God of the gaps moves into yet smaller gap for creationists

[dmallind]

Eventually it's going to disappear just like the divine cause of lightning and the geocentric system.

Serious question: What then will creationists claim when further experiments lead to where they obviously will?


My guess is "well the fact that it was produced by human intelligence proves that it needed intelligence of SOME kind to design" (forgetting of course that earth's reducing atmosphere of 4 billion years ago was changed irrevocably by the fact that life DID evolve, so no natural repeat is possible).

What do you think they'll come up with?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16382-artificial-molecule-evolves-in-the-lab.html

[opihimoimoi]

1. When will we learn ya cannot discuss these things with the Brainwashed

Its like talking to them Republicans...their brains are fucked.

[Warpy]

2. They just can't cope with the fact that

our magnificent intelligence arose as a random set of mutations spurred by extreme environmental changes on a growing planet.

I myself ascribe to the notion that life is an artifact of planets and that intelligent life is just the planet looking at itself.

As for the next intelligent species my money's on the cephalopods.

[charlie]

3. Uh-uh, the molecule has DESIGNERS

It was created in a LAB. You WEREN'T THERE 6000 years ago, you can't say how it REALLY was done. There certainly WEREN'T ANY LABS around. You shouldn't be doing that stuff anyway, it's AGAINST GOD'S WILL. Look over here, have you seen this banana? It's DEVASTATING.

Something like that...

[trotsky]

4. Aieee! Bananas!!

[dmallind]

5. The utter lack of humility when bananas were shown to be artificial

said everythging you need to know about Ray and his ilk.

[trotsky]

7. That's how the game is played on that side.

Throw everything you can out there - the people with the truth on their side will then have to waste their time debunking crap like that over and over and over because some numbskull who sees it on TEH INTERNETS thinks it's the most brilliant thing he's ever seen and the ultimate weapon against Darwinism. It's just the latest in a long line of bogus stories, examples, or analogies. Like the old "747 in a junkyard" or "watch found on the beach" arguments. You waste so much time dealing with the long list of childish and wrong arguments, there's no time left to point to the mountain of evidence for evolution, and the cretinist "wins."

[ZombieHorde]

8. What is this about? Banana?

[charlie]

9. Ray Comfort and The Atheist's Nightmare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGMuIyBK5P4

No, he's not joking. Yes, his arguments are always like this.

And that idiot sidekick to his right is Kirk Cameron, which makes Ray's show just that much more surreal.

[dmallind]

10. The link below gives Ray's side but the punchline is.....

The eating bananas we all know and love are the result of decades of selective breeding and hybridization by humans. Natural wild bananas have tough husks and are full of rock hard stones.

[charlie]

11. And there's also

the spectacle of Ray making the unwitting case for masturbation and 14 kinds of sodomy.

[charlie]

6. LOL!

If there was a God, Ray would make Him die of embarassment.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Sanctified]

13. So this proves there is no God? n/t

[cosmik debris]

14. Nobody needs to prove that there is no god

Because there is no evidence that god exists.

It is up to god to prove that he DOES exist.

He has had a few thousand years to do it and he is still incapable of offering proof.

[Sanctified]

17. Why does God need to prove that he exists? n/t

[cosmik debris]

18. He doesn't,

But until he does, the only people who will "believe in" him are the gullible and the desperate. If he is happy with that, so am I.

[Sanctified]

19. Even if he showed his face to every person on the planet within 100 years

people will be saying he does not exist and even the people who saw him would say he did not exist. I am pretty sure God is secure enough that he does pace worrying if people believe in him or not.

[Meshuga]

21. But I thought the whole point...

...is to make sure people believe and accept God in order to be saved. If that is the case, why did God create all these stubborn creatures who refuse to believe and accept him?

[Sanctified]

22. Free Will, with it you are free to decide to worship God or not.

Again God is not so petty that he really worries if you worship and love him or not.

[Meshuga]

25. Is that what God told you?

Because the Bible seems to state that you can only achieve salvation through acceptance of Christ as your lord and savior.

The Bible even goes further by stating, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast." -- Ephesians 2:8-9

So, God seems to care according to scripture which is supposed to be the word of God.

[Sanctified]

26. Yes it's a free gift but one that is offered not forced.

Again would God prefer for you to be with him, yes. Will he force it, no. Is he going to stay awake at night worrying about it, no.

[Meshuga]

27. If sending someone to eternal damnation...

...For not following in line with faith is not forcing then I don't know what is.

[Sanctified]

32. Why should He let someone enter His house if they rejected Him. n/t

[dmallind]

33. Why should a loving god set up such a cruel twisted game in the first place?

Accept I exist without proof or evidence or I will burn you forever in agony?

If such a god exists, he deserves nothing approaching worship, only revulsion and loathing.

