Comment on A “Christian Agnostic”? by Nic Samojluk.
Sean PitmanNovember 23, 2011 at 8:57 am
“How do you know? You said that you considered God’s existence to be “likely”. Isn’t the word “likely” a statistical/scientific term based on at least some ability to actually demonstrate the odds of a hypothesis being correct?
This is my problem here. How can you say that something is “likely” when, at the same time, you say that you have no empirical evidence for what you say is “likely to exist”? – no more evidence than you have for mythological fairytales?
You see, it is your use of the phrase, “likely to exist” that doesn’t make sense to me since it appears, at least to me, that you’re being inconsistent with yourself.
If you have no positive evidence for God’s existence, and if everything that you do know appears to you to have a mindless natural cause, how then can you say, one way or the other, that the “first cause” was “likely” an intelligent God-like being vs. some other mindless natural process? Upon what basis do you make this claim?”
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Sean,
Thanks for this impeccable logic. I appreciate the clearness with which you demonstrate the role evidence plays in providing support for our faith.
Faith without evidence places us at risk of becoming victims of charlatans and those who have been deceived by the Devil.
Sure, there is evidence for and against a belief in God and Creation, but the weight of evidence favors the biblical teaching that God is the one who created everything that exists.
We do owe our existence to him alone and he is entitled to our worship. The moment we credit Nature for our existence, we fall prey to the artful deceptions of the one determined to destroy our faith.
Nic Samojluk Also Commented
A “Christian Agnostic”?
@Sean Pitman:
Sean Pitman November 6, 2011 at 12:52 am
“Part of the problem, of course, is that biologists are far better at telling just-so stories than they are at math. It is much much easier to come up with imagined just-so stories about how things may have morphed over time than it is to actually do the relevant math or to understanding the statistical odds involved with crossing the growing non-beneficial gaps between functional systems at higher and higher levels of functional complexity.”
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I am reading a little book authored by Robert Piccioni, a physicist who took the time to calculate the chance of life being the result of an accident, and he concluded that such a chance occurrence is for all practical purposes almost equal to zero. The title of his book is “Can Life be Merely an Accident?”
He is also the author of another book dealing with this issue. The title is “Everone’s Guide to Atoms Einstein and the Universe.” He is not an Adventist, but he is convinced that the universe was the result of the work of a designer.
A “Christian Agnostic”?
@BobRyan:
BobRyan November 11 2011 at 6:11 pm
In this case we are talking about complex houses not just a cube – complete with embedded nano-tech capable of self-repair – self-healing, auto-paint-updating etc.
Something like this…
v=GVqJdAqTD4Q&feature=related
When your fellow atheists and agnostics view that in a moment of objectivity – they respond something like ABC News did when it reported on it…
And in this case – those houses would be found all over Mars. And the observing agnostic friend might be tempted to claim “well then complex houses of that sort must occur naturally in the rocks and sand of Mars — err… umm… somehow, because there are sooo many of them”.
For the rest of us – it would be a sign of Martians – very smart ones.
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I think that Bob’s answer was superb, yet ten bloggers voted his comments down. Is the voting system rigged somehow?
A “Christian Agnostic”?
@Sean Pitman:
Sean PitmanNovember 15, 2011 at 7:01 am
“@Nic Samojluk:
I think that Bob’s answer was superb, yet ten bloggers voted his comments down. Is the voting system rigged somehow?
The voting is not rigged. It is just that people tend to vote from the hip for or against a comment, before actually reading it, based only on who wrote it – not what was actually said in the particular comment at hand.
This also happens on Talk.Origins – and pretty much all discussion forums. I did an experiment once where I re-posted a comment from a well-known evolutionist under my own name (on Talk.Origins). There was no end to the ridicule against the comment based simply on the assumption that I had actually written it. When I pointed out that I had not actually written the comment, that it was written by one of their own, the attempts at back-peddling were quite hilarious
I’m sure the same thing would happen here as well. That is why the allowance of “voting” for comments is really only a curiosity feature “just for fun” and really has little meaning aside, perhaps, from keeping track of how many people from opposing camps are actually following a particular thread.”
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Thanks, Sean. You are so right! Perhaps I should pay less attention to the number of votes posted next to bloggers’ comments!
Recent Comments by Nic Samojluk
The Heroic Crusade Redux
@Professor Kent:
Professor Kent August 20, 2011 at 8:22 am
“Evidence is important, yes; but it has no match in faith. Evidence won’t rescue us any more so than it saved Lucifer; faith can.
Let the faith-bashing continue so we can heap more praise on those who peddle evidence. That’s what this is all about.”
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If evidence is “important” for you, why is it then you disagree so strongly with Sean Pitman? He also believes in the relevant role of faith, otherwise he would have rejected the story of Genesis a long time ago given the geologic evidence which suggests long ages.
