Life, The Universe, And Everything

[dano]

Freeman.

Buddy...

"I haven't claimed to be a true Christian, I hope. I am a believer, old and scarred; just plain Christian will do."

And from Buddys post above^^^^^^^^^

"We're both Christians, although she has a bit of a different take on things theologically."

 

 

Dear Dano,

Are you quoting me for consistency checking, or for humor? I always (well, usually, ok maybe just sometimes) enjoy your comments; feel free to offer an opinion. You can at least agree with HanS; he thinks I'm a moron because he missed the egg joke.

Buddy

... just plain Christian will do.

 

Buddy,

No I don't think you are a moron, but most of the Christian apologists who comment on this site either are, or are well on their way to becoming morons, because of their faith.

 

I have no idea why you call yourself a Christian, because you seem to have a logical mind, which is totally non consistent with all the miracle, magic mumbo jumbo of the bible.

 

This is why I have followed you. I am fascinated by how smart people can say they believe the totally illogical, irrational, and just plain silly Christian dogma, and then are able to sound so rational in every other aspect of their lives.

 

My mind absolutely refuses to allow me to believe the basic concepts of Christianity or any other mythical, magical, religion. I am skeptical of everything supernatural, and so far haven't found any reason to not be.

 

I am older than you, (71) and thank my creator, (The Big Bang) every day for allowing me to think and question everything. It is so freeing and refreshing from the fear and loathing of Christian belief.

Dan, Agnostic

[freeman]

I am fascinated by how smart people can say they believe the totally illogical, irrational, and just plain silly Christian dogma, and then are able to sound so rational in every other aspect of their lives.

 

Dano,

I also! I know many people whom I consider highly intelligent (with and without degrees & in professional and non-professional work) who check there brains at the door of some church every Sunday!

 

The main reason I left christianity some 25 years ago was do the the most stupid saying in christianity, "You just have to believe!". No, I don't! At 17 years old, all my questions were met with that statement. Learned about Deism and said adiós to christianity forever!

 

I was taught to question everything and I wanted to most to know how things worked. The bible did not work and the more I questioned it, the more it was broken! That is when the "You just have to believe!" shit started! Or another famous one is, "Forget the OT, jesus came and the NT is the only one you need to worry about!". Bullshit! It is all or nothing.

 

Even after quiting, I became fasinated by the "historical" aspect of the church (still believing that there might have been some dude named jesus) and was futher mystified by the collective conscious of the "faithful" to be WILLFULLY ignorant of the historical facts of the church and of their god/man.

 

Getting side tracked.

Buddy, why do intellectuals like yourself check your brain at the door of christianity?

[Grandpa Harley]

I'd not class him as an intellectual, since a vocabulary and an ear for metre does not an intellect make...

[BuddyFerris]

... I get this tell-tale twitchy feeling in my frontal lobes that reliably tells me it's either bullshit or delusion.

Dear HuaiDan,

Imagine my pleasure as I share your twitchy bs-or-d meter; mine, however, goes off at both ends of the scale. The young earthers amaze me with their willingness to ignore the fossil record; the ToE proponents amaze me as they strain at the complexity of cellular machinery and swallow the camel whole regarding the arrival of same.

 

I'm sure I'm inadequately versed in the science, and probably shouldn't be following the topic as far as I have, but I've been a science follower since my first chemistry set. As a third-grader, I emptied out a house full of my mom's dinner guests by burning hydrogen-sulfide (rotten egg gas) in the back room. Memorable moments in science. My field isn't bio, but I'm not persuaded the foundational elements of bio are beyond explanation to a non-pro. My experience with the 'too complex for you to understand' crowd is that they don't understand what they've observed well enough to examine it themselves. So we arrive at the current discussion.

 

The ToE proponents have no problem with statements like the following defense, "The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made "vision" a little sharper. At the same time, the pit's opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera." I reasonably examine the random changes that create a depression in the light sensitive patch that are supposed to make the 'vision' a little sharper and notice that the implied optics are wrong. Not just a little off, but just plain physics non-compliant. A subsequent gradual narrowing of the opening that now encloses the depression creating a pin-hole camera... will some non-mushmouth please describe the various beneficial adaptations that make a depression gradually deepen and narrow until the pin-hole effect actually works. How many sequential events are assumed in that description? The description is more suited to a clogged pore and the evolution of the first pimple. A gradually deepening pit, light-sensitive at the bottom, not subject to filling up with sand or parasites or slime, progressively sharpening 'vision' as the pit deepens.

 

On the other side, just to be fair, are those who stop short of saying 'I don't know' and throw in a creation claim. Boing! there's the world, newly formed, six-thousand years ago, complete with fossils of creatures that never existed.

