Sendraks wrote:

Wortfish wrote: What I claim is that creation doesn't involve producing things from absolutely nothing, as some believe.

That's not what the bible says nor is it what many creationists believe.

Indeed, the first verse of the Bible claim that god created the heaven and the earth, from nothing, as this is the beginning of the creation story.

Wortfish wrote:

aban57 wrote:It's quite funny to see Wortfish justifying all those lies and inconsistencies by telling they are "allegories" or metaphores for evolution, when most people concerned by the OP are in fact litteralists who don't want to hear about this shit.

I never claimed that Genesis 1 and 2 is a metaphor for evolution. What I claim is that creation doesn't involve producing things from absolutely nothing, as some believe. Rather, it involves working with existing materials, as evolution does.

Okay, well have fun arguing about that with most of the worlds christians, who believe that there is "something instead of nothing" because God changed the state of affairs from nothing to something.

Fallible wrote:

BlackBart wrote:

Fallible wrote:

Wortfish wrote:

I never claimed that Genesis 1 and 2 is a metaphor for evolution. What I claim is that creation doesn't involve producing things from absolutely nothing, as some believe. Rather, it involves working with existing materials, as evolution does.

Where did the existing materials come from?

Already asked that one.

Yeah. And I know I'm banging my head against a brick wall. Sometimes the fancy to not let him think his arse achingly bad dodging and diving has gone unnoticed takes me though.

Oh, go for it. It's as funny as fuck.

So, you're ditching creation ex nihilo entirely? Or what? Because that's more like the process view than classical/traditional theism. And if that's the case, your picture of divine causation will likely be quite different from people like Craig. And whatever else you want to say about the non-traditional view, it's by no means the most popular one among Christian theists nowadays. So it's hardly a mistake on the part of atheists to address the classical view.

Wortfish wrote:

aban57 wrote:

Sendraks wrote:

Wortfish wrote: What I claim is that creation doesn't involve producing things from absolutely nothing, as some believe.

That's not what the bible says nor is it what many creationists believe.

Indeed, the first verse of the Bible claim that god created the heaven and the earth, from nothing, as this is the beginning of the creation story.

That's actually what some atheists believe: http://njbiblescience.org/presentations ... othing.pdf

Which has fuck all to do with their atheism.
You might as well have said 'that's what some people with moustaches believe"
It is also yet another desperate dodge that won't fool anyone.

Wortfish wrote:Genesis doesn't say that God made the heavens and earth from absolutely nothing at all.

Except that it did.
What did he create it from otherwise Wortfish?

Wortfish wrote:

MS2 wrote:
If you regard it as allegorical, do you not regard it as fully compatible with the reality of evolution? Could God not have created everything as it is now through the agency of evolution? If not, why not?

Most Christians and Jews regard it as allegorical/figurative, but evangelical Protestants believe every single word in Genesis is the inerrant and literal reality. Of course, as I have pointed out, by creating Eve from a rib of Adam, God shows that he can - like evolution - use existing parts to generate new ones.

You quoted my post, yet failed to answer any of the 3 questions it was made up of! That says a lot.

Anyway, as it appears you are not a literalist, can I have a pair of these special spectacles you have please, that enable you to discern the 'deeper truths' (God 'can use existing parts to generate new ones') from the literal assertions (God 'creating Eve from a rib of Adam'). Failing that, can you describe the reading rules you are applying, because as it stands your reading looks entirely arbitrary and unjustified?

ETA: it strikes me your special spectacles might be what are 'helping' you read other peoples' posts too?

Wortfish wrote:Genesis doesn't say that God made the heavens and earth from absolutely nothing at all.

No, it simply says.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"

and makes no reference to any existing materials from which god made those things. The bible is also lax on the point of where god came from, which boils down to an ex-nihilo creation from an ex-recto one.

Most theologians would agree that God didn't create the universe from absolutely nothing

On what would they base this assertion?

Wortfish wrote:Most theologians would agree that God didn't create the universe from absolutely nothing. What ex nihilo creation really means is that God did not use any pre-existing substance other than his own essence to create everything. So, nothing other than himself.

But, god itself is an ex nihilo creation.

Wortfish wrote:

Spinozasgalt wrote:So, you're ditching creation ex nihilo entirely? Or what? Because that's more like the process view than classical/traditional theism. And if that's the case, your picture of divine causation will likely be quite different from people like Craig. And whatever else you want to say about the non-traditional view, it's by no means the most popular one among Christian theists nowadays. So it's hardly a mistake on the part of atheists to address the classical view.

Most theologians would agree that God didn't create the universe from absolutely nothing.

