While my first somewhat snarky answer would be “The universe and all the time in the world” I have to agree that it is amazing, and would have to add the knowledge and intelligence of God, in agreement with you, though we may disagree on the details (and indeed I have no pretense of knowing the details of how he did it.)
I would add that the “cause” is a totally different question than the mechanism, and I give God all the credit.
Thank you Phil for your reasoned comments.
We are not saying there is no micro-evolution but that even mutant cells have to be constructed.
Examples of the super-intelligent and careful assembly work for bases for our DNA: Adenine C5H5N5, Guanine C5H5N5O1, Cytosine C4H5N3O1, Thymine C5H6N2O2 .
From this we can see how carefully the counted numbers of the right atoms have to be selected from the adjacent blood vessel and assembled into the essential bases. Then assembling these bases to construct the DNA program for almost every cell is far more complex than any program Microsoft had developed, according to Bill Gates.
As to how this super-intelligent force (commonly called ‘God’ by our governments and the majority of our citizens), actually performs the work necessary at every cell construction site, is one of those indicators verifying “…so are my ways higher than your ways…” Isa. 55:9
I can’t find who did the original quote but this sums up some thoughts on how one ought to react to that:
Today’s aggressive atheists couple bad reasoning to good science. The right response is good reasoning, not bad science. Richard Dawkins and his ilk make the claim that modern science somehow disproves God or renders Him irrelevant. Instead of challenging the fundamental illogic of that reasoning, ignorant Christians are taken in by it, and thus are panicked into trying to prove that modern science itself is wrong. It only serves the purposes of the atheists to have conservative Christians proclaim, “If evolution is true, Christianity is false”. While most Christian adults can remain happily scientifically illiterate, waves of Christian young people each year are forced to engage with the reality of biology and geology in high school and college classes. Many of them come to realize that their trusted Christian parents and teachers have misrepresented the case regarding evolution. They find that evolution is in fact true. So “If evolution is true, Christianity is false,” what do they then conclude about Christianity?
Great quote!
In Eden, Adam undermined God’s commandment (don’t eat) by adding his own (don’t even touch).
So when Eve found out she could touch without problem, then she doubted all she had heard and so boldly ate
But it is the experience of those who ARE targeted by refusal to hire and rejection from churches, small groups, homeschool co-ops, or family, and generally being treated as a non-person.
Maybe for some people and in some contexts, but I don’t think it is the case for most people. I don’t believe that most Evangelical creationists are power-hungry manipulators bent on mind control. I don’t think Christians who have been ostracized over their evolution views usually experience it as an attempt to manipulate and control so much as just a rejection, and I don’t think the people doing the rejecting are consciously trying to “dictate” what others are allowed to think. They believe the Bible does the dictating and they thought we were all on the same page about that.
There is a lot of genuine grief involved on both sides; on the side of the EC Christian over lost relationships and networks that were valued and the fact that they can’t be authentic and be accepted. On the side of the Creationist Christian over their perception that someone they cared about has walked away from the truth and rejected their well-intentioned efforts to hold them accountable to what they thought were shared core tenets of faith.
I understand spiritual abuse is a real thing and that it happens in Evangelical contexts. But it’s not fair or accurate to characterize all instances of people responding negatively to fellow Christians views on evolution as abusive, even if the results are painful.
Well the only solution I see to this situation is bring the sword of truth to it and divide those beliefs which produce such behavior from those beliefs which do not. And I operate from a principle that when a belief is useful and convenient for a purpose (such as power and manipulation) then this is most like the real origin (original motivation) for that belief. Thus I am committed to promoting a Christianity which is entirely useless for the purpose of power and manipulation.
Since the beginning, absolutely every single time that humans have gazed at the heavens…
With larger and more powerful instruments…
Every single time…
More and more, fainter and fainter, dimmer and dimmer objects…
Have emerged from the darkness into human view…
Humans have never ever one time NOT been surprised by all the wonders out there…
From Galileo observing moons orbiting Jupiter, to the Hubble deep fields…
Yet, human astronomers have already retired…
They sweep their arms across the whole sky, and confidently declare the all clear, alleging that they…
All of the sudden…
Have now observed all of the normal matter throughout the universe…
Having canceled 100-200m optical telescopes that might reveal otherwise, everyone has declared the search over…
We are now to blindly believe in phantom ghostly dark matter and dark energy…
And pay endlessly for hyper expensive particle accelerators and other fancy gadgetry to hunt the same…
When with the same money we could build kilometer scale telescopes that could pick out everything out there
It’s too much to ask to put eyes on the skies…
Rather we are to blindly believe in phantom dark matter and dark energy…
Without “risking” further and more detailed observations
Scientists wrote equations of Big Bang nucleosynthesis in 1948, which equations claim our universe has so little matter in it that we have already observed it all, and they are above and beyond observational scrutiny
Blind belief, in science?
Or is it actually the case that we know everything already?
I apologize for the sensitive analogy, it’s all I could come up with right now, but it’s like a US marine standing outside of Baghdad, at night, and directly observing only 6% of the outsides of the buildings, declaring to have accounted for everything, sounding the all clear, and then starting to dig ditches outside the city (analogous to underground dark matter detectors on earth outside of the heavens) to be sure and tie up loose ends
Guess we just have to take their word for it
Very frustrated at what I perceive to be blatant flagrant hypocrisy
In something I said? I’m not following your line of thought here.
No I was trying to agree with you, and was responding to what you replied to…
I guess the double quote didn’t show…
Some say that Christianity demands blind belief and check your brain at the door… While priests count how many Angels fit on pin heads…
Even though the more secular society becomes, the less educated it becomes overall… And even while scientists are counting ghostly phantom dark matter particles from space, deep underground
Seems like blind belief (in BBN calculations)…
“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” would rather imply that (for the same money) we just build the next generation of super telescopes, and keep looking more intently… All past trends predict we would then just actually directly observe dark matter as say ultra faint brown dwarf stars and planets
But nobody wants to do that because that would defy sacrosanct BBN calculations, almost a century old now…
Which have become an entrenched tradition…
Blind belief in ancient entrenched traditions…
Am I starting to highlight the hypocrisy?
I think I get what you are saying now. Though I would characterize it more as a natural human propensity to trust whatever institution you identify with most closely and remain blind to your own biases. Maybe anytime your loyalty spills over into persecuting the “other” it is rightly named hypocrisy.
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