Yep no doubt. I hope it's a decent debate and not a 'INFIDEL! DIE!' etc.

GL with your finals btw .

Heh, well put Ockham.

Someone used your namesake today as an arguement for Intelligent Design. Was highly ammusing.

Actually, let's tell the truth. You made this dogmatic assertion as a matter of pure Darwinian faith. Darwin never answered the question,  "how exactly did we get here?"  in his book or otherwise. Neither have his advocates and true blue followers through today. Darwin,et al,  was utterly unable to explain the complex machinery of the cell. Detailed genetic studies have dealt a death blow to Darwinian lie of macro-Evolution---that theorizes molecules to man natural transformation or one species changes into a completely different one in whihc new, higher genetic information is gained which was not possessed by one's ancestors....that wants us to believe we humans descended from apes.

 

Problem is that no mechanism for this to occur has been found...there is no hard scientific evidence that backs up your assertion...for Darwinism stems from one imaginative theory after another of which none have been proved.

 

All evidence collected on natural mutations indicates species degeneration with no record of any improving themselves let alone completely changing species.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, the earth is at the center of the universe only not the "geographical" center.  First point---The earth is carefully designed as the only center of life.

Second, the very placement of the earth in the universe gives us the best possible view of it as if the Great Designer wanted to help us discover His Handiwork. Our Creator God designed our surroundings for us to discover information about them especially concerning supporting human life. Earth is perfectly positioned to allow us to map the structure of our galaxy even though we are inside it.

Would earth support life at all if it were just a bit smaller or larger? No-- it wouldn't. That's one of the reason why the earth didn't just happen by blind random chance but was made by Almighty God.   

 

 

 

Oh c'mon?  using the "Galileo affair" spin to attempt to bash the Catholic Chruch.

Well, it's a good thing that the Catholic Church didn't rush to embrace Galileo's views becasue it turned out that his ideas aren't entirely correct either. Science has once again come through for us. Galileo believed that the sun was not just the fixed center of the solar system but the fixed center of the universe. We now know that the sun is not the center of the universe, and that it does move--it simply orbits the galaxy rather than the earth.

So recent science has shown Galileo was partly right is asserting the mobility of the earth and wrong in asserting the immobility of the sun. His opponents were right in asserting the mobility of the sun and wrong in asserting the immobility of the earth. Had the Catholic Chruch rushed to endorse Galileo's views and there were many in the Chruch in those days who were quite favorable to them---the Church would have embraced what modern science has disproved.

Last point, the CC has little to apologize for in its relations with science. Indeed, it can be argued that it was the metaphysical framework of medieval Catholicism that brought the first universities, and that made modern science possible in the first place. Stanley Jaki said, "science was still-born in every major culture Greek, Hindu, Chinese, --except the Christian west. As far as the teaching authority of the Chruch is concerned, it's striking how modern physics has played catch-up with Cathollic dogma. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council taught that the universe had a beginning in time, a scandal then, but which is now common modern cosmology.  

 

Here's what I absolutely love about this one. God creates the world (or entire universe, depending on one's interpretation) in 7 days....... but at that point a "day" didn't exist yet as a measurement of time because the earth didn't exist yet. So God, the creator of the entire universe, decided to build our planet based on an as yet nonexistent unit of measurement. Now considering the vast size of the universe I find it highly unlikely and arrogant to think that we would be the only sentient species he would create. That's an awful waste of all that real estate and mighty boring and uncreative (two attributes I do not think the creator would have) So, if he made other species in magical easy-bake oven format he would then have to craft his creation of their planets to whatever length of time their days would become as well (in order to provide the same biblical references for them) Plus that would mean that eventually, we will probably see one of these easy bake creations through our telescopes "astronomers view planet and ecosystem creation in less than a week!!!" I can see the headlines now.

Crafting all these planets on different units of  time is terribly inefficient, and if there's anything we can infer about God from nature it's that he most likely abhors innefficiency.

