Atheist Central -- Ray Comfort's Blog: Einsteinian Evolution

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Einsteinian Evolution

"Ray, two questions: 1. How do you think Einstein would like what you have done with your banner? 2. Why would you care what Einstein would like? You have very little in common with him." Chris

I think Albert Einstein would be delighted that I let people know that he hated being quoted by atheists. I also think that he would be pleased that I quoted him in context.

I care what Einstein liked (and believed) because his name epitomizes intelligence. It is synonymous with the word "genius." Atheists say that intelligent design isn’t intelligent, and that anyone who believes that God exists, hates science. So, although Albert Einstein’s view of God is different than mine (he didn't believe in a personal God), it is pleasing to me that he humbly acknowledged the One who gave him life. He was no fool.

Now to your last comment--that I have little in common with Einstein. That’s just not true. We are both Jewish. We both emigrated to the United States. We both believe that we were intelligently designed by God. We are both regularly misquoted by atheists. We both have moustaches. We both kept our hair, and mine has been known to look like his after a restless night's sleep.

Many times I have been told that I look like Albert Einstein. A few years ago when I was in Phoenix airport boarding a flight to Los Angeles, I gave million dollar bill tracts to four Moslem women and a little girl who was traveling with them. They were grateful, and told me that I looked like Einstein.

As they passed me on the plane, I heard them say, "There’s Einstein." I have to say, it puffed me up a little, to think that they perceived an intellectual likeness [Special note to atheists: that was like a joke].

When we landed in Los Angeles, the little girl walked passed my seat and said in a friendly (and loud) voice "Goodbye Frankenstein."

A friend even wrote a song about me, in which there was the line: "When you see a man riding a boy’s bike; when you see an Einstein look-alike . . . "

There’s only one thing in which I believe I trump the man. In 1982 I found something in the Scriptures that is infinitely more important and has far greater repercussions than the Theory of Relativity (see LivingWaters.com/learn/ ).

So I think I have more in common with the great genius than most. One other thing. Intellectually, I’m not worthy to wash his socks. But I guess you already figured that.

PS: "I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God." Albert Einstein, Brian, op. cit. p. 186.

292 comments:

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Lore_Weaver said...: Where's your quote where Einstein unoquivically states that he believes he was "Designed by God"?; July 8, 2008 9:41 AM
David W. Irish said...: Well, you both have a moustache, but that's as far as any comparison can go with you and Einstein.

As for your "discovery" of your delusional "hell's best kept secret", it is nothing more than a distillation of your pretty much standardized religious delusions, and more of a regurgitation of Evangelical Fundamentalist doctrine than a "discovery".

A DISCOVERY is when you are the first person to find something, not when you are the first person to make a youTube video or write a book stating beliefs that people who came before you already had.

Relativity, which I'm pretty sure you couldn't even correctly paraphrase in a few sentences, much less understand, is far more important a phenomenon, far more useful to humanity, than any religion has ever been.; July 8, 2008 9:47 AM
Emily said...: It's so funny (and even a tad eerie ;) hehe) that you look so much like Einstein. I never noticed the resemblance before!

Also just a side note to you Ray, I stumbled on your infamous banana video over on Times Online Microtrends. Your video is being "featured" on a sidebar under "Atheists Nightmares". It says, "YouTube evangelists are using common foodstuffs to disprove the theory of evolution. Good luck with that!" (Referring to you and Chuck Missler.) Thought you might find that interesting. =); July 8, 2008 9:47 AM
Faith Minus said...: And the narcissism train rolls on and on and on.....

There is one very significant difference between you and Einstein, he actually understood science.; July 8, 2008 10:00 AM
erikloza said...: Ray,

Thanks for the laugh this morning. That shifting picture of you and Einstein is great. Is there a web site that does that or was it specially made?

God bless you, brother.; July 8, 2008 10:02 AM
AllFiredUp said...: HA! You look so much like him, I love it!; July 8, 2008 10:08 AM
Irukandji said...: We are both Jewish.

Not according to Israeli law. As a formal convert to another religion, you are ineligible to become an aliyah. Is this the sole measure of authentic Jewishness? No, but it's still telling. In the interest of not appearing disingenuous, you should probably clarify that you are ethnically Jewish, but not religiously Jewish - or better yet, stop calling yourself Jewish altogether. But then, disingenuousness is your typical stock in trade, you schmuck.

Atheists say that intelligent design isn’t intelligent, and that anyone who believes that God exists, hates science.

No. Although a higher-than-average percentage of scientists are atheists (indeed, this is true of all well-educated people), many highly respected and competent scientists identify as theists as one sort of another. Kenneth Miller, a biologist who testified on behalf of the plaintiffs at the Dover trial, is a devout Roman Catholic. The extremely famous paleontologist Robert Bakker, who was one of the first scientists to realize that modern birds are descended from dinosaurs, is a Pentecostal minister.

Of course, anyone who rejects fundamental scientific theories and the wealth of evidence that supports them simply because those theories might conflict with a literal reading of the Bible . . . well, anyone like that is better suited to a career in fast food than a career in science, not to put too fine a point on it. Theism is not inherently inimical to science, but biblical literalism is.

In 1982 I found something in the Scriptures that is infinitely more important and has far greater repercussions than the Theory of Relativity.

Ray, what does your imaginary friend have to say about lying?; July 8, 2008 10:48 AM
Rev. BigDumbChimp said...: You call this humble?; July 8, 2008 10:52 AM
chris said...: David Irish,

I will have to disagree with your discovery statement. Things might be known but if a person does not know and then comes to an understanding or revelation then there has been a personal discovery. Any way Irish tell me about yourself. Where are you from?
Pastor Chris( of SW La.); July 8, 2008 10:52 AM
Iago said...: Amazing, how a computerized morphing program can make anyone transform into anyone else. I invite folks to go out and look it up and read about the science behind behind image manipulation.

or maybe folks can just flap their hands in the air and cry out 'Goddidit' and bury their heads
back in the sand again so that stray intelligent thoughts do not penetrate.; July 8, 2008 10:56 AM
Anna "Banana" Jackson said...: Love the picture! He must be your long-lost uncle or something. :-); July 8, 2008 11:15 AM
Harvester said...: Hello Ray, tell me have you ever read the book "Shattering the Myths of Darwinism" by Richard Milton, who by the way is a reputable science journalist and secular evolutionist. He has some interesting statments concerning evolution.
RADIOACTIVE DATING. …radioactive dating techniques are far less reliable than was previously thought; the Earth could be much younger than has been supposed by Darwinists; and nothing like the billions of years required by evolution theory have elapsed since the Earth’s formation.
RATE OF DEPOSITION. Curiously, too, no geologist seems to have checked out the geological column dates with an electronic calculator on a commonsense basis. …For instance the Cretaceous period is said to have lasted 65 million years and is 15,000 meters thick — an average annual rate of deposition of 0.2 millimeters. Now look at the Siluarian period: this, too, yields an average rate of deposition of about 0.2 millimeters per year — as does the Ordovician, the Devonian, the Carboniferous and the rest. …about the thickness of a human hair in a year …such a slow rate would be quite incapable of burying and fossilizing entire forests, dinosaurs, or even a medium-sized tadpole.
HUMAN EVOLUTION. …the evidence for humankind’s own evolution is actually nonexistent.

Psalm 19:1
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmanent sheweth His handywork.; July 8, 2008 11:18 AM
Kyle VanderBeek said...: I agree you share some features, but please correct your post. You say children perceived and "intellectual likeness", when they were only commenting on your appearance. I assume it was an error since you later admit that you aren't his intellectual equal.

Your text is internally inconsistent, but I suppose you're used to that.; July 8, 2008 11:25 AM
Mike and Lizette's Travels and Thoughts said...: david w. irish said... Relativity, which I'm pretty sure you couldn't even correctly paraphrase in a few sentences, much less understand, is far more important a phenomenon, far more useful to humanity, than any religion has ever been.

That may be the case but it is comparatively ashes to the salvation through Christ that God offers.; July 8, 2008 11:49 AM
Paul Brown said...: Well, there we go, boys and girls; absolute proof that God does not exist because, quite simply, if He did, Ray would currently be a smouldering pile of ashes for telling the World's Most Giant Lie Ever (TM) Part 1, to whit:

"I have little in common with Einstein. That’s just not true. We are both Jewish. We both emigrated to the United States. We both believe that we were intelligently designed by God. We are both regularly misquoted by atheists. We both have moustaches. We both kept our hair, and mine has been known to look like his after a restless night's sleep."

Six things in common, three of which arent't even true. You have less things in common with Einstein than Tom Selleck does. I have more things in common with Einstein than you do, and I've got (relatively speaking) nothing in common with him at all. Then you followed up with World's Most Giant Lie Ever (TM) Part 2:

"As they passed me on the plane, I heard them say, "There’s Einstein." I have to say, it puffed me up a little, to think that they perceived an intellectual likeness"

I don't care if you think that's a joke (clearly the world of standup comedy is missing out), a lie that enourmous should have caused God to appear in person and scour it from the minds of anyone exposed to it. Oh, well. As I used to say during my "demonstrations" to Christians, we'll give him twenty minutes and then assume that he isn't coming.

