KFC Kickin For Christ... read my post again, this time read it IN FULL!

You appear to not be a creationist, you sound like a person who beleives you were created by god, but has no association or understand of what the creationist/ID movement is ABOUT; and you are duped by their sweet sounding names. Creationist SOUNDS like a person who beleives in creation, just like Scientologist SOUNDS like a person who beleives in Science. Intelligent Design SOUNDS like the notion that some external influence, divine or otherwise, created or interfered with our development.

But NONE of those have any relationship to what they are trying to sound like.

You should watch this lecture, it goes into depth about the exact specific creationist/ID/Sci Critique lies. (and remember just because you beleive a god created you doesn't make you a cretionist, just like beleiving in science doesn't make you a scientologist)

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg

This debate needs to move from the politics thread to religion ....er science....one of them. I haven't seen Palin's name used in the last two pages.

Since politics includes cultural and societal issues, the discussion is wholly relevant. We are engaged in a cultural war and it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that there are stark ideological and worldview differences between McCain/Palin and N'Obama/Biden and the direction in which the country would go under their respective leadership.

Taltimer posts:

Since I agree with KFC and consider myself a Creationist I would like to respond...

Taltimer posts: #45

This is where you misunderstand the concept of Special Creation...of course the movement is about people who believe in God and in Creation according to God's revelation which is Sacred Scripture and (for me, a Catholic, Sacred Tradition.)

But let's start at the beginning where we can agree (I think)....and then look at the differences. Both Darwin's Evolutionism (Naturalism) and Creationism are philosophies that attempt to explain how  the universe and man came to be. 

Evolutionism central idea is that the science of natural phenomena is the only valid path to knowledge and that there is no need for a transcendant Creator God because such belief is regarded as unscientific and Genesis is mythology.  Evolutionism has failed to prove scientifically that all life came about purely by naturalistic "creation". If the science of genetics had been known then, the idea of macro-evolution would have been seen as obviously mistaken. The theme of descent with modification has failed Evolution theory and naturalistic evolutionists are still in hoping that the ever elusive mechanism (what I call the missing link) will be found.

 Darwin and his collegues Evolutionist Naturalist dogma became popular among atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists and the illusion of Evolution is very appealing and enchanting and helps keep belief in a Creator God at a remote distance.

Again, the concept of Creationism is harmonious with Sacred Scripture....basically there is but one God, the Divine Trinity, the Infinite First Cause, who created all that exists including space, time, and matter out of nothing.  Not only was matter created, but also organization of matter was created. Laws of nature were placed into operation by which space and time, matter and energy both exist and interact. What we know about God is very incomplete, but we are learning more all the time. This is very similiar with what we know of atomic energy, gravity, and the study of genetics. What actually constitutes living matter?  What animates the total entity of the cell? In contrast to the evolutionist idea of purely mechanistic functioning of matter, which holds that nature has its own inherent life-force, Creationism can and has provided a coherent explanation...that the Creator has impressed complex information into cells which can reproduce and pass on that info to the next generation via secondary causes.   

To date, true empirical science has supported the historical and anthropological events recorded in Genesis and Creationists endeavor to disern objective truth about these events. Creationism offers a coherent basis for understanding the earliest events and how mankind came to be. It takes in Almighty God's unbounded love and mercy. It's just as KFC said, Special Creation view accepts on the basis of faith in the revealed God, that Scripture is free from error and that empirical science will never discover any data which can conclusively contradict Scripture. I would add that man can know something of God and deduce His existence as an unseen Designer.

The Evolutionist view offers only a Naturalistic explanation of the universe and mankind, while the Creationist view goes further and acknowledges an unseen Creator God and a supernatural dimension of existence. IMO, since Creationism can explain such things as the existence of coded information, order in design and laws of nature, it can fairly lay claim to a more comprehensive concept of science than that of Evolutionists.  

We've seen through this discussion that the influence of both Evolutionism and Creationism extends to politics, sociology, anthropology, religion, and many other fields that touches upon the questions of existence.

My problem with Palin is that there were more qualified female Republican's McCain could have chosen - more qualified, less polarizing, and pandering to the Religious Right.

Don't change this into a "the democratic candidate is unqualified tooooo" whine, either.  Obama, qualified or not, won an election - Palin was hand-picked.  So it is vastly different.  If Palin was a man she wouldn't have been chosen, either.  Her credentials are low and she was barely vetted - it seems like a knee-jerk reaction to me.

Now, we can play "what don't I like about palin personally" and I can say the firm abstinance before sex ed stance (worked well for Bristol didn't it?) and that she comes with too much political baggage, or the lie that she originally did NOT oppose the Bridge she talks about so much, and then when it was cancelled just shuffled the funds into other projects, or the PR firm she hired just to get earmarks for her tiny state (remember, Alaska gets more per-person than most places!) Or that while religion isn't bad, the stuff that I've heard about her brand of Christianity is (such as a recorded speech where her pastor claims the war on terrorism is some kind of holy war/act of God) or the fact that she seems far more grounded in God/Drilling/Moose/Guns than in Economics/Peace/Solving Problems.

