A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I covered Penn Jillette’s piece on NPR entitled, There Is No God. It recently grabbed the attention of Lord Spanky and this is what he had to say. I offer you the complete unedited commentary and would appreciate your thoughts on the matter.
Begin Commentary:
The sad fact of the matter is that most of what I’ve heard on this forum, both from believers and non, are all blind assumptions. I wish I had come across this forum sooner, though maybe I can contribute a little wisdom now. A belief in God or not should always begin at the beginning. Logically, it is the best place to start, and what does that mean? Why do we exist? I read earlier that someone brought up evolution on the subject of empathy, and no one questioned it! Let’s get away from assumptions, shall we? You want to talk science, let’s do it.
FACT: None of you here can prove evolution. No one can, and no matter how much you hate it, it’s still a theory that is NOT standing up to the test of time. As time progresses, more and more flaws are being found in Darwin’s theory, which he himself denounced on his death bed, but no one wants to admit that, do they? If you dig down into the earth to look at the fossil record, you will find that the deeper you go you actually find remains of MORE complex organisms, not less, until it just suddenly stops. Explain this to me, please? Evolution just got a big hole in it. If anyone on this board can explain to me how the human eye EVOLVED, feel free. Why would a random mutation cause a hole to form in the front of our eye, if there was nothing in the back to detect the light, form an image, and send that information to our brains? And why, if there was no pupil to allow light through, would receptors have formed at the backs of our eyes? Answer? That’s not even all of it! The scientifically accepted chaos theory shoots holes all in evolution.
FACT: Science contradicts itself, not the Bible. Anyone can twists words in a text, but I don’t have to twist anything when bringing up the previous point of chaos theory and evolution. Science tells us that the earth is billions of years old, but sedimentary data in river deltas and other areas only suggest thousands. Carbon dating has been proven inaccurate time and time again, and yet all of you accept what you hear on the discovery channel, yes? Why? How is that so different from my accepting something that I read in a book that is FAR older than a television?
FACT: Christianity is the only organized religion in the world that has such explicit prophecies concerning end times in it. As far as it being “creative interpretation”, how does that apply when Christ Himself says that natural disaster in the end times will increase in number and severity? Hmmmm…that could be interpreted a lot of ways, couldn’t it? Please don’t debate about a book you’ve never read, it only makes you look ignorant.
FACT: Miracles happen. Yeah, I just said that. BobbyG mentioned experiences that I’m sure you were all so anxious to hear and shoot down, so I’ve got some of my own for you. Feel free to criticize, because you can’t disprove them; I’m the one with documentation. I have seen a blind girl healed. I was at an Arkansas Youth Camp, and there were about 500 of us (teenagers) there, and our sermon had been about the supernatural. We were in a worship point in our service and a youth leader went to the DYD (District Youth Director) and told him that she wanted to be healed. I tell you that I spoke with her before this happened, and afterward. Today she can see perfectly, she could not then. A friend of mine had twisted, in fact nearly fractured, her ankle that same week of youth camp, and on Tuesday night she came in from the hospital to the service, having been whisked away from the camp when the accident happened. She had a splint on and was on krutches, and was supposed to be for two weeks. She literally sprinted out of the sanctuary that night. Those are only a few examples from my youth.
You see, you all talk about abstract things like emotions and a sense of right and wrong, but how can you respond to physical evidence in a physical world? To Log, how is it “cheap” to admit that I’m too weak to handle a given situation and trust it to higher hands? You look at the order of the universe, the fact that the sun rises everyday, and tell me that there is no God? The Bible says that He will harden the hearts of the wicked and foolish. None of you have yet to present any evidence as to God’s non-existence, only assumptions. By the way, Jay, you offered so much insight after bashing everyone else’s logic. Please don’t try to be the “smart guy” anymore. You had nothing tangible, either. That seems to be what you all want, right? Something solid? Some proof? Well, here you go. I haven’t seen any of you come up with any.
No related posts.
Thanks JKM, I think we should just end this argument (in this thread) cuz no ones getting anywhere. It doesnt matter what evidence either party brings to the table, the other side will always want more.
