Recent Comments

1. about 7 hours ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Slavery was a worldwide practice, but by Jefferson’s time it was declining. Also there had been some history in the Western world of Christians not enslaving other Christians. Part of the original “justification” of enslaving Africans is that they were enemies of Christendom. Once they were Christian some of them felt they should be freed in a “Jubilee” per the Old Testament.

   The idea of making slavery racial was also somewhat new. At times some Southerners even had some difficulty with this notion. There was enslavement of a nation that had gone to war with your own, but often that nation was basically the same “race”.

2. 2 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   The idea that the majority of scientists are anti-science I don’t think makes much sense unless you get a bit conspiratorial.

   I think scientists are seeking natural explanations. The “intelligent design” type explanations would require either non-natural explanations, and therefore not be science as it’s currently understood, or require an extraterrestrial designer which there is no evidence of. An extraterrestrial designer would also require scientists to try to discover how that extraterrestrial came about through natural forces.

   Now you keep saying that something highly improbable is impossible. Also hoping I will be wowed by really big numbers. The problem is I already told you I’m not wowed by that. I’m pretty sure it’s not that “I don’t understand really big numbers.” I have a whole book on a school of set theory as well as Martin Rees book on the constants of the Universe. Now you can feel I should or must agree really big numbers effectively mean impossibility, and that’s fine, but at some point you should recognize that’s not happening. The science I’ve read doesn’t actually say high improbability equates to impossibility. The exception being infinities which science tends to reject. (And I’m not sure science is right on that.)

   So from “science” starting at 20^200, even if there are billions of years of chemical interactions, is indeed amazing. But it’s still nature. It’s still within science as it is normally defined. A supernatural event is beyond nature and therefore beyond science. The reason scientists aren’t researching it isn’t a conspiracy or statism or something it’s because it’s not a scientific question and proving or disproving God is not science’s job. (Granted I would prefer they be honest/humble that they just don’t know how life starts, that’s the part where I’ll grant they are “not being scientific” because they should be more agnostic on this.)

3. 3 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   I’m into math so the idea that extremely large or small numbers equate to impossible doesn’t really work for me. 20^200 power exists. It looks to be roughly 10^260 power or roughly 2^864. That’s not “infinity”. We know of Mersenne primes far far larger than that. So a natural explanation, no matter how improbable, is the scientific explanation for a natural event.

   That doesn’t mean I’m saying it is the explanation. I don’t think everything can be explained scientifically. But if you are committed to the idea that the only answers can come from science than it kind of makes sense why they speak of “accepting abiogenesis” rather than believing or preferring it. Because for some scientism just is reality and this is important to them. They see it as giving them freedom from religion, which they dislike, and from "false hopes.

4. 3 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Some of the most empathetic people I’ve ever known are Republicans. Even some of the ones who the Left deems say “transphobic” genuinely believe transgender is a mental illness and that “not enabling it” is the compassionate thing.

5. 3 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   That’s not really true though. Look up “Beatification miracles” and Jacalyn Duffin.

   The idea that miracles stopped at a certain point I would guess descends from the non-Evangelical Protestant notion of “cessationism.” I believe this indicates that some time after the Apostolic era miracles were no longer needed. Cessationism is not believed in by Catholics, Orthodoxers, Pentecostalism, much Evangelicalism, or varied non-Christian forms of mysticism. (Sufi, Hindu, etc) But perhaps because the “power” in America was traditionally non-Evangelical Protestant maybe this notion of “cessationism” seems like a good secular argument. Miracles didn’t stop because they are no longer need to spread the faith, they “stopped” because they were just something uneducated people believed.

   It’s much harder to try to disprove thousands of beatification miracles, some shown to have no natural cause by scientists, and likely millions of Pentecostal experiences. (less evidential backing on those granted.) But you are living in a world where liberal Protestantism is dying to irrelevant. So eventually you’re going to have deal with reported miracles among those in educated and modern societies (Catholic, Orthodox, Coptics, Pentecostals) whether you want to or not.

6. 4 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Same here. Not a coffee drinker, maybe a couple capuccino’s in my entire life, too disabled and young to be drafted.

   Neat Rat meeting a guy who must be nearly a hundred though. (I guess if he had done a vet for a later war it wouldn’t be as notable. Although North Korea is clearly bonkers so feels like the Korean War should maybe be reevaluated even if 50s South Korea wasn’t great.)

7. 4 days ago on Nancy

   I think her hands are too small.

8. 4 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   And by saying he’s doing “largely a good job” I don’t mean I agree. I just think he, probably he, defends his position well on the whole even if going too far on occasion.

9. 4 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   I think you’re doing a bit of a slight of hand to say high improbability equates to impossibility. That said the other side at times seems to be saying that high improbability is true because supernatural forces don’t exist. But that’s a metaphysical position, same as yours, not inarguable truth. (I think you’re doing a largely good job but when you say archaeology totally validates the Bible completely you went a bit too far as I think even many Christians is archaeology would not precisely agree with that.)

   St. Albert Magnus stated, I paraphrase, that science is about using nature to explain natural events. He obviously was not denying supernatural creation but stating it isn’t the subject of science. So it is correct to say that as the only natural explanation an incredibly improbable creation of life from non-life is the only scientific explanation.

   But the idea that the only explanation for anything is science is either a kind of greedy reductionism or scientism. Science doesn’t actually demand that you believe all things are science. The origin of life is possibly unanswerable, at least at present.

   A question being unanswerable to science doesn’t require or negate a belief in God or the supernatural. I think theistic explanations are more satisfying because they actually are explanations. But I think one can prefer a kind of agnostic atheism where many questions are unanswerable and life is a journey for answers that will never be fully complete. I can see the appeal of that perspective in some areas, even if for most people it’s emotionally unappealing long-term.

10. 6 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

    Abiogenesis does kind of go against some tendencies in science disproving “spontaneous generation”. It’s also not really been proven. We can say that building blocks of life can form through chemical processes but how those amino acids, etc became life or DNA and RNA is not fully known.

    And before you think I’m being some kind of evolution denying Fundamentalist, um no. What I’m saying only relates to the start of cellular life. It doesn’t even involve natural selection as such, which I agree natural selection is pretty solid.