And she looks kinda funny to me.  But that last one is personal and silly, ofcourse.

But my last and biggest issue, as a young independant voter?  McCain sacrificed his maverick record to go and pick someone obviously more chosen to please a large part of his party than to lead the country.  He picked someone to help him win - not someone who would help him lead after he won.  Contrast that to the other candidate's pick... Biden isn't going to help anyone get elected, but he knows a lot of stuff.

As it stands, McCain is losing the "lesser of two sucky options" race in my head.  He fell way behind with Palin from a close race.

North Carolina

Proof or it didn't happen.

Can you be a bit more specific?

@lulapilgrim - either you are ignorant (not an insult, a state of lack of knowledge) about evolution, biology, and science... or you are intentionally spreading those lies. Buecase you obviously ARE repeating the creationism FUD. There is very little truth in any of your statements on the above subject.

By saying that something is supernatural, divine, and completely unpredictable, it is no longer science is no longer a path to knowledge... Looking at how the cells work is a path to knowledge. saying "the cell works this way cause god is making it work that way" is throwing knowledge out the window and accepting it as some sort of an unknown beyond your ken. It is not a path to knowledge, it is a path to NOT knowing (I don't know WHY, it just does because god is doing it). Weather you want to personally beleive in it that is your choice, but schools should not even teach the option of "oh don't bother learning this, lets just say its supernatural and thus unexplainable and break for lunch" because at that point it is no longer teaching, and no longer a school.

A religious scientist NEVER accepts something as supernatural, EVERYTHING is created by god, thus EVERYTHING is natural. Thus everything is understandable and explainable via natural laws.. laws SET by god... No scientist has ever even TRIED to explain WHY the laws of nature exist, that is left either as a "just because" or "just because god did it". What it explains is why things happen by writing down the laws of nature. Weather god said "let there be evolution" or it being random chance doesn't change the FACT that there is evolution. Weather god said "let evolution change this tree dwelling ape into a human" or it being random chance doesn't change the FACT that an APE did become a human. (and that all apes share our DNA, and that all apes have two more chromosomes because a specific KNOWN pair of chromosomes fused in humans and so on)

Many of the examples of "unknowns" you gave are simply not true, they ARE known but claimed to be unkown by creationists in their attempt to debase science with lies. I am hoping you are simply ignorant of that fact (again, ignorant means lacking knowledge. I have been ignorant on things before, I educate myself whenever I can though)

You asked where. I told you where.  NOw do you need a class in how to use google?  Or are you "not real" either.

Do it yourself, or learn how to ask questions.

My aren't we antagonistic.  Ever take a debate class? "Google it" is not a viable source of proof.  Are YOU too lazy to go pull it up to support your point?  It's YOUR point, YOU have to defend it.  The onus is on not on me to prove your comments, nor google.

And, to the poster above me - the reason the real hardline relgious people disavow all knowledge and science is because it's counter to thier beliefs - God created man from dust, remember?  We should all share our DNA with dust.  And woman was created from a man's rib, so she should have precisely the same DNA.

Also, owning slaves is okay and homosexuals must be stoned.  Oh wait..........

not true!  Like I've said many time....The Bible and Science are NOT mutually exclusive. They fit togehter perfectly.  In fact, there's quite a bit of Science in scripture.  It's in there that Christopher Columbus first learned that the earth was not flat but a sphere.  It was there the astronomers first learned that the earth hangs on nothing.  It's all found right in scripture written thousands of years before these things were even discovered. 

again, this was written thousands of years before Science came up with cloning.  Now the Scientists say even if a body decomposes in the dust the dna is still there in the dirt.  Scripture also says that these same particles will be resurrected when he comes back.   For many this means they will only be specks of DNA in the dirt . 

Amazing ain't it? 

Ever take an english class?  You asked where.  I told you.  Then you said no it is not.  And that is debating?  If you had asked for a link, I would have provided it.  But that was not the question and instead you just decided to act dumb.  Ok, so go ahead and act that way.  And do your own googling.

And if you want a link, next time ask for it.

It's amazing how you twist facts KFC.  You remind me of a good Baptist preacher, actually, taking one thing and twisting it until it meets your worldview.

I stated that we shared our DNA with dirt - jokingly pointing out the Hebrew creation story states that we come from dust with life breathed into it by God - ad you turned around and pointed out DNA stays in dirt?  Wow.  Except it's an awful tangent that has nothing to do with the comment.