JKM,
there does not exist any “concrete” proof either way. In debates like these, we are discussing the possibility of and bringing our evidence to the table for our sides. No one has given a positive argument for why God cannot exist. I don’t know if anybody read the articles i gave, but it has evidence in it and nobody has attempted to show why it’s wrong. No one has even attempted to prove evolution.
your not getting the point, your evidence isnt good enough, just as ours isnt good enough for you. thus we should end this because no progress is being made on either side.
AMEN!
and from now on, I suggest we just look up there instead of restate the same with slightly different words
Absolutely!
From here out, I think we should stop using small variations of previous posts. ;)
LOL
The proverbial horse is truly black and blue after this beating.
as long as you concede the fact that you havn’t given sufficient evidence, period, not just for me. I will admit, i havn’t even touched the surface of substantial evidence yet. But neither have you, in fact you havn’t made a rebuttal of any i have given or given any of your own. So as long as we agree on this.
*yawn* i dont think anyone is listening anymore. so just give it up J.
I love myself… a lot.
If anyone comes back to this thread, ignore that last crap and read post 34. Boris, Alcari, Matt, before you start bashing J, maybe you should take into account that a lot of concrete evidence has already been presented, and in 175 posts since #34, no one has offered anything to refute any of it.
Hello Lord Spanky,
Thanks for the index to the relevant posts. My guess is the reason that no one has refuted any of these points is that no one has the time to look that deeply into it. I will try to remedy this by looking through the posts you indexed and take one point at a time. It will probably take quite a long time, so if you are patient, I’ll address all that I am able to.
I’ll start with post #34: You start with a critique of the earliest stages of life. This is a certainly a safe place for you to start. This happened such a long time ago that it is tough to fully understand what occurred.
I’d like to point out that this is the problem of the origin of life, not really evolution. Notice that even if the first forms of life were designed or miraculously created, evolution could still take place. Thus casting spontaneous generation into doubt has absolutely no effect on the validity of evolution.
For this section I’ll simply point out the Denton’s “Evolution: A Theory in Crisis” (published 1986) is a little out dated for the pace of molecular biology research. For more recent research on the early atmosphere, see this recent (2005) study.
You also cite Gish (circa 1972, 1984) and state, “In must be noted at this point that the existence of a reducing atmosphere is theoretical and does not rely on physical evidence”. Well, the hydrogen atmosphere cited in the study linked above is a very reducing atmosphere. Also, form this 2004 article, “Molecular oxygen wasn’t around, indicate rocks from the era, which contain iron carbonate instead of iron oxide.”
I’ll have more critiques of post 34 later!
Hello again Lord Spanky,
I’ve found more time to find flaws with your critique of evolution in post #34 so that you can no longer claim that “no one has offered anything to refute any of it”. Read the post (#211) preceding this one for the first segment.
Today, I’ll refute the ‘dilution problem’ from your three-and-a-half decade old reference (Gish 1972). He states that sufficient concentrations for abiogenesis could not occur. This would be true if the concentrations were uniform across all bodies of water. He completely ignores the natural distillation effect of evaporating water in coastal pools. From this 2004 research paper, “The early impact that produced the Moon, and fast terrestrial rotation, subjected coastal areas 3.9 Ga ago to rapid tidal flooding (dilution) and drying (concentration), with a likely periodicity in the range of 2-6 h, and could have provided a driving force for cyclic replication of early biomolecules.” The process of concentrating normally dilute particles can be observed today in salt lake formations. Also, a natural cold trap is quite possible is such an environment since shallow pools of waters have large daily changes in temperature due to solar warming during the day and cooling during the night.
As to what you call ‘incompatibility’, all I would do is reference the phenomenon of dynamic equilibrium. When you have two competing and opposite reactions, they reach a balancing point where the construction and destruction of such molecules equal out resulting in constant concentration. Dynamic equilibrium is a very basic concept in chemistry.
More critiques of post #34 to come!
Oh, as an addendum, I found this 2001 scientific article about the compatibility and, indeed, synergetic relationship between amino acids and sugars. It is know known as the Sugar Model of the origin of life and completely refutes Lord Spanky’s ‘incompatibility’ argument.