[Elmer G. White]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

Jesus is the Son of God, so everything about Him is exceptional. Further, as the Lord's prayer tells us, we should forgive those who trespass against us.

Dear Child,

I am a bit disappointed that you did not answer my queries regarding eschatology and mindless suffering if you accept the standard model of cosmology; also, you have not told us if you believe in the Historical Genesis. Instead, you're evasive. That might be a good sign of the Bible finally breaking through your defenses.

Mrs. Etheldreda did not need to know that Jesus is exceptional. She knows but not based on QM but based on Faith(rm). The atheist doesn't know that Jesus is exceptional or if He ever lived. Based on your repetitive posts they won't have any reason to Repent, either.

This is what I meant by special pleading. We accept the Bible's authority and our Faith™ is based on that. If you accept secular science, it is very hard to base your Faith on that without special pleading, and then the secularists can attack you and eventually convert you.

At least we now know that your ideas are not yours but based on popularized physics as interpreted and cherry-picked by the Jesuit Spitzer. I must admit that you have studied him quite well, as the main methods of you both are the same, the most important of which is the Gish Gallop - presenting fancy names and theories in rapid succession causing confusion among the less educated atheists but ridicule among the scholars. Never good in the long run, as the atheists have a long-term agenda and eventually they will bread down any argument that is based on methodological naturalism if it ignores the opposing viewpoints through confirmation bias. Spitzer is also dangerous as his ideas about a Creator are in the long run very hard to associate with the Christian God© who works is Human History and we end up with the esoterics such as the Omega Point Teilhard. Nothing new there, of course.

Luke 10:41-42
And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

Basically, Spitzer has the old "Bing Bang Boing was a Beginning" argument and the Big Problem is that it requires billions of years of suffering before us and eons of decay after us and makes Jesus irrelevant. Combine this to the "fine-tuning" (that is Paley all over) and you get a failing case as follows:
1. We don't know (the atheists, that is) how many possible combinations of parameters and natural laws could produce life. Spitzer is just argumentation ad ignorantiam. A fallacy.
2. God could produce life without any need to look at parameters. Omnipotency (Revelation 9:17) suffers as I pointed out earlier. You still have failed to say why God should be restricted by our logic (Exodus 3:14). Special pleading of accepting Gospels as historical but Genesis as not. A fallacy.
3. The inflatory model of the atheists explains the fine tuning as apparent but not really after all... Fine tuning vanishes when you look to general relativity. The probability of the universe expanding is no longer 10exp–17 but 1. In addition, probabalities cannot be applied to past event without knowing prior probabilities (see point 1). Cherry picking. A fallacy.
4. If the current atheist models fail, it does not mean that they'll accept Jesus as the only alternative (see point 1). That would be a false dilemma as other models also exist. A fallacy.

Please, no more name-dropping. I'm no longer interested in that. It's time you assessed your quote and citation base of Spitzer against the whole text of the Bible. No more testimonials presented as natural science instead of science. No more special pleading or confirmation-bias-generated popular books. You need to give the atheists the original publications from actual peer-reviewed literature without forgetting the opposing viewpoints. However, it's time you dealt with the Bible. Is Genesis historical? If not, is this based on your studies on physics and paleontology, etc.? If Genesis is not historical, do you trust natural sciences when they say that the Gospels are not historical, either? They say that, you know.


Yours in Christ,

Elmer

[tomdstone]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

Basically, Spitzer has the old "Bing Bang Boing was a Beginning" argument

Here is what Einstein said about Father LeMaitre's explanation of the Big Bang theory:"This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanationof creation to which I have ever listened"
As everyone knows thecosmic microwave background spectrum isthat of a nearly perfect blackbody with a temperatureof 2.725 +/- 0.002 K. This observation matches exactly thepredictions of the Big Bang theory.

[tomdstone]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

...you have not told us if you believe in the Historical Genesis.

I don't take every line of the Bible literally. I think that there was a beginning to the universe and that the Borde-Vilenkin-Guth theorem provides a good mathematical and scientific reason for believing so.

[tomdstone]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

... the main methods of you both are the same, the most important of which is the Gish Gallop - presenting fancy names and theories in rapid succession causing confusion among the less educated atheists but ridicule among the scholars.

