Quotes of the day

I didn’t know they repealed gravity!! why don’t you show us?? take a flying leap, and see what happens!!

right4life on February 23, 2009 at 12:20 PM

You didn’t know, because you’re devoted your efforts to hating on Darwin instead of to learning science. Newtonian mechanics treats gravitation as a force proportionate to the masses involved and inversely proportionate to the square of the distance between them. This is a good approximation in many cases, but it is not the full picture.

In the 20th century many experiments showed that the effects of gravity can be better modeled when thought of as the result of curvature in non-Euclidean space-time. Newtonian mechanics, for instance, does not predict gravity as affecting the behavior of light, as photons are massless. Newtonian mechanics also does not predict time dilation in a gravitational field, but that too has been empirically validated.

When new evidence contradicts existing, enshrined theories, scientists throw out the old theories. They do this because they are actively engaged in an objective search for the truth. Natural selection is still the model used to explain the origin of species, not because biologists are in league with the devil, but because it explains what we observe.

You disagree because you start with the axiom that any evidence which contradicts your literal reading of the Book of Genesis cannot possibly be true. You fail to see on purpose. It’s called “Cognitive Dissonance,” and it is why arguing science with a Young Earth Creationist is exactly like arguing economics with a Marxist.

hicsuget on February 23, 2009 at 12:53 PM

oh yeah, explain the tuatara while you’re at it…since you’re so ’scientific’

right4life on February 23, 2009 at 1:53 PM

Science is an enormous discipline, and no one person can profess honestly to know all of it. My interests ran more toward physics than to biology–I do not claim to have any more than rudimentary knowledge in the latter field. You, meanwhile, exhibit an enormous degree of hubris believing that all the knowledge in the world is contained in one particular transcription of the oral traditions of a particular group of illiterate goatherds.

hicsuget on February 23, 2009 at 2:01 PM

Christian Conservative on February 23, 2009 at 2:29 PM

Read Locke’s Second Treatise–it’s where Jefferson and the other founders got most of their ideas from. Locke argued not from the Bible, but from what was evidenced in the world (thus the Declaration’s statement that the truths were “self-evident”). If the correct principles of government can be inductively derived from the world around us, it makes no difference whether one believes the world was created by God in 6 days or whether one believes the world is the product of a Big Bang; one will arrive at identical conclusions.

As Thomas Paine put it,

But some, perhaps, will say: Are we to have no word of God — no revelation? I answer, Yes; there is a word of God; there is a revelation.

THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.
…
It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they may be. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.
…
That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.

hicsuget on February 23, 2009 at 2:46 PM

really? the french tried it your way…ended up with the terror..

right4life on February 23, 2009 at 2:50 PM

Thomas Paine wrote the words I quoted above while in a French prison for not being revolutionary enough. I doubt he would agree they did things his way.

hicsuget on February 23, 2009 at 2:57 PM

thomas paine was an atheist
right4life on February 23, 2009 at 3:00 PM

Now you’ve come out as a bald-faced liar. From the work I’ve been citing repeatedly in this thread:

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

Paine was a Deist, and you’re a liar. End of story.

hicsuget on February 23, 2009 at 3:21 PM

And let me repeat one of Christian Conservatives by Jefferson: “My views…are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from the anti-christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others…” April 21, 1803 in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush.

Paine said no differently:

Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practised was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years before; by the Quakers since; and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.

Like I said, though, proving most of the Founders called themselves Christians does not mean that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. See, for example, one more argument of Paine’s:

When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a legislator, could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention.

To the extent to which principles in the Bible are good principles, honest, objective investigation of the natural world will bear them out. To the extent to which they are evil, America’s founders repudiated them–see, for example, the First Amendment.

hicsuget on February 23, 2009 at 3:37 PM

By and large, the rest of the founders were not only Christians but many were preachers, many formed Bible societies and otherwise furthered the cause of Christ.

As I have said repeatedly, I am fully aware of that fact, and it does not prove your point. To say “America was founded by Christians” is not to say, “America was founded upon Christian principles.”

So the evolutionists have to lie about our founders and hang on Thomas Paine threads like they have to hang on Darwin’s theories which have already been refuted by mondern [sic] evolutionists.

New evidence disproved the old theories, so the old theories were modified to fit the new evidence. This is how science works. It is not individuals such as myself who do not reject modern science who cling to Darwin, it is the Answers in Genesis crowd. Modern biology is too complicated, and too irrefutable, for Young Earth Creationists to explain away, so they retain Darwin as a straw man even though the rest of us have moved on.

There is a long string of lies and hoaxes created by evolutionists including those involving human embryos (we all had gills and fins), pigs bones becoming missing link humans, etc.

Both honest mistakes, now corrected. “Honest mistakes,” unfortunately, is far too kind a descriptor for the propaganda of the Young Earth Creationists. Their goal is not to objectively search for correct answers wherever the evidence may lead; their goal is to proselytize by any means necessary. If I may paraphrase Saul of Tarsus, they have exchanged the pursuit of truth for lies.

And why?
Because the alternative is just too much to bear: There is a God, He created us, and He just might be holding us responsible for our actions.

Christian Conservative on February 23, 2009 at 3:44 PM

That is a false dichotomy. A flaw in modern evolutionary biology does not indicate that life did not evolve; it may merely indicate that the existing models are inadequate to describe the process. And even if evidence were to completely disprove evolution, it still would not prove that there is a God. And even if the existence of God were conclusively proven, that still would not prove that the Christian Bible is the infallible Word of said God.

hicsuget on February 23, 2009 at 4:14 PM

looks like you know as much about history as you do about evolution…

right4life on February 23, 2009 at 4:32 PM

I know how to read even that with which I disagree, which is more than can be said for you. To repeat (and do try to parse the quoted verbiage this time):

From section 1:

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

From section 7:
But some, perhaps, will say: Are we to have no word of God — no revelation? I answer, Yes; there is a word of God; there is a revelation.

THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.

…
Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed! Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the Scripture called the Creation.
…
Almost the only parts in the book called the Bible that convey to us any idea of God, are some chapters in Job and the 19th Psalm; I recollect no other. Those parts are true deistical compositions, for they treat of the Deity through his works.

From section 8:

First, — Canst thou by searching find out God? Yes because, in the first place, I know I did not make myself, and yet I have existence; and by searching into the nature of other things, I find that no other thing could make itself; and yet millions of other things exist; therefore it is, that I know, by positive conclusion resulting from this search, that there is a power superior to all those things, and that power is God.

…
As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism — a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.

The effect of this obscurity has been that of turning everything upside down, and representing it in reverse, and among the revolutions it has thus magically produced, it has made a revolution in theology.

That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.

From section 21:
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.

…
Were man impressed as fully and as strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of that belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. To give this belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts alone. This is Deism. But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and another part called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits.

Paine went to the trouble of writing a full treatise on what he purported to be his religious beliefs–I can conceive of no reason not to take him at his word. Notice too that he disparages atheists and Christians equally; were he actually an atheist writing a tract on atheism, he would not have done so.

This is what I meant when I accused you of being plagued by cognitive dissonance–the evidence is plain as day and right in front of your face, and yet you refuse to acknowledge it because it is in disagreement with your preconceived notions.

hicsuget on February 23, 2009 at 4:55 PM

pannw on February 23, 2009 at 6:15 PM

You still have not addressed my actual argument:

Like I said, though, proving most of the Founders called themselves Christians does not mean that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles.

hicsuget on February 23, 2009 at 3:37 PM

hicsuget on February 23, 2009 at 6:17 PM