By the way, this post does prove one thing; there is nothing, no matter how stupid, inane, obviously false or even downright crazy, nothing that Ray can say, ever, without his little flock chipping in with "great post, Ray" and "yeah, Ray. Those atheists don't believe in unicorns, but you showed them." Seriously, people: think for yourselves occasionally.; July 8, 2008 12:05 PM
AllFiredUp said...: Harvester, I'd like to check out that book, thanks for the tip!; July 8, 2008 12:11 PM
Rufus said...: Ray Comfort: Please cite your sources for where Albert Einstein ever wrote or said that he believed he was intelligently designed by God. Thank you.; July 8, 2008 12:14 PM
Rufus said...: Harvester:

Richard Milton? Are you cereal? Thanks for the laugh.; July 8, 2008 12:20 PM
Sir Jebbington said...: harvester:
"HUMAN EVOLUTION. …the evidence for humankind’s own evolution is actually nonexistent."
Do you think that the religious should be put in power, so that such research can be stopped? Surely, the research is a waste of resources, since there is apparently no evidence. Those resources should be devoted to forcing people to believe something and restricting their freedoms.
They tried that a few centuries ago.
It was called THE DARK AGES.; July 8, 2008 12:26 PM
Webster Hunt (Parts Man) said...: @irukandji:

This was written by Saul of Tarsus (called Paul) - a man who knew all about being Jewish:

17Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God; 18if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; 19if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, 20an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? 22You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? 24As it is written: "God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."[b]
25Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. 26If those who are not circumcised keep the law's requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? 27The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the[c] written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.

28A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 29No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God.

Ray seems to be a real Jew to me.; July 8, 2008 12:53 PM
erikloza said...: Lighten up, Mr. Brown.; July 8, 2008 1:08 PM
AllFiredUp said...: It's funny how atheists (dale) say that Christians have no sense of humor.

Ray is so funny! He's got a great deal of humor, and that's a great thing.

He could be all feeling sorry for himself about what you guys say about him, but he doesn't, it's like water off a ducks back.

Instead, Ray is the opposite of atheist's super serious attitudes except when it comes to the Law of God and the preaching of the Gospel.

It seems that atheists have no sense of humor.

Ray even mentions "One other thing. Intellectually, I’m not worthy to wash his socks. I guess you already figured that."

If that's not funny...

Atheists, lighten up!; July 8, 2008 1:13 PM
Dimensio said...: Hello Ray, tell me have you ever read the book "Shattering the Myths of Darwinism" by Richard Milton, who by the way is a reputable science journalist and secular evolutionist. He has some interesting statments concerning evolution.

I am curious as to the extent of Mr. Milton's work that you accept as viable. Do you believe, as Milton does, that the sun has a frozen core, or that some human individuals literally possess no brain yet are still able to function normally? Do you believe that the Central Intelligence Agency employs spies who have genuine psychic ability?; July 8, 2008 1:24 PM
euthyphro037 said...: Ray, I have an honest question.

Is God omniscient? If he is, he knows what it would take to persuade me to believe in me.

Is he omnipotent? If he is, then he has the power to persuade me, and being as great as he is, it wouldn't take hardly any effort to do so.

Is God omnibenevolent? If he is, then he would care if I went to hell and he wouldn't want me to go there.

If he's omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient, then why does he not show himself to me like he has shown himself to others.

You don't think I've asked for it? Ray, I've been in tears on the floor asking for God and Jesus to help me, and all I got was silence. I've asked in good faith and he said nothing.

Why doesn't God care enough about me to do the very small task of speaking to me and letting me know he's there.

I'd love if you addressed this in a blog post, but I can't hope for such an honor. You'll probably say something about lies, thieving, and adultery, and how I haven't actually asked God and Jesus to be my guides (even though I have). Even if you think I don't "want" God to be in my heart (even though I don't know how you can know that, since you are not omniscient), it would be such a small task for God to reveal himself to me. If he cares about me, why doesn't he do it?; July 8, 2008 1:38 PM
Iago said...: @Harvester:

Tell you what, tell me why there are no modern mammals in the same rock strata as a T-rex or gorgonopsid?

And since you indicate you do not believe in evolution I will be very specific. Why are the cow,sheep,goat,antelope,elephant, wooly mammoth, mastodon, lion, tiger, bear, dimetrodon, gorgonopsid,hyenadon fossils not in the same rock strata as the dinosaurs?; July 8, 2008 2:12 PM
JHJEFFERY said...: ". . . it is pleasing to me that he humbly acknowledged the One who gave him life . . ."

I studied Einstein at the Master's level in a course specifically devoted to him. I have read three biographies of him and much of his own writing. I can assure you that your statement quoted above is not just false, it is palpably ridiculous.; July 8, 2008 2:20 PM
Noadi said...: Hubris: noun. Excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.

Humble: adjective. Not proud or arrogant; modest.

Just for the record, these are the definitions. Which applies when you are comparing yourself to one of the greatest geniuses in history?; July 8, 2008 2:20 PM
Milo Johnson said...: This is a parody site then, right?; July 8, 2008 2:27 PM
The Inoculated Mind said...: I think when Ray is referring to an "Intellectual Likeness" he is actually trying to be funny, which some people didn't understand. There are two viewpoints which are compatible with his phrase, the first being that the people perceived someone (Comfort) who is intellectually like Einstein, and the second being that the people perceived someone intellectual (Comfort), who is a likeness (physical) to Einstein.
That being said, nothing Ray Comfort has ever said, 'discovered' or argued could in any way compare to the intellectual contributions of Albert Einstein. That's just pure egotism.
By the way, the "Banana" argument is based on pure ignorance of plant breeding, and crop evolution and domestication. Wild "bananas" are tough, seedy, and barely edible. It took the intelligent 'designing' of humans to turn them into seedless delicious, and prolific fruits that we eat today. The only worst nightmare here is Ray Comfort's and it's his lack of basic science literacy.; July 8, 2008 2:29 PM
AllFiredUp said...: This is long, but a must read for those who really want to know what Einstein thought about God. Atheists will usually skim over this without study, and then still say Einstein was an atheist.

Atheists love to quote mine Einstein and don't read in context what he was saying. They bring up issues that Einstein doesn't believe in a personal God and thus say he was atheist - a very illogical conclusion for those that don't know how to read.

Einstein wasn't a Christian, that is for sure, but he also was no atheist.

Einstein said, "I can't answer with a simple yes or no. I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvellously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things."

Einstein and God

Center of Theological Inquiry

By Thomas Torrance

About the Author: Thomas Torrance has taught theology in both Scotland and America, culminating in twenty-seven years of service at the University of Edinburgh. An ordained minister, Dr. Torrance worked for ten years in the parish ministry and served as moderator of the Church of Scotland's General Assembly. His numerous publications include: Space, Time and Incarnation (1969); Theological Science (1969); Christian Theology and Scientific Culture; (1981); The Mediation of Christ (1983); Karl Barth, Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (1990); Preaching Christ Today: The Gospel and Scientific-Thinking (1994); and, most recently, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (1996). He lectured on Einstein at the Center in February, 1997.

In a recent book Max Jammer, Rector Emeritus of Bar Lan University in Jerusalem, a former colleague of Albert Einstein at Princeton, claims that Einstein's understanding of physics and his understanding of religion were profoundly bound together, for it seemed to Einstein that nature exhibited traces of God quite like "a natural theology." Indeed it is with the help of natural science that the thoughts of God may be tapped and grasped. 1 On the subject of Einstein and God Friedrich Dürrenmatt once said, "Einstein used to speak of God so often that I almost looked upon him as a disguised theologian." 2 I do not believe these references to God can be dismissed simply as a façon de parler, for God had a deep, if rather elusive, significance for Einstein which was not unimportant for his life and scientific activity. It indicated a deep-seated way of life and thought: "God" was not a theological mode of thought but rather the expression of a "lived faith" (eines gelebten Glaubens).

Albert Einstein was born in 1879 of secular Jewish parents who lived in Ulm and then in Munich, where he went to school. There in accordance with state law he had to be instructed in his faith; he was taught Judaism because of his ethnic heritage. By the age of twelve Einstein became deeply religious, combining ardent belief in God with a passion for the music of Mozart and Beethoven. He composed songs to the glory of God which he sang aloud to himself on his way to and from school.

Einstein regularly read the Bible, Old and New Testaments alike (which he continued to do throughout his life). He was taught the rudiments of Hebrew, but never mastered it, and he avoided the course for the traditional Bar-Mitzwa. He revelled in mathematics and music, especially in playing the violin, but recoiled from rigid orthodox rites such as those regarding kosher food, 3 compulsory rules, and Talmudic ways of thought. He began to develop a distrust of all authority, including biblical and religious authority. He had an unusually independent attitude of mind, critical but not sceptical, which was accentuated by his resentment against the authoritarian discipline of his German schoolmasters. This led him to give up his uncritical religious fervour in order to liberate himself from what he spoke of as "the only personal", but without becoming atheistic or hostile to religion.
He never lost his admiration for the fundamental ends and aspirations of the "Jewish-Christian religious tradition", and had no doubt of the significance of what he called those "superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation". 4 It was in this independent spirit, as "a typical loner", as he spoke of himself, without personal religious commitment, but with deep religious awe, that he cultivated and retained throughout his life unabated wonder at the immensity, unity, rational harmony, and mathematical beauty of the universe.

