Xavier's M.O.

[Greg]

Here is his "reasoning".

While we're on the topic of Science, allow me to ask: Did we land on the moon?

We did not. I find the pro-hoax arguments to be extremely convincing. Especially the fact that no advanced nation has done anything on the Moon, or even anything beyond Low Earth Orbit, for the past 50 years. That evidence speaks volumes to me. NASA claiming they lost the technology to go there is just the icing on the cake. I believe the Van Allen Belts surrounding the Earth are an impenetrable obstacle for human flesh. That is why we never venture beyond Low Earth Orbit. In the entire history of man going into space, the "Moon landings" of the early 1970's stand out as a statistical aberration. If they want to convince the doubters that we landed on the Moon, having any advanced nation send a man beyond Low Earth Orbit would be a start.



This is a man with no scientific education, who cannot read his own water meter, and yet knows enough to believe that the Van Allen Belts are "an impenetrable obstacle for human flesh".

It's just silly to believe that his opinion on the matter is more valuable than her's below.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww[/yt]

[Greg]

Here is a nice, easy and accessible video that explains how NASA solved the problem.  Seems very reasonable to me and I believe it.  Simply put, the astronauts were not exposed to radiation for long enough.  People visit Chernobyl's reactor today, but nobody is foolish enough to camp there by ground zero for 6 months.  If they did they would have serious health issues.



If you, or anyone else, could give me an answer as to how "The Church" had not defected or how JP2 and J23 can be saints who that same indefectible Church has declared and defined to be saints and in Heaven, then please do so.  I am all ears.

Don't, however, throw emotional accusations at me of wanting to lapse, lie in on Sundays, quit, throw in the towel, make up my own religion or get a girlfriend and sniff coke of her tits free of guilt, because none of those things are my motivators.  I simply want rational answers to reasonable questions.  I want to understand what I believe and why I believe it, not simply believe it because some cleric (probably a poofter) told me to or threatened me with hellfire.

If asking those questions threatens your faith, then your faith is pretty worthless.  Why would I want more of it?

If you don't know the answer, say, "I don't know".  That is fine.

[Quaremerepulisti]

That's all fine.  But you have to deal with reality, and realize that reality is not going to conform itself to your desires.

That's all fine. But you have to deal with the reality that God created, and realize that reality formed by His desire is not going to conform itself to YOUR desires.

It should, however, conform to the evidence, since that is also the result of His creation.  If it doesn't, what you claim is the reality God created isn't the real reality He created.  And the reality is that it doesn't, and that fact isn't going to conform itself to your desires.  You don't want to accept this, which is why you go running after the latest crackpot creationist theory you can find, just like you go running after the latest apparition.  Walt Brown's been around for a while, you know.  He's already been debunked numerous times.

I asked you specific questions on another thread about fossil layering, mother-daughter isotope ratios, Lake Suigetsu, the genome, and so on.  You completely punted on all of them.  You don't actually have anything resembling a sensible answer as to how all this can be if YEC is true.  (And there's plenty more evidence the earth is old, I just started with this.)  And the reason why there isn't one is because YEC is false.

Look, Quare, mate, this is the fundamental area of disagreement between Christians and evolutionists - Christians consider the testimony of the Prophet Moses, whom God made an eyewitness of His creation, to be a real and the primary source for our knowledge of His creation.

The same argument was made for geocentrism and the previous "fundamental area of disagreement" between Christians and astronomers and physicists - the testimony of Solomon, "who not only spoke by divine inspiration but was a man wise above all others and most learned in human sciences and in the knowledge of all created things, and his wisdom was from God", was cited according to Cardinal Bellarmine to be the "real and primary source" for our knowledge of the cosmos.  In fact pretty much every single argument you posit can and was made for geocentrism. 

First of all, while I'm not a Scripture expert, I doubt very much Moses wrote the Pentateuch (at least not the entire Pentateuch), and again what "Christians consider" is going to take a backseat to whether the evidence supports or not that he actually was the author.

Now, apparently Genesis I was written because God replayed creation to Moses like he was sitting in a movie theater, and that Adam really looked for a companion among the animals before God created Eve, and there is literal firmanent over the earth, and so on?  If THIS is what you think Christianity is all about, then "evolutionists" are right that Christianity is absurd and stupid, and that Christians are idiots.  Even Pius X's Pontifical Biblical Commission admitted that "day" in Genesis need not mean literal 24-hour day, but could mean an indefinite period of time.