Please advise us as to which modern physicists, alive today, have ever ridiculed the fact that quantum entanglement is nothing more than statistical correlation applied to the mixing of quantum states.

[Basilissa]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

Here is what Einstein said about Father LeMaitre's explanation of the Big Bang theory:"This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanationof creation to which I have ever listened"
As everyone knows thecosmic microwave background spectrum isthat of a nearly perfect blackbody with a temperatureof 2.725 +/- 0.002 K. This observation matches exactly thepredictions of the Big Bang theory.

The most important question is: can you read? Like, seriously, what is the level of your text comprehension?

I'll just repeat what Brother Elmer has said - maybe the n-th time is the charm:

Please, no more name-dropping. I'm no longer interested in that... No more testimonials presented as natural science instead of science. No more special pleading or confirmation-bias-generated popular books. You need to give the atheists the original publications from actual peer-reviewed literature without forgetting the opposing viewpoints.

If you are planning to keep ignoring the Bible, then you need to adhere to that. ^^^

I've also highlighted the problematic parts in your post, for your convenience.

[Didymus Much]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

Here is what Einstein said about Father LeMaitre's explanation of the Big Bang theory...

And off to another irrelevant tangent, quite predictably lacking any citation or reference.


You ain't learned shit here, have you?

[Elmer G. White]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

I don't take every line of the Bible literally. I think that there was a beginning to the universe and that the Borde-Vilenkin-Guth theorem provides a good mathematical and scientific reason for believing so.

Finally, an honest answer. I appreciate it but Jesus doesn't. He refers to the Genesis many times and urges us to believe it literally.

He accepted the first couple, i.e., Adam and Eve.

• Matthew 19:4 - And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,

He urges us to trust the writings of Moses (among them is the Genesis) - if we didn't trust them, why should we trust Him (exactly what we've been asking you all along!)

• John 5:46-47 - For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?

OK, let's see some writings by Moses that we should believe if we are to believe Jesus.

• Exodus 20:11 - For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Jesus said that the Global Flood had taken place in literal history.

• Matthew 24:38 - For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,

He was convinced that Jonah had spend a literal 3-day period in the belly of an aquatic beast and we know very well that this is a preview of Jesus's own Sacrifice.

• Matthew 12:40 - For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Paul (do you believe him) also accepted the literal Adam and Eve.

• Romans 5:14 - Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.

Do you believe in the literal Virgin Birth, Resurrection, literal Miracles and the literal Second Coming that is immanent? If you do, can you see how choosing just those parts of methodological naturalism that you like leads to the fallacy of special pleading.

Incidentally, regarding your view on Deism. I'd like to see a population-based study that shows how many of those you present with the kalam argument turn via Deism gradually into the only Salvation-providing form of True Christianity™ (James 2:10) and how many of those studying physics eventually lose all Faith(tm). Please include a control group of those who are told about Jesus in the way the Bible present them (and the proportion of those who turn into atheism). Then (if the study is well-designed and has adequate sample power) and only them will I reconsider my position.


Yours in Christ,

Elmer

[tomdstone]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

...we end up with the esoterics such as the Omega Point Teilhard.

The idea that everything in the universe is spiraling toward the Omega point or the final point of divine unification with a maximum level of complexity and consciousness is at least partially a teleological concept which I have not discussed as yet. Teihard's work in this area has been controversial however, there has been some praise for it from Sir Julian Huxley and Theodosius Dobzhansky. David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist, claims that Teilhard had anticipated his own work in multilevel selection theory.

[Dolores de Barriga]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

And off to another irrelevant tangent, quite predictably lacking any citation or reference.

You ain't learned shit here, have you?

I know, right? You'd think that he would be able to learn something when others used peer reviewed publications to support specific claims, but no; he just stops pushing when he realizes that someone else actually knows more about the given subject and goes back to the same pseudo-scientific babbling, ignoring all of the evidence that was provided.

He wouldn't pass any of my classes with that attitude.

