Social justice warriors hit engineering

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 3, 2017

Culture, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, News}

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The way thing are going, they might even succeed. From Rod Dreher at American Conservative:

Having all but ruined humanities education, the Social Justice Warriors now turn to the STEM fields. Purdue University has hired Donna Riley as its new head of its School of Engineering Education. Here’s an excerpt from Prof. Riley’s biography page at Smith College, where she taught for 13 years:

My scholarship currently focuses on applying liberative pedagogies in engineering education, leveraging best practices from women’s studies and ethnic studies to engage students in creating a democratic classroom that encourages all voices. In 2005 I received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation to support this work, which includes developing, implementing, and assessing curricular and pedagogical innovations based on liberative pedagogies and student input at Smith, and understanding how students at Smith conceptualize their identities as engineers. I seek as an engineering educator to be part of a paradigm shift that these pedagogies demand, repositioning concerns about diversity in science and engineering from superficial measures of equity as headcounts, to addressing justice and the genuine engagement of all students as core educational challenges. More.

This is what happens when scientists come to believe that consciousness is an illusion and objectivity is sexist.

A friend notes that this trend will spread like a skin disease through the ranks of the people marchin’, marchin’ for science. Demanding more and more funding for less and less science. Convinced that the doubts they keep running into are merely prejudice…

See also: Objectivity is sexist.

ID has sexual politics?

“hate science”

A scientist on the benefits of post-fact science

and

Marchin’, marchin’ for Science (Hint: the problems are back at your desk, not out in the streets)

