Best products from r/Creation

Yes, if you look at things only from the point of view of the senses, a table is just a table. But we don't analyze reality that way. When we see something we don't just sense it, we also integrate the sensations through our mind. So a table, aside from particular table X, it is also an abstract idea that is nevertheless real. Because that idea exists across many objects. Similarly, a number is an idea that is present in all its instantiations, but does never diminish.

Also, from another point of view, a table is an object with a function and the function of "being used as a table" can migrate to other objects as well, such as a stone slab on the ground. The tableness of the table is not lost when supplanting it with a stone slab because the tableness is also a function.

To give an analogy. A book can be analyzed by thickness, weight, the number of words, etc. And that analysis is correct and real. However, beyond this analysis is the analysis of the meaning of the words, sentences and thematic meaning as well. This makes the ink blots not only inkblots, but also symbols of meaning, of ideas.

You can also deny the reality of the mind and say that ideas are not like things, they are just illusions, but then you won't have science, theories, anything more than plain sense perception. If ideas are not real, then theories are not real, science is not real, morality etc.

As far the non-moving part of reality, that is indeed accounted for in Sankhya but not in this particular article. It is God which is that reality behind everything, the source of both conscious souls and the reality "external" to the souls which they perceive. And how that reality is organized it is described by Ashish Dalela in the book Six Causes: The Vedic Theory of Creation, which is a great read if you are inclined towards creationism and ID. In chapter 9: The Nature of God's Power, there is an extensive presentation of the intricacies of Vedic theology as it relates to what you are refering to as a "non-moving" point. But that's another discussion. Here is a taste from the book description, to give you an idea of how Indian philosophy can analyze creation:

"The Personal Cause of Creation explores the properties of consciousness, its quest for meaning and self-knowledge and how that quest forms the basis for the creation of the universe.

The Efficient Cause of Creation describes the mechanism by which the quest for meaning gradually becomes thoughts, desires, judgments, plans and actions, thereby creating various experiences.

The Instrumental Cause of Creation discusses the Vedic view on the senses, mind, intelligence and ego as the instruments that experience meanings, and embed meanings into matter.

The Formal Cause of Creation describes the nature of meanings and how these meanings are created as subtle information and then embedded into space-time to create differentiated objects.

The Systemic Cause of Creation explains how information in the mind is transformed into energy which is then represented into matter as sound vibrations denoting meanings.

The Material Cause of Creation describes how information is encoded as vibrations in space-time, and how modifications of these vibrations create other observable physical properties."

> No, they don't.
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512
>
> But we might just have to agree to disagree about that. In any case...

No, the only thing I'll agree to is that both you and Ehrman are totally wrong.

https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Case-Christianity-Homicide-Detective-Investigates/dp/1434704696/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Cold+case+christianity&qid=1554338796&s=books&sr=1-1

>Either way, let me just ask you: does faith in the God of the Bible produce any measurable (by a non-believer) effect that faith in some other god does not? If so, what is it? If not, then in what sense can such a god be said to exist?

You're asking the wrong question. The main effect my faith in God produces is my personal salvation, which is not testable. But is there good evidence that the God of the Bible is the one true God? Yes, there is very good evidence of that. One of the most powerful of these is fulfilled prophecy.

See:
https://www.amazon.com/Messianic-Hope-Hebrew-Studies-Theology-ebook/dp/B004OR18CY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=181JAOD14V0WZ&keywords=is+the+hebrew+bible+messianic&qid=1554338880&s=gateway&sprefix=is+the+hebrew+bible%2Cstripbooks%2C274&sr=8-1

> And yes, I'm sure "metaphysical training" would improve my use of the terminology of your field. But a slightly more charitable reading on your part would accomplish pretty much the same. If you have a clearly defined concept of change, then obviously there's no issue of semantics, and I can say straightforwardly whether it exists or not.

I offered many examples of change: Solid ice melting into liquid water, the striking of a match to produce fire, fire reducing a piece of paper to ashes. In the sense that these events entail change, such change is a real feature of the world.

