Chance or by Design ?

Originally posted by jaywill
incorrect response on some points.

I thought you were leaving?

Originally posted by SwissGambit

The point here is not whether you believe it or not. I know you don't believe God spoke. But my immediate point is that this puts Aesop's Fables and Genesis into two entirely different kinds of writing.

Not really - Aesop had his gods, too:[quote]A Waggoner was driving his team along a muddy lane with a full load behind them, when the wheel t's taking it away from those who deserve it and giving it all to a mythical figure.

A Waggoner was driving his team along a muddy lane with a full load behind them, when the wheels of his waggon sank so deep in the mire that no efforts of his horses could move them. As he stood there, looking helplessly on, and calling loudly at intervals upon Hercules for assistance, the god himself appeared, and said to him, "Put your shoulder to the wheel, man, and goad on your horses, and then you may call on Hercules to assist you. If you won't lift a finger to help yourself, you can't expect Hercules or any one else to come to your aid."

Okay. You have here a Aesop Fable with a quotation from Hercules.

Mind if I do a little comparison ?

1.) Who was the wagoner ? I mean quite a lot is made in the Bible about who Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were. And we have record of God's words to them.

To history, what does this anonymous Wagoner mean ?

2.) Is there a contemporary ethnic group of people who claim lineage back to this Wagoner ? The Jews all own Abraham, to whom God is said to have appeared and spoken, as their forefather.

Any similar connection of a race of people today and this Wagoner ?

3.) Just curious. Where did this happen ? Jacob told his son Joseph that God Almighty appeared to him "at Luz in the land of Canaan .." (Gen. 48:3).

Is this just a speaking of Hercules "once upon a time somewhere," it really doesn't matter ?

If so, I think there is a real difference here.

4.) Is there any other writing in which Hercules confirms that these words were spoken by him years ago to this Wagoner ?

I mean in the Bible we have over 1600 years a running reminder of this Speaker about His past words. Any parellel to the few supposedly uttered by Hercules?

5.) I noticed there that the speaker of the parable said that the god appeared. However, how does he know it was Hercules ? The being that supposedly spoke doesn't seem to refer to himself as Herules. In fact he refers to Hercules off in the third person. This is a bit unclear.

Maybe there is ANOTHER parable where Hercules identifies HIMSELF more clearly as the speaker ? If not, then we are left with something rather vague and fuzzy.

7.) The words spoken supposedly by Hercules there - could not the morality of the lessen be absorbed even if it had been ANY passerby who has spoken such ?

There is plenty speaking of God in the Bible the consequences of which are related to the listener's responsibility to God Himself. They are not removed proverbs all the time. The reaction to the words are directly related to accountability to God the speaker.

There are miles of difference between this moral proverb generally taught by Hercules and God's direct historical promises to Israel - promises which were fulfilled by God the Speaker.

8.) Does the Fable or collection of Fables actually center on Hercules ? Or is Hercules simply a quickly passing by player not terribly germane to the overall import of the Fables ?

How much do the rest or all of the Fables suffer if Hercules' presence is removed from that one fable ?

I think if you remove God from the Bible it collapses into nothing. His centrality is intrinsically the hub and spokes of the wheel, so to speak.

9.) You have here a Wagoner calling on Hercules for the help of getting a wagon moving. Do you have a calling on Hercules for anything more ? I mean the calling of man upon God and His answering in the Bible is related to eternal destinies.

Isn't this assistance from Hercules rather trivial in comparison to the Bible's God of man's eternal salvation ?

10.) Does this fable about Hercules giving some good advice touch at all on the problem of human DEATH ?

If not it is rather limited. Do you mean the only speaking of a deity in Aesop's fables pertains to getting a wagon to operate correctly ?

We are still dealing with significant differences between the Bible and Aesop's Fables.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Don't believe in me. Believe in God and His Christ.
HalleluYah !!! Praise the Lord!