Later in life in a speech delivered in Berlin, he gave this illuminating account of himself:

Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated. The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that is there. 5

Before Albert was sixteen when he would have been obliged to undertake military training, he decided to move from school, leave Germany, give up German citizenship, and join his parents who had moved to Italy. Instead of continuing his education in Italy, however, Einstein chose to attend a school in Aarau in Switzerland where he enjoyed a rather freer mode of study and continued to cultivate his passion for Mozart and physics and think out things in his own way. As he was not an ethnic Swiss he was exempted from military training, which gave him time to indulge in extra-curricular pursuits, such as natural history expeditions with friends. He taught himself calculus and kept musing and thinking about light: "wondering especially what things might look like if someone went along for the ride with a light wave, keeping pace with it as it travelled through space". 6

When he was seventeen he finally announced his exit from the Jewish Religious Fellowship. After Aarau Einstein went to Zürich where he took courses in electrical engineering at its world famous Polytechnic. This led eventually to his first employment in a technical school at Wintertur, and then at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern, where he wrote his early epoch-making scientific papers published in Annalen der Physik for 1905.

Particularly interesting for our understanding of what Einstein held about God was his marriage to Mileva Maric, whom he had met in the physics classes, who belonged to a Greek Orthodox family in Serbia. While it was not personal belief or religious faith but physics which brought them together, there can be little doubt that it left some imprint on what he was to think and say of God, evident in the use he frequently made of terms such as "transcendent" and "incarnate" to speak of "the cosmic intelligence" which lay behind the universe of space and time, which seems to indicate that there was rather more than just a way of speaking in what he said and thought of God. This is clearly reflected in an interview which Einstein later in life gave to an American magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, in 1929:

"To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?"

"As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."

"Have you read Emil Ludwig's book on Jesus?"

"Emil Ludwig's Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot."

"You accept the historical Jesus?"

"Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life." 7

In view of this interview it is understandable that Einstein is reported to have said that Christ Jesus was the greatest of all Jews.

Be that as it may, Einstein remained generally committed to the Jewish tradition and outlook, a commitment which became more and more resolute in face of Nazi attacks on himself and his Jewish scientific friends in Berlin, where he was appointed a Professor in 1913. The following year his wife Mileva with his two sons joined him in Berlin, but returned almost immediately to Switzerland–she hated Germany. Einstein wept when she left him–they were reluctantly divorced. He had once written to her, "You are and will remain a shrine for me to which no one has access." Several years later he married a cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, a widow in Berlin, who with her daughter Margot cherished him throughout the rest of his life. He continued to pursue his scientific research and teaching in Berlin, in spite of the Nazi campaign against the Universities, and the vilification of Einstein's special and general theory of relativity, especially after his publication of Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie in Annalen der Physik in 1916.

Einstein's fearless championing of academic freedom finally drove him and Michael Polanyi, his Jewish colleague in Berlin, abroad. Einstein went to Princeton and Polanyi went to Manchester. Throughout his years in Berlin, Einstein had retained the admiration and support of Max von Laue and Max Planck, but objections to nominations for the award of the Nobel Prize to Einstein were lodged year after year, in fact six times, by several leading German physicists, notably by the virulently anti-Semitic Nobel Laureate Philip Lenard. The award was finally made in 1922, for his work, not on relativity, but on the photoelectric effect–Einstein sent the prize money to Mileva.

The bitter persecution of the Jews in Germany had the effect of drawing Einstein into closer relations also with Christian people, as his personal friendships with Max and Heidi Born who had become Quakers in Edinburgh, and with the Ross Stevensons and Blackwoods of Princeton Theological Seminary, make clear. When the Rev. Andrew Blackwood handed him a magazine clipping about the interview published in the Saturday Evening Post, and asked him if it was accurate, he read it carefully and answered, "That is what I believe". 8

While the hounding and harrowing slaughter of Jews in Germany, and attacks on him by anti-semitic Americans, had the effect of making Einstein more and more resolute in open affirmation of his Jewishness, deepening the bond with his fellow Jews, they also had the effect of deepening his appreciation of the Christian Church and its opposition to Hitler and the holocaust. Here is a paragraph from a letter Einstein once sent to an American Episcopal Bishop about the behaviour of the Church during the holocaust.

Being a lover of freedom...I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom, but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly. 9

Let me relate here what a friend of mine in Princeton told me about an illuminating event one day during the war, when Einstein learned of a prayer-meeting where Christians gathered to make intercession for Jews in Germany. To their surprise Einstein came along from his home at 112 Mercer Street with his violin and asked if he might join them. They welcomed him warmly, and he "prayed' with his violin. Yet in relation to petitionary prayer Einstein not infrequently reacted against "the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfilment of their wishes", for that implied for him, as we will note, a selfish "anthropomorphic" idea of God which he rejected. 10

I associate that incident in Princeton when he joined a prayer meeting with his violin, with another event which took place in 1929 in Berlin, told to me by Max Jammer in a recent letter. It was the occasion when Yehudi Menuhin, the great Jewish violinist, gave a recital at a concert on Beethoven, Bach and Brahms, by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter. Einstein was so overwhelmed that he rushed across the stage into Menuhin's dressing room, and exclaimed, "Jetzt weiss ich, dass es einen Gott im Himmel gibt"—"Now I know that there is a God in heaven." 11 What does all this tell us about Einstein the scientist and "God"? That is a matter which calls for a more considered thought than is usually given. And so, in the rest of this lecture I would like to address myself to two questions: 1) What did "God" mean for Einstein himself, and 2) What did "God" imply for his mathematical and physical science?
What Did "God" Mean for Einstein?

Early in his life Einstein came to refer to God as "cosmic intelligence" which he did not think of in a personal but in a "super-personal" way, for, as he learned from Spinoza, the term "personal" when applied to human beings cannot as such be applied to God. 12 Nevertheless he resorted to the Jewish-Christian way of speaking of God who reveals himself in an ineffable way as truth which is its own certainty. Spinoza held that "truth is its own standard". "Truth is the criterion of itself and of the false, as light reveals itself and darkness," so that "he who has a true idea, simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt concerning the truth of the thing perceived." 13 Hence once a thing is understood it goes on manifesting itself in the power of its own truth without having to provide for further proof. 14 Thus when God reveals himself to our minds, our understanding of him is carried forward by the intrinsic force of his truth as it continually impinges on our minds and presses for fuller realization within them.

In this way Einstein thought of God as revealing himself in the wonderful harmony and rational beauty of the universe, which calls for a mode of non-conceptual intuitive response in humility, wonder and awe which he associated with science and art. It was particularly in relation to science itself, however, that Einstein felt and cultivated that sense of wonder and awe. Once when Ernest Gordon, Dean of Princeton University Chapel, was asked by a fellow Scot, the photographer Alan Richards, how he could explain Einstein's combination of great intellect with apparent simplicity, he said, "I think it was his sense of reverence." 15 That was very true: Einstein's religious and scientific instinct were one and the same, for behind both it was his reverent intuition for God, his unabated awe at the thoughts of "the Old One", that was predominent.

Although Einstein was not himself a committed Jewish believer he would certainly have agreed with the call of Rabbi Shmuel Boteach today to restore God himself, rather than halacha, as the epicentre of Judaism. 16

Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. 17

That statement comes from his 1939 address to Princeton Theological Seminary, but far from being unique, it is reflected in statement after statement he made about science, religion, and God.

Count Kessler once said to him, "Professor! I hear that you are deeply religious." Calmly and with great dignity, Einstein replied, "Yes, you can call it that. Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious." 18

Einstein was certainly no positivist. Here are some other statements Einstein made about this.

By way of the understanding he [the scientist] achieves a far-reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes and desires, and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind towards the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, and which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man. This attitude, however, appears to me to be religious, in the highest sense of the word. And so it seems to me that science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.19

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior Spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. The deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning Power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. 20

Yet again:

You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar religious feeling of his own . . . .His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. 21

Still again, in another version of this statement, Einstein said:

Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. The firm belief, which is bound up with deep feeling, in a superior mind revealing himself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God, which may, therefore be described in common parlance as `pantheistic' (Spinoza). 22

What did Einstein mean, then, when he referred to God as "cosmic intelligence", "the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence", to which he not infrequently referred in a Talmudic expression as "the Old One"? He was not always consistent so that it is not easy to grasp precisely what he meant. But it seems clear that he conceived of God as the ultimate spiritual ground of all rational order which transcends what the scientist works with as natural laws–a point to which we shall return later–but unlike the Jewish-Christian religion he did not think of that in what he called a "personal" or "anthropomorphic" way, that is, as a God conceived in man's image, but in a "superpersonal" (ausserpersönlichen) way freed from the fetters of the "only personal" (Nur-Persönlichen), or people's selfish desires.

