Your vision of hell is merely religious vengance in your mind. You are not at peace, but filled with hate against the ‘infidel’ even if you suppress expression of it. All exclusive religions have it, so you are not alone.
CS Lewis thought that there must be a kind of purgatory, which confronts us with the illusions that have carried us through life, cleansing us of the inappropriateness of our thoughts and concepts, and also of our misguided beliefs. Even prayer, he thought, fails to find the mark it is intended for, and it is compassion that guides us to the truth.
As complex and fascinating as the study of the Qu’ran may be, as beautiful as its Arabic language may be, it is a weak effort to describe reality, which, when finally perceived will no doubt be found to be overwhelming.
It’s hard to accept, but not logically impossible as far as I can tell… the natural evolution of life. Certainly if we look at living organisms they seem designed in certain ways, like the utter complexity of things like DNA, electron transport chains, even just how vision works in the eye. Then again, there are weird residuals like the fact that we have a tailbone.
In any case, no one knows. Which I find funny, that people on either side usually act as if THEY KNOW the real truth of human origins. Whether from a religious or scientism perspective. I just wish people could admit when they really don’t know something for certain, and try to honestly stack up their ideas and evidences fairly within the space of possibility for alternate explanations too.
Life is, at bottom, about atomic-level reorganizations of energies in order to form molecules which then go on to do their own reorganizations of energies, changing forms back and forth in extended multi-molecular systems. Exchanging protons and electrons for the most part, making and breaking covalent bonds, like what is going on with ATP in the body all the time. Very cool stuff. But really, it’s a basic machine. Perhaps natural selection plus a lot of time is sufficient to turn the simplest possible molecular machinic interaction between a small number of molecules and which interaction exhausts itself almost immediately, into… all of the life in the world as we know it.
Who knows? Like I said, logically it doesn’t seem impossible. But it is far from the only possibility. And we might need to learn about new things that science doesn’t consider yet, like morphic resonance for example, in order to more fully explain the ‘natural’ emergence of living beings.
Regardless of how apparently compelling such dating methods appear to be the fact remains they are built on assumptions. They are built on processes and rates that extend into the distant past.
Different dating methods have their own limitations, assumptions and challenges.
^^^ note the convenient and suddenly rigorous scientific skepticism of carbon dating methods that is completely absent when analyzing and examining other parts (the majority) of the bible bearing scientific claims concerning orgins, or miracles, or vigin births, or voices giving commandments, or seas splitting, etc.
This is also where VO offered the solution. Where existence is fundamentally valuing, and matter occurs within, as a function of that dynamism, then matter becomes far more dynamic and creative than it would be if it is just randomly interacting atoms.
What dates are you questioning? What do you propose?
I think the evidence for evolution is overwhelming but how life emerged from inanimate matter is unexplained. Saying “God did it”, is another way of admitting that.
Being Itself is the mystery at the heart of life. That’s what the Hebrew symbol of the burning bush that declares, “I am what I am” signifies to me. It is the shock of discovering that being and consciousness are one.
Centered consciousness to me is the presence of God. It is the One at the center of all beings including you. So, I’m not telling you how it is, because I respect the datum of your experience. You tell me.
According to the modern myth of the Copernican revolution humanity became disillusioned when Copernicus discovered that the earth was not the center of the universe. But, let me ask you, according to your experience, is your consciousness ever decentered?
As I read it, the message of the gospel is that divine life is in the center of humanity. Jesus became aware of that at his baptism when he realized his divine sonship. His ministry was to inform everyone he met that they too were divine children of God.
That’s a great way to look at it. “Life” essentially boils down to complexes of more or less spatially and temporally stabilized valuings-in-relation; Even an atom also boils down to a (very much simpler) “complex of valuings”. Indeed, for its grand simplicity it earns the right to near-eternal existence.
It also suggests that lots of structuring was going on long before matter came into play. At least it does to me. There is a lot of background process.
Could be, structuring of logical relations in pure energy fields for instance. Possibilities playing off each other, if we want to invoke things like parallel universes. Perfect background process and setup for multi-tier valuings to occur and even test themselves off of each other.
