Religion should play no role in Supreme Court nomination

I'm here. Tried to post yesterday, but it wouldn't let me. I had to re-register. Don't know what that was all about.

I have about 3 weeks of stuff from Peter that needs answering - I'll start working on that.

After that, Peter, if you want to take a long break from evolution, that's fine with me, but I think if it's going to be that long, you should add a couple more books to your reading list. Something (anything, really) on the history of geology, or just straight geology (since that was what started the ball rolling - not Darwin - and something about what DNA has to say about evolution. I would recommend Relics of Eden by Daniel J. Fairbanks (who happens to be quite religious).

In the meantime, there's plenty for us to discuss about the bible, without bringing evolution into it at all.

information from non-information, etc...

"Where does that information come from Walter? Can you answer that? Can you answer any of the questions I have been firing at you lately?"

a few years ago, the clever questions were "what's the moon made of?" or "what makes people sick" and so on. dna/rna/protiens/amino acids are only recent discoveries. give science a chance before we resort to "god did it".

the self-replicating properties of dna DO seem "miraculous" to me. i personally really can't imagine how it evolved. scientists assume dna evolved from something simpler, possibly rna or something. but even imagining rna happening "by itself" seems miraculous to me (like i'm sure the idea that nothing is holding the stars "up" used to be). like i've said numerous times now, if that's a "gap" you want to fill with god, then fine.

you say johnson says,
"...they assume that it is produced by material (i.e., Darwinian) process..."

huh? he equates "material" and "darwinian"? (first of all, no one says "darwinian" except anti-darwinists. scientists don't call it that. we don't worship darwin... it's just "evolution" or...science....) now, if he's trying to equate darwinism and materialism with atheism, well, that's his choice, and yours too. it's possible god has manipulated every genetic mutation ever. it's possible. or maybe he just manipulates certain important ones - like maybe to make flagella.... hahaha my point is, there are plenty of scientists who believe in "material (i.e. darwinian) processes" AND believe in god.

you said johnson said,
"...THE SCIENTIST WHO BELIEVE THAT NATURAL SELECTION MADE THE BRAIN DO SO NOT BECAUSE OF THE EVIDENCE BUT IN SPITE OF THE EVIDENCE."

repeating something loudly does not make it true...'cept maybe in church....

on the contrary: there is no evidence that REQUIRES we suppose god. you are free to do so, but it's not required by the evidence.

you said,
"Where does that information come from Walter? Can you answer that? Can you answer any of the questions I have been firing at you lately?"

i know you think these are earth-shattering questions you've been "firing". "life from non-life?" and "intelligence from non-intelligence" and so on. i know they sound clever and all, but they're really not. infact they're mostly nonsense along the lines of "how do you get blue from non-blue?" we've answered them numerous times but you dislike, and therefor ignore the answer.

the fact is the evidence supports evolution. scientists are still working on the origin of life - and that is a different question, even though you consider it all part of one question. i suppose you could say it's "evolution of molecules into life" or something - but THAT'S not what the theory of evolution is about. as i've mentioned numerous time before this "molecules into life" is a great "god gap." mebbe god did it?! dunno, could be - but that NOT what the theory of evolution is all about. evolution is not about the first life form on earth, but the second.

more responses to come as/if time permits. this thread is about to go, so let's jump to one more thread and hopefully pam will jump in here somewhere to comment and let us know she's safely returned from vacation.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/pamela_k_taylor/2010/05/abortion_and_islamic_thought.html

Hi Walter,

From the link you provided:

"Scientists have created the world's first synthetic life form in a landmark experiment that paves the way for designer organisms that are built rather than evolved."

That has been one of my points all alone - built or designed rather than evolved.