What is important is the force of this superpersonal content and depth of the conviction concerning its overpowering meaningfulness, regardless of whether an attempt is made to unite this content with the divine Being for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly, a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance and loftiness of these superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation. 23

Einstein was often asked, "Do you believe in God?", to which he sometimes replied "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all being". 24 "By God", Spinoza wrote at the very beginning of his Ethica, "I mean a being absolutely infinite-that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality". Proposition XV of the Ethica stated: "Whatever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived." 25

Einstein certainly held, as his constant appeal to God showed, that without God nothing can be known, but what did he really mean by his appeal to Spinoza? Once in answer to the question "Do you believe in the God of Spinoza?" Einstein replied as follows:

I can't answer with a simple yes or no. I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvellously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things. 26

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society, Spinoza declared, "I do not think it necessary for salvation to know Christ according to the flesh: but with the Eternal Son of God, that is the Eternal Wisdom of God, which had manifested itself in all things, and especially in the human mind, and above all in Christ Jesus, the case is far otherwise." 27 He himself, he claimed, "paid homage to the Books of the Bible, rather than to the Word of God." 28 Spinoza read the New Testament Scriptures as well as the Old Testament Scriptures, e.g. St John's Gospel and the Epistle to the Hebrews, in a Hebraic way. He complained to Henry Oldenburg: "You think that the texts in John's Gospel and in Hebrews are inconsistent with what I advance, because you measure oriental phrases by the standards of European speech; though John wrote his Gospel in Greek, he wrote it as a Hebrew." 29 That is what John Reuchlin used to call veritas Hebraica. 30 When another Jew, Martin Buber, whom Einstein had known for forty years, one day in Princeton pressed him hard to reveal his religious belief, Einstein said, "What we [physicists] strive for . . . is just to draw his lines after him." The deeper one penetrates into nature's secrets, he declared, the greater becomes one's respect for God.

Einstein held that the main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lay in "the concept of a personal God" for that was to think of God in an anthropomorphic way, and to project into him figurative images and human psychological notions of personality, which give rise, he held, to religious practices of worship and notions of providence shaped in accordance with human selfish desires. That did not mean that Einstein thought of God merely in some impersonal way, for, as we have noted, he thought of relation to God in a sublime superpersonal way which he confessed he was unable to grasp or express and before which he stood in unbounded awe and wonder. Hence he felt it deeply when Cardinal O'Connell of Boston charged him with being an atheist. 31 When a newspaperman once accosted him in California with the question, "Doctor is there a God?", Einstein turned away with tears in his eyes. 32

What, then, did Einstein mean by claiming to believe in Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, the intellectual love of God, the highest happiness that man can know? He was approving of Spinoza's idea that to be rational is to love God and to love God is to be rational, so that for one to engage in science is to think the thoughts of God after him. With Spinoza, however, that involved the outright identification of God with nature, a causally concatenated whole, whereas, as we have seen, with Einstein the Verständlichkeit of God was so exalted that it could not be reduced to the logico-causal intelligibilities of nature. A transcendent relation had to be taken into account.

As a Jew himself Einstein naturally resonated with Spinoza, the greatest of all modern Jewish philosophers, for they shared in the traditional unitary concept of man as body of his soul and soul of his body. Although there was much in Spinoza's philosophy which Einstein could not accept, what did appeal to him was Spinoza's rejection of Cartesian and other forms of dualism, and his unitary conception of the universe with its inherent rational harmony. That was both a help and a problem for Einstein. It fuelled his great drive toward unified field-theory, and his rejection of a dualism between time and space, wave and particle, relativity theory and quantum theory, but Spinoza's logico-mathematical and hard causalist uniformity gave rise to an absolute rigid determinism which conflicted with Einstein's realist and dynamic understanding of the openness of the universe, in his rejection of the closed Euclidean system of the world.

Here let me refer to a very interesting letter, recorded by Helen Dukas, which Einstein wrote to a child who asked him whether scientists prayed.

I have tried to respond to your question as simply as I could. Here is my answer. Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being. However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research. But, on the other hand, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive. 33

This brings me to my second question.
What Did "God" Imply for Einstein's Mathematical and Physical Science?

Early in his career Einstein's studies of Newton and Kepler convinced him that there is no logical path to knowledge of the laws of nature, for there is no logical bridge between phenomena and their theoretical principles. 34 This was greatly reinforced by his study of James Clerk Maxwell. 35 It is the extra-logical problem, he held, that is essential, namely, the ontological reference of thought to reality. 36 Within the preestablished harmony of the universe, "ideas come from God"–they are revealed to the mind tuned into the master plan of the universe, and are apprehended through intuition resting on sympathetic understanding of experience. "He [the scientist] has to persist in his helpless attitude towards the separate results of empirical research, until principles which he can make the basis of deductive reasoning have revealed themselves to him." 37 "The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those elementary universal laws from which the cosmos can be built up by deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them...There is no logical bridge between phenomena and their theoretical principles; that is what Leibnitz described so happily as a 'preestablished harmony.'" 39

Einstein used to speak of this non-logical, intuitive way of reaching knowledge, as "tapping into God's thoughts". 40 "The deeper one penetrates into nature's secrets, the greater becomes one's respect for God." 41 Once when drawing out the implications of relativity theory in an amusing way which he hoped was in tune with the thoughts of God, he said "I cannot possibly know whether the good Lord does not laugh at it and has led me up the garden path"! 42 I think of that in connection with the fact that the equations of relativity theory predict their own limits, and thus direct us back to a zero point in the expansion of the universe from what is commonly known as "the black hole", which, as Henry Margenau held, implied the principle of creatio ex nihilo. 43 Einstein pointed out that "one must not conclude that the beginning [of the expansion of the universe] must mean a singularity in the mathematical sense." Then he added: "This consideration does, however, not alter the fact that the 'beginning of the world' really constitutes a beginning." 44 Such a beginning, a creatio ex nihilo, was of course an idea which was ruled out by Spinoza's Deus sive Natura notion of God as an infinite, eternal self-creating substance, and of his conception of the universe as non-contingent and completely necessary in its identification with God.

Now in order to indicate something of what "God" meant for Einstein's science, let us consider the bearing of three of his often repeated epigrammatic 'sayings' about God: "God does not play dice"; "God does not wear his heart on his sleeve"; and "the Lord is subtle but not malicious."
"God does not play dice".

This seems to have been suggested by one of the propositions of Spinoza's Ethics, "In the nature of things nothing accidental is granted, but all things are determined by the necessity of the divine nature for existing and working in a certain way. In short, there is nothing accidental in nature." 45 "God does not play dice" was asserted again and again by Einstein in connection with his belief in a fully rational world of law and order, and in rejection of the appeal to random elements in certain forms of quantum theory, e.g. the so-called "uncertainty principle" put forward by Heisenberg. Far from having explanatory value, what is called chance is after all a negative way of thinking, or rather a way of not thinking. Einstein's "God" would not allow him to rest content with anything less than a rigorous scientific description of the intrinsic orderliness of nature at its micro-physical as well as at every other level of reality. Einstein once wrote of his objections to the then current form of quantum theory that his view of the matter "does not represent a blind-man's buff with the idea of reality". 46

"God does not play dice" imports a belief in an objective intelligibility in the continuous dynamic structures and transformations in the space-time reality of the universe which we may apprehend, but only at relatively elementary levels through open structures, even though they are mathematically precise in their formalisation. As I understand him, even Heisenberg toward the end of his life concluded that in quantum theory the scientist is in touch with nature which in its depth is so subtle and elusive that it cannot be explained in terms of the couplet "chance and necessity". That "God does not play dice" highlights the fact that chance is after all a negative way of thinking, or rather a way not to think. This is a lesson I believe that many scientists today, especially perhaps in biology, need to learn-their appeal to "chance" too often appears to be a sort of "scientist's God of the gaps"!

Behind all Einstein's thought lay the role given in the Jewish-Christian religion to the primacy and constancy of light. Recall the Genesis account of creation–the primacy of light: "And God said, Let there by light: and there was light." God is himself eternal uncreated Light, but he created the universe in such a way that it is governed by created light. We cannot see light, but see only what is lit up by light. We shall return to this later. It is through deciphering light signals that all our knowledge of the cosmos in macroscopic and microscopic levels is learned. We owe that to James Clerk Maxwell who discovered the mathematical properties of light, and the central role they have in scientific theory. Clerk Maxwell was followed by Einstein in giving light a primary place in his scientific description of the space/time universe.

As Hermann Weyl, Einstein's colleague in Princeton, expressed Einstein's understanding of light: all bodies in motion are defined relationally in terms of space and time, and space and time are defined relationally with reference to light, but light is NOT defined with reference to anything else. Light has a unique physical and metaphysical status in the universe–it is an ultimate factor, the Constant expressed as C in scientific equations. (thus Einstein's famous formula, E = MC 2 ). If light were not constant, if the movement of light varied or wobbled in any way, there would be no order, only random disorderly events, chaos. It is light that reveals the orderly nature of things. That is why Einstein recoiled from giving random or chance-events a role in scientific explanation or the formulation of scientific theory. The constancy of light throughout the created order reflects the faithfulness of God of which the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures all speak–God does not play dice. Yes, it was Einstein's belief in God, in God as the ultimate ground of all order, rational and moral order, that governed his scientific thinking and daily life. Spinoza, no less than Einstein, believed in the faithfulness of God–but the oneness he posited between God and nature meant for Spinoza that the kind of order he envisaged was of a determinist kind to be understood in terms of rigid logico-causal connections.

