David.
The problem of inspiration is vexed. I am happy to describe biblical texts as being guided by the Holy Spirit and even to be inerrant. That does not mean that I believe in an otherworldly force that guided the authors hand but simply that they (by widely differing paths) came to the same truth.

I am not sure how the creed helps with the question of the whereabouts of the bones of Jesus. Are we to believe that he sits bodily at the right hand of God in some physical heaven? I think that the authors of the NT would laugh at such a suggestion. Resurrection and ascension are about the continuing presence of Jesus with the church and his being at one with the father.

There is a common confusion in both this discussion and the one on evolution between the material and the spiritual. Although this confusion exists in the minds of many Christians it is nonetheless true that Christianity ( and Judaism before it) denies the duality between matter and spirit. We may blame the Greeks for this infection. Spirit in Christianity is not a word that points to another realm that is different from the material. Indeed spirit has its basis in the material just as thought has its basis (ultimately) in the firing of neurons. Any being that involves itself in evolution must interact with the material world and must therefore be of that world. Thus if we are looking for an external influence on evolution we must look for an external material cause.

Similarly, you cannot have the risen Jesus (bodily) being projected into low orbit to sit at the right hand of God in some physical heaven. If this were the case then the Soviet astronauts proclaiming that they saw no heaven would have been terminal for Christian belief. The point about Christmas is that the Word became flesh, the truth became a man. Truth is spiritual in that it cannot be reduced to the physical not that it belongs to a different realm than that of the material

jih – a ‘philosopher of science’? Look, I’m not trying to discredit this guy, I’m just saying, the overwhelming majority of the scientific world completely disagrees with him. Why you would choose to listen to this one guy, however influential, over countless other influential individuals, is beyond me.

I know you could quote lots of other ‘well-regarded’ scientists, but like I keep saying, that doesn’t matter, because for every well regarded scientist you quote, there is a thousand who disagree. It just doesn’t stack up. Yet creationists to this day think that it means something.

You say it would be arrogant to ignore this voice, and if science didn’t have a good reason to do this, you would be right. But this voice is ignored because evolution has been well and truly established. If someone came along and rejected the theory of relativity, it would not be arrogant to ignore this voice, it would be sensible. Such is the case here.

You may disagree that evolution is falsifiable, but scientists KNOW that it is, so your opinion unfortunately means little. It’s not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of testable and observable fact.

You don’t have to believe me, and it’s not my job to convince you. I’ll just say this one last time:

The greatest scientific minds in the world have been pondering and debating the finer details of science for over a century. Do you really believe that you can step in now and point out something that hasn’t been considered? And that somehow, by some massive coincidence, every single person throughout the history of this theory made a mistake?

It would take a miracle.

Published:
POPPER, Karl, 1980. Evolution. New Scientist 87(1215):611.

“In the 17 July issue of New Scientist (p. 215) you published an article under the title “Popper: good philosophy, bad science?” by Dr Beverly Halstead. This article, it appears had two purposes:

1. To defend the scientific character of the theory of evolution, and of palaeontology. I fully support this purpose, and this letter will be almost exclusively devoted to the defence of the theory of evolution.

2. To attack me.

As to (2), I find this uninteresting and I shall not waste your space and my time in defending myself against what are in my opinion hardly excusable misunderstandings. and wild speculations about my motives and their alleged history.

Returning to (1), it does appear from your article (provided its quotation from Colin Patterson’s book – which I do not know – is not as misleading as your quotations from my book) that some people think that I have denied scientific character to the historical sciences, such as palaeontology, or the history of the evolution of life on Earth; or to say, the history of literature, or of technology, or of science.

This is a mistake, and I here wish to affirm that these and other historical sciences have in my opinion scientific character: their hypotheses can in many cases be tested.

It appears as if some people would think that the historical sciences are untestable because they describe unique events. However, the description of unique events can very often be tested by deriving from them testable predictions or retrodictions.

Karl Popper

Spendocrat,
You could have given me? What a great defence. You sound like the whiny little weedy kid who blusters how he could have taken the big kid if he wanted to.

