.

[theseoafs]

A) That verse in Peter didn't come around till a few thousand years after Genesis. With that in mind, it's clear that the author was leading everyone to believe that the days were 24-hour days, and at the end of the day Genesis was written so that its readers could comprehend it, right?

B) Even if we allow the possibility that the days in Genesis were god-days (and therefore thousands of years long), the Bible still messed up the order of the development of everything in the universe. The consolation that the days might be more than 24 hours long doesn't necessarily make Genesis scientifically accurate.

C) This is very, very beside the point. Here's the point:

The thing is that if you're going to support Intelligent Design by saying that evolution was guided by a greater force, you can't also talk about Adam and Cain and Abel as if they were actual people. There's no historical record of their existence.

[jammindude]

Paul didn't write Genesis, nor did he write in Hebrew. I have no reason to assume his writing style should shed any light what so ever on Genesis.

"All Scripture is inspired of God" - 2 Tim 3:16
"Your word is truth" - Jesus to his father at John 17:17
"...men spoke from God as they were borne along by holy spirit." - 2 Pet 1:21

I believe the Bible is God's Word....not men's. 

[rumborak]

I don't know how old you are, but prepare yourself for a lifetime of being at odds with facts.

rumborak

[Scheavo]

Paul didn't write Genesis, nor did he write in Hebrew. I have no reason to assume his writing style should shed any light what so ever on Genesis.

"All Scripture is inspired of God" - 2 Tim 3:16
"Your word is truth" - Jesus to his father at John 17:17
"...men spoke from God as they were borne along by holy spirit." - 2 Pet 1:21

I believe the Bible is God's Word....not men's.

Then why did God get so many things wrong? He apparently felt he got the first attempt so horribly wrong, that he had to go and write another one to fix the errors of the first.

And how do you arbitrarily stop this chain at the New Testament? What reasons do you have for supporting the idea that the Koran isn't God's Word? I assume you would say that the Koran is the work of a "false prophet," cause otherwise you'd be a Muslim and not a Christian.

[Ħ]

How did a thread about the end times become a thread about arguments from design?

[theseoafs]

H, that is an excellent question. The equation seems to be as such:

Thread about something + Placement in P/R = Thread about something else

[Adami]

How did a thread about the end times become a thread about arguments from design?

Ummmmmm...........................Ron Paul?

[jammindude]

I don't know how old you are, but prepare yourself for a lifetime of being at odds with facts.

rumborak

I'm used to this.   I show The Bible supports facts (and *does not* teach what theology claims it does) and scientists hate me.   I show theologists from their own book how The Bible does not teach what *they* have been saying it does, and the theologists hate me. 

It's to be expected. 

[theseoafs]

Except you have done neither of those things.

[Super Dude]

There's another interesting argument to be made: If human evolution got directed towards its current state, i.e. towards a being that can comprehend divinity enough to worship it .... why do we have hunter-gatherer bodies? Our bodies are incredibly ill-suited for the lifestyle that gave rise to Abrahamic religions. Or argued the other way around, if you take our bodies as guidance, our ideal lifestyle was in a time when there was no Christianity or other religions.

rumborak

What does that mean? I'm not arguing, I actually have no idea what that means biologically speaking.

[Ħ]

Humans are flawed. Therefore God doesn't exist. That's what it means.