Now there are clearly deep problems here in Einstein's appeal to the God of Spinoza. Like Spinoza he was right to reject a strict bifurcation of nature into mind and body, subject and object, but what of Spinoza's rigidly logical and causalist conception of God and the universe? In insisting that "God does not play dice", Einstein was accused, for example by Max Born, of being a hardline determinist, but as Wolfgang Pauli showed, writing to Born in Edinburgh from Princeton, 47 Einstein was not a determinist but a realist, with the conviction that, in line with Clerk Maxwellian field theory and general relativity theory, nature is governed by profound levels of intelligible connection that cannot be expressed in the crude terms of classical causality and traditional mathematics. He was convinced that the deeper forms of intelligibility being brought to light in relativity and quantum theory cannot be understood in terms of the classical notions of causality–they required what he called Übercausalität–supercausality. And this called for "an entirely new kind of mathematical thinking", not least in unified field theory–that was a kind of mathematics he did not even know, but which someone must find. 48
"God does not wear his heart on his sleeve".

In their Jewish tradition both Einstein and Spinoza adhered strictly to the second Commandment that forbade thinking of God in any image or visible form. With Spinoza this was evidently reflected in his rejection of sense-perception as a mode of genuine objective knowledge. That is also the fundamental idea expressed in the statement "God does not wear his heart on his sleeve" which Einstein applied to physical science. It formulates the profound conviction that the real secrets of nature, its hidden intelligible order cannot be read off appearances, or be logically derived from the observational patterns of its phenomenal surface, but only by "tapping into the thoughts of God" as he "reveals" them to us. We cannot see God, but we may see him in the light of his own light. As the Hebrew Psalmist declared, "In thy light we see light."

Let us recall here the point noted earlier about the central role of light in the created universe. There we were concerned with the constancy of light, but here our concern is with the invisibility of light. It is through deciphering the mathematical patterns carried by light signals that all our knowledge of the space/time universe in its vast or tiny dimensions is derived. This understanding of light initiated an immense revolution in scientific inquiry, for it meant that the invisible is not to be explained in terms of the visible, but the visible in terms of the invisible. We do not see light itself, but see only what is lit up by light–"grasping reality in its depth", "tapping into the thoughts of the Old One", as Einstein used to say. "God does not wear his heart on his sleeve."

This is not to say that Einstein was concerned to look for hidden causes detached from, or of a different category from, the ordered regularity we experience in our everyday world, for he was just as concerned to reject the 'occult' as Bacon and Newton, and was even more concerned than they were, because he would have nothing to do with the kind of dualism upon which the occult seemed to thrive. Einstein's concern was rather to penetrate into the deep invisible dynamic ontological structure of the ordered regularity of things to which the phenomenal patterns of that regularity are coordinated, and by which they are controlled. That is particularly evident in the epistemological revolution brought about by general relativity theory which showed that empirical and theoretical factors, being and form, belong together at all levels of nature and our knowledge of it.

Hence scientific inquiry must penetrate into the inner imageless constitutive structure of things, which is invariant through all relativity for the human knower, and which can be grasped not through observational or phenomenological investigation but only by intellective penetration or intuitive insight. While the outward shape on the surface of existence remains observable and imageable, and is variant for every observer, the invisible imageless ontological structure remains constant and invariant for all observers. As such it provides the objective frame underlying the observable variations correlated with it, and therein constitutes the integrative force of their order on the phenomenal level, even of their surface connection with appearances.

To grasp nature like that intuitively and unitively in its objective depth and inherent relatedness, and in such as way as to do full justice to the differences and relativities of our observational experience without allowing them to disintegrate into pluralistic relativism, is what rigorous science is about. But it does mean that we have to think in a dimension of ontological depth in which the surface of things is coordinated with a deep invisible, intelligible structure, and thus think empirical and theoretical factors, phenomenal and noumenal levels of reality together, if we are really to reach knowledge of things in accordance with their distinctive nature and constitutive ground. "God does not wear his heart on his sleeve".

There is, however, a deep difference here between Einstein's thought and that of Spinoza. Spinoza's philosophy was in its way a Jewish form of the old Latin Stoic idea of deus sive natura, for according to him there is only one all-inclusive self-caused substance "God or nature" which he identified with the universe conceived as an infinite necessary whole and which is to be understood only in a logical-causal way–for him "God" was in no sense transcendent to the universe. In contrast Einstein's formulation of the principle that "God does not wear his heart on his sleeve", imports a profounder sense of the astonishing intelligibility (Verständlichkeit) of the universe and its incomprehensible transcendent ground in God. "The scientist", he said, "is activated by a wonder and awe before the mysterious comprehensibility of the universe which is yet finally beyond his grasp". 49 "In its profoundest depths it is inaccessible to man". 50 That is why, for Einstein, science without religion is lame.
"Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not."

This saying, now engraved above a fireplace of the faculty lounge of the Mathematics Department in Princeton, is the translation of Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft is Er Nicht. 51 By that Einstein said he meant "Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse." 52 It was, like the other sayings, often repeated, not always in the same words. I prefer the stronger form: Raffiniert is der Herr God, aber hinterlistig ist Er nicht, which suggests that while God is subtle he is not wily or artful, he is deep but not devious–he does not deceive us or play tricks with us.

If "God does not wear his heart on his sleeve" is meant to express the idea that the secrets of nature cannot be read off its phenomenal surface, "God is deep but not devious" expresses the complexity and subtlety yet ultimate simplicity and reliability of the universe. That is to say, the immanent order hidden behind the intricate and often baffling complex of connections which we find in the universe is essentially trustworthy, for in spite of all that might appear to the contrary when we come up against sets of events for which there seems to be no rational explanation, the universe is not arbitrary or evil, but unitary and trustworthy in its intelligibility.

This conviction relates to the point, to which I have referred earlier, that light has a unique physical and metaphysical status in the universe. If all bodies in motion are defined with reference to space and time, all space and time are defined with reference to light. Undefined by reference beyond itself, light is the great Constant, with reference to which all else we know in nature is relationally ordered, known and defined, and upon which we invariably rely. That holds good in spite of the fact that in our atomic and sub-atomic investigations, in terrestrial and astrophysical explorations of the universe as far as we can reach through space and time, we meet problems which may appear intractable to the laws of physics, as hitherto formalised. Throughout all the dynamic multivariable structures that pervade the universe of bodies in motion, somehow the constancy of light with its unique metaphysical status supports the conviction that "God does not play tricks with us". That is to say, there is an immanent order in the universe of the inviolability of which we remain totally convinced, for apart from it the universe would nowhere be accessible to rational inquiry and we ourselves who are creatures of space and time belonging to the universe could not be capable of rational thought or behaviour of any kind. Thus while in the logical sense belief in order in the universe is neither verifiable nor falsifiable, it remains the most persistent of all scientific convictions, for without it there could be no science at all; hence we do not believe that there is or could be anything that can ultimately count against it. God is faithful, and does not let us down; he is always trustworthy.

That was a conviction to which Einstein remained very firmly committed in place of the claims of the quantum theorists who called in question the deep invariable order in the sub-atomic realm, where nature appeared to be causally discontinuous, and irrational. Einstein had himself to face a similar problem over the implications of general relativity for our understanding of a non-Euclidean universe of curved space, when he insisted that "as far as mathematical propositions refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain they do not refer to reality." 53 Traditional logic applies to flat and not to curved space, so that new ways of thought are called for, which do not conform to the classical laws of logic and physics. That is why instead of going along entirely with the Copenhagen-G246ttingen form of quantum theory, Einstein pointed to the need for "an entirely new kind of mathematics" to cope with the profound intelligible relations with which quantum scientists sought to grapple. 54 A profound revolution in the logical structure of science was needed, in line with and in development of the logical structure of science initiated by Clerk Maxwell, when he called for "a new mathesis" in mathematics, and pointed to the need for a dynamic kind of mathematics with time relations built into it.

All this is to say, that in mathematical and scientific explanation a deeper more subtle way of thinking is needed, in which new factors of profound rationality have to be taken into account. God is subtle but not malicious or devious, and he does not lead us up the garden path, or ask us to play blind man's buff!

The way that Einstein so often connected the notion of Order with God reflects the fact that order is one of the ultimate beliefs which, while rational, cannot be proved–for we have to assume order either in trying to prove or disprove it–all rational order points beyond itself to an ultimate ground of order. That is why Einstein could not be an atheist, if only because apart from God the transcendent ground of all order, there could be no rational thought, let alone any science.

Now in concluding this lecture let me recall a point of great importance which few scientists today have taken up or perhaps dared to take into account. It is here that we can discern Einstein's sharpest deviation from the God of Spinoza. It was his adherence to Spinoza's rejection of dualism, and his insistence on the rational unity and lawful harmony of the universe, which made Einstein give so much attention for many years to the development of a unified field theory, one in which, for example, relativity theory and quantum theory could be united in a universal rational structure.