Aren’t you perhaps fighting a fictional enemy which has been distorted by those who read Educate Truth with liberal lenses?
God, Sky & Land – by Brian Bull and Fritz Guy
I have had the rare privilege of listening to Guy, Bull, and Pitman on numerous occasions over the years. I may disagree with them on certain issues, but I must admit that what I have seen, heard, and read indicates that all three of them do sincerely believe what they preach.
All three of them have made a valuable contribution to my theological thinking in spite of the fact that some of my views differ for what they defend. I have discovered that sometimes I can learn more from those who hold opinions which diverge widely from what I believe.
[6/17/11 UPDATE] Two administrators, one biology professor, and one board member resign
@BobRyan:
BobRyanJuly 9, 2011 at 7:14 pm
“And finally there is the case where the ice-core theory was “tested” in Greenland by real life measurement against known data.
It was in this area, 17 miles off the east coast of Greenland, that Bob Cardin and other members of his squadron had to ditch their six P-38’s and two B-17’s when they ran out of gas in 1942 – the height of WWII. Many years later, in 1981, several members of this original squad decided to see if they could recover their aircraft.
They flew back to the spot in Greenland where they thought they would find their planes buried under a few feet of snow. To their surprise, there was nothing there. Not even metal detectors found anything. After many years of searching, with better detection equipment, they finally found the airplanes in 1988 three miles from their original location and under approximately 260 feet of ice! They went on to actually recovered one of them (“Glacier Girl” – a P38), which was eventually restored to her former glory.
What is most interesting about this story, at least for the purposes of this discussion, is the depth at which the planes were found (as well as the speed which the glacier moved). It took only 46 years to bury the planes in over 260 feet (~80 meters) of ice and move them some 3 miles from their original location. This translates into a little over 5 ½ feet (~1.7 meters) of ice or around 17 feet (~5 meters) of compact snow per year and about 100 meters of movement per year.
In a telephone interview, Bob Cardin was asked how many layers of ice were above the recovered airplane. He responded by saying, “Oh, there were many hundreds of layers of ice above the airplane.” When told that each layer was supposed to represent one year of time, Bob said, “That is impossible! Each of those layers is a different warm spell – warm, cold, warm, cold, warm, cold.”
Also, the planes did not sink in the ice over time as some have suggested. Their density was less than the ice or snow since they were not filled with the snow, but remained hollow. They were in fact buried by the annual snowfall over the course of almost 50 years.”
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This is really amazing! I wish I had this information a few weeks ago when the Ice Cores topic was discussed in Sabbath School. Since you did not reference this information, I took the time to Google this and was able to verify the authenticity of it. I found several sources confirming this. Here is one of them:
http://evolutionfacts.com/New-material/frozen_planes.htm
Biblical Interpretation and Credibility
@Professor Kent:
Professor Kent September 11, 2011 at 5:32 pm
“I think the Desire of Ages, Steps to Christ, or Sermon on the Mount are all better choices than the Great Controversy for effective witnessing in today’s climate. Why would this make me a non-SDA? …
Why is it you get to decide that a “true SDA” believes there is only one really effective marketing tool for the Church: mass mailing the Great Controversy?
If you really want to go for something dramatic, Bill, why not invest in Great Controversy billboards all across the continent that proclaims the Pope to be anti-Christ. Make it a dramatic, apocalyptic scene.
Put a phone number on it where people can order their copy. And be sure to put Seventh-day Adventist on it so that we can get lots of people so angry at us that we no longer have an opportunity to witness when people ask us, one on one, what SDAs believe.”
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The Great Controversy book emphasizes the persecuting power of Rome. My question is: Who does Rome persecute today? What Rome did centuries ago might be relevant for what might take place in the future, but is this the best way to evangelize our Catholic brethren?
Did Paul use such a strategy in his work? Didn’t he start by commending the people of Athens for worshiping the Unknown God?
Is blaming Rome for its past sins the best way to share Christ with them? Did Jesus use such a method? Why not start by giving Rome credit for some of the good work the Popes have been doing?
New NAD president: ‘I love you’ doesn’t mean we won’t deal with issues
There is nothing wrong about teaching evolution in our schools. What is wrong is teaching it as the scientific TRUTH to the point of refusing to consider adverse scientific data which tends to support the biblical view of origins. My understanding is that at LSU, science teachers routinely ignored the contributions of Adventist creationist scholars arguing that only peer reviewed books were allowed in their curriculum.
I learned about the theory of evolution from Adventist teachers in Academy over six decades ago and saw nothing wrong with this because it was presented as an erroneouis theory which contradicted the clear teaching of the Bible about origins. I believe that this is the correct approach to the teaching of evolution in our schools.