 

The statistical analysis of ToE claims is useful to the extent that it describes an unanswered element in the causal chain. 'Blah, blah, trust me I have a PhD,' doesn't impress me any more than its' counterpoint would impress you. The brightest intellectual stars of modern science have screwed the pooch, so to speak, investing years trying to prove invalid theories. While I subscribe to common descent, random variation, and natural selection, I'm stuck without adequate evidence for the arrival of most significant (functionally different) changes the ToE offers. I'm fond of our experience with the malarial parasite (since I have to take the #**!$ pills and sleep under a mosquito net). The ToE supporters offer the parasite's adaptation to modern medicines as proof of random variation being a foundation for significant change. It's a bad choice on their part; the resistance to meds is demonstrably not functional change; it is minor and describable right down to the prediction of occurrence rate and time line based on mutation rate, population density, and reproduction rate.

 

Does that help explain what's gone before?

 

I'm partial to cold, unbiased data. The meter goes off when 'this looks like that, therefore it must be'. It smells of gill slits, vestigial tails, and my all-time favorite, women are inherently inferior to men, having evolved solely for the purpose of procreation.

 

I agree, bs-or-d.

 

The interesting undercurrent in these exchanges is the presuppositional bias. We have here illustration of folks choosing to acknowledge evidence that supports their preferred position and reject the same if it does not. (Statements like this one usually provoke more of same)

 

Buddy

 

P.S. Dano, my antique friend, you don't sound a day over 60. Isn't it a pleasure to be old enough to have outlived so much stupidity? So why do reasonable folks like yourself stumble when the conversation begins to make room for things beyond your grasp? What if there is a purely natural realm contained within a larger superset? No, NO!, they protest. It cannot be, for surely man is the measure of all things! Surely all that which IS can be grasped by my mind (if not yours). Surely there is nothing beyond the reach or grasp of mankind. In any other subject area, we'd call such hubris what it is; hayseed parochialism.

 

While the results of the Renaissance are visible, and generally thought to be of benefit to mankind, the narrowing of scientific inquiry, classical humanism, and the supposed supremacy of man have left much of nature and experience unexamined.

 

BF

[Vigile]

Gotta give it to you Buddy, you're an eloquent old bastard.

 

I do wonder though how someone so enamored of science can so easily rebuff Occam's Razor, but I have no doubt you have a dazzling reason.

[Grandpa Harley]

Rat adaptation to Warferen is, actually, a significant morphological change... it's not visible,but the post-Warferen rat has a decidedly different blood clotting reaction to the pre-Warferen rat... it's why Warferen is now only used as a blood thinner in people with blood clots, and not a killer of rodentia...

[freeman]

Buddy,

As one who has studied Molecular/Biochemistry, I could see were a layman might think how complex life is at the cellular level! Very complex for us to learn, but I will say this again, only louder. NATURE IS EXTREMELY LAZY!

Once you understand (actually, a firm grasp of) Organic Chemistry & Biochemistry, then and only then the light goes on and you see how Molecular Biology works and how simple the mechanisms that control the inner workings of the cell truly are!

 

I think the major point on the ToE you are still missing is that multiple adaptations over time product evolutionary changes. Mutation/adaptations do not occur sequentially, but many at the same time. Think about this for a moment. In a human male during ejaculation, 300,000,000 (yes 300 million) spermatozoa are released! In just 4 ejaculations, over 1 billion spermatozoa are released with no two alike! That is over 1 billion DNA replications being performed. While most mutations are not beneficial and the result is the "death" of that gamete, there are lots of mutations which cause no detrimental effect and that mutation is passed on.

 

Since you enjoy the light-sensitive spot eventually evolving into an eye so much, let’s look at a similar situation, only in reverse. The blind mole rat has evolved to the point that its eyes are not functional. The eye lids are completely sealed shut. The most amazing part is that the optic nerves are not connected to the eyes at all any more. The optic nerves have been re-routed to enhance the function of the ears, nose and whiskers of the rat. This is a major evolutionary change of a major sensory organ! When a person becomes blind, the other sensory organs pick up the slack. No change in physical structures! However, the blind mole rat has made major changes in its structure of the eyes, nerves to the eyes and the part of the brain that processes sight! This is an evolutionary change, not an adaptation!

[Grandpa Harley]

Generally speaking, the low energy solutions are right... but 'Nature is lazy' is a clearer way of putting my 'least energy' remarks...

[freeman]

I forgot, the evolution of SIV to HIV!