I have read a lot of talk.origins stuff. It is put up so often as a model of great answers when really it is quite poor in that regard.

Evolutionists capitalize on the combination of:
a) complexity of evolutionary theory, and
b) lack of scientific understanding held by the average person.

Irreducible complexity is a concept that has not been debunked. I don’t expect to convince you of this (I’m getting used to the idea of Anti-ID proponents only seeing what they want to see), but it’s true

"Evolution is a theory based on observable fact, just like any other scientific theory. That’s why it’s regarded as science, and that’s why it’s taught in science classrooms."

'In science’s pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history’s inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists cannot generate a Cretaceous Park to observe exactly what killed the dinosaurs; and, unlike “harder” scientists, we usually cannot resolve issues with a simple experiment, such as adding tube A to tube B and noting the color of the mixture.' - Jerry Coyne, Evangelical Evolutionist

Good to see you didn't actually deal with any arguments put forward (e.g. limits to microevolution) and instead just blustered and insulted. The reasoning and rationality of evolutionists has been reinforced in my mind now.

Grey:
‘You sound like the whiny little weedy kid who blusters how he could have taken the big kid if he wanted to.’
And you say I’M the one resorting to insults? Grow up.

Here’s the (extremely condensed and simplified) examples that you said I couldn’t provide:

1. Comparative Biochemistry. The agreement of the biochemical evidence with the anatomical evidence illustrates an important consideration when evaluating the strength of evolutionary theory: namely that our 20th century ability to compare the biochemical similarities among species provided a test of evolutionary theory which had been mainly based on the evidence from 19th century comparative anatomical studies, biogeography and a limited fossil record. If the same overall pattern of biochemical similarities did not agree with the pattern based on anatomical comparisons, evolutionary theory would have been in serious trouble. But the patterns do agree and evolutionary theory is all the stronger because of that.

2. The Fossil Sequence for hominids is a study of the general pattern present in the overall fossil record. That pattern is that modern species are not found throughout the fossil record from top to bottom - which they should be if all species were formed at one time at the very beginning of life on this planet. Instead, what we discover is less evidence of modern species as we go deeper into the fossil and geological record - a pattern that is precisely predicted by evolutionary theory and is also the only pattern evolutionary theory allows for. The chance of this being a coincidence (especially combined with the other tests) is obscenely small.

3. Fossil Intermediates. This refers to the fact that, regardless of the mode or rate of evolutionary change, there should be evidence of morphological continuity over time in the fossil record if species are evolutionarily linked and related to one another. Is there a better classroom example one can use to illustrate this point than a fossil like Lucy with her mixture of ape-like and humanlike features?

There’s tonnes more where they came from. But like I said, I only have 350 words.

..two wordsleft.

I hope the other guys on the thread will excuse Peter and I having a little private chat.

Peter,

Thank you for your post. Immediately I had posted my last post I regretted saying “the Apostles' Creed … tells you where the bones of Jesus are” – I did so because of your own reference to His bones. What I also affirm is that the Jesus who ascended to his Father in heaven is the same blood, flesh and bones risen and glorified Jesus that His disciples spoke, eat with and touched between His resurrection and ascension.

Now just where heaven is, I don’t know nor do I enquire, though I doubt it exists within the Universe that we find ourselves in.

Personally I believe Resurrection and ascension has more to do with the Father’s vindication of Jesus’ substitutionary sin bearing obedience on the cross, as well as pointing forward to His future coming again in judgement with the resurrection of the dead. The same body (soma) with which Jesus ascended shall be found for all God’s children for life “in the new heavens and new earth our home of righteousness” - “So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” In saying all of this I believe I am orthodox.

Re additional items in your last post, I think I have the stronger doctrine of inspiration. I also think we operate with some similar but also some rather differing conceptions for the relationship between matter and spirit, the physical and the spiritual. I am unhappy with any great division between the two. Christ’s resurrection body was and remains both physical and spiritual, even now at God’ right hand in glory – “it (soma) was sown psuchikon and raised pneumatikon”. At all times he remains in bodily form, though of course utterly transformed by the Spirit.