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Comments

KF quoted
. . . (1) A designer conceives a purpose. (2) To accomplish that purpose, the designer forms a plan. (3) To execute the plan, the designer specifies building materials and assembly instructions. (4) Finally, the designer or some surrogate applies the assembly instructions to the building materials.
This is what I mean when I say ID greatly underestimates the role that knowege plays in design. It's not even mentioned here at all. Someone could perform all of those steps and still not end up with a bridge that actually held up under load. That's because working bridges that are constructed (as opposed to those that are washed away) are only brought about when the knowege of what transformations of matter are required were present there. If someone ordered the plans for a bridge, but was accidentally shipped plans for a boat, they would not end up with a bridge because that's the purpose they had and believed the plans would build. Right? The outcome is independent of anyone's belief or intent. And anyone can have a "plan". That doesn't guarantee it will result in the intended outcome. The strange thing is, when I point this is missing, no one seems to care. So, apparently, there is something implied by ID proponents which they think everyone knows or is supposedly obvious in that it doesn't need to be explicitly included in the theory itself.critical rationalist_{April 9, 2017
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KF:
The bridges, pipelines and power grids must stand up under stress, and that has to do with soundness of design. Which has little to do with XY vs XX chromosomes...
I agree. Then why did you bring up the subject of abortion? But, I have noticed that when there is a question that you don't want to answer that you simply accuse the questioner of being a troll. If you want me to stop asking you about your ridiculous abortion-holocaust conflation, simply provide me with a rational argument as to why the woman should not be charged with first degree murder. As I mentioned above, the only two reasons that I have been able to come up with are hipocrysy or misogyny. If you have a rationale that does not require one of these, I would be glad to hear it.Armand Jacks_{April 7, 2017
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Charles, headlined: https://uncommondescent.com/atheism/fft-charles-unmasks-the-anti-id-trollish-tactic-of-attacking-god-christian-values-and-worldview-themes/ KFkairosfocus_{April 7, 2017
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Charles, AJ is now clearly in troll territory. I suggest, deal with substantial issues for record, and ignore the personality and rhetorical antics, minimising any dealings with him. KFkairosfocus_{April 7, 2017
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JDK (attn AJ), sorry, it was AJ at 43, and he has just continued. He now crosses over into the territory of the troll. He apparently does not realise that he is engaging in enabling behaviour for a holocaust. And strangely enough by his choice of epithets to toss as rhetorical grenades, he comes back to the underlying SJW problem in the OP. Engineering is about sound design and being prepared for it, it is not the place to be playing cultural marxist identity politics, agit prop and media shadow show games. The bridges, pipelines and power grids must stand up under stress, and that has to do with soundness of design. Which has little to do with XY vs XX chromosomes (as opposed to say certain frontline infantry roles that require brute upper body strength and in fact look like setting up similar later life problems to Pro Football US style). But, injecting cultural marxism is a destructive ideological imposition, which unfortunately is corroding everything, and in this case would be potentially ruinous, up to the first few multi-million dollar lawsuits when alleged graduates in engineering cannot get accredited because they lack substance. KFkairosfocus_{April 7, 2017
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KF:
JDK: “the ridiculous “posterity in the womb” . . . “ That says all we need to know about how the unborn child...
The fact that you continue to refuse to answer a very simple question speaks volumes. And not in your favour. So, what is it? Hypocrisy, misogyny, or some other unexplained justification?Armand Jacks_{April 6, 2017
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Armand Jacks @ 39: I wrote:
a) their materialism fails in answering the big questions of cosmic & biological origins and the human mind,
And Armand Jacks argues
At least materialists have a reasonably good explanation, at least from a very short time after the Big Bang.
to which I pointed out:
After is not an origin.
There is only one origin of the cosmos, the universe, and that is the Big Bang. There are no cosmos or universe origins after. Armand Jacks knows full well the cosmic origin being discussed is the Big Bang, having used that phrase in context twice in his own posts. Yet, in his post @39 he trys to move the goal posts by ignoring the qualifier "cosmic" and deflecting to other "origins" after the Big Bang:
So, there were no origins after the Big Bang? What about all of the elements after hydrogen? Stars? Planets? Life? Flatulence?
Armand, had I said "materialism fails in answering the big questions of the origins of flatulence" you would have a point. But I didn't, and you know it. Moving goal posts seems to be your fall-back argumentation: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/is-science-refereeing-out-of-date/#comment-626753Charles_{April 6, 2017
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I think you quoted the wrong person, kf. I haven't been a part of that discussion.jdk_{April 6, 2017
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JDK: "the ridiculous “posterity in the womb” . . . " That says all we need to know about how the unborn child has been dehumanised through the factors already identified. 800+ million and now climbing at a million per week, have paid the price. And our civilisation is being corroded from within by the soul-tearing distortions required to sustain that holocaust. KFkairosfocus_{April 6, 2017