[Ouroboros]

Buddy,

 

Thanks for the clarification of your position, and now I understand where you come from. You're basically equally critical towards both sides of the spectrum, and I appreciate that. A good measure of critical thinking is important in all kinds of studies, and especially in science, so one doesn't fall into a trap of "belief" rather than having the facts to support the theories.

[alanh]

the resistance to meds is demonstrably not functional change

 

It seems like a functional change to me - its adapting to a chemical that was killing it. What do you want, the thing to grow wings and start flying?

 

What if there is a purely natural realm contained within a larger superset?

 

That would be wonderful, now all we need is some evidence. If this "larger superset" interacts with our natural realm, then it will produce evidence. If it is totally apart, then its undetectable and for all intents and purposes irrelevant.

 

It cannot be, for surely man is the measure of all things! Surely all that which IS can be grasped by my mind (if not yours).

Surely there is nothing beyond the reach or grasp of mankind. In any other subject area, we'd call such hubris what it is; hayseed parochialism.

 

That is a strawman argument. We know that there are some things we will probably never know, like what occurred during the big bang before the Planck era.

[BuddyFerris]

... As one who has studied Molecular/Biochemistry, I could see were a layman might think how complex life is at the cellular level... Once you understand (actually, a firm grasp of) Organic Chemistry & Biochemistry, then and only then the light goes on....

 

Dear Freeman,

Too bad. I had hoped there might be reasonable answers a rational person could comprehend. Got another subject to which the rest of us might contribute?

Buddy

 

Sarcasm, think sarcasm....

[freeman]

I don't know Buddy, is there? Besides Biological Science and Angels, what else is there that others to contribute in this thread!

I know lets talk about Klingons! They exist! There were featured on TV shows all the time when I was a young one!

[freeman]

I don't know Buddy, is there? Besides Biological Science and Angels, what else is there that others to contribute in this thread!

I know lets talk about Klingons! They exist! There were featured on TV shows all the time when I was a young one!

 

 

I don't know Buddy, is there? Besides Biological Science and Angels, what else is there for others to contribute in this thread!

I know lets talk about Klingons! They exist! They were featured on TV shows all the time when I was a young one!

Better

[webmdave]

Shall we lay again the foundation and premise?

Buddy is an old, educated, rational, generally reasonable, non-hallucinatory, engineer who has seen an angel. Twice.

Buddy is therefore a too old, uneducated, irrational, unreasonable, hallucinating, engineer who has succumbed to suggestion and mass stupidity. He falls into the category with superstitious natives, mediocre magicians, tarot card readers, and the easily deceived. Or not.

 

Buddy

 

For the third, fourth or fifth time, Buddy. What did these angels look like? Can you please describe what you saw? The word "angels" means nothing to me. I have no picture in my mind as to what you think you saw, or why you interpretted what you saw as an "angel."

 

As stated above, when I hear that someone has seen a UFO, I might start envisioning little green men. Unless the story teller gives more detail, I'm left to my imagination, which in the case mentioned above would have been in complete error.

 

Please explain what you saw.

 

Thanks.

 

I'll just keep asking, I guess.

[freeman]

Evasive!

 

It is a defensive mechanism; to offer no proof or not discuss your positions, but to attack your opponents positions in the hopes of cutting them down to your level.

 

We are confident to defend our positions. Too bad christians don't feel the same way!

[Grandpa Harley]

Shall we lay again the foundation and premise?

Buddy is an old, educated, rational, generally reasonable, non-hallucinatory, engineer who has seen an angel. Twice.

Buddy is therefore a too old, uneducated, irrational, unreasonable, hallucinating, engineer who has succumbed to suggestion and mass stupidity. He falls into the category with superstitious natives, mediocre magicians, tarot card readers, and the easily deceived. Or not.

 

Buddy

 

For the third, fourth or fifth time, Buddy. What did these angels look like? Can you please describe what you saw? The word "angels" means nothing to me. I have no picture in my mind as to what you think you saw, or why you interpretted what you saw as an "angel."

 

As stated above, when I hear that someone has seen a UFO, I might start envisioning little green men. Unless the story teller gives more detail, I'm left to my imagination, which in the case mentioned above would have been in complete error.

 

Please explain what you saw.

 

Thanks.

 

I'll just keep asking, I guess.

 

I think you'll be older and I'll be dead when answers are forthcoming...

[freeman]

Buddy,

Your two angels have reappeared!

 

A heroic subway rescue in Queens

 

"Now, we still don't know the identity of the victim or the Good Samaritans, so much remains a mystery. "

 

I'm sure someone is going to give credit to gawd for this!

[dano]

Buddy,

If you gave some explanation as to how you can believe that an omniscient, omnipotent, perfect, intelligent supreme being, decided that he needed to have a person sacrificed to himself, to atone for the wrong doing of humans that he made and programmed, I missed it!