As Phil Johnston put it in 'The Wedge of Truth,'

"The real duality at every level of
biology is the duality of matter and information. The philosophers of mind-science fail to understand the true character of information because they assume that it is produced by material (i.e., Darwinian) process and hence is not something fundamentally different from matter. But this is merely a prejudice that would be swept away by unbiased thinking. THAT IS NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT THE BRAIN, OR ANY INDIVIDUAL CELL WITHING THE BRAIN, EITHER WAS OR COULD HAVE BEEN CREATED BY MATTER UNASSISTED BY PREEXISTING INTELLIGENCE. THE SCIENTIST WHO BELIEVE THAT NATURAL SELECTION MADE THE BRAIN DO SO NOT BECAUSE OF THE EVIDENCE BUT IN SPITE OF THE EVIDENCE." p123.

Did you get that Walter? Here are scientists (including Craig Venter) designing and making a synthetic genome, not allowing nature to produce a natural one, as if that were possible. It is amazing what happens when you put intelligence into the equation. That is the point. Did you hear what Craig said - something to the effect that 'life is basically a result of an information process.'

Where does that information come from Walter? Can you answer that? Can you answer any of the questions I have been firing at you lately?

Did you hear what else Craig said,
"We first had to learn how to write the genetic code." In other words, the only way is to put intelligence into the equation as opposed to dumb, random, blind materialistic chance.

As Phil continues,

"Information is not matter, although it is imprinted in matter. It comes from elsewhere, from an intelligence that is so far (and perhaps forever) outside the ken of a science that examines only material entities and effects. [Let me spell that out for you. G - O - D.] The task of neuroscience is not to deny the reality of information or to insist in the teeth of the evidence that all information is the creation of some combination of physical law and chance, but to learn as much as possible about how the information interacts with matter to produce mental phenomena." p. 123

Reality is limited for you, Walter, to what science can explain, as Phil mentions about all science that comes from a materialistic beginning or a Darwinian basis. It is ignorant to all else.

hi peter,
i saw this and thought of you...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-form

it's not really what i'd call "creating life", but it's pretty close.

let's hear from pam to see if she has anything to add. otherwise jan 1 or 2 on one of susan's blogs would be fine.

Hi Walter,

Do you have anything further to add? If not, and Pam has finished her say, lets agree to rendezvous January 1st or April 1, 2011. By then I hope to have composed a solid refutation on Darwinism and maybe add more on why the Flood scenario is feasible.

wow...i assumed pam was on a one week vacation....maybe it's two. nice!

dang, peter,
that's a great web page - that ken miller interview one. he says it so well. just to let you know, some crazy guy (named "pittman" i think) messed it all up with that blue text he put in there....

:-)

Hi Walter,

Here is something that might interest you on Kenneth Miller.

http://www.detectingdesign.com/kennethmiller.html#NOVA

Read Pitman's comments on Miller.

WALTER: "it's just that as more information has come in and science has advance the EVIDENCE discredited that god. he wasn't "assumed away" right from the start."

Here is another one.

http://www.detectingdesign.com/

Open the two links on the right side of the page and read, 'The Theory of Evolution. True Science or Dogma' and 'Detecting Design: Simple Stuff Nature can't do' under the section that begins, 'A Very Special Universe.'

If things like this don't set you thinking then I think you are too deeply focused on the one view at this particular time.

Hi Walter,

WALTER: "peter,
science does not "assume god away", so to speak. science does not even "assume away" the noah's ark god of the literalist bible. as if to prove MY point, you listed all those old scientists who purportedly believed in THAT god."

I don't know what you are getting at?

What I am saying is that many/most scientists who believe in evolution have eliminated the need for God. They are natural materialists. They believe that the natural realm is the only explanation for why we are here, as explained by evolution and Big Bang cosmology.

As for 'THAT' God, there is only one true and living God.

Pam argued with me that the kind of science she (and you for that matter) believes in is not philosophical naturalism. I have pointed out to her (and you are included) that these events - the origin of the universe and spontaneous generation or life from non-life - are not events that can be duplicated and verified by the scientific method. Therefore, it is a philosophical bent that Darwin made possible. And the evidence that is most commonly used in the text books to promote macro-evolution is the finch, peppered moth or fruit flies, all three examples are only that of micro-evolution. To make matters even worse the yarn is spent proposing that similarities between kinds actually shows the link to a common ancestry - a blob of single celled life or something along that line. The whole thing is highly speculative.