My two questions were:

How would you rationally know when you are not a geneticist nor have you looked an analogised the relevant data?
The geneticists know vastly more about it than you do ( and would generally be a lot more intelligent just to have got qualified ) so their scientific analysis of it would be vastly more credible than your religious judgement on it.
Why should we believe your non-expert irrational religious judgement on it rather than their expert scientific analysis of it?

and your response is “Don't believe in me. Believe in God and His Christ. “

so, lets get this straight: when trying to analogising the relevant data ( from my first question ) and making an expert scientific analysis of it ( from my second question )
we should not believe what you have to say about it ( so far we are in agreement there ) but rather we should consult “God and His Christ” as opposed to using logic/reason?
I think if all scientists did that it would be the end of science and we will go back to the stone age.

Originally posted by SwissGambit
I thought you were leaving?

No I was not leaving. I wrote something and deemed it incorrect. So I erased it.

I need to leave though and do something else.

incorrect response on some points.

Refered to what I wrote which I erased.

Originally posted by SwissGambit

The point here is not whether you believe it or not. I know you don't believe God spoke. But my immediate point is that this puts Aesop's Fables and Genesis into two entirely different kinds of writing.

Not really - Aesop had his gods, too:[quote]A Waggoner was driving his team along a muddy lane with a full load behind them, when the wheel ...[text shortened]... t's taking it away from those who deserve it and giving it all to a mythical figure.

After all, "All truth is God's truth".

That's not giving credit where credit is due. That's taking it away from those who deserve it and giving it all to a mythical figure.

"All truth is God's truth" is a saying not a pasage in the Bible.

And "they" who spoke thus of wise men in the world, were giving praise to wisdom itself and to the people who had it.


And you can talk God as myth as much as you like. Christ is history. And what Christ said about Himself and lived convince many of us down the centries that His Father and He Himself are quite real.

You WISH God was a myth.

Originally posted by RJHinds
The problem in disagreement with man's view by him using his faculties of reason and logic to understand things is that he mast assume some imagined reference point to start off his quest for understanding. He is either like a child without parents who was never told where or how he came into being, like the Atheist evolutionist, or he could be one with his ...[text shortened]... ptions are right. Then from there he can use his reason and logic to see how it all works out.

I tend to agree with your opinions here. I am not sure we can get any closer to how to choose between apparently contradictory ideas; say the ideas of evolutionary biology and the ideas of creationism, without assessing them against some criteria that we have had prior reason to trust.

I say "apparently" contradictory because there are schools of thought that seek to resolve the contradiction, say, by assigning different meanings of "day" to the issue. Semantic analysis like this can be a reasonable approach in some situations, perhaps even in this one.

What is a wonder to me is how the choice of criteria becomes seen as destructive of beliefs that extend far beyond the narrow, specific issues they are chosen to decide. For example, if we choose to use criteria that lead us to choose against creationism in favor of biological evolution, this does not in itself destroy any reason to be theistic. And choosing creationism over biological evolution does not destroy reasons to develop gene therapies using genetically similar organisms or models, that is, to believe in scientific method as a way to improve our lives.

Originally posted by jaywill

After all, "All truth is God's truth".

That's not giving credit where credit is due. That's taking it away from those who deserve it and giving it all to a mythical figure.

"All truth is God's truth" is a saying not a pasage in the Bible.

And "they" who spoke thus of wise men in the world, were giving praise to wisdom itse ...[text shortened]... e centries that His Father and He Himself are quite real.

You WISH God was a myth.

You WISH God was a myth.

that wouldn't be true.


just for the record:

people do not disbelieve there is a god because they “WISH” there is NO god but rather because of the absence of credible evidence for a god existing.
If there was credible evidence that there is a god then we would all, including myself, believe there is a god precisely because of the evidence.

I do not WISH there is NO god.
I disbelieve there is a god as a result of the absence of credible evidence for a god existing.

Originally posted by jaywill
[quote] A Waggoner was driving his team along a muddy lane with a full load behind them, when the wheels of his waggon sank so deep in the mire that no efforts of his horses could move them. As he stood there, looking helplessly on, and calling loudly at intervals upon Hercules for assistance, the god himself appeared, and said to him, "Put your shoulder to ...[text shortened]... ll dealing with significant differences between the Bible and Aesop's Fables.

The wagoner is obviously not a historical figure.
The geographical location is unspecified. It doesn't matter. All you need is a muddy road somewhere.
The difference in geographical details is real, but unimportant.
Hercules was more about action rather than words.

Aesop knows it was Hercules who appeared because he is the author of the story.
The wagoner knows it was Hercules who appeared because he called specifically for him and he appeared.
What is vague or fuzzy about that?