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Just a reminder: "atheist" and "materialist" are not synonyms. All materialists are atheists. All atheists are not materialists.jdk_{April 6, 2017
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Fair enough. But how is god-did-it any different than me saying that the universe was caused by the flatulence of an interdimensional nymphomaniac. They both have as much explanatory power.
First, the science of design detection doesn’t propose that “God did It”, instead it proposes that an “act of intelligence” can be detected in the origin of biological objects. And on that front, “act of intelligent” versus “cosmic flatulence” (or any other materialist substitute) are nowhere near being on the same evidentiary ground. We know the physical mechanism required to organize biology, and the explanatory gap between the two competing theories literally explodes from that point forward. Thus, your statement that the two theories are on equal explanatory footing is grossly incorrect. They are not even in the same ballpark.Upright BiPed_{April 6, 2017
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The point of the original post was that Engineering was being contaminated with Social Justice Warrior values & viewpoints. As any engineer knows, what makes engineering "Engineering" is the rigorous adherence to physical reality, analysis, and testing to design something that is reliably fit for purpose. As the author's article at American Conservative elaborates, Prof. Riley's SJW viewpoint is the antithesis of sound Engineering. kairosfocus summarized this point with his comment that:
"Bridges gotta stand up under load."
Armand Jacks' snide and dismissive comment that
”How’s that [bridges needing to stand up under load] working out for ID?”
juxtaposed civil engineering with ID, impugning that ID was not Engineering. That is a fallacious comparison on several levels, not least of which is Engineering's maturity born of hundreds of years of applied science, advancing technology, and development of best practices, contrasted with ID in its relative infancy, as well as engineering being all about "how to design" versus ID which endeavors to reduce to practice the "recognition of design". Implicit in Armand Jacks' comment is the presumption that evolution (or materialism or atheism) has a laudable track record over ID similar to engineering. As if to say "evolution" is a successful, testable, reliable theory like "engineering", whereas ID is an engineering failure. But evolution has no such track record of theoretical success. Modern evolution doesn't even have a theory that makes testable predictions, and moreover, all of Darwinian evolution's predictions (such as transition forms will be found in the geologic record)) have all failed, which I likened to engineering failures in my response to Armand Jacks:
As compared to Darwinian Evolution’s collapsed bridges, toppled buildings, crashed airplanes and lack of repeatable, testable theory?
john_a_designer then affirms that Armand Jacks hadn't thought through the implications of his atheism, namely that atheism is bankrupt and contributes nothing intellectually, summed up as
"Haven’t we been told that atheism is “just disbelief”?"
Indeed. At which point, I elaborated that while atheists claim they "just disbelieve", atheists are not content with just disbelieving. That in fact, atheists fear and worry they are wrong as evidenced by the effort they put out to convince “believers” that there is no evidence for their belief in God or Jesus Christ. When someone "just disbelieves" there is little or no concern attached to the disbelief. I gave the example of disbelieving in a flat earth. When someone argues the earth is flat, the atheist might criticize that belief and show a space station picture of our spherical green, blue and white "marble", but they don't define themselves by their disbelief – they don't call themselves "aflatearthers", they don't write volumes on the philosophy of aflatearthism, they don't dedicate websites to flatearth skepticism, they don't spend countless man-years holding flatearthers up to ridicule. No. They shrug, and move on. As wrong headed as flatearthers are, why don't disbelievers define themselves as "aflatearthers" and lobby for flatearth beliefs to be eliminated from society? Because they don't care, because they have a confidence born of evidence and experience that the earth is round, and flatearth arguments just don't matter. But atheists define themselves as A-Theists – against, without, absent, sans, theism. They invariably in social or political gatherings are self-compelled to declare, to signal, their atheistic world view and how it is self-evident to be intellectually superior over Christians in specific and over religionists in general (cowards that they are, they rarely take specific exception with Muslims or Islam). And atheists write volumes about their self-labeled viewpoint, they fill libraries, they write textbooks, they lobby legislatures, they put signs on buses, all to advance their self-defined atheistic world view. They are very concerned and discontent about their disbelief. Why? Because they are intellectually threatened. Because "The Enlightenment" and atheism's ascendancy is over. Back in the day, when we didn't know about the Big Bang, when we didn't know how the universe was fine-tuned for our life, when we didn't know how exquisitely mechanized are celluar functions, when we didn't know that DNA and RNA were actually huge complex information programs densely encoded in precisely folded chemical molecules that have no natural tendency to otherwise so organize themselves (let alone replicate and error correct), and then there is the little matter of human consciousness. Back then being an atheist was easy, almost