Where did we come from, KFC?  Why doesn't the bible mention the dinosaurs or any beings that came before us?  Do you think these generations of plants and animals existed for six days?  Less, sorry, he spent the first few days creating light and darkness (not that there's a reaction in the Sun that causes this).  All of them from single-celled organisms to dinosaurs to our extinct ancestors (which we wouldn't have nor need if there was a sudden creation from the dust).

Also, don't forget - there was no rain until Noah and the Ark (Gen 2:5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.) which if you at all understand how weather and the atomosphere works, is impossible.

This is quite a sidetracked debate, but now you people with your fallacies have drawn me into a sideline.  This whole discussion right here is a good example, however, of just whats wrong with Sarah Palin.

well as somebody here already said.....

OH!  That was you!!

God.

it does.  Not beings but dinos are mentioned. Hmmmm have you ever seen a cat mentioned in scripture?  Or maybe a poodle?  What's with the big deal with the dinos anyhow?   Are you trying to say we don't believe in dinos because we're Christians? 

 There were NO beings before the first being. Adam was the first man created so how could there be beings before him?

nothing is impossible with God or he wouldn't be God now would he? 

which is what? 

TALTAMIR POSTS:

Oh my, what a pronouncement of faith!

FACT, you say? If Darwinism evolution produced you by random chance, there ought to be a staggering number of your ancestor's "rough drafts" in fossil form. We should be finding mountains of nature's failed experiments...where are they? Evolution scientists have not been able to come up with the "missing link" between species. The fossil record is so devoid of evidence for macro-evolution that the "proof" has to be supplied by desperate speculation, hopeful predictions, and wacky experiments, empty rhetoric and downright lies---even fraud i.e Ernst Haekel's drawings.

The idea that Macro-Evolution is the only explanation for the human race and its natural environment is disessembling and dishonest. The idea of one species growing into a completely different one is incoherent and been proven false and virtually impossible by modern genetics becasue of the way our DNA barrier works in cells. As I said, it takes an act of faith to believe in it.

What are these, then?  Prototypes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens_idaltu

(I understand that Wiki is not generally the most viable source, but here it's a decent way for me to get all the information on so many proto-humans out quickly.  If you want to know more, there's always the references at the bottom of each page.)

In any case, each of these distinct species of proto-humans is different through morphology/timeline from us.  If we were created in God's image, did it take him a while to find a mirror or something?

Dinosaurs: My point with them is that there are generations of them - not a SINGLE day, as the bible would indicate, since man was created on day seven and the beasts of the earth on day six.  Since we've found skeletons of dinosaurs of different groups at all stages of life, from eggs to young to old age, this is a factual impossibility, sir.  By accounting for biblical creation as stated in Genesis, you are completly throwing all science to the side, science you can go to a museum in your nearest big town and touch with your owwn hand (assuming the guards don't toss you out - point being it's THERE, visually, for people to touch, not written down in a book, but exhumed from the very crust of the earth you walk on each day.)

TALTAMIR POSTS:

Atheists and secularist humanists often employ the false but useful concept that those having religious faith are ignorant or lacking in knowledge in science.  Like the false myth of separation of chruch from state, you want separation of church from science. It won't happen. Why? Becasue there are 2 orders of knowledge...one we derive from natural reason and the other from divine faith. Theology is the highest science...it's reasoning and terminological exactness is the highest intellectual order. There is no inherent conflict between science and the Christian religion. Get used to it. Not only does true science not contradict religios faith, but religious faith can shed new light on our knowledge, since the source of all knowledge is God.

You unfortunately are operating on a bold face lie which is ......that anything that has to do with the existence or nature of God is unscientific. 

I'd like to add that there is some scientific good to be found by looking into the possible existance of god - where Science and faith have the disconnect is that Science seeks to prove through facts, and religion through faith regardless of facts.

And now for a bit of copy-paste:

"It is commonly claimed by critics of evolution that there are no transitional fossils... Such claims may be based on a misunderstanding of the nature of what represents a transitional feature. A common, though fallacious creationist argument is that no fossils are found with partially functional features. Vestigial organs are common in whales for example. Also, there is evidence that a complex feature with one function can adapt to a wholly different function through evolution in a process known as exaptation. The precursor to, for example, a wing, might originally have only been used for gliding, trapping flying prey, and/or mating display. Nowadays, wings may still have all of these functions, while also being used for active flight. Due to the special circumstances required for preservation of remains, only a very small percentage of all life-forms that ever have existed can be expected to be represented in discoveries. Thus, the transition itself can only be illustrated and corroborated by transitional fossils, but it will never be "caught in the act" as it were. Creationists often argue against this, claiming it is merely a convenient way to explain the lack of 'snapshot' fossils that show crucial steps between species. Their anti-evolution arguments continue to be undermined as progressing research and discoveries fill in gaps, and in modern thinking evolution is pictured as a bush of lines of development, not the simplistic ladder of progress imagined by creationists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx  Ever heard of this one? Or any of the proto-humans above?  Transitional fossils are there, we have them in physical form, and to state that there are no examples of transition from one life form to another is either an example of a lack of understanding, or an outright lie.