Already in 1929 Einstein had raised a matter of great importance in this connection. 55 He pointed out that science has now reached the stage where it cannot be satisfied simply with describing how nature is what it is in its ongoing processes, but must press on to ask "why nature is what it is and not something else". 56 That is to say, science must not be satisfied with determining the laws of how nature as a matter of fact behaves, for if it wants to understand their "logical unity", to which he himself was committed in unified field theory, then science must penetrate into the transcendent ground of those laws and find the ultimate justification for them. Einstein went on to say that this might appear to be a rather "Promethean" undertaking, but here we have to do with what he called "the religious basis of scientific enterprise." 57

To introduce the question Why? back into the inner structure of natural and physical science was to reject the rationalistic dualism of the Enlightenment between the how and the why to which are to be traced the damaging splits in western culture, but it was also to point to God as the ultimate ground of all rational order and the transcendent reason for all the laws of nature. What a startling light that throws upon what Einstein himself really meant by "God"! It is only from God that we can understand the why or the fundamental purpose of the created universe.

In view of this conviction, let me note two things. (1) Einstein never gave any attention to the problem of evil–evil is ultimately irrational and inexplicable, an abysmal mystery, as St Paul called it. There is no reason why to evil. (2) As far as I know, Einstein showed no interest in redemption–either in the biblical significance of atonement, or in the Jewish celebration of Yom Kippur. Yet it is only from God who does not play dice, who does not wear his heart on his sleeve, and who is deep but not devious, that we may be given an understanding of the ultimate reason for the created universe, and of his redemptive purpose for a world that has gone astray. It may be interesting to note that another Jewish scientist, Ilya Prigogine, who is not a believer, yet not a determinist like Spinoza who had no place in his thought for "time", has actually spoken of time as "redeemable". 58
Notes for Einstein and God

1. Max Jammer, Einstein und Die Religion, Konstantz, 1995.
2. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Albert Einstein, Z ürich, 1979, p.12, cited by Max Jammer, op. cit. p. 54: "Einstein pflegte so oft von Gott zu sprechen, dass ich beinahe vermute, er sei ein verkappter Theologe gewesen."
3. While in his religious years he tried to dissuade his parents from eating pork, it is related of a later occasion that when he and some friends were entering a restaurant, an Orthodox Jew asked whether the food was strictly kosher, Einstein replied, "Only an ox eats strictly kosher"! Denis Brian, Einstein, A Life, New York, 1996, p.128. But Einstein was never disrespectful of the beliefs and habits of his orthodox friends.
4. Cf. Abraham Pais, 'Subtle is the Lord...', Oxford, 1982, p. 319. Cf. also Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, New York, 1954; "The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition." See also Max Jammer, op.cit. p. 48f.
5. Cited in Brian, op. cit., p. 234.
6. Ibid., p. 12.
7. George Sylvester Viereck, "What Life Means to Einstein", The Saturday Evening Post, 26 October 1929.
8. Brian, op. cit., p. 277f.
9. Reported in The Evening News, Baltimore, April 13, 1979.
10. See his 1939 address to Princeton Theological Seminary, Ideas and Opinions, p.46.
11. This is also recounted by Brian, op. cit., p. 193.
12. Cf. Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza, revised edition, Harmondsworth, 1962, p. 49: "It is a general principle in Spinoza's philosophy, which he constantly repeats to prevent misunderstandings, that no term when applied to God can possibly bear the meaning which it has when applied to human beings."
13. The Chief Works of Benedict De Spinoza, Vol. II, Ethica, Proposition XLIII, translated and edited by R.H.M. Elwes, London, 1889, p. 114; De Intellectus Emendatione, pp. 12-19. Cf. Hampshire, Spinoza, p. 99f.
14. Tractatus de intellectus emendatione, ed. Elwes, p. 19.
15. Alan Windsor Richards, Einstein as I Knew Him, Princeton, 1979.
16. Rabbi Shmuel Boteach, The Jewish Chronicle, 26.10.96.
17. Ideas and Opinions, p. 46.
18. Cited by Brian, op. cit. p. 161.
19. Out of My Later Years, New York, 1950, p. 32; and Ideas And Opinions, p. 49.
20. Cited by Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Einstein, New York, 1948, Mentor soft cover edition, 1963, p. 109.
21. Ideas and Opinions, p. 40.
22. Einstein, The World as I See It, London, 1955, p. 131.
23. Ideas and Opinions, p. 44f. In his reference to Buddha Einstein may have had Ben Gurion in mind or even David Bohm! Cf. the discussion, reported by Max Jammer, which Einstein once had with Rabindranath Tagore about his book The Religion of Man, when Einstein said: "I am more religious than you are!" Op. cit. p. 43.
24. Brian, op. cit. p. 127.
25. See the translation by Elwes, London, pp. 45 and 51.
26. Brian, op. cit. p. 186.
27. Spinoza's Correspondence, letter LXXXIII-see Spinoza's Works, Vol. II, p. 299.
28. A Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza's Works, vol. I, p.9.
29. Letter XXIII (LXXV), The Chief Works of Spinoza, Vol. II, p. 303.
30. John Reuchlin, De Verbo Mirifico, 1552, 2.7, p. 129. Cf. my essay "The Hermeneutics of John Reuchlin, 1455-1522", Church, Word and Spirit: Historical and Theological Essays in Honor of Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Edited by J.E. Bradley and R.A. Muller, Grand Rapids, 1987, pp. 107-121.
31. Cf. Jammer, op. cit. p.54; and Albert Einstein–The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, Princeton University Press, 1979, p.132.
32. Brian, op. cit. p. 206.
33. Dukas and Hoffmann, op. cit. p. 32f. My attention has been drawn to this passage by Mark Koonz, formerly of Princeton Theological Seminary.
34. Einstein, The World as I See It, p. 125f.
35. See The Evolution of Physics, from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta, by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, New York, 1938, pp. 125ff; and "Maxwell's Influence on the Development of the Conception of Physical Reality", by Einstein, reproduced in my edition of James Clerk Maxwell, A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, Edinburgh, 1982, pp. 29-32.
36. Ibid. p. 174.
37. Ibid. p. 128; and see the essay on "Physics and Reality", Out of My Later Years., pp. 60ff.
38. The World as I See It, p. 125f.
39. Brian, op. cit. pp. 61 and 173.
40. . p. 129.
41. . p. 67.
42. Henry Margenau, Thomas and the Physics of 1958, Milwaukee, 1958, pp.
43. See Jammer, op. cit., pp. 102f. and 115.
44. A. Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity, Princeton, 1953, p. 129.
45. Baruch Spinoza, Ethica, proposition XXIX: In rerum natura nullum datur contingens, sed omnia ex necessitate divinae naturae determinata sunt ad certo modo existendum et operandum. English translationd by Andrew Boyle, Everyman's Library, vol. 481, London, 1959, p. 23. See also Jammer, op. cit. p. 38f.
46. Irene Born, The Born-Einstein Correspondence, London, 1971, p. 180f.
47. Ibid. pp. 217-218 and 322-224.
48. Brian, op. cit., p. 370.
49. Einstein, Out of My Later Years, pp. 30,60.
50. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, p. 49; cf. also p. 40.
51. Thus Brian, op. cit. p. 127.
52. See Pais, op. cit., frontispiece.
53. "Geometry and Experience", the 1921 lecture to the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Ideas and Opinions, p. 233.
54. Brian, op. cit. p. 370.
55. "Über den Gegenwärtigen Stand der Feld-Theorie", Festschrift zum 70 Geburtstag von Prof. Dr A. Stodola, Zürich, 1929, pp. 126-132.
56. Ibid., p. 126: "Wir wollen nicht nur wissen wie de Natur is (und wie ihre Vorgänge ablaufen), sondern wir wollen...wissen warum die Natur so and nicht anders ist."
57. Ibid., p. 127.
58. "The Rediscovery of Time", Zygon, Journal of Religion and Science, December, 1984, Vol. 19, No. 4, p. 444, with reference to T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton".

Center of Theological Inquiry; July 8, 2008 2:36 PM
PrincessTinkles said...: Lofy claims require lofty evidence my friend. Einstein never explicitly nor implicitly stated he believed his existance was the result of a creative act by his Cosmic Force.; July 8, 2008 2:37 PM
The American Atheist said...: Harvester said:
"such a slow rate would be quite incapable of burying and fossilizing entire forests, dinosaurs, or even a medium-sized tadpole."

Harvester, which part of "average annual rate of deposition" do you find confusing? That doesn't mean .2 mm was laid down every year, it could have been 50 meters one year and -1.020404 meters for the next 49 years, for an average of .2 mm per year.

Learn to think.

Harvester:
"the evidence for humankind’s own evolution is actually nonexistent"

Wrong, there is plenty of evidence simply by comparing the human and chimpanzee genomes.

Harvester:
"Psalm 19:1
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmanent sheweth His handywork."

As long as we're quoting works of fiction:
"Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth."
"Ender's Game" pg. 241; July 8, 2008 2:40 PM
Mark W Laine said...: Good post Ray the ah-theists will surely express themselves, over this post, in a much nuttier way than their usual lunatic ravings.

Course it seems the same ah-theist loons are still here. They must have nothing better to do passing their time here on earth before returning to dust and entering into hell.

Yawn!!!; July 8, 2008 2:45 PM
Mark W Laine said...: To euthyprho037,

Is it possible that God is speaking to you right now through me and asking you to go buy a book called "The Shack".

This is a book that might very well help you understand God a little better and the rationale for what the Trinity is and why God does not show himself so as to impede your free will.