[Sanctified]

34. Depends on your definition of Heaven and Hell.

For me Heaven is to be in the presence of God while Hell will be separation from Him. I do believe that since God is just there will be punishment for those who were real assholes like Hitler but as far as the person who just rejected Him but was a good person they will be separated from Him. One may say, "Well separation for eternity is not going to be that bad, after all I made it 80 years without Him." However you will have the opportunity to experience His true presence upon Judgment and when you are separated from Him you will notice something missing which was His presence you felt on earth. Now this is just my personal Theology and obviously I could be wrong.

[dmallind]

35. The gospels say it otherwise

Wialing and gnashing of teeth. everlasting fire. Eternal punishment. All there in the NT.

[Sanctified]

36. Matthew describes hell as darkness, with weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I honestly believe that for the average person going to Hell it will just be the separation from God hence the feeling of darkness and sadness. Now for the really bad people the ones that molested little kids, raped women, started wars and just general nasty shit they will be punished with some form of severe suffering.

[dmallind]

37. Matthew alos says afire and eternal punishment,

[Sanctified]

39. But fire and eternal punishment was used to describe those who

did not help or were harmful to their fellow man.

[dmallind]

41. And nonbelievers too.

[Sanctified]

42. The scriptures are pretty specific in that those who burn did more than just reject God.

Now obviously the hard part is how do you guarantee you don't burn since can you truly cannot be without sin and does God judge one sin more harshly than another. So if you lie does that put you on the same level as someone who mass murdered? I personally believe that there are different levels of hell that one can experience and the scripture does give evidence to that in Matthew 11 : 20-24.

[Meshuga]

38. As far as the list of people who will suffer

You include the bad people and that is fine but you go against scripture when you exclude the nice folks who don't believe in God and consequently don't accept him.

[Sanctified]

40. I believe their suffering will be just the separation from God.

And that will be pretty horrible suffering considering one feels His presence on Earth however the whole burning in fire for eternity I doubt that is reserved for good people who just reject him.

[cosmik debris]

24. Well, it's your myth. You can make him do anything you want.

You can even give him super powers!

[dmallind]

29. Rather strange then that the entire Bible

is basically one long insecure diatribe about how big and great he is and how important it is to him that we agree then.

[dmallind]

28. Why does it need to?

Not that it tries to. It simply provides one more brick in the huge wall of evidence for purely mechanistic processes creating all that exists. There could be any number of putative gods out there, but the more we understand the less NEED for one there is to explain life, or creation, or natural laws (OK to make wild ass guesses with no evidence about these things really, but that is explanation enough for theists it seems).

[moobu2]

15. Has any scientific discovery

Ever come down on the side of the supernatural?

[Sanctified]

16. If there is a scientific explanation then it would no longer be supernatural.

The closest one I could think of would be the Big Bang Theory which was the brainchild of a Catholic Priest who used it to explain scientifically how the Universe was created by God.

[frogmarch]

20. No, he didn't!

Georges Lemaitre didn't propose his theory in order to explain scientifically how the universe was created by God.

article snip:

It is tempting to think that Lemaître’s deeply-held religious beliefs might have led him to the notion of a beginning of time. After all, the Judeo-Christian tradition had propagated a similar idea for millennia. Yet Lemaître clearly insisted that there was neither a connection nor a conflict between his religion and his science. Rather he kept them entirely separate, treating them as different, parallel interpretations of the world, both of which he believed with personal conviction. Indeed, when Pope Pius XII referred to the new theory of the origin of the universe as a scientific validation of the Catholic faith, Lemaître was rather alarmed. Delicately, for that was his way, he tried to separate the two:

“As far as I can see, such a theory remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being… For the believer, it removes any attempt at familiarity with God… It is consonant with Isaiah speaking of the hidden God, hidden even in the beginning of the universe.”

http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/essaybooks/cosmic/p_lemaitre.html

[Sanctified]

23. I will grant that Georges did not use Theology to declare his science but was able to use his

science to confirm personally his Theology. One quote from Georges in particular I can think of is, "He (the Christian researcher) knows that not one thing in all creation has been done without God, but he knows also that God nowhere takes the place of His creatures. Omnipresent divine activity is everywhere essentially hidden. It never had to be a question of reducing the supreme Being to the rank of a scientific hypothesis."

This is important because I think there are a lot of Christian Scientists who use the Bible to confirm their science which is ridiculous, the Bible was never intended to be a book on scientific research and the realms of science and theology should not be intertwined. The Bible is a book on salvation and science cannot explain salvation just like religion cannot explain the workings of atoms and molecules. Furthermore there is no need for science to explain salvation just like there is no need for religion to explain how atoms and molecules work.

[moobu2]

30. Originally, and for most Christian history

the Bible was certainly intended to be read literally.

[pokerfan]

31. Whenever a gap is filled they simply shout, "Look! Two more gaps!"