WALTER: "it's just that as more information has come in and science has advance the EVIDENCE discredited that god. he wasn't "assumed away" right from the start."

No, it is how the information is now interpreted, thanks to Darwin and his ilk.

How does information arise except by mind ordering it? You have one of two possibilities - God or chance. Either a Mind is responsible for all you see, or chance is. You can't have it both ways.

Why would something that began by chance order things and build information into things?

Can you answer any of my questions? I have noticed that they just seem to be zinging by. These are the kind of questions that you need to answer in order for your worldview to be feasible.

Show me how Chance sustains order and keep information intact.

http://www.detectingdesign.com/

peter,
science does not "assume god away", so to speak. science does not even "assume away" the noah's ark god of the literalist bible. as if to prove MY point, you listed all those old scientists who purportedly believed in THAT god.

it's just that as more information has come in and science has advance the EVIDENCE discredited that god. he wasn't "assumed away" right from the start.

hi peter,
here's our old thread:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/philip_g_davis/2010/04/celebrating_selfless_prayer.html

Hi Walter,

Again concerning the philosophical bent of modern scientism, have you considered how it was when these fields were being founded?

They were established by people philosophizing or trying to "think God's thoughts after Him" (a saying that I believe was made popular by Johann Kepler who coined it), the equation was the other way around from what it is today. The majority were Christian or at least deists. They believed for the most part in the supernatural God of the
Bible.

Henry Morris, in 'Men of Science Men of God' notes many of them. Men like Leonardo da Vinci, Fracis Bacon (primarily responsible for the scientific method), Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, John Ray, Nicolaus Steno, Thomas Burnet, Issac Barrow, Nehemiah Grew, Isaac Newton, John Woodward, Carolus Linnaeus, William Herschel, Gottfried Leibnitz, William Derham, Gustavus Brander, Jean Deluc, Richard Kirwan, James Parkinson, Michael Faraday, Humphrey Davy, George Cuvier, Charles Bell, Charles Babbage, David Brewster, John Herschel, Benjamin Barton, Samuel Morse, Joseph Henry, Matthew Maury, James Simpson, James Joule, Adam Sedgwick, Louis Agassiz, George Stokes, Gregory Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Henri Fabre, William Thompson, Joseph Maxwell, Bernhard Reimann, A.H. Sayce, John Ambrose Fleming, George Washington Carver, Wernher von Braun are just some on the list.

Hi Walter,

I'm not following your last posted thread on Phil's forum page.

"They assume there is no god..."

WALTER: "that's just not true! tell that to ken miller and francis collins."

We are talking generalization, since the majority of scientists today I believe are philosophical naturalists, as appears to be Miller too, except for the fact that it also appears he believes that God wound up the world and left it to its own devices. What he does is compromises the God he believes in.

As Phil Johnston said about Miller in 'The Wedge of Truth' p. 91, about Miller's statement on the Virgin Birth as to making no sense scientifically,

"I suspect that most of Miller's materialist colleagues will wonder how serious he can be in claiming to believe in an event while saying that it makes no scientific sense, especially since he is vigorous in judging all other claims of supernatural influence on the natural world by the standards of science. If he makes this one exception then why not others, and how does he decide where to draw the line? They may also wonder what Miller could possibly mean by his quest to "find Darwin's God," when it is so widely known in the scholarly world (and even to Miller himself) that Darwin in his later years was an agnostic."

The point is that the if you took a consensus I'm sure you would find the overwhelming majority of scientists are evolutionists, and most of those are philosophical naturalistic evolutionists. That is, they believe the universe came into being without the aid of a supernatural Being. They take that belief by faith.

The ironic thing is that these naturalistic philosophers who want to test everything that they believe in by empirical standards of empirical evidence cannot do so on the very thing they rely upon most - logic or reason. In a materialistic world show me the immaterial, abstract, intangible we call reason.