It is a well written book and might shed some very interesting light upon God so that you too might begin to have a relationship with God through His son Jesus.

Read the book and wake up from your nightmare. Stop demanding God perform like a puppetmaster for your entertainment and you will do much better.

I can tell you for a fact...God is very fond of you but you have a lot of sin to repent from. Do so and live.; July 8, 2008 2:54 PM
Lance Christian Johnson said...: JHJeffrey wrote,

I studied Einstein at the Master's level in a course specifically devoted to him. I have read three biographies of him and much of his own writing. I can assure you that your statement quoted above is not just false, it is palpably ridiculous.

Hey pal, you probably have facts to back up what you're saying. Well, we're just not interested in that sort of a thing around here.; July 8, 2008 2:56 PM
Atomic Chimp said...: Ray, I never claimed Einstein was an Atheist, nor do any of my Atheist friends. I cannot speak for all on this blog but I'm sure they are well aware that he might not be an Atheist, although Einstein said he would be considered an atheist "from the point of view of a Jesuit priest" , but he was not a believer in a personal God like you at all. Einstein believed in a deity completely unconcerned with human affairs. I think Deist would be a more appropriate term.

Your misrepresentation of Einstein's beliefs and comparing of yourself to him is insulting and egotistical.

Word is Bond!
~Atomic Chimp; July 8, 2008 3:00 PM
Dimensio said...: 28A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 29No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God.

Ray seems to be a real Jew to me.

Fascinating. I was unaware that Jews accepted the authority of the New Testament when assessing whether an individual qualified as Jewish.; July 8, 2008 3:02 PM
Dimensio said...: Instead, Ray is the opposite of atheist's super serious attitudes except when it comes to the Law of God and the preaching of the Gospel.

Your observation is interesting. I am curious; do you believe that it is a part of Ray's apparent endeavour to display the "opposite" of "super serious attitudes" when he repeatedly demonstrates willful ignorance of the theory of evolution, and of basic science in general? In his gross displays of apparent dishonesty when speaking on the subject of evolution, are you suggesting that Ray is merely attempting to show that his attitude is not "serious"?; July 8, 2008 3:04 PM
Dimensio said...: Good post Ray the ah-theists will surely express themselves, over this post, in a much nuttier way than their usual lunatic ravings.

Do you have any rational argument to offer, or is the sum total of your position based upon ad hominem attacks?; July 8, 2008 3:06 PM
bmcworldcitizen said...: I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
-- Albert Einstein, obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955

Tell us Ray, given Einstein is on record as rejecting the personal God, where do you think he is spending Eternity?; July 8, 2008 3:06 PM
chris said...: Here are some quotes from Einstein
on God. We are not saying that he accepted Christ as HE said He was. But he could not deny that there is a God.

Knowing God's Thoughts
I want to know how God created this world. I'm not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.

— From E. Salaman, "A Talk With Einstein," The Listener 54 (1955), pp. 370-371, quoted in Jammer, p. 123.
Could God Have Done It Differently?
What I am really interested in, is knowing whether God could have created the world in a different way; in other words, whether the requirement of logical simplicity admits a margin of freedom.

— C. Seelig, Helle Zeit—Dunkle Zeit (Europa Verlag, Zuürich, 1956), p.72, quoted in Jammer, p. 124.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The following comments are excerpted from Calaprice. See pp. 145 - 161.

God's Punishment
Why do you write to me “God should punish the English”? I have no close connection to either one or the other. I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.

— Letter to Edgar Meyer colleague January 2, 1915 Contributed by Robert Schulmann; also see CPAE Vol. 8 (forthcoming).
God and Goodness
Whatever there is of God and goodness in the universe, it must work itself out and express itself through us. We cannot stand aside and let God do it.

— From conversation recorded by Algernon Black, Fall 1940; Einstein Archive 54-834
God's worry
If God has created the world, his primary worry was certainly not to make its understanding easy for us.

— Letter to David Bohm, February 10, 1954; Einstein Archive 8-041
An Unperceivable Being
To assume the existence of an unperceivable being ... does not facilitate understanding the orderliness we find in the perceivable world.

— Letter to an Iowa student who asked, What is God? July, 1953; Einstein Archive 59-085
Awe of the Structure of the World
I don't try to imagine a God; it suffices to stand in awe of the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.

— Letter to S. Flesch, April 16, 1954; Einstein Archive 30-1154

From reading he says he leans towards Sponza.

Pastor Chris
I know it was not the quote yall were looking for but this it what I found with a simple google.; July 8, 2008 3:06 PM
weemaryanne said...: This post has been removed by the author.; July 8, 2008 3:09 PM
Feynmaniac said...: Sir, I served with Albert Einstein: I knew Albert Einstien; Albert Einstein was a friend of mine. Sir, you're no Albert Einstien.; July 8, 2008 3:15 PM
Alexc3 said...: "Atheists say that intelligent design isn’t intelligent, and that anyone who believes that God exists, hates science."
I don't say that, so am I not an atheist? I thought Christians were supposed to tell the truth. :(; July 8, 2008 3:15 PM
Rev. BigDumbChimp said...: Is it possible that God is speaking to you right now through me and asking you to go buy a book called "The Shack".

It is more likely you are hearing voices and should consult a psychiatrist, stat.; July 8, 2008 3:18 PM
likestrayvoltage said...: @Mark, it is possible that God is talking to me right now and asking me to tell you not to embarrass Him cos he didn't write that book you're recommending. He only wrote the one Book and, since there was no demand for a sequel, he threw in the towel as a writer and went back to his previous career as a general purpose smitter and punisher.

Not sure why He doesn't just tell you Himself, but there you go.; July 8, 2008 3:35 PM
AllFiredUp said...: Lance Christian Johnson said...

"Hey pal, you probably have facts to back up what you're saying. Well, we're just not interested in that sort of a thing around here."

*****

You may be jeering, but that is precisely why atheists fail on all kinds of levels.

*****

It's a wonder why they even bother with science or life in the first place, since they consider themselves mere animals that have no hope, no future but to make 50-70 years of their entire existence their "best life now."

Sad!

Einstein was fueled by his awe and wonder of God - a God he believed not to be whimsically personal but what he calls "super-personal."

Why should your rantings against the Bible even be given a second thought? when we KNOW you could care less about serious study of it. Unless it was study that furthers the pathetic atheist cause, a study that just comprises of a ridiculous search for loop holes like W.C. Fields.

The atheist cause, is for what purpose?!?

Vanity!

An ex-atheist shows how disillusioned he really was and how he (like atheists here) loosed all of his hatred on the Christians...

And for what reason? especially since he didn't believe in the Christian God in the first place. Where does it lead you?

Even atheists admit that Brian Sapient (RSS) is way out of line.

Here's what an ex atheist has to say,

"The worst idiots were the Christians. I hated them because, in their ignorance of naturalism, they failed to see that there was no reason for the rest of the world to believe in their god, live by their standards or give a damn about what they had to say, yet there they were, acting as if they had a copyright on truth. Their pretentiousness sickened me, despite my being equally pretentious toward them. After all, I was justified in my pretentiousness! At least I could give logical reasons for not believing in the supernatural. I would challenge them to give reasons for believing in something that couldn't be seen and they would reply, "You can't see the wind but it's there." I would then try to explain to them that wind was created by differences in pressure and that there was plenty of scientific proof for the existence of wind but none for their god. Even the most intelligent Christians I knew had a difficult time articulating their reason for faith.

Most of the explanations I heard rested on the Bible's authority. "The Bible says... the Bible says... the Bible says." Who cared what the Bible said? I certainly didn't. "It's all a bunch of made up, superstitious baloney. Can't you see?" and I would then go into pagan origins, etc., and try to demonstrate that Jesus was a manufactured myth. I ended up knowing the Bible inside and out just to be able to debate against it.

My anti-Christian arguments became my ultimate diversion to a hopeless life. I learned that religious debate wasn't as much about truth as it was about language and presentation. I began seeing flaws in my own logic while trying to demonstrate certain instances of Biblical errancy, but that didn't keep me on the bench. To justify my desire to destroy Christianity, I had to find reasons to discredit it. I railed against its hypocrisy, the behavior of its followers, the wars fought in its name and I questioned the motives of its bloody god and the religion's effective outcome. In short, I began seeing it as the supreme evil, despite the fact that my own view of moral relativism did not permit a logical defense of the concept of evil."

********

Fortunately for this atheist, God became a reality to him and he humbled himself to Christ.

Here's the continuation:

********

"THE PARADOX OF BIBLICAL JABBERWOCKY

"One night, I was very tired and alone in my study. I didn't reach, as I usually did, for a book of religious argument. I grabbed Lewis Carroll's "Through The Looking Glass", plopped myself down in a comfy chair and sleepily began reading. I skimmed through the pages and stopped at Humpty Dumpty's explanation of 'Jabberwocky' to Alice. A thought occurred to me that if I were to read 'Jabberwocky' the same way I read the bible, it wouldn't make any sense at all. I put Carroll's book aside, folded my hands and stared at the wall, lost in thought.

