Update on Flight 718/June 16, 2011 (PHL‐FCO)

[Piedmont1984]

I don't disagree with your assessment. Of course an astronomer who may have held a more biblical view of the number of stars versus the consensus thought of say 6,000 stars prior to the sixteenth century would have been the subject of ridicule, torture, loss of position/respect and possibly even death. This culture of intimidation was commonplace for daring to challenge the scientific thought of the day until Galileo produced a telescope that proved all previous consensus thought on the subject was vastly incorrect. The problem is not with the scientific tools available at any given point in history, but with the scientific community that seeks to suppress truth in favor of peer pressure and enforced conformity. While we may not see many subjected to threats of death today, we do see people's careers destroyed for daring to question evolution, origin science, or global warming. Going against the grain and daring to seek truth is still not a very safe thing to do in those circles even today.

The church has been an instrument of suppression throughout history, not the scientific community. The culture of intimidation and suppression has been a religious phenomenon at many stages of history - from the Inquisition to the witch trials of New England.

 

[CallawayGolf]

The church has been an instrument of suppression throughout history, not the scientific community. The culture of intimidation and suppression has been a religious phenomenon at many stages of history - from the Inquisition to the witch trials of New England.

That is an absolute fact as well. Deplorable but factual. Didn't mean to imply that the human led church, especially a particular one where robes, collars, and mitres are normal attire, is free of human corruption. Some or perhaps most modern churches today have renounced and repudiated the conduct that produced the things you described and would certainly like to purge that from church history, but we cannot change the past anymore than anyone else who doesn't like the things they see in the history of their family, nation or associations. Do you think modern doctors are proud of how their profession handled the sick and infirm a few hundred or a thousand years ago? Does what the medical profession did in the middle ages make you not want to go to see a doctor? Many churches have changed; the medical profession has changed; but the scientific community hasn't changed its peer pressure and enforced conformity tactics much by way of comparison.

 

[Piedmont1984]

A good debate on the positive and negative aspects of religion is available on Utube - Tony Blair vs Christopher Hitchins.

 

[CallawayGolf]

A good debate on the positive and negative aspects of religion is available on Utube - Tony Blair vs Christopher Hitchins.

Well since Jesus is often described as the most anti-religious person in history I wonder which side of the debate He would be on? He called the religious leaders of the day hypocrites and children of Satan so He wasn't very impressed with how they conducted themselves either.

 

[Move2CLT]

Yes, the daughter particles. Already proven that they communicate with each other instantly with no regard to the distance between them. Flip one, and the other flips at the same time, even if it is light years away. Quantum physics, which Einstein thought was so much hooey, has proven that.




Good science and good religion certainly can and do co-exist very well. Good science and fundamentalist religion, on the other hand, cannot co-exist peacefully, since fundamentalist religion assumes they have all the answers, no matter what science proves.

The Dalai Lama has stated that if science disproves a tenet of Buddhism, then Buddhism must change.

Coexist? Not really. Just bring up evolution, dinosaurs, and easties and watch that coexistence fall apart.

The best religion is no religion.

 

[Iclubbabyseals]

There once was a consensus that the earth was flat, ....

Wrong. Never was. Never has been. I will not comment on your intelligence, just be assured that snails should never fear losing to you in a game show.

 

[CallawayGolf]

Wrong. Never was. Never has been. I will not comment on your intelligence, just be assured that snails should never fear losing to you in a game show.

Darn those worthless high school history books that taught us about Christopher Columbus going against the wisdom of his day that said the earth was flat and his ships would just fall off he edge of the earth. I should have known better than to trust anything taught in secular public education. I guess I can deep six those history lessons right along with those completely worthless biology and cosmology texts that didn't get their facts right either.

Okay, I'm certainly willing to admit that I never thought there was a need to research that assumption because it was so commonly taught in public schools. My fault and my apologies. Hopefully you can accept that I had no intention of making a false or misleading statement. I'm always open to correcting any statement that is factually incorrect.

I see you said there never was and never has been. What's your source for making that claim? I see there was some scientific claims about the earth being a sphere about 500 years before Christ was born, but didn't find anything that precedes that other than of course Isaiah 40:22 who was a prophet of God about 700 years before Christ was born. I would definitely be interested to know if you have an earlier source. My laptop is out of commission and I'm just using my iPad tonight so my research capabilities are quite limited.

As for my intelligence, well I make no claims about that. I am what God made me to be just like you are who He made you to be. There really is no need to compare IQs as far I'm concerned.

Thanks again for your post. I do appreciate it.

 

[Move2CLT]

http://media.photobucket.com/image/dinosaurs%20are%20jesus%20ponies/yoa3721/jesus_and_the_dinosaurs.jpg

 

[CallawayGolf]

http://media.photobucket.com/image/dinosaurs%20are%20jesus%20ponies/yoa3721/jesus_and_the_dinosaurs.jpg

Very cool. I like the concept but I think the artist is a bit off on what the antediluvian world actually looked like. It was likely a lot more green and less 1960's sci-fi. But showing Jesus' love for creation is spot on. Thanks.