The story works better with Hercules speaking the words he speaks. If it had instead been some random passerby, his opinion would have not carried the same weight with the wagoner (or the reader).

The obligation to God in the Bible is indicative of how people of that time understood moral obligation.

I can show an example of a promise from God to Israel that was not fulfilled ... but that's tangential to the discussion.

The AF collection centers on moral lessons, not specific characters.

Removing the concept of moral obligation from AF is equivalent to removing the character 'God' from the Bible. The effect is collapse, indeed.

The calling of man upon God in the Bible is not restricted to inquiries about eternal destinies. There are myriad examples that don't include any eternal consideration.

The assistance from Hercules is not trivial because he is teaching the wagoner (and the reader) an important lesson. By contrast, God's plan of salvation is unhelpful because it leads to a false abrogation of moral responsibility. (I don't have to worry about the consequences of my actions, because God will save me anyway.)

Obviously the Hercules fable does not speak to the issue of death. But other AF tales do:

An old laborer, bent double with age and toil, was gathering sticks in a forest. At last he grew so tired and hopeless that he threw down the bundle of sticks, and cried out:

"I cannot bear this life any longer. Ah, I wish Death would only come and take me!"

As he spoke, Death, a grisly skeleton, appeared and said to him:

"What wouldst thou, Mortal? I heard thee call me."

"Please, sir," replied the woodcutter, "would you kindly help me to lift this [bundle] of sticks on to my shoulder?"

(Now back to your quotes 🙂)

Do you mean the only speaking of a deity in Aesop's fables pertains to getting a wagon to operate correctly ?

No, the wagon's operation is obviously not the point. Hercules never suggests that the man's efforts will get the wagon out of the rut - only that he should not ask for help if he is unwilling to help himself.

We are still dealing with significant differences between the Bible and Aesop's Fables.

I'll continue reminding you that I have not argued that the Bible and AF do not have significant differences. However, from a standpoint of speaking to the important issues of mankind, they are not as different as one might think.

Originally posted by jaywill

After all, "All truth is God's truth".

That's not giving credit where credit is due. That's taking it away from those who deserve it and giving it all to a mythical figure.

"All truth is God's truth" is a saying not a pasage in the Bible.

And "they" who spoke thus of wise men in the world, were giving praise to wisdom itse ...[text shortened]... e centries that His Father and He Himself are quite real.

You WISH God was a myth.

“Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever;
wisdom and power are his.
21 He changes times and seasons;
he deposes kings and raises up others.
He gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to the discerning.
Daniel 2:20b-21

...

And you can talk God as myth as much as you like. Christ is history. And what Christ said about Himself and lived convince many of us down the centries that His Father and He Himself are quite real.

Truth is not decided by popular vote.

God is a myth. Jesus existed, but the stories about him were greatly exaggerated. That's my take.

Originally posted by SwissGambit

Truth is not decided by popular vote.

God is a myth. Jesus existed, but the stories about him were greatly exaggerated. That's my take.

Well truth is not determined by your "take" on it either.

Your "take" has to provide for some realistic alternative explanations of some strong historical evidence that argues against a fictional mythic movement from ancient Judaism to a Christian faith. A resurrection from the dead is a better argument to explain the events:

1.) For centries Jews celebrated their main worship day on Saturday. Suddenly thousands were "revolutionized" to make the next day, the first day of the week, (Sunday) that main worship day.

Why after centries of Saturday Sabbath did some Jews establish "the Lord's Day" celebrating the rising of Jesus from the dead ? Give your alternative explanation for the sudden social change.

2.) The Jews emphasized obeying the laws that God had entrusted to Moses. This set them apart from the surrounding heathen nations for centries. Yet within a short time after the death of Jesus, a considerable number were saying that to be an upstanding member of the Jewish community one need no longer be in obligation to Mosiac law keeping.

Why the sudden social change ?

3.) The Jews had believed that ever since the time of Abraham and Moses they needed to offer animal sacrifices each year for atonement for sins. God, they believed, would transfer that guilt to the animal, and their sins would be forgiven to be in a right standing before God.
All of a sudden, after the death of Jesus, a Nazarene carpenter, thousands of Jews no longer look to animal sacrifice. They believe the death of Jesus has done the atoning for sins once for all.