As for Pam's ridiculous statements that science does not require faith or that science did not start from a philosophical bent, at the end of everything we know is faith. Depending on what you know will depend on where faith begins, for beyond what you know so often is where faith lies.

I can't wrap my head around infinity being a finite being. God is infinite. I believe that by faith since I can't comprehend it. How can I grasp infinite with a finite mind? How do I grasp infinite love? I can only grasp as much as I know of love.

Ron Nash said that if you took all the even infinite numbers and subtracted them from all the odd infinite numbers you would still have an infinity of numbers. I can't make sense of that statement. I find it illogical. The only way I can comprehend is to think that because the infinite goes on and on, the minute you subtract the one from the other there is already an infinity more.

Are not Catholic and Jewish morals and values analogous to those of good Protestants, pagans, atheists, agnostics, secularists, Hindus and Buddhists? So what is the problem? Next topic!!!

Note: Islam has no morals or values as noted by the following:

1a) 179 killed in Mumbai/Bombay, 290 injured

1b) Assassination of Benazir Bhutto and Theo Van Gogh

2) 9/11, 3000 mostly US citizens, 1000’s injured

3) The 24/7 Sunni-Shiite centuries-old blood feud currently being carried out in Iraq, US Troops 3,482 killed in action, 912
in non-comabat, 95,888 – 104,595 Iraqi civilians killed, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ and
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

4) Kenya- In Nairobi, about 212 people were killed and an estimated 4000 injured; in Dar es Salaam, the attack killed at least 11 and wounded 85.[2]

5) Bali-in 2002-killing 202 people, 164 of whom were foreign nationals, and 38 Indonesian citizens. A further 209 people were injured.

6) Bali in 2005- Twenty people were killed, and 129 people were injured by three bombers who killed themselves in the attacks.

7) Spain in 2004- killing 191 people and wounding 2,050.

8) UK in 2005- The bombings killed 52 commuters and the four radical Islamic suicide bombers, injured 700.

9) The execution of an eloping couple in Afghanistan on 04/15/2009 by the Taliban.

10) Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan: US troops killed in action 745, 210 killed in non-combat situations as of 04/17/2010. en.wikipedia.org/.../Civilian_casualties_of_the_War_in_Afghanistan_(2001–present reported that 13,372 - 32,969 Afghan civilians have been killed by direct and indirect armed conflict through 2009.

11) The killing of 13 citizen soldiers at Ft. Hood by a follower of the koran.

12) 38 Russian citizens killed on March 29, 2010 by Muslim women suicide bombers.

13) The recent attempt by a Muslim male to blow up Times Square.

Pamela, you wrote,

"More importantly, the law of our land is secular. It does not originate in religious authority."

Yes it does originate in religious authority. The background of these men who wrote the laws of the land were influenced by the Judeo-Christian value system.

You continue,

"Its strictures do not derive from holy books. Rather it comes from the Constitution, federal law, and the acts of Congress."

That statement is a broad leap of faith. To think that these people formed their constitution in a vacuum.

And where do values come from outside of God? Who sets the standard?

the amalgamation between the church and state.

the constitution or the law of the land is not absolute,its the product of the people by the people and for the people.

the constitution or the law of the land is elastic to the need of the people by the people and for the people .

in other words if the people by the people and for the people decided to take their religion to the suprem court and gov,is there any thing wrong or unconstitutional about that?

as a muslim i have no problem at all nominating a devout christian or devout jew or devout muslim as long as they practice what they preach about their idealism that is writen in their text book or the idealism of the constitution.

religion donot matter,religion should not make it to the suprem court, religion shouldnot make it to the gov ????what is the use of the religion then? you might as well thro it in the gulf of mexico !this is unconstitutional and unfreedom of relgion and speech.

again the wrong is not with the idealism of the constitution or the text book, the problem is how many are devout ?

was the delusional mission of g bush the democraz devout to the constitution or even to the sacred book that he was carrying?

human hypocrisy is what matter.