Your rectum still isn't a source of information Wortfish.

Wortfish wrote:What ex nihilo creation really means is that God did not use any pre-existing substance other than his own essence to create everything. So, nothing other than himself.

There is no biblical basis for that assertion.

@Thomas Eshuis, That last quote^ - Spinozasgalt didn't type what follows the two questions. It seems post #109 has got mixed up, somehow...

newolder wrote:@Thomas Eshuis, That last quote^ - Spinozasgalt didn't type what follows the two questions. It seems post #109 has got mixed up, somehow...

Wortfish wrote:

aban57 wrote:

Sendraks wrote:

Wortfish wrote: What I claim is that creation doesn't involve producing things from absolutely nothing, as some believe.

That's not what the bible says nor is it what many creationists believe.

Indeed, the first verse of the Bible claim that god created the heaven and the earth, from nothing, as this is the beginning of the creation story.

That's actually what some atheists believe: http://njbiblescience.org/presentations ... othing.pdf

Oh dear, not this crap again ...

First of all, this has nothing to do with atheism. Atheism, in its rigorous formulation, consists of suspicion of unsupported supernaturalist assertions. That is IT. Everything else is left as the remit of those with the requisite expertise.

Second, the output of phyicists has nothing to do with belief whatsoever, certainly not as practised by supernaturalists, which involves uncritical acceptance of unsupported assertions. Physicists, on the other hand, are in the business of testing assertions to destruction. Whilst it is true that theoretical physicists may themselves generate new assertions, they do so on the basis that [1] said assertions have already been determined in advance to be consistent with known physics, and [2] that at some point, an empirical test of those assertions will be devised and conducted. The moment this happens, whether those assertions stand or fall is solely determined by concordance with the empirical data.

Third, what Krauss is proposing isn't creation ex nihilo, what he's proposing is that there exists a testable natural process for converting vacuum energy into matter. On this basis, he has a nice, safe precedent to build upon, in the form of E=mc2. An equation which underpins the operation of such diverse technologies as particle accelerators (which convert collision and kinetic energy into matter) and the various uses of nuclear fission (converting mass into energy via the release of nuclear binding energy, which is itself a contributor to the mass of the atomic nucleus). All those atmospheric nuclear tests conducted by the superpowers, provide ample empirical evidence that this equation is not only sound, but real world applicable. Indeed, the view of modern cosmologists is that the vacuum is itself a physical entity, a point that is totally lost on the various pedlars of apologetics who continue misrepresenting cosmological physics.

But the crap you linked to above, is precisely what I'd expect from the sort of people who think science is a branch of apologetics. Hint: it's not.

Wortfish wrote:Genesis doesn't say that God made the heavens and earth from absolutely nothing at all.

Well, even if we discount for a moment, that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 contain separate, and contradictory, "creation accounts", there's the little problem that there's been a nicely anti-consilient range of "interpretations" of Genesis ever since it was written. For example, Augustine of Hippo rejected the calendar days cited in Genesis 1 as temporal divisions, rather as logical divisions of subject matter, and even more interestingly, wrote this interesting piece, in which he asserted that the 6,000 years so beloved of creationists was too long a period of time to have elapsed since the "creation" event, an assertion he presented close to 1,200 years before the Ussher chronology. Even more interestingly, Augustine also wrote this, which is the passage in which Augustine asserted that time itself did not exist before his magic man started performing the requisite conjuring tricks, an assertion that has been mistakenly credited to physicists, who instead postulated that time as observable in this universe began with the Big Bang.

But that's the whole problem with mythology - it's the epistemological equivalent of quicksand, and trying to extract genuinely substantive knowledge from it is like trying to plough the Mediterranean Sea.

Wortfish wrote:

Spinozasgalt wrote:So, you're ditching creation ex nihilo entirely? Or what? Because that's more like the process view than classical/traditional theism. And if that's the case, your picture of divine causation will likely be quite different from people like Craig. And whatever else you want to say about the non-traditional view, it's by no means the most popular one among Christian theists nowadays. So it's hardly a mistake on the part of atheists to address the classical view.

Most theologians would agree that God didn't create the universe from absolutely nothing. What ex nihilo creation really means is that God did not use any pre-existing substance other than his own essence to create everything. So, nothing other than himself.

Erm, which theologians? Because the way you have God's essence standing in for an outside substance looks and sounds like ex Deo rather than ex nihilo. And that would again be steering close to something like process theology or panentheism. Neither of those count as classical theism.

From his own "essence". That means jizz. We're all God jizz.

OH MY GOSH, A WICKED LIE??