The Bible didn't make sense to me. But why did it make sense to others? What were they seeing that I didn't? Did they so desperately want there to be a God that they had deluded themselves into thinking that there was one? It was New Year's Day, 1998. I made a resolution to read the entire Bible again, only this time I was going to read it as I would poetry or fiction, and not as a proposal of fact.

In the months that followed, I kept my resolution and I began noticing a change in my way of interpreting the Bible. Intellectually, I found that my mind could logically accept two very different interpretations of almost everything I was reading. One interpretation of any verse or passage would render the whole story as nonsensical. But the other interpretation allowed the whole story to make sense.

If my mind was capable of accepting interpretations that allowed the whole book to make sense, then what was it in me that wanted it not to make sense? This book was reading me as surely as I was reading it. Every time I found fault with its god, I ended up finding a fault of my own. What was I doing when I condemned this god for commanding Moses to kill? Was I arrogantly making my morality superior to that of the being who allegedly authored all of morality? Was I condemning the actions of an entire nation, which was trapped in a kill or be killed situation? What was it in me that wanted to express outrage at Jesus Christ for telling me that I had to give away everything to be considered worthy to follow him? Was it my own selfishness?

For weeks, I was on a high, the type of high that comes about by feeling that one is on the edge of making some sort of profound discovery. I wasn't sure what I was discovering but my perception of this world was changing. In July, I read these words of Jesus Christ, understanding them for the first time after having read them for years; "Who do you say I am?"

I SEE IT!

What I had to say about who Christ was, said more about me than it did about Him.

At this moment, I saw it. I saw what the truth of the Bible was! And I was humbled. More than humbled, I was broken. The truth wasn't about cud chewing bunnies or how much precipitation fell during Noah's flood. It was the truth about human nature and our efforts to rise above it! It was the truth about human spirit being led by divine spirit! It was the truth about each of us, imperfect in our love for one another, needing to be made complete by the perfect love of God! The truth was about how one man, without sin, had died for us so that we could live! The truth of the Bible was and is JESUS CHRIST!

The moment I was made aware of my despicable nature, I realized that Jesus had died for me. I never had recognized sin and, therefore, thought that Christ had died for nothing. But this man was able to see the horrible nature present in all of humanity and yet he had sacrificed himself to save us from ourselves. In a very real sense, my sinful nature had caused the death of an innocent man. I never believed in hell prior to this, but one of my first thoughts, after seeing how hellish a person that I was, was that I deserved to be in it.

A NEW CREATURE

I had been a fool. I had paraded around, thinking myself to be the sophisticate, oblivious to the trail of toilet paper clinging to my shoe. For the first time in my life, I became aware of my soul and how dirty it was when the light of Christ fell upon it. My accusing finger turned around and pointed right back at me. I sucked! Christianity wasn't what was wrong with the world! A lack of education wasn't what was wrong with the world! I was what was wrong with the world. I began praying for forgiveness to a god whose existence I had thought was intellectually indefensible. But He was very, very real. Within days, almost every viewpoint I had once so loudly announced, changed. I could no longer justify my advocacy of abortion, homosexuality or pre-marital sex because I recognized these options for what they were, that being selfishness. I couldn't enjoy television because much of what it offered was an offense to the god I had discovered. But the most astounding change that took place in me was that I was freed from my cold indifference in matters of the heart. My atheistic philosophy had allowed me to lose my compassion for others. I no longer had the ability to love anyone, not even myself. I had become apathetic to life itself. For years, I had been dead, but because I continued to walk and talk, I didn't know it. But now, I was born again and the spirit that was in me, which had allowed me to understand spiritual things, connected with the glorious and perfect higher consciousness of Jesus Christ. He restored my heart and my conscience. Christians speak of this as a veil being lifted, but, for me, it was more like the iron curtain was being torn down. For the first time in my life, I was seeing the world as it really was. I no longer saw people as a sum of their components or this life as a meaningless exercise, but I now saw both as something more valid than my rational thought had allowed. I had spent most of my years examining life, crouched over and focused on the microscope of logic, incapable of seeing the Big Picture that was going on around me.

The more I emptied myself of myself, the clearer the truth became. It had been my own selfish sin that had kept me from seeing it before. Jesus Christ became my God and my grand obsession, and for many months, I spent hours with my mind locked in meditation, trying to connect with Him in a more tangible way. I wasn't disappointed. There is a point that one can reach in prayer where there is nothing at all left of oneself, and it is in that moment that God makes Himself known.

For me, Biblical truth wasn't verified through historical accuracy, inerrancy or reliability of the Gospels, because my initial assumptions didn't include these things. I saw divine inspiration in the actual content of the words attributed to Jesus Christ. The fact that I, or anyone, was capable of understanding spiritual matters became my evidence for the soul.

Learning the things of the spirit dramatically changed my attitude and my outlook on life. It wasn't that the information available to me had changed, but that my perception had changed and as a result, I was changed. I was dead, but Christ woke me up! He saved me from my selfish self and I have given myself to Him because I am thankful for that which He has given me and hopeful for that which He has promised."

(FROM SKEPTICISM TO WORSHIP by A.S.A. Jones 09/01/02)

No doubt you'll bring up the Dan Barkers to make a counter. But you must understand that Barker is a prime example of a stillbirth, a genuine false convert who listened to so much sugar coated filth that claimed that it was from God that he rightly tossed it away.

However he promptly threw the "baby out with the bathwater" because he never had an ounce of real Bible study in his brain, nor the salvation of Christ in his blood.

Dan Barker and all like him are the the perfect picture of what Ray calls "the bitter backslider".

Hebrews 6:4

“For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.”; July 8, 2008 3:55 PM
Agersomnia said...: And the most fun part of it, to me, is that I haven't read a post here from anyone, incluiding the author of the blog who is NOT atheist to a degree or another.

There are millions of gods and goddesses around the globe, yet people here only belive in one at the very best... That makes this bunch of people something like 99.99% atheistic, at the very "best".

So for those self-righteous single-god belivers but yet atheists out here, don't send to hell so easily the not-even-a-god atheists.

Maybe when you die you will meet Kingu, who will drag you to the Darkness. Or you will suffer at Tezcatlipoca's obsidian knife.

Maybe what you say and who you harm is not Christian so you don't care much, but if that is a child of Kali the Dark Mother you should be afraid of revenge.

Maybe, after all, the same as those millions of gods that have existed through the ages, yours is also just a delusion.; July 8, 2008 4:01 PM
forgiven37 (Mark) said...: The Inoculated Mind said...

I think when Ray is referring to an "Intellectual Likeness" he is actually trying to be funny, which some people didn't understand. There are two viewpoints which are compatible with his phrase, the first being that the people perceived someone (Comfort) who is intellectually like Einstein, and the second being that the people perceived someone intellectual (Comfort), who is a likeness (physical) to Einstein.
That being said, nothing Ray Comfort has ever said, 'discovered' or argued could in any way compare to the intellectual contributions of Albert Einstein. That's just pure egotism.

mark said,
at what point in time did ray ever make such a claim ? so your assumption is wrong

By the way, the "Banana" argument is based on pure ignorance of plant breeding, and crop evolution and domestication. Wild "bananas" are tough, seedy, and barely edible. It took the intelligent 'designing' of humans to turn them into seedless delicious, and prolific fruits that we eat today.

the banana thing is more of a joke than theory. do you have any idea what you are talking about ?

The only worst nightmare here is Ray Comfort's and it's his lack of basic science literacy.

no, the atheist worst nightmare is to die and find out that GOD is real !; July 8, 2008 4:16 PM
Kyle VanderBeek said...: Ray, thanks for adding the "I'm kidding" note. In the future, be more careful when switching between serious and humorous. In the text medium we can't see a twinkle in your eye or hear a change in tone. Semantically marking your jokes more clearly, even with such pedestrian mechanisms as "Just kidding!", will avoid future misunderstandings.; July 8, 2008 4:17 PM
flinging dust said...: This post has been removed by the author.; July 8, 2008 4:21 PM
forgiven37 (Mark) said...: Rev. BigDumbChimp said...

It is more likely you are hearing voices and should consult a psychiatrist, stat.

mr.dumbchimp,

you go by bigdumbchimp and you offer medical advice ? maybe you need to consult GOD, STAT!!! your soul is at stake.; July 8, 2008 4:24 PM
BohonsRE said...: Quite honestly, posting a book from a religious organization about what Einstein believes is to say the least, disingenuous. Einstein used the word "God" much in the same way you and I would use the words "wonder" or "awe". With all due respect allfiredup, the book you quoted was not quoting Einstein fairly, only picking out the bits they needed to justify their original intention. Please do your own research and don't let someone with an obvious agenda fool you with half-truths.

REAL Einstein quotes and sources:

“The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image-a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being. For this reason, people of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere.”

Albert Einstein, letter to a Rabbi in Chicago; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton University Press, 1981, pp. 69-70.

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

Albert Einstein, in a letter March 24, 1954; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 43.

“My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.”

Albert Einstein in a letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive 59-215; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 216.

“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve.”

Albert Einstein in a letter to Beatrice Frohlich, December 17, 1952; Einstein Archive 59-797; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 217.

“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems.”

Albert Einstein, 1947; from Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein Creator and Rebel, New York: New American Library, 1972, p. 95.

“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems.”

Albert Einstein, 1947; from Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