 

Why, in your opinion, did God inspire those ancient men to put all that silly shit in the bible, knowing that it would be unbelievable to humans in 2000 years?

 

This blog is about belief and non belief, but you seem to want to discuss everything but your beliefs.I notice that you are very stingy about sharing, what parts of the bible you believe and which parts you don't!

 

Why don't you just call yourself a Deist, and forget the Christian moniker, or are you afraid the devil will get you?

 

Do you really think God will give you some kind of everlasting reward, just because you were lucky enough to be exposed to Christianity, and fry everyone else forever, who never heard of it?

Dan, Agnostic

[Grandpa Harley]

One thing I've noticed about the type of prosletyser that we appear to have here is they never really tell you anything... they let you make up the story then claim 'Well, HEY! That's what Jesus thought too... '

 

It's not wildly dissimilar to the methods used by a certain segment of the population to groom children... Same psychology with the need for power. The evangelist has to have an 'influence'... if they do it right, they gain a congregation...

 

I think I spent too long with my head in BAU manuals...

[Grandpa Harley]

I know... I have odd hobbies...

[dano]

I've noticed that when Buddy is in the process of evading a direct question, he gets a little crazy for a few lines, and then goes right back to talking about something totally irrelevant to the question.

Dan Agnostic

[Grandpa Harley]

but the context makes some think they've 'missed' something, thus cementing the authority of the writer as an 'intellect'...

 

The faux modesty and the slight disingenuous edge, the litany of 'sarcasm' he has to remember it is one of the more obvious cases, also gives lie to the image he wishes to put forward... 'in the world but not wholly of it'... while coupled with strange ex-cathedra statements... He also plays on his age, to give gravitas that he somewhat feels he lacks...

 

Overall, it's just irritating

[BuddyFerris]

Do you really think God will give you some kind of everlasting reward, just because you were lucky enough to be exposed to Christianity, and fry everyone else forever, who never heard of it?

Dan, Agnostic

Nope.

 

QUOTE(.:webmaster:. @ Aug 3 2007, 01:33 PM) *

QUOTE(.:webmaster:. @ Aug 1 2007, 10:29 AM) *

QUOTE(BuddyFerris @ Aug 1 2007, 09:19 AM) *

Shall we lay again the foundation and premise?

Buddy is an old, educated, rational, generally reasonable, non-hallucinatory, engineer who has seen an angel. Twice.

Buddy is therefore a too old, uneducated, irrational, unreasonable, hallucinating, engineer who has succumbed to suggestion and mass stupidity. He falls into the category with superstitious natives, mediocre magicians, tarot card readers, and the easily deceived. Or not.

 

Buddy

 

 

For the third, fourth or fifth time, Buddy. What did these angels look like? Can you please describe what you saw? The word "angels" means nothing to me. I have no picture in my mind as to what you think you saw, or why you interpretted what you saw as an "angel."

...

I'll just keep asking, I guess.

...

I think you'll be older and I'll be dead when answers are forthcoming...

...

 

Let me not be the cause of death-by-conversational-frustration.

Occasion one (from memory, without reference to previous description):

In a crowd of about 1200, I watched a guitarist on stage who played and sang while his wife danced behind or beside him. This was a Christian gathering; the musician was singing songs he had written; rather good actually. His wife danced oddly; disjointed movement, far removed from classic ballet. Looked more like a war dance from a bad movie. I asked myself, perhaps out loud, what is this woman doing?

 

Up to this point, my life is normal, non-spooky, reasonable. At this point, I'd been a Christian for maybe 40 years. Baptist background, Free Methodist extended family, some time with the AoG while living in Spain in the 70's. Routine experiences with faith, life, kids, school, and career; nothing unnerving. Pragmatic science & math type mind; routine church involvement, board member, trustee, elder, occasional Sunday school teacher, that sort of thing, all plain and perhaps unremarkable. At that point, I had never seen a bona fide miracle with my own eyes, as far as I can remember.

 

So here we are at a conference, listening to pretty good music, watching a weird lady dance, and I ask the question, "what is this woman doing?" Having asked, I saw the stage curtain behind her become somewhat insubstantial, like netting or something you could see through with little effort instead of the black opaque stage curtain that had been there a moment before. Behind the curtain, I watched a creature dance more or less in step with the weird lady. Not a reflection, not a shadow; it danced with her, as oddly as she, like a war dance. I remember closing my eyes and looking again to clear the picture; I had no referent for the creature and supposed at first that it was a trick of shadow or some such. Through repeated attempts to make the thing I saw resolve into something familiar, the creature persisted. As the song ended, and the dance drew to a close, both the dancer and creature concluded their steps and came to a stop; the nearly transparent curtain returned to normal. I could hear the echo of my question in my mind, "what is she doing?" followed by the answer in a voice not my own, "she dances with angels." I was at a total loss as to what to say or do. It was days before I realized with any clarity what I had seen.