 

[Move2CLT]

Very cool. I like the concept but I think the artist is a bit off on what the antediluvian world actually looked like. It was likely a lot more green and less 1960's sci-fi. But showing Jesus' love for creation is spot on. Thanks.

Better?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rzdB5a4kLAo/SdQIuR0wsYI/AAAAAAAANt8/IGW5zdir8-8/s400/jesus-dinosaur.jpg

 

[CallawayGolf]

Better?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rzdB5a4kLAo/SdQIuR0wsYI/AAAAAAAANt8/IGW5zdir8-8/s400/jesus-dinosaur.jpg

I'm not much of an art critic and it's not really my taste. What's the point you are straining so hard to make?

 

[Move2CLT]

I'm not much of an art critic and it's not really my taste. What's the point you are straining so hard to make?

That religion and science cannot coexist logically. Anyone who tries to make them coexist logically ends up with pictures that look like the ones I posted.

 

[CallawayGolf]

That religion and science cannot coexist logically. Anyone who tries to make them coexist logically ends up with pictures that look like the ones I posted.

If you define "religion" as a common set of deeply held beliefs which constitutes a person's basic worldview, then secular science is just as much of a "religion" as any other belief you define with such pejorative disdain. True science and biblical faith absolutely do co-exist. It is perfectly logical to believe in science based on fact and to have faith in God which can in fact be validated by science.

What is illogical is to continue to believe that science can offer an excuse not to believe in God when ever field of study about origins naturally leads to a conclusion that the universe and life on the planet earth cannot possibly be explained absent "intelligent design" as an absolute minimum.

Irreducible complexity does not allow for slow, gradual progressions of the basic building blocks of life. When man looks through 20th and 21st century technology into the complex workings of the cell, the structure and information contained in the DNA and mechanical processes that still stagger the most educated engineers, we find it beyond all logic and statistical probability to conclude that randomness and luck could possibly explain all we see in the universe. Even the best secular scientists on the planet reluctantly agree that continued belief in unguided biogenesis and Darwinian evolution is beyond believability.

I'll provide you some quote to back this up but I need to switch to my wife's laptop and get off my iPad. Stand by...

 

[CallawayGolf]

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.– Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, pg 18


For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I arrived.
– Charles Darwin, Origin of Species Pg 3


I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.
– Charles Darwin


One only has to contemplate the magnitude of this task [evolution] to concede that spontaneous generation of a living organisms is impossible; yet, I choose to believe that which I know to be impossible rather than accept the unthinkable, special Creation. – Dr. George Wald, Professor of Biology, Harvard


When it comes to the origin of life there are only two possibilities: Creation or spontaneous generation. There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved one hundred years ago, but that leads us to only one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds, therefore, we chose to believe the impossible: That life arose spontaneously by chance!
- George Wald, Harvard University biochemist & Nobel Laureate (1954)


The scientist’s pursuit of the past ends in the moment of Creation [First Cause]. We cannot get past that to answer any questions. This is an exceedingly strange development; unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the words of the Bible: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.’ For the scientist who has lived by his faith in evolution and reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak, and as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
- Robert Jastrow, Founder NASA’s Goddard Space Institute


The origin of the genetic code presents formidable unsolved problems. The coded information in the nucleotide sequence is meaningless without the translation machinery, but the specification for this machinery is coded in the DNA. Thus without the machinery the information is meaningless, but without the coded information the machinery cannot be produced. This presents a paradox of the ‘chicken and egg’ variety, and attempts to solve it have so far been sterile.
– John Walton, chemist


The possibility of life arising by chance is about the same as the probability that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard could assemble a [Boeing] 747 from the contents therein. – Sir Fredric Hoyle, Evolution from Space

Very comforting words from scientists who hold no faith in God, don't you think?

 

[Move2CLT]

If you define "religion" as a common set of deeply held beliefs which constitutes a person's basic worldview, then secular science is just as much of a "religion" as any other belief you define with such pejorative disdain. True science and biblical faith absolutely do co-exist. It is perfectly logical to believe in science based on fact and to have faith in God which can in fact be validated by science.

What is illogical is to continue to believe that science can offer an excuse not to believe in God when ever field of study about origins naturally leads to a conclusion that the universe and life on the planet earth cannot possibly be explained absent "intelligent design" as an absolute minimum.

Irreducible complexity does not allow for slow, gradual progressions of the basic building blocks of life. When man looks through 20th and 21st century technology into the complex workings of the cell, the structure and information contained in the DNA and mechanical processes that still stagger the most educated engineers, we find it beyond all logic and statistical probability to conclude that randomness and luck could possibly explain all we see in the universe. Even the best secular scientists on the planet reluctantly agree that continued belief in unguided biogenesis and Darwinian evolution is beyond believability.

I'll provide you some quote to back this up but I need to switch to my wife's laptop and get off my iPad. Stand by...

There is always a logical conclusion to everything. To attribute the unknown and complex to a master architect is short-sighted.

Let's start with the eye argument:

http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v305/n1/full/scientificamerican0711-64.html