Iron Skillet, sorry I have clearly touched a hot nerve for you but your post is so full of half truths and straight out untruths I’m not really sure where to start but start I must:
1. You still don’t seem to understand our fallen human nature. You seem to think that because there is evil in the world there can be no God. The bible explains this situation perfectly, but to accept that means also to accept the personal accountability that goes along with it, a tough ask for most of us.
2. Morals are common to all of todays religions because we are all made in God’s image, no matter what you believe, yes even Secular Humanists Iron. We are descended from that first pair of humans so does it not make sense we would have the same nature? Even evolutionists acknowledge we are all descended from the same group of people in Africa, although the whole ‘out of Africa’ model was simply devised to avoid the intrinsic racism of the multi regional theory of human origins, despite there being no fossil evidence. And while animals show signs of instinct, that is all it is, instinct, not some moral awareness that will someday evolve into a ‘human’ style moral code.
3. Secular Humanism, like all religions, holds at it’s core unproven and unprovable pre suppositions. I know what the Oxford dictionary definition is and I acknowledge you don’t worship a god, although in reality you actually put mankind on this pedestal. You believe by faith that there is no God and matter and energy spontaneously formed by themselves out of nothing for no reason where I believe there is a God, He has revealed himself to us in the bible and He created the entire universe ex nihilo specifically to have relationship with us. Can either of us prove our positions, no but I’m sure we both believe them none the less, this, my friend is faith.
4. So what exactly is your ‘real’ universe Iron? You don’t understand worldview do you? You obviously consider the Secular Humanist explanation for our existence as the ‘default’ fact where I accept the biblical version. There can be little hope of reconciliation when ones worldview clashes.
5. The New Testament is the most reliable, in terms of knowing what was originally written, set of writings known from the ancient world. There is more manuscript evidence from far closer to the events they describe than absolutely anything else. The ‘pagan myth’ theory to which you allude is so discredited by real historians, frankly it’s not even worth wasting my time rebutting it. Logically the whole resurrection story stands up to scrutiny as well, consider the following:
- If Jesus was really dead, why didn’t the Romans or the Jews just produce the body? Both had huge interests in stopping a new religion in it’s tracks which a dead Jesus would have certainly done.
- The disciples stole the body I hear you scream, well consider the inconvenient fact of the professional Roman guard, placed at the tomb specifically to prevent this occurring. Or are you suggesting that hardened Roman soldiers were unable to stop a bunch of fishermen and tax collectors?
- Many of the NT letters written by the apostle Paul were written within one lifetime of Jesus Himself, so if any falsehoods were preached they would have been corrected by those who were there to see it.
6. I’m sorry to say Iron but the facts of science to which you elude are not on your side either. I know the current paradigm in modern science is completely controlled by the philosophy of naturalism, so it’s understandable that you think they are but just have a think about the following:
- Where did matter and energy come from for the ‘big bang’ to occur? All our laws of physics show that the universe and time itself had a beginning, so logically if something begins in time, there must be a creator.
- How did the first life form? Real chemistry shows non living chemicals do not come together to form living ones all by themselves. We as fairly intelligent humans can’t even get this to happen artificially.
- Whilst the new science of information is only just taking off, and we really don’t understand how little we know, where did all the information in DNA come from when mutations and natural selection only ever decrease it?
- Could you please explain why zircon crystals have been found to contain helium, which should leach out in only thousands of years but is still present after millions? Or perhaps why original, as indicated by a recently published paper, dinosaur soft tissue is still in fossils supposedly millions of years old when observable science shows it decays in thousands? Or why there are no stage three super nova remnants when if the universe were millions of years old there should be thousands? I could go on but I think you get the point.
With respect Iron we are both ‘religious’ in that we hold our beliefs by faith, but I would say that to believe in no god at all, based on history and real observable science, is to hold a faith that can only be described as blind. Given the angry tone of your posts I suspect deep down you know this to be true.
Last edited by Gigaboomer; 21st Jul 2011 at 01:46.