 

OK, that's the part you've heard. Now you want to know what it looked like. Haven't a clue beyond a general impression of upright, arms, legs, head, perhaps covered or clothed, symmetric, perhaps 4 meters tall, and quite non-human; movements seemed wrong. I couldn't see any facial features or detail of extremities. It's as though what I was shown was very specifically chosen to answer the question I had asked. Now as to what all that might mean, you'd have to know the rest of the story, and I expect you wouldn't care for it.

 

The reason for telling this snippet in the first place was that I was asked something along the line of why I believed in God or the supernatural or something like that. It seemed as good an introduction as any; to introduce the concept of a real person and an objectively evaluated experience (during and post); objectivity in this case being tempered with whatever baggage or mental aberration you will ascribe to me for the time. From my fairly careful review, I'm satisfied that I wasn't emotionally caught up in anything, not swept up in wishful imagining, not persuaded to something fanciful by someone else. In the crowd of 1200, only one other person of whom I am aware saw what I saw; they described it for me a couple of weeks afterward without being prompted.

 

I've met people who are blasé about such things, considering them reasonable and appropriate in the life of a believer. I'm not so inclined, nor does my reading of scripture suggest that such things should be commonplace. So, I'm no expert on the subject; I saw the first creature when I was wide awake, eyes open, undisturbed, unhurried, unemotional (at the time). The second such event left me badly shaken, but again nothing particularly spooky, just non-human, and this time, rather frightening. I'll describe the second one for you if you like, but it won't help you at all. The two events occurred several years apart and were unrelated; in neither case was I particularly curious or pursuing such things.

 

So we're back where we started several weeks ago, and here's the challenge you face. Either you have encountered an unreasonable person, likely superstitious and imagining things, probably mentally unbalanced, or deceived by a trick of lighting and shadow, or perhaps there are things beyond the subset of reality we call science and reason.

 

Buddy

 

P.S. I haven't come lightly back to this issue for obvious reasons. Claims of supernatural events don't impress me or even get my attention on most occasions, and I don't expect more from anyone here. I'd be particularly interested in something more substantial than a casual dismissal. BF

[Ouroboros]

...

I've met people who are blasé about such things, considering them reasonable and appropriate in the life of a believer. I'm not so inclined, nor does my reading of scripture suggest that such things should be commonplace. So, I'm no expert on the subject; I saw the first creature when I was wide awake, eyes open, undisturbed, unhurried, unemotional (at the time). The second such event left me badly shaken, but again nothing particularly spooky, just non-human, and this time, rather frightening. I'll describe the second one for you if you like, but it won't help you at all. The two events occurred several years apart and were unrelated; in neither case was I particularly curious or pursuing such things.

 

So we're back where we started several weeks ago, and here's the challenge you face. Either you have encountered an unreasonable person, likely superstitious and imagining things, probably mentally unbalanced, or deceived by a trick of lighting and shadow, or perhaps there are things beyond the subset of reality we call science and reason.

 

Buddy

 

P.S. I haven't come lightly back to this issue for obvious reasons. Claims of supernatural events don't impress me or even get my attention on most occasions, and I don't expect more from anyone here. I'd be particularly interested in something more substantial than a casual dismissal. BF

You know, when I was Christian (for over 30 years), I wanted to experience some miracle or any kind of vision. I sought after it, and I wanted it so badly. Later we had a terrible accident in my family, and my wife and kids got hurt. For years I wanted a miracle, but I slowly gave up on it. Eventually I just wanted anything that would keep my faith alive, a sign, a word, a feeling, a strengthening in my faith, and I prayed for it, but I never got anything.

 

Could it be that God plays favorites? Some he give miracles or visions freely, to others they spend their whole life seeking it, and never getting it? Don't you think it does make sense to conclude that a statue is "dead" to you, when you year after year talk to it and it never moves and it never responds? Why should I, or anyone else, be expected to believe in a lifeless doll on the floor, only because someone say we should do so in faith?

 

I think that it is extraordinary that you get a vision like that, but I'm certain that you would of course willingly admit that I very easily can ascribe your event to a mere psychological phenomenon rather than a miraculous event. Wouldn't you? Especially if you consider people getting similar vision in other religions and it supports their faith just as much as this vision supports yours.