And as to a clearly defined concept of change, I have defined change as the actualization of potential.

So, I feel that I have done my part in making clear what it is that I am talking about.

When I did, you denied the reality of potentialities, relegating the notion to mere convention. But change without potentiality is something from nothing. And this is in violation of the Law of Non-Contradiction. As the law of non-contradiction is not mere convention, neither can be potentiality. We can know this.

So it is not that I have been less than clearly definite. You have denied critical realities which must be true in order for change of the sort exhibited in melting, buring, etc. to really be real. And you have offered no grounds at all for such an extreme denial, empirical or otherwise.

Besides, I am still not sure in what sense you think change is not real. Space-time representations are not dealing with change in a different sense of the word. It is the same concept which is being treated in a different way. The questions of the utility of such representations ought to be kept separate from questions regarding the truth of such representations. A representation can be extremely useful, even when it is not true.

>the evidence that time and space are entities which change and interact with other physical entities.

And what is this evidence? I hope you will not point me to a "model", after having claimed that all models are wrong.

Again, there can be no physical evidence for this kind of metaphysical claim. At best, you might be referring to a specific mode of representation (i.e. a model) which treats space and time as though they were agents. But again, it is precisely because you have no metaphysical training that you are unable to distinguish representations from reality. Metaphysical training would do you good!

It is knowable that time and space are not agents. You, yourself, admitted that it is nonsensical to suppose time outside of time, or space outside of space. And yet for time and space to be changeable agents, they would need to exist in a higher time and higher space than themselves. And then those higher times and higher spaces would then require still higher times and spaces in which they interact as changeable agents with the first level time and space. And this would have to go on and on to infinity. It posits superfluous entities in order to account for what is perfectly well accountable by the understanding of time and space as nothing more than the dimensive and successive properties and relations of things, rather than as entitative things existing in themselves.

These are things that we can know by metaphysical rigor. And again, it may be useful to represent reality in ways which treat change or time in various other ways. But that won’t mean that time and change are really as they are so represented. The only thing the utility of such representations tells us, by itself, is that representations can be useful. But we already knew that.

>You don't seem the empirical type,

This kind of glibness is pretty common from empiricists who lack appreciation for the metaphysical foundations of physical science. We have said very little about any actual empirical controversies. You have no basis whatsoever to impugn my appreciation for empirical investigation of reality. In my view, metaphysical science operates in tandem with physical science, and both are important for a complete understanding of reality. So while you have denied the importance of metaphysics, I have affirmed the importance of both metaphysics and physics. Which of us is more likely to be found ignorant?

>what about believing the earth is six orders of magnitude younger than it actually is in the teeth of two hundred years' convergent empirical evidence?

More begging the question. It is absolutely in virtue of actual empirical evidence that I believe in a young universe. If you want to have a debate, then you will have to allow the question.

Of course, if you think there is "empirical evidence" for the claim that "time is an agent", then I am not particularly threatened by your glib appeals to "empirical evidence" in the question of physical origins. At any rate, that’s a pretty radical change of subject. I typed up a “Gish Gallup” of empirical considerations which point me to a young earth and away from an old earth, but I doubt it would be fruitful to go down that road.

> I can play your "ur dumb" game too.

I don’t think you are dumb. To be dumb is different than to be a fool. Stupidity is a defect of the intellect, but foolishness is a defect of the will. A system of beliefs is as much the product of will as it is of intellect. The questions you ask, the evidence that you consider, the sources you trust: these are all actions of the will, among others. It is common for people to set their will against the knowledge of basic principles, when they want to avoid the conclusions which necessarily flow from those principles (edit: wording).

I am well aware that the charge could be leveled against me. That’s just the point. If you think only in terms of “right and dumb”, you are missing a major part of the picture. That is why I get to be honest about the fact that many of the people who disagree with me are very intelligent. They don't need better brains. They just need to repent.