Why the sudden change ?

4.) The strict monotheism held the Jews for centries. Suddenly a large group of them begin to speak of the one God as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit . This was radically different from what the Jews believed. Previously it was heresy to that God could be God and a man at the same time. Yet Jews began to worship Jesus as God within the first decade of the history of the Christian church.

How do you explain the radical and sudden social change of these Jews to a Three-One God and the worship of Jesus ?

5.) The vast body of Jews previously thought of the Messiah as one who would immediately conquer the Roman armies and free Judea from imperialism. Suddenly thousands of Jews began to believe in a Messiah who died for the sins of the everyone in the world, including their enemies.

What happened to cause this momentous transformation in attitude of thousands of Jews ?

This evidence may not prove that Jesus was God incarnate. But it is strong evidence that He was who He said He was and rose from the dead. You can give us your alternative theory why in such a short period of time, so many Jews were willing to give up such strong traditions and practices to pursue the teaching of an executed carpenter.

My explanation is that this man had been raised from the dead, and therefore the credibility of His other promises was to be taken seriously as well. That is why strong customs which had served sociologically and theologically for many centries were suddenly put aside for new belief which swept the ancient world starting from Jerusalem by JEWS.

Do you have a believable alternative theory why this all happened ?

And please don't be too quick to compare to the spread of Islam. Islam spread largly in its early days through military conquest and subjugation. I am not talking Holy Roman Empire of 600 or 700 AD. I'm talking the first centries of the Christian church.

Originally posted by RJHinds
I think you will find the following video informative and worth your while in viewing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN1dy1lHcC0&feature=related

Why do I rise to the bait you may ask? Maybe just to show I am prepared to listen and not be bigoted. Maybe for the entertainment value when I spot the lies and the rhetorical tricks employed.

Well this 49 minute video clip sets out in a deeply sarcastic manner a curious proposition.

Science (it says) attributes life to a combination of matter + energy + random chance.
Creation Science atrtributes life to a combination of matter + energy + information.

It then waxes lyrical on the sheer complexity of DNA and the vast amount of information contained there and the incredibly organised way in which that information is transmited and copied from DNA to RNA to proteins and so forth. Such a display of clear, intelligble and unarguable erudition lends credibility to this speaker's scientific credentials. We even lern early on that he has spent 150,000 dollars getting an education in medicine, the foundation of whcih, as he points out, is evolutionary biology. So whatever else is wrong with evolutionary biology, he concedes that it is the foundation of medical science and so must have some value I would suggest.

It proposes (at about 23 minutes e.g.) that according to Science, this information got into the DNA code by random chance. That is such a crazy, improbable eventuality that it must be dismissed.

It would be a decent argument if it was true but it is FALSE. It is true enough that many scientists say that evolution arises by chance and not by design. But the manner in which this happens is not random and chaotic.

What happens by random chance is that there are errors in transmitting the code during replication. That is not surprising in a complex process as described so well in the video. The majority of such errors result in a failure of the process - at some stage, the error makes the DNA replication a failure. However, some transmission errors do not damage the viability of the new DNA and are retained. What effect this might have on the subsequent new organism is highly questionable. For example, it may have zero effect, since much of the DNA sequence does not appear to do anything useful at all. Or it may produce a slight difference that is normally unimportant - an example might be that some peas are smooth and some are crinkled, depending on which version of the DNA message gets transmitted.

What also happens by chance ( not truly random however, it must be said, but chance all the same) is that the environment into which each organism is born varies over time. It may become more dry or more wet, a new predator may arrive on the scence, etc.

Now two things are not contentious. One is that individual differences arise in every species of life. eg some individuals are taller or shorter, or have longer fingers or shorter ones, and so forth for every feature of the creature's structure. The other is that the environment is subject to continual change.

In the theory of evolution by natural selection, all that is claimed is that as the environment changes, some individuals turn out to have a slight advantage over others on account of their individual differences, and as a result are more likely to reproduce successfully and produce new individuals sharing their DNA, as compared with less favoured individuals. That is all. It is a product of chance differences but it is not a random process. It is highly deterministic, in that it is shaped by the environment. Far from being random, any new creature that was cursed with a feature making it harder to compete and survive is going to die without reproducing. Most random changes in any organisms are going to cause trouble. Random change is dangerously risky. The change only survives if it enhances the prospects of reproducing or at best if it does not restrict those chances.

