Are God and Faith Anti-Science and Anti-Reason? John Lennox

@caissad4 said
Faith is about dogma.
Faith has little to do with truth and logic.
Fact: Moses and the Exodus never existed. Even Israeli archaeologists have agreed for decades. Yet when I posted that fact here many disagreed immediately rather than examine the facts. Faith is not about truth.

Truth and logic are tricky concepts. Much as it pains me to admit it Eladar made a good point in his reply to you on the first page, Scientific method isn't entirely justified as far as the truth is concerned, we can only really be certain when something is false. In fact, if one takes a really skeptical position even Popper's falsification programme fails as we can't be entirely sure that we've falsified something.

Regarding logic, consider the following sentence:

If I am a giraffe then Mars is green.

In classical logic this sentence is entirely sound, even if it sounds ridiculous. If we put in true information we cannot draw a false conclusion. I'm not a giraffe, so we cannot draw incorrect inferences about Mars' colour. Were I a giraffe then Mars would be green, but it's red which contradicts the assumption that I'm a giraffe and so we draw the correct conclusion that I am, in fact, not a giraffe.

In normal English we have what is called the relevance if, where some sort of relevant connection has to exist, such as causality or a related process is in play. For example if we see supernovae on opposite sides of the observable universe, which aren't causally connected due to the distances involves, we can still say "If the two supernovae have the same light curves then the underlying mechanism must be the same.". That rules out sentences such as the one above.

What I'm getting at with all this is that what seems relevant to them is not to you. So you tend to reject their faith based position, on entirely understandable grounds. But the grounds that you are rejecting them on are not entirely sound themselves. I think it's important to distinguish clearly between Christians who think that there is no contradiction between science and their faith and creationists who want to distort science in an attempt to prove the existence of God, the literal truth of the Bible, and shore up their somewhat shaky belief system. I suspect the ones who see no contradiction between science and their religion are the ones with the stronger faith.

@deepthought said
I suspect the ones who see no contradiction between science and their religion are the ones with the stronger faith.

I suspect the ones who see no contradiction between science and their religion are the ones with the stronger faith.

Suzianne for example.

@vivify said
Do you have any non-religious sources for the 6,000 year age of earth or for evidence against evolution?

The thing is I'm not attempting to prove any date, thousands, millions, billions, it doesn't matter to me. If what is being suggested as true with respect to the beginning of all things, like creation, it cannot be known through checking anything in the material world, it would be a special creation event.

You have a logical explanation on where everything came from? No one has come up with a viable alternative for any other scenario that explains where everything came from outside of creation, so it boils down to creation verses everything else.

With respect to life, there is the divine explanation verses everything else, because there isn't any thing other than the divine explanation. No other explanation is viable to date, unless you can produce one that can be validated! So God forming life too is a special event, and like creation you cannot test for it. You can look at life and ask does this look like an intelligent being did it or not, I believe design is a much more viable reason than any other cause for starting and maintaining life.

Both of those two events standout and have no rivals even now, there are "theories" but all details are (just so stories) with all the details supposedly in the past. Why would I take the creation story over nothing with details that can shown true, it stands alone. Why would I take divine design over all other stories, it stands alone for life's beginning. I don't care where you get your sources from, choose another religion, pull some theories out of the air. I'm not asking you to show me anything to prove my beliefs wrong, show me something to prove your beliefs are correct.

If you are going to compare a creation to evolution you have to realize that creation is a special event, and evolution is supposedly an on going process so it is apples and oranges they are not the same thing so why compare the two?

Even evolution has its own issues, many for that matter! The complexity of life, you assume through time that can arise with a process that is mindless, goalless. I don't even think many of the things people claim about it make sense when you look at the fossil records. Why do we see life forms in the fossil records just appear and disappear in different ages of time, shouldn't there be strings of life all looking the very close to the same throughout all time? Why are there not living creatures today, that have small variations in massive numbers than we do? There should be a variety of variations between ape and human alive today if we and the apes shared linage, where are all of those creatures that didn't die off, but reproduced in history? There is no reason for anything to die off if it can maintain life and thrive. The thing is life just does not die off simply because next years model is now being sold. So where are the life forms that only have small variation, instead of distinct variations between the two species.

