How to argue against a particular delusion.
Hello everyone,
A friend of mine is a pretty die-hard Christian (shock horror, both of his parents are missionaries/vicars) and he often posts little sayings of some kind or another on Facebook, which I usually ignore. However, today he posted something that really irritated me for some reason:
"The more I look at science, the more in awe of God I become."
And just to make that worse, one of his Christian friends commented "Boom" as if he had made some kind of infallible argument. Somehow, I feel as though nothing I say will make any difference because they must be incredibly deluded already to believe that God just "invented" science. Basically, this is the guy who thinks he's a "modern and intelligent" Christian by saying that things like Noah's Ark are "just stories and aren't meant to be taken seriously by Christians". But if that is true, then why take ANY of the Bible seriously and where does he draw the line between stories and (what he believes is) the truth?
In the past I asked him and his friend where the evidence was. He claimed science (yes, seriously) helped prove Christianity and that Christianity was about "opening yourself" to it and believing, and then you "feel God" or whatever. How do you argue with someone like that??
What do you all say to religious people (not necessarily just Christians) who claim that science is just an invention of God? Is there a specific way to argue with someone who twists everything to awkwardly suit modern day thinking?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on -
RE: "A cow doesn't become a horse, nor an ape a man." - I don't know how to break this to you gently, Richard, but a man IS an ape --
No one said a cow became a horse, but some dinosaurs DID become birds, and I am living proof!
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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Dogs, Richard, are not "natural" animals, they were evolved, by Man, from captured wolf cubs over the past 30,000 years. Even the tiniest chihuahua had a wolf for an ancestor!
Hang around here long enough, and you could learn a lot of things they'll never teach you at home!
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on -
@Sagacious Hawk
I'm an atheist and a believer in evolution, but I recognize that the theory isn't 100% worked as regards every single species.
For example, we have charts showing the evolution of modern man and the modern horse. These are based on fossil skeletons.
Where is the one for the modern cow? the modern pig? The modern camel? Where are the missing fossil skeletons?
We await an explanation for the lack of fossil evidence for the evolution of many species other than man and the horse. Do human and horse skeletons preserve better? Do cow, pig, and camel skeletons decay more easily? So far, there appears to be no answer.
This doesn't disprove evolution, which is certainly a better explanation than "God did it," however the theory remains incomplete.
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Permalink Reply by Gallup's Mirror on -
And something from nothing--the big bang?
If you can't have something come from nothing, then what created God? If he exists, then according to you, he had to have a creator.
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Permalink Reply by Sagacious Hawk on -
@ Unseen
As you probably know, but for those who don't, fossilization is a rare process that needs to have certain environmental conditions to occur. Essentially, the body must die somewhere so that it ends up being buried and thus is kept from scavengers who would like nothing more than to crack open some bones for the marrow inside. This process occurs better where animals can be sucked under ground like in peat bogs or the La Brea tar pits, sometimes caves and caverns provide this, too, or places where sedimentation occurs like river beads and flood plains. Or in the case of our history where we purposely began to bury our dead.
To use your example of a camel, we don't have transitional fossils for the camel from about 4 million years ago to present because they did not live in areas conducive to fossilization. Does this explain all instances of why we don't have transitional fossils? Of course not, but it is one of the reasons for why we don't see as many. -
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Permalink Reply by SteveInCO on -
It's also the case that we haven't found any pre-chimpanzee fossils either. They don't live in an area amenable to such.
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Permalink Reply by kOrsan on -
science THEORIES
Not unlike other cultists, you clearly do not know the difference between the everyday use of the word "theory" and a scientific theory, which is not surprising. As a aside note, creationism is a hypothesis. BARELY!
we just have a different idea of how the puzzle fits together.
Smashing on the jigsaw pieces like a chimp on sugar to force them fit isn't "a different idea." You're trying to force science where it doesn't belong: your "holy" books.
Some believe in evolution as God's creative tool
See above. Science has proven religion wrong a thousand times over in every era of history. Every time there are 3 phases:
1. Complete denial by religion. It's a lie and it's blasphemy!
2. Realization that they can no longer ignore the mountain of facts.
3. Pretend like it was always of the religion! "It's been written in our holy book all this time!"
Muslims do this a lot too. Every time something new is discovered they're the first to raise their empty skulls and shout "it was written here in this surah! we already knew about atoms and quantum theory or how the world is round! yeah!"
Since Islam is a cult like yours I chose to take them as an example.
God being the first cause
Now, you've made clear your reading comprehension isn't the best, but gives this a try.
Specifically the "The First-cause Argument" paragraph.
Betrand Russel is easy to follow, and he already owned everything you have brought up here until this point.
Others believe in micro evolution but not macro.
CHERRY PICKING.
How many more times? I'm not a special needs student counselor, alright? I don't know how to handle you if you behave like this, you got to try a little bit.
See, you come here and babble about god being the first cause, micro and macro evolution. What you don't realize is that these are such OLD and examined topics, you think they're clever but we know them by heart. You coming here saying god was the first cause would be like me going into geology class and saying the earth is flat! And getting laughed out of the room. That's precisely how ridiculous it is at this point. You might as well argue the world is flat or that the universe revolves around the earth.
You're like a 8 year old stumbling into a book club full of adults, and you try to teach them the first letters of the alphabet. And we think it's cute and want to give you milk and cookies because it's amusing.
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Permalink Reply by Richard Bohn on -
I notice how the origin of the universe and of life itself is not part of your answer. And I am not denying the realm of science, only the evolutionary biased interpretation. No matter how you jump up and down and exasperate, Science is the study of what God created!!! WOW I can't prove God to you, these truths are spiritually discerned...and you can't prove He doesn't.
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Permalink Reply by Richard Bohn on
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I suppose you can explain away mutations as well. Genetic information is lost not gained, and this degrades the organism,not advances it.
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Permalink Reply by kOrsan on
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Science is the study of what God created!!! WOW.and you can't prove He doesn't.
Yup you're trolling at this point. Good one actually, even I thought you were for real at fist. You solicited some pretty long posts out of us.
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Permalink Reply by Richard Bohn on
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As for that website, you have skulls, arranged by evolutionists...some probably apes and most are human in some stage of MICRO EVOLUTION. The fossil re ord does not show any evidence of life from the simple to the complex. WOW
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