Last note: While these metaphysical principles do necessarily prove both the existence and the perfect goodness (and the unity, necessity, simplicity, immateriality, incorporeality, unchangeableness, eternity, omnipotence, intellect, and omniscience) of God (see Feser’s Five Proofs of the Existence of God), they do not favor either a young or old-earth model. You can accept these principles without yielding the debate on the age of the universe.

> The more seriously credentialed creationists tend to speak over the heads of their target audience, unfortunately, which also leads to them getting less attention

Agreed, though some of us prefer not to have our science watered down, I'm sure you agree. :)

> The creationist movement loves themselves a strong firebrand

Agreed again, but to be fair this is a general human trait: e.g., Richard Dawkins is an oft-adored shock jock among atheists even as he produces awful arguments that more intelligent atheists find laughable.

> real science isn't done by preaching to the faithful, it begins with no one believing

You're referring to Methodological Naturalism, yes? So there's an interesting book Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology (Eta Linnemann) that actually offers a critique of that idea: in a nutshell, if Christianity is true, we are putting on a blindfold by ignoring what Scripture states, essentially saying, "yeah dad, I hear what you're saying, but I'm not gonna listen because I wanna figure this out on my own," which in terms of software search algorithms, results in a lot of inefficiency due to lack of pruning. The problem, of course, is if we misinterpret the text and try to read too much into it, and prune where we ought not to. Thus any pruning has got to be done with the utmost diligence, honesty, and care.

The above idea of pruning based on God's Word would obviously be rejected by anyone who denies inerrancy, so I'm not expecting you to agree, just wanted to share the line of thinking with you.

> The problem with both Todd Wood and Kurt Wise is that they argue quite heavily from the concept of inerrant scripture

Have you read any of Todd Wood's essays in The Fool and the Heretic where he goes into wonderful detail about why it's necessary to start with inerrancy of God's Word? What about this really good blog post by Ron Garret on the subject?

> Darwin Devolves (Behe) is currently the #1 best seller in developmental biology on Amazon and goes into detail on why random mutation and natural selection cannot account for the modern creation myth of "single cell to man"

Yeah...it's not.

As of right now, the #1 seller is The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility" (Incerto). Which just sounds...really boring...

The Kindle version is beat by this book about bees.

And I don't think a freebie should ever be considered a best seller.

> The same techniques that lead us to suspect the ending of Mark might not be genuine show us that the vast majority of the New Testament exists largely unchanged from the original manuscripts, save for the odd spelling error.

No, they don't.

https://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512

But we might just have to agree to disagree about that. In any case...

> I believe only in the God of the Bible.

With or without Mark 16:17-18?

Either way, let me just ask you: does faith in the God of the Bible produce any measurable (by a non-believer) effect that faith in some other god does not? If so, what is it? If not, then in what sense can such a god be said to exist?

I would start with

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9_o7NGTkJc

and/or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JEFy-ZtEzg

That's Spike Psarris. For all I know, he may not even know the philosophy behind presuppostionalism. If so then he is just doing it organically. He just takes naturalistic observations and carries them to their logical conclusions.

If that floats your boat then I would go one of two ways:

You could check out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEOY4LNRMd8

for the more pedestrian version of presuppostitionalism... Or you could go all in and check out

https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Apologetics-Cornelius-Van-Til/dp/0875525113

for the more ivory tower intellectual variety.

The choice is yours between those two. It's just whatever fits your personality better.

It is not really a textbook, but this one is highly recommended. It is definitely on my reading list.

Some really good arguments for creation here.

Go buy a copy. It is a very good read.

Review: Why you should read Bavinck.

I'd encourage you to read the book Heretic by Matti Leisola. It covers all these items in much more detail than I ever could.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B079MCPG8B/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

> What does "genetic deterioration" mean? And how do you go from creationism to GD?

https://www.amazon.com/Genetic-Entropy-Mystery-Genome-Classroom/dp/0981631614/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=99BMBD1MSBB21HXZPNK1

I guess that is rather the point of Behe's latest book (I'm just indicating it, I've not read it yet):
https://www.amazon.com.br/Edge-Evolution-Search-Limits-Darwinism/dp/0743296222