Scripture says all life would reproduce after its own kind, I see that, I don't see small changes over time on the planet through time in every lifeform!

@kellyjay said
The thing is I'm not attempting to prove any date, thousands, millions, billions, it doesn't matter to me. If what is being suggested as true with respect to the beginning of all things, like creation, it cannot be known through checking anything in the material world, it would be a special creation event.

You have a logical explanation on where everything came from? No o ...[text shortened]... kind, I see that, I don't see small changes over time on the planet through time in every lifeform!

So, what you are saying is that you have zero, zip and nada non-religious sources for your opinion that creationism is the actual way life got here on Earth.
I don't understand why you even engage in any religious discussions here. Most people here enjoy debating and hope to expand our level of understanding by honest interaction. You are not actually debating anything. You are basically proselytizing and nothing else. You contribute nothing.
Your actions are a deliberate deception or you are stupid as a rock.

@kellyjay said
The thing is I'm not attempting to prove any date, thousands, millions, billions, it doesn't matter to me. If what is being suggested as true with respect to the beginning of all things, like creation, it cannot be known through checking anything in the material world, it would be a special creation event.

You have a logical explanation on where everything came from? No o ...[text shortened]... kind, I see that, I don't see small changes over time on the planet through time in every lifeform!

Again: do you have any non-religious sources to dispute evolution? What about non-religious sources for the Global Flood?

Whether or not you personally dispute evolution isn't my concern. My point is that it's only religious people who do so, which shows that religion is anti-science.

@vivify said
Again: do you have any non-religious sources to dispute evolution? What about non-religious sources for the Global Flood?

Whether or not you personally dispute evolution isn't my concern. My point is that it's only religious people who do so, which shows that religion is anti-science.

Science if done by a Christian not science because a Christian does it?

@vivify said
Again: do you have any non-religious sources to dispute evolution? What about non-religious sources for the Global Flood?

Whether or not you personally dispute evolution isn't my concern. My point is that it's only religious people who do so, which shows that religion is anti-science.

One of the things that occurs is if you show anything that remotely supports the flood or disputes evolution it gets labeled regardless of how solid the work was done religious. If you actually care look at what was done and ignore the labels.

The motivation mongers slap on labels as fast as they can!

@kellyjay said
Science if done by a Christian not science because a Christian does it?

No. Science that contradicts the Bible is only disputed by Christians.

@kellyjay said
One of the things that occurs is if you show anything that remotely supports the flood or disputes evolution it gets labeled regardless of how solid the work was done religious.

Give an example of "solid work" that supports the Flood or disputes evolution.

@vivify said
Give an example of "solid work" that supports the Flood or disputes evolution.

And you will do what?

@kellyjay said
And you will do what?

Nice dodge.

In any event, you are unable to produce evidence against evolution or for the Flood from non-religious sources. That's quite clearly because religion is anti-science.

@vivify said
Nice dodge.

In any event, you are unable to produce evidence against evolution or for the Flood from non-religious sources. That's quite clearly because religion is anti-science.

You can’t even watch the video in this OP, I don’t think you have the ability get past your prejudices.

@kellyjay said
You can’t even watch the video in this OP, I don’t think you have the ability get past your prejudices.

Because I don't want to watch a video that's an hour and ten minutes long, I'm prejudiced. Got it.

@vivify said
Because I don't want to watch a video that's an hour and ten minutes long, I'm prejudiced. Got it.

Long on accusation short of reason.

@vivify said
Because I don't want to watch a video that's an hour and ten minutes long, I'm prejudiced. Got it.

The lecture is more than like ~30 minutes, the rest is question and answer. That will not change anything, you showed up to bad mouth the topic, not gather information.