automatic. It was easy to say "random chance did it" – but that was an ignorant and arrogant presumption. Today, the materialist, the atheist, has no answer for any of that. They have a multitude of speculations, yes, but no engineering-like understanding or scientific theories that make testable predictions. Evolutionary "theory" in all its claims (setting aside its failures) has nothing like our level of understanding of relativity, quantum mechanics, chemistry, or information theory. In fact the scientists who are expert in those subjects acknowledge that "chance" could not have begun our fine-tuned universe or life. The modern atheist is forced into special pleading for a multi-verse, that free-will is imaginary and then piggyback on Christian morality as they have no basis in their own materialism to justify good or evil other than personal preference in any particular situation. About all of which, they could be complacent if it weren't for Christian theists. While the atheist has no defense against the failure of science to prove a multiverse or that life arose from inert chemicals, the Christian has an affirmative argument for what the atheist can't prove. The Bible records that God made the Heavens and Earth, ex nihilo (the Big Bang), created life with consciousness and morality, and gave us free will to love and obey God, or not. Only the Christian is so audacious as to confront atheism directly. Hence the atheist or materialist drive to remove Christian prayer from schools, thought from universities, and gatherings from public places. And the atheist was not content to merely suppress Christian viewpoints, but now seeks to impose atheist behavior on Christians; Christians must bake cakes for homosexual weddings, Christian chaplains must teach Islam, Christian schools must hire atheists and allow them to teach "diversity". What the atheist can not achieve by intellectual persuasion, they seek to impose by legislation and force of confiscation and imprisonment. All the foregoing while atheists cloak themselves in a false morality that they hijacked from aspects of Christianity. Atheists talk of being opposed to murder, except when Muslims murder homosexuals and then it's abject silence. Atheists talk of being for equal rights for women, except unborn women or Muslim women. Atheists talk of doing good for mankind, but atheists don't start hospitals, didn't start universities (like Harvard or Princeton), and you don't see atheists organizing charities or feeding the homeless. The atheist argues that religious views have no justification in society's laws, yet declaring bankruptcy has its roots in Judeo "jubilee" forgiveness of debt and servitude, marriage is a Judeo Christian sacrament, and the legal prohibitions on murder, theft, and lying all are millennia's old Judeo-Christian teachings. To Christian arguments against the atheist, the atheist in variably responds with a) "science will some day prove _____" and b) "there is no evidence for God (and the Bible doesn't count as evidence)" The problem for the atheist is that a) science is further away than ever of proving "chance" underlay the big bang and our information-based life. In fact, information may also underlie the laws of physics and the hence the fine-tuned universe in which we live, and b) there is evidence for the existence of God, some of it logical, philosophical arguments, some of it forensic proofs. And now we come to the atheists' discomfort with their own disbelief. So, not only is materialistic evolution a theoretical failure and scientific near impossibility, the atheist has no alternative proven scientific explanation for what the Bible plainly declares were creative acts of God. The atheist is forced to borrow and impose biblical concepts just to maintain a civil society (while banning Christian beliefs the atheist dislikes). Lastly the atheist is further confronted with evidence for God's existence and that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. That forensic evidence is fulfilled biblical prophecy in which God supernaturally declares to Daniel several hundred years in advance that the Messiah would appear, and forensic evidence further shows that prophecy to have been fulfilled by Jesus Christ.Charles_{April 6, 2017
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AJ:
But how is god-did-it any different than me saying that the universe was caused by the flatulence of an interdimensional nymphomaniac.
That God created the universe by design creates some expectations that simply would not be the case for your alternate hypotheses. Good job pointing out the value of even this rudimentary knowledge!Phinehas_{April 6, 2017
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Armand, God bless him, is not interested in a serious conversation. Andrewasauber_{April 6, 2017
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AJ: How can the right to life increase? Either you have a right to live or you don't. Can you sorta have a right to live? How does that work? You say that abortion after the first trimester is "a crime unless the woman's health is at serious risk." What kind of crime is it? How is it not a deliberate homicide? Should each abortion be investigated to determine whether the woman's health is at serious risk and murder charges be brought against the woman if it is not?Phinehas_{April 6, 2017
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P:
According to your own statements, you’ve got exactly the same issue to address for the fetus after the first trimester, but you’ve merely avoided the issue.
I have been very clear on this. It is my opinion that the right to life increases with stage of pregnancy. As such, I don't think that abortion in the first trimester is a crime. After that, an abortion is a crime unless the woman's health is at serious risk.Armand Jacks_{April 6, 2017
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Drc:
I don’t understand this objection, and never have. Saying “X did it” is always a valid answer, ask any law enforcement officer. In some cases they don’t even know the “how”, but that doesn’t change the fact that “X did it” is true and accurate.
Fair enough. But how is god-did-it any different than me saying that the universe was caused by the flatulence of an interdimensional nymphomaniac. They both have as much explanatory power.
Notwithstanding, we DO know how God did it – He spoke and it was so. Would you accept that “how” as an answer?
No. Neither would any rational person.
something inside the universe would not be able to create the universe (which, btw, is a perfectly valid objection to all current materialistic explanations like the big bang).
No it's not. If something in our universe was responsible for creating another universe, wouldn't that be a materialistic cause? Just because we don't know what caused our universe does not make it a supernatural cause. That is just another god of the gaps argument.Armand Jacks_{April 6, 2017
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AJ:
Leaving aside the ridiculous “posterity in the womb” BS, you still have not addressed your hypocrisy in this. Let me repeat it in case you have conveniently forgotten.
Whoa. I'm not sure you are the one to be casting stones about conveniently forgotten hypocrisy. According to your own statements, you've got exactly the same issue to address for the fetus after the first trimester, but you've merely avoided the issue. Now, I see you on the attack again about charging women with murder while having failed to address the exact same question about abortions after the first trimester. You appear to be doubling down on your hypocrisy!Phinehas_{April 6, 2017
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AJ @28,
Saying that god-did-it is not an answer. How god did it would be the answer.
I don't understand this objection, and never have. Saying "X did it" is always a valid answer, ask any law enforcement officer. In some cases they don't even know the "how", but that doesn't change the fact that "X did it" is true and accurate. Notwithstanding, we DO know how God did it - He spoke and it was so. Would you accept that "how" as an answer? By definition, this is a non-materialistic answer - something inside the universe would not be able to create the universe (which, btw, is a perfectly valid objection to all current materialistic explanations like the big bang). So, what you really mean when you say "saying that god-did-it is not an answer" is that it is not a materialistic answer bounded by current known laws of the universe. Which is not a point of contention, since the definition of God is non-materialistic to begin with. So why say something that is clearly either a) wrong or b) a tautology (a non-materialistic being is not a materialistic answer)? Let's assume for a moment that God did, in fact, do it, by speaking the universe into being - then what IS the answer, if you have arbitrarily ruled out god-did-it as an answer? Are we doomed to never have an answer, because the truth is "not an answer"?drc466_{April 6, 2017
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KF:
Do you really think that if we acknowledged the sanctity of life that we would so cavalierly act towards posterity in the womb?
Leaving aside the ridiculous "posterity in the womb" BS, you still have not addressed your hypocrisy in this. Let me repeat it in case you have conveniently forgotten. If the early term fetus has the same right to life as you and I, why would you refuse to impose first degree murder and minimum penalty if a woman is found guilt of having an abortion? It is a very simple question. Why do you keep avoiding it? I can only perceive of two reasons: 1) you really don't believe that the early term fetus has the same right to life afforded to you and I; or, 2) you don't believe that a woman has the same intellectual and emotional stability as you and I to be culpable of understanding what she is doing when she has an abortion. Your options are hypocrisy or misogyny. If you have a third option, I would love to hear it.Armand Jacks_{April 6, 2017
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kf writes, "AJ, you obviously have not seen that I replied to JDK, who wrenched discussion off topic to scapegoat and attack Christians." Balderdash. I responded to Charles, who wrote, "But atheists don’t contentedly disbelieve. They fear and worry they are wrong as evidenced by the effort they put out to convince “believers” that there is no evidence for their belief in God or Jesus Christ." If anyone "wrenched the discussion off topic", it was he. And I didn't "scapegoat and attack" Christians. I said, "If Christian theists didn’t feel like they needed to legislate their beliefs into society, claiming that they had some uniquely valid view of what is right, then I would be quite content to let them believe whatever they wanted to. If you think that comment is a "scapegoat and attack", then you've got a pretty low standard for leaving room for anyone to disagree with your point of view.jdk_{April 6, 2017
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AJ, you obviously have not seen that I replied to JDK, who wrenched discussion off topic to scapegoat and attack Christians. I pointed out that instead the evidence is that we are facing a civilisation-scale imposition by evolutionary materialists and fellow travellers that has done just what it did in Plato's day, brought radical relativism, amorality, nihilism and ruthless factionalism in its train; with the worst and ongoing holocaust in history as case study no 1 on how law, medicine, media, education, politics and community alike have been tainted leading to huge bloodshed -- which of course many people do not want to be reminded of; but for the sake of our souls and our civilisation we had better wake up. Do you really think that if we acknowledged the sanctity of life that we would so cavalierly act towards posterity in the womb? As for evo mat did not exist in Plato's day, Plato says you are wrong [just read the clip!], it was a philosophical, skeptical view then (and now), today it likes to wear the lab coat but is still essentially a corrosive and domineering ideology. As for the SJW-feminist theme, I spoke to that above at 5 (you tried to wrench that into a rhetorical barb at 6], 12 and 13 with a typo fixed at 14. G'day, KFkairosfocus_{April 6, 2017
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Charles:
In the Bible, Daniel 9:24-27 is a forensically verifiable, supernatural foretelling of the coming the Messiah, a foretelling that is forensically verifiable as fulfilled by Jesus Christ.
You really should watch Monty Python's Life of Brian. But I fear that it would be lost on you.Armand Jacks_{April 6, 2017
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Charles:
After is not an origin.
So, there were no origins after the Big Bang? What about all of the elements after hydrogen? Stars? Planets? Life? Flatulence?Armand Jacks_{April 6, 2017
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KF:
PS: Plato’s warning about evolutionary materialism in The Laws Bk X still patently obtains, 2350+ years later:
Since evolutionary materialism didn't exist in Plato's day, your point is taken for the nonsense it is. Entertaining nonsense, but nonsense none the less.Armand Jacks_{April 6, 2017
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KF:
Where then, have we seen policy, law, courts, administration and more reflecting the self-referential incoherence, subjectivism, relativism, ideological agendas, pressure group agit prop and media shadow-show games coming from that have led to amorality, nihilism and the ongoing worst holocaust in history (of our posterity: 800+ millions in 40+ y and mounting at 1 mn/wk)? The implied imposition of might and manipulation make ‘right,’ ‘truth,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘justice,’ ‘rights,’ ‘law’ etc? The resulting ongoing stereotyping, strawmannising, bigoted scapegoating and targetting of ethical theists in the Judaeo-Christian tradition?
WTF? Why do you insist on bringing abortion into every debate? Are you incapable of keeping on subject.? But since you asked "Where then, have we seen policy, law, courts, administration and more reflecting the self-referential incoherence, subjectivism, relativism, ideological agendas, pressure group agit prop and media shadow-show games...blah, blah, blah". Might I answer, who was responsible for the crusades, inquisition, forced conversions, hundreds of civil wars, hatred driven propaganda, residential schools, the jailing and execution of people for blasphemy, the jailing and execution of people for homosexuality, and a host of other atrocities? Christians were persecuted for the first few hundred years of their religion and have been playing the martyr card ever since. Atheists have a far longer history of being persecuted but you don't hear us complaining about it. The rest of your comment, gibberish, just like the first part. If you want to discuss issues openly and honestly, you would be well advised to tone down your sermonizing, patronizing and arrogant attitude.Armand Jacks_{April 6, 2017
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JDK, In short you have little to say beyond the rhetoric of projection, scapegoating and targetting. Sad, really. KFkairosfocus_{April 6, 2017
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Charles, just lay out your thoughts; you have raised several thought-provoking ideas above and I think a short essay laying out your ideas could be a useful spark for discussion. I'd prefer that to clipping from above. KFkairosfocus_{April 6, 2017
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kairosfocus @ 27
Charles, a bit of a sharpish exchange, but thought-provoking.
Yes, "sharpness" as you charitably put it, is one of my failings, albeit I find it helpful to keep arguments brief and focused.
Do you have a bit of an expanded argument?
I might. I would certainly try. Could you be more specific as to what you would like to see expanded?Charles_{April 6, 2017
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Armand Jacks @ 28: I wrote:
a) their materialism fails in answering the big questions of cosmic & biological origins and the human mind,
And Armand Jacks argues
At least materialists have a reasonably good explanation, at least from a very short time after the Big Bang.
After is not an origin. And materialists have zero explanation for the origin of the Big Bang, nor before the Big Bang, and even after the Big Bang does not allow enough time for random chance to give rise to biological, reproductive organisms. This is pointedly acknowledged by materialist biologists such as Eugene V Koonin and mathematician Greg Chaitin. Hence the wishful speculation and yearning for a multiverse and many worlds - to give random chance enough time and chances, time and chances that are many orders of magnitude insufficient in a single universe of some 13.6 billion years old.
There is evidence that a person like Jesus existed. Evidence that he is god, not so much.
In the Bible, Daniel 9:24-27 is a forensically verifiable, supernatural foretelling of the coming the Messiah, a foretelling that is forensically verifiable as fulfilled by Jesus Christ. Because we are locked in time, constrained by the natural "present", we humans can not genuinely foretell future events. But genuine biblical prophecy (several hundred years in advance in the case of Dan 9:24-27) is a supernatural foretelling of events from outside of time. Only God exists outside of time and before time, before the Big Bang, and God's revelation to Daniel of the future coming of the Messiah, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, is forensic proof both of God's existence, and that Jesus is the Messiah. As Jesus, therefore, is the genuine Messiah foretold by God, when Jesus declared that He and the Father are One, He is to be believed.Charles_{April 6, 2017
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07:52 AM
7
07
52
AM
PDT}

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