So therefore I would like to put forth the position that if God does indeed use units of time to measure his creations, he would probably use a universal scale that applies evenly across the board. Let's call these units "Fleems"

Therefore, the bible should read that God created the earth in so many fleems, and would read more like "In the first 1.73 fleems, God created such and such". If he decided to be a real show-off, perhaps he would shoot to have total creation time of our world to be something like Pi or other funky number of fleems.

I wasn't joking, my morality really does come from reasoned selfishness. Well, that and my wife has made a lot less of a callous bastard over the last decade; but that is more a matter of developing my capacity for empathy.


The universe was a lot smaller back then, and embracing Galileo's views would have still been more correct than their current ones.


Apparently he was unaware of where our current number system originated?

Yeah, and the fact that most scientific advancements made in Europe during the Middle Ages were by the Muslims and Jews, NOT the Christians . . .

Oh yeah, the "magical" telescopes.

Scientific advancements from the Muslims and Jews during the Middle Ages? Like what for instance?

"Arab science flourished during this time devising the now-common Arab numerals, increasingly accurate time-keeping devices and astronomical instruments, and providing corrections to Ptolemy's observations. Later, through the close contacts generated by the Crusades, Arab knowledge was carried to Europe."
WWW Link

Time, astronomy, numbers...pretty good developments, I think.

~Zoo

Artysim posts:

Christians believe that there is only one God, the Divine Trinity, the Infinite First Cause who created all that exists, including space, time and matter.

First of all, Genesis 1 is obviously not a detailed scientific textbook and the sacred writers (guided by God the Principal Author) did not intend to teach us about the essential scientific nature of things in the visible universe. However, Genesis, at face value, does though tell us something about the historical sense of mankind and our Origin.

The question of whether the word "yom" for "day" could be interpreted as a 24 hour day or a longer period of time is still left open. As for me, I'm content with the literal understanding on the interpretation of Genesis which I believe is the Word of God Himself through the Holy Spirit. I say this becasue if the days of Creation are really "geologic ages" of millions of years then the Gospel message is undermined at its foundation because it puts death, disease, work and suffering, before the Fall of Adam and Eve.

Genesis seems to say that God created the universe, the earth, the sun, moon, and stars, plants, and animals, and the first two people within 6 ordinary 24 hour days. The word for day in Genesis 1 which is qualified by a number, the phrase, "evening and morning", and for day one the words, "light and darkness", obvioously means an ordinary 24 hour day. I just can't see how anyone who is honest can get the idea of millions of years from that.


Now, let's discuss time....

the very manner and order in which the sacred writer of Genesis 1 relates the Creation serves to bring out the order and mutual relation of things created. God has already created light on the first day, but this light was not the light of the sun. It was on the fourth day that God made the sun, to be the giver of light to the earth. God made light first, becasue without light and without warmth, which is connected with it, there could be no growth, no life, no order in nature.

God made the atmosphere on the 2nd day which divided the waters, becasue neither plants nor animals, nor mankind can live without air. Sound also is impossible without air, so that without it there could have been neither speech or hearing.

On the third day, God made the earth to be dry, and plants to grow on it. But plants to live and thrive require something besides light and air. therefore God had already on the second day caused part of the water to remain in the air to supply the plants with moisture from above most probably by dew.

the fourth day the bodies of light were created and the 5th, the inhabitants of the air and water, the birds and fishes. The sixth day, the inhabitants of dry land, the animals and the first two humans, Adam and Eve.

So time began with the Creation. ONce nothing existed but the Eternal God alone. God is not subject to the changes of time, for with God who is outside of time, always existed of and by Himself.

The sacred writer divides the whole work of Creation as we now see it before our eyes, into 6 days followed by the Sabbath or day of rest in order to impress upon us that man should follow the example of God and work 6 days and rest in God on the 7th. He consequently apportions a work to each day, and by "day", he means what we mean, namely a space of time consisting of 12 hours of work and twelve hours of rest. God Himself doesn't work in time, but He can be llkened to a man who works six days and finishes all his work in one week. Again, as to the real space of time which the formation of the world required, and about which geologists inquire, the sacred writer's narrative says nothing at all.