It's very clear from what you said above that they have a very different methodology. It considers even the dogma of two human parents to be open to doubt, question, change and perpetual flux. That is unfortunately a modernistic methodology and leads ultimately to unbelief in divine revelation. We believe without wavering that God created the whole human race from two first parents, because He has testified to it, and we know a priori before any scientific investigation, that the evidence, rightly interpreted, will confirm that conclusion. I notice you skipped over the parts explaining why Christians give an unwavering assent to all Christ testified to, knowing He is God.

Obviously exactly what He has testified to is exactly what is under question.

And btw, the petty insults of worldlings who have self-professed scorn or contempt for Christ matters less than nothing to me. It will be a mark of honor before the throne of God.

That's the bravado of one who knows he is losing the argument.

Because it covers very many ID arguments in depth and very convincingly in the first part. Did you even read it? Dr. Walt Brown is a very well qualified scientist and believes in creation. Why should I trust the evolutionists over him?

Because it isn't a question of trust, but evidence.  That's the fundamental thing you fail to understand.  Dr. Brown's theory is preposterous and has been debunked numerous times, as I said.

[Greg]

Quaremerepulisti

Since you are definitely much smarter than me when it comes to science, I am interested what you make of the Hubble deep space field and ultra-deep space field images.

We are surrounded by a trillion galaxies.  They are everywhere we look.

I find that both unsettling and exciting at the same time.

Unsettling because they would appear to have a purpose and there are so many that I cannot think of a purpose that doesn't make what has gone on on this little planet, small by comparison.  Exciting, because there is a lot of stuff out there to explore.  It's like discovering the New World, but much much bigger.

I can't help but feel that this has to change man's perspective of his place as it enters the common mind of people from all over the world.

What do you wonder about when you pause to consider it?

[Mono no aware]

You're right, though, Greg, that the way one argues things is important.  I was recently reading about the Bill Nye-Ken Ham debate, which I intend to watch.  I liked this bit of review:

Daily Beast writer Michael Schulson used the Seahawks-Broncos analogy to declare Ham the resounding victor.  Although Schulson agreed with Nye's underlying scientific message, and allowed that Nye "had his moments," he wrote that "it was easy to pick out the smarter man on the stage. Oddly, it was the same man who was arguing that the earth is 6,000 years old."

I recently watched this debate, and even though it's long, it's worth watching.  Personally, I didn't see a clear winner.  I disagree with the above review that Ken Ham was easily the smarter man on the stage, but he was definitely the more adept debater.  Bill Nye made his strongest points on the age of the earth and the distance of the stars (true to form, I guess, his presentation was the more educational), but Ken Ham employed the better rhetoric, was abler on his feet, and counter-punched more effectively.  Bill Nye lost a ton of ground by continually returning to the trope that a society has to accept evolution in order to remain technologically competitive, even though Ken Ham had roundly won that point early in the debate, by challenging him to "name one widely-used technology in our modern world that could only have been invented by an evolutionist."  (Oddly, Bill Nye never responded, even though I would've offered "forensic DNA" and "DNA modelling").  Left unanswered, Ken Ham knew he'd won this, so he wisely left it alone and let Bill Nye voluntarily look desperate by continually stressing it.

Ken Ham had the better graphics, too.  He had a particularly good one that illustrated the depravity of the pre-lapsarian "theistic evolution" scheme.  He was probably the better-prepared, although to be fair he's been hacking away on this topic for decades and has really refined his presentation to a razor sharpness.  He even beat Bill Nye on the creationist contention that lions were pre-lapsarian vegetarians.  Ham simply said, "sure, lions have sharp teeth, but so do bears, and they can subsist on berries and vegetables."  Bill Nye failed to counter by making the distinction between omnivores and obligate carnivores, and consequently lost on that point.  Nye lost almost consistently on matters of biology, but was much more at home (and won nearly every squabble) on geology and astronomy.

I'm not sure why the video archivist at Answers in Genesis put the program up with thirteen minutes of dead time leading into it.  It's actually 2 hrs 30 mins, not 2:45.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI[/yt]