Re: Science, God, and Free Will

On 11 Nov, 14:29, part...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Nov 9, 6:39 pm, Ben Standeven <be...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Nov 8, 11:30 am, part...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Nov 6, 6:04 pm, rem6...@xxxxxxxxx (Robert Maas, seehttp://tinyurl.com/uh3t)
wrote:

[...]

There is no way that the high priests of the Middle East, who hired
scribes to write their myths, then died 3000 years ago, can *now*
guarantee anything. They were just men, and now they've been dead
for 3000 years. If their "guarantee" isn't good, how are you going
to collect damages? Their "guarantee" is worthless, get used to it.

That's exactly the point. They couldn't have been *so* wise, so
maybe the prophecer wasn't them...

For example, it might have been their descendants, who already knew
(or at least assumed) that they survived...

The Bible wasn't written before the destruction of the 1st Temple,
as some Jews (the Yamanides) were then isolated from all other Jews in
the world, until modern times, and yet have the same version of the
Bible.

I can't find anything about the Yamanides on the internet. Do you have
some references?

But anyway, even if you take the latest date in which the Bible
could have been written, many attempts to destroy the Jews were made
afterwards, and failed. So the validity of the historical verification
of this prophecy doesn't change by your assumptions.

Why many? The only true Jew destruction attempt seem to be the Nazi
holocaust.
The Romans generally tolerated the Jews as an ethnicity, they focused
on preventing them from regaining control of Palestine. Christian
persecutions killed and harassed Jews for religious reasons but they
were always limited in scope and were never proper attempts at the
destruction of all Jews.

<snip>
There's not much point in presenting "evidence" about what happened
thousands of years ago, if I'm not allowed to make "assumptions" about
how things worked in the past. For example, you have no "evidence"
that the Jews or the Bible existed three thousand years ago, that is
not based on such "assumptions".

Of course you have to make some assumptions. If you choose to make
anti-Biblical ones, you're likely to get anti-Biblical conclussions.
That's fine. But if, then, you argue that you have anti-Biblical
factual evidence, that's a fallacy. What I was arguing, is that there
isn't any anti-Biblical factual evidence - only anti-Biblical
assumptions.

The assumptions that are made in sciences like geology and archeology
haven't been created to prove the Bible false. They are reasonable
scientific assumptions.

any extrapolation on current physics laws and solar system's
behaviour into the past, is anti-Biblical, ...

Who the *** cares? The entire Universe is anti-Biblical in that sense.

In what sense?

In the sense that "any extrapolation on current physics laws and solar
system's behaviour into the past, is anti-Biblical." There must have
been _some_ physics laws and solar system behavior back then, and
there must be such now, at great distances from us. Yet, these things
are "anti-Biblical" according to you. (Although I confess I don't see
why.)

Why do you assume that the physics laws that applied then, exist now
in a great distance from us?

The assumption that the fundamental laws of nature are the same in all
times and places is absolutely required to do any science.
If you don't make this assumption, there is no way you can study
history scientifically.

To study the past scientifically, you have to make hypotheses about
what happened and test these hypotheses against the evidence you can
observe. Testing an hypothesis means asking yourself "If the events
happened as described by the hypothesis, could they have left the
evidence I observe now?" To answer that question you need to make an
assumption about how the world worked in the past, that is about its
natural laws.
The only reasonable assumption is that the fundamental natural laws
were the same in the past as they are today.
If you don't make that assumption then there is no way you can test
any historical hypothesis since you don't know how the world worked in
the past.

If I claimed that a gigant marshmallow appeared in the skyies of
Antartica in 5000 BC, hovered for 1000 years and then disapperead into
nothingness you would think that my claim is not reasonable.
Why? Because you assume that the laws of nature between 5000 BC and
4000 BC were the same as they are today. If you don't make this
assumption, how would you know that my claim is unreasonable? If the
laws of physics could have been different what would have stopped a
gigant marshmellow from appearing from nothing? What would have
stopped it from hovering in the air? what would have prevented it from
disappearing without leaving any remain?

If, for example, the earth just didn't
conserve its angular momentum during the Flood, and does it since
then, it's perfectly consistent with the Biblical story. Do you think
that in this case, something far away from us, will not conserve its
angular momentum now? why?

You may decide that this assumption is foolish. That's fine
(although senseless - there's no reason to blindly extrapolate current
physics to the past. It can only be an assumption). But then, your
conclussions can't contradict the Bible, and that's my point.

If you can make assumptions about the past that make the Bible
consistent with the observed evidence it's fne, but you should realize
that you aren't doing science.

.