[Elmer G. White]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

The idea that everything in the universe is spiraling toward the Omega point or the final point of divine unification with a maximum level of complexity and consciousness is at least partially a teleological concept which I have not discussed as yet. Teihard's work in this area has been controversial however, there has been some praise for it from Sir Julian Huxley and Theodosius Dobzhansky. David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist, claims that Teilhard had anticipated his own work in multilevel selection theory.

Darling,

The world of methodological naturalism does not care who said something. The reference system of scientific publications is not there for authority but to give credit to (or to discredit) the ones who thought and experimented about these things before.

In science, the names are irrelevant. There's more and more of double-blind peer-review because of that. I'll tell you a macabre example of the thought processes of the atheist scholar.

• Even if Hitler had discovered the theory of special relativity, the theory would be judged based on its merits and predictive power, not by any fancy names that support or dismiss it.
• Even if Stalin had discovered the theory of biological evolution (he didn't, he was a Lamarckian and Hitler a twisted Creationist), the theory was be assessed by its content and not by popular books citing it.

Atheist science does not take place in these popularized books. It is discussed there but the evidence material is not there. You have to go back to the original sources, not opinions about these sources. In the same manner, The Truth™ value of Christianity cannot be judged based on the popularity of different denominations. It is judged by going back to the original source material that is the Bible.

Let's ask this one more time:

• If natural science is right when it dismisses the literal Genesis, how can it be wrong when it combines forces with historical sciences, archaeology and textual analysis and says that the Gospels are not literal, either?

Yours in Christ,

Elmer

[tomdstone]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

And off to another irrelevant tangent, quite predictably lacking any citation or reference.

1. "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened" quote from Einstein about the Big Bang theory developed by Father LeMaitre.
p. 55 of Cosmology and Controversy
by Helge Kragh
OR
How Einstein Created Relativity out of Physics and Astronomy by David Topper.
2. The cosmic microwave background (CM spectrum is that of a nearly perfect blackbody with a temperature of 2.725 +/- 0.002 K. This observation matches the predictions of the Big Bang theory:
NASA Report on Findings of the COBE Satellite. http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/

[tomdstone]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

The Truth™ value of Christianity cannot be judged based on the popularity of different denominations.

That is an argument which I haven't used yet.

[Elmer G. White]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

The world of methodological naturalism does not care who said something... the names are irrelevant... the theory would be judged based on its merits and predictive power, not by any fancy names that support or dismiss it... not opinions about these sources.

1. "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened" quote from Einstein

Matthew 22:29
Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.


Yours in Christ,

Elmer

[Dolores de Barriga]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

1. "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened" quote from Einstein about the Big Bang theory developed by Father LeMaitre.
p. 55 of Cosmology and Controversy
by Helge Kragh
OR
How Einstein Created Relativity out of Physics and Astronomy by David Topper.

As we have already established many posts ago, nobody cares about quotes that Someone Important said over coffee.

Let me repeat that: in science, nobody cares about quotes of famous people.
Nobody.

Here is the surprising fact about science: it is all about interpretations derived directly from data, presented in peer reviewed publications which also contain - wait for it, wait for it - supporting rigorous data.

Therefore, please refrain from posting anecdotes about people with high index of name recognition. Because nobody cares. Really. NOBODY CARES.

2. The cosmic microwave background (CM spectrum is that of a nearly perfect blackbody with a temperature of 2.725 +/- 0.002 K. This observation matches the predictions of the Big Bang theory:
NASA Report on Findings of the COBE Satellite. http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Please cite a specific article, not the entire damned database! Have you ever written a source-based paper in college? I guess the more important question is, have you ever made it to college? Seriously, backing your claims up with data is not that hard, assuming that such data actually exists!

[tomdstone]

Re: Ten points that CRUSH Atheism

Let's ask this one more time:

• If natural science is right when it dismisses the literal Genesis, how can it be wrong when it combines forces with historical sciences, archaeology and textual analysis and says that the Gospels are not literal, either?

Yours in Christ,

Elmer

Scientific accuracy, such as the correct value of pi to 3 trillion places, is not essential to attaining eternal salvation and therefore it is understandable that the Bible would give an integral approximation to pi. The Bible teaches us many important things such as there is one God and that humans are made in the divine image. The categories, methods and mathematics of today's scientific enterprise would not have been understood by the people at the time the Bible was written.