Or how about a transitional animal that still lives: The platypus! A draft version of the platypus genome sequence was published in Nature on 8 May 2008, revealing both reptilian and mammalian elements, as well as two genes found previously only in birds, amphibians and fish. It retains certain reptilian traits no longer found in modern mammals and also possesses derived traits of a highly specialized aquatic animal.

A transitional fossil for apes -> humans? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus.

First off, what does this have to do with Palin?  Second of all I've been here so much on JU you might want to go back and do research on my site or maybe check the science or religion forums or a similar subject regarding this area. 

Man was created on day six, not seven.

Who told you that dinos only lived one day?  The bible doesn't indicate this as you say.  Science and the bible are in agreement here.  Something catastrophic happened that made these dinos extinct.  What could that be?  From a Christian POV biblically speaking it would be the flood which is put in quite a bit of detail in the scriptures. 

You have no idea about the condition of the bones in the dino's beds to be making such an assumption.  The way they are put together is guesswork.   What is found generally is a bunch of bones from various amounts of dinos in one bed and to put them together as you see in the Museum is a whole bunch of guesswork. 

Here's a video link on the Christian POV about the bible and Dinos. 

http://www.answersingenesis.org/media/video/ondemand/bible-explains-dinosaurs/bible-explains-dinosaurs

There are many scientists who believe in the biblical account of creation and have no problem with the dinos.  No Science is being trashed or thrown away.  Let me assure you of this. 

Firstly, a concession: You are correct and I have forgotten my sunday school - god rested on day seven, man was day six, land animals five and ocean animals four.

Secondly, I'm going to have a listen to this vid - I hate to come into a debate unaware of a position.

what's wrong with palin?

nothin at all...for those of you who have no problem with elected officials pressuring librarians to remove books they find objectional from public library shelves as a test of said librarians' political loyalty to such officials,

admittedly she caved back in the 1990s, but she's gotta be a quicker study than a lotta those currently sitting behind a desk in the oval office so she musta learned somethin between then and now.

clearly she's gonna have a difficult time workin her way outta cheney's long, wide shadow so the public is gonna need to cut her a lil slack.  face it, in just two areas--circumventing the constitution and exploiting the power of his office--that dick set the bar well outta reach of any but the most ruthless, cynical neo-totalitarians, crypto-monarchists or all their bastard children combined.  

it'll certainly work to her benefit tho.  

after all, he's already done most of the hard work.  

Personally I think it has nothing to do with those things. However she isn't even competant or self confident in an interview. Imagine how that plays out under real pressure or stressful situations. She is clueless about what is really going in the economy and clueless in most foreign policy matters. The pipeline deal she made is going to fail and cost the Alaskan taxpayers more than 500 million because she doesnt even understand the energy industry. She made a deal with a Canadian Company without realizing that neither the US Govt. nor the Canadian Govt. supports it. Once again she is clueless.

TALTAMIR POSTS #58

The fundamental reality is that Christian theology was essential to the rise of science. Christianity depicts God as the Creator of the universe and all that's in it is His personal Creation. The natural world was thus understood to have a rational, lawful, stable structure and Science is an organized effort to explain it. What science discovers is what is already existent by the will of God.

The data that scientists collect about physics, biochemistry, genetics, and neuro science contains ever more compelling evidence that only a Designer God could have made life possible.

The theory of Evolution is wholly inadequate to explain life or the complexities of the human body. To start, life cannot come from non-life. Never has and never will. After that, living organisms are so enormously complex that they could not have been generated by a long, long series of accidents that Darwinism relies on. Genetics have proven conclusively that all variations occur only within each type or kind and never from one type to another. It's the very complex DNA code within each animal and person that erects the wall that cannot be crossed.

astounding!

wonder what all them 1000s of ancient (like bce egyptian, greek, roman, chinese, etc.) crackpots--including archimedes, hippocrates, heraclitus, plato, the list goes on and on and on--would have to say about that?  

not to mention those more modern scientists for whom christian theology was a serious--if not fatal--impediment?

If you aren't busy Friday night, Lula, I suggest you go to the local theatre and purchase a ticket to see Religulous.  Might be a good one for Palin to check out too.  It should make you think hard about religion's role in your life.  I've been looking forward to this one for months now.  Please stop talking about science proving evolution wrong and providing compelling evidence for a creator; that's just wrong!  Something to look into, check out the Hubble Space Telescope images of galaxy clusters.  If God created the universe, is as much attention being paid to every single form of life inhabiting those distant realms, and do human-like life forms happen to be only present on Earth due to God??  Are we that special?  Think about it...