I am quoting from the very article you have given…
“Geochronological dating
Different dating methods have their own limitations, assumptions and challenges”
Sounds familiar…
Catechism of the Catholic Church. Ye shall be as gods
The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the devine nature”(78) For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of Man’ so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God (79) For the Son of God became man so that we might become God (80). The only begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods. (81)
No, the use of symbolism to show the essential unity of life, which is grounded in the cosmic consciousness we call God. “For in him we live and move and have our being.”
Without a doubt. In Christian tradition this is called theosis or divination.In terms of the Garden of Eden fable (fables are stories with talking animals like the snake who tempts Eve) this possibility is represented by the Tree of Life which was among the trees Yahweh said the couple could “freely eat.” However, after they chose the forbidden fruit, that way was cut off. The Tree of Life is a type of Christ. By his redemptive act he opens the way to partake of Him as the Tree of Life. When Christ talks about eternal life in the Gospel of John he’s talking about the divine life of God. Only God is eternal. He’s not talking about extending natural life somehow. Believing in Jesus so you can go to heaven when you die is a distortion of the New Testament gospel.
Right on cue (well, a bit late tbh, boo), the Back-Rub of Death - compliment issued whilst my rebuttals about evolution and even the involvement of God with the physical constants right at the start of “natural law” (as he erroneously calls it) all get stonewalled, whitewashed, ignored;
TO CONCLUDE:
You have not proven evolution. You’ve not even given any argument for it, just fragments of what could be, perhaps, should be, maybe, an argument.
You’ve moreover ignored my reasoned and scientific objections.
You are scientifically non-literate and it shows. I’m sorry.
@Bob will now rush in and queen at me. However it will have no bearing on the particulars of debate.
@felix_dakat@Bob as an asides, let me remind you: Religion is not an intellectual pursuit as such, though it welcomes intellectual accretions. True religion can be grasped by anybody, not just the elect. That is the major sin of the Theosophers (which you are, like it or not) - you turn everything into materialist quibbling, like stamp collectors. Taking a slice of life, and cataloguing the fine positioning, the absent cross-hatching in one corner, the centering, the missing initial, the reason why this or that plate had a limited run. Sure it’s valid, but if you haven’t grasped the bare necessities of faith - i.e. actual worship to God and requited love from God - then your life’s work is in vain. Sorry!
I never claimed to be a scientist. But, neither do I have the need to refute the massive evidence of biological evolution in order to justify my religious dogma. And I freely admit the emergence of life from inanimate matter has not been scientifically explained. I’m not a metaphysical materialist, so, many of your arguments don’t really land on me. It’s as if you are arguing with some stereotypical atheist that exists in your imagination. I do believe that the best case for Islam is better than your representation of it on this forum so far.
Refuting evolution is not incumbent on me, worshipping God is.
Refuting evolution is part of polemics. Evolution undermines the idea that God is creator. Sure you can wiggle evolution into religion but it’s a tight fit and looks awkward and evolution is false.
[SIDENOTE: Re: you not being a metaphysical materialist, nor a stereotypical atheist, nor Bob etc. but you are Theosophists or something similar and it’s telling that nobody really knows what you are. Except, vaguely, atheists, or sometihng. Maybe. You’re very confused / confusing.]
That brings me to what l actually wrote: that evolution is false, and l have shown why. You are still handwaving at the library building. But can you formulate an actual argument? Refute one of my counterarguments to evolution then.
p.s. by all means tell me off for being a flawed human, but how is that relevant? And have you even tackled anything l’ve said yet? So far, it’s Felix Corner-Turn (settle on a contingent , related topic, when the old one gets rebutted, ignoring the rebuttal) and Back-Rub of Death (“we’re all right, aren’t we?” “Your faith has SOME good in it, man!”)
What “massive evidence” have you shown for evolution?
and
What did l say to counterargue it? [First you’ll have to acknowledge that l actually gave a handful of introductory counterarguments … l bet you won’t acknowledge them]