Evolutionary changes in DNA arise over immense timescales and by means of a long series of minor changes, never very significant at all at the level of one or even a few generations. It takes many many generations for any change to become significant and many more before a species diverges to establish a new and different species and many different species stand in the ancestry of most (though not all) modern species. Nobody can ratioanally claim that any modern species (or its DNA) has arisen out of the blue by random chance. Since this would be a nonsensical misrepresentation of the theory of evoution by natural selection, then the entire video is, I regret to say, a hoax.

It does not explain how any of its arguments can be derived from the Bible, unless there is a reference to the sin of Onin. To arrive at this version of Creation Science, one must start with the findings of modern evolutionary biology and work backwards. Whenever something interesting happens, insert the word "creation" for the scientific account.

This is also, of course, just one of the various versions subsumed under the heading Creationism. So the Creationists can have long and interesting debates together to determine who is being confused by Lucifer's little imps and who has a direct line to God.

Informative? Not about anything else, just about the kind of propoganda referred to in support of Creationism. Worth my while viewing? Only if it is worth taking the trouble to respond to its lies, since otherwise they go uncontested.

Originally posted by humy
My two questions were:

[quote] How would you rationally know when you are not a geneticist nor have you looked an analogised the relevant data?
The geneticists know vastly more about it than you do ( and would generally be a lot more intelligent just to have got qualified ) so their scientific analysis of it would be vastly more credible than your religiou if all scientists did that it would be the end of science and we will go back to the stone age.

No so. If one believes in God and His Christ, he is on the right track toward wisdom and knowledge, because he believes in the truth. Evolution is obviously not true to one who knows the truth of God and his Christ, even without any scientific training. Evolution is the opposite of creation by God and therefore a false teaching. Easy, huh?

HelleluYah !!! Praise the Lord!

YouTube&feature=related

Originally posted by nook7
Quite an exceptional post.

l thank you.

Thanks. I enjoyed writing it. Not holding my breath for a reply from Jaywill however.

Originally posted by finnegan
Why do I rise to the bait you may ask? Maybe just to show I am prepared to listen and not be bigoted. Maybe for the entertainment value when I spot the lies and the rhetorical tricks employed.

Well this 49 minute video clip sets out in a deeply sarcastic manner a curious proposition.

Science (it says) attributes life to a combination of matter + ene ...[text shortened]... it is worth taking the trouble to respond to its lies, since otherwise they go uncontested.

"What happens by random chance is that there are errors in transmitting the code during replication. "

There is much wisdom in your writings.

You are saying the above with acceptance of the common parlance, in order to be intelligible, but sometimes I wish "random chance" and "intelligent design" were replaced by the simpler "without intention" and "with intention."

Originally posted by SwissGambit
The wagoner is obviously not a historical figure.
The geographical location is unspecified. It doesn't matter. All you need is a muddy road somewhere.
The difference in geographical details is real, but unimportant.
Hercules was more about action rather than words.

Aesop knows it was Hercules who appeared because he is the author of the story.
The e important issues of mankind, they are not as different as one might think.

JW: Do you mean the only speaking of a deity in Aesop's fables pertains to getting a wagon to operate correctly ?

SG: No, the wagon's operation is obviously not the point. Hercules never suggests that the man's efforts will get the wagon out of the rut - only that he should not ask for help if he is unwilling to help himself.

What this suggests to me is that if Aesop's fables were the scripture of a current religion, people would be arguing over what it meant; the deniers taking it as shallow; the faithful insisting that it is deep. Is this a mark of a successful scripture? 😉

edit: Here's another:

Fable #40 ZEUS AND THE OAK TREES

Once upon a time the oak trees came to Zeus and lodged a complaint, 'O Zeus, founder of our species and father of all plant life, if it is our destiny to be chopped down, why did you even cause us to grow?' Zeus smiled and replied, 'It is you yourselves who supply the means of your destruction: if you didn't create all the handles, no farmer would have an axe in his house!'

http://www.mythfolklore.net/3043mythfolklore/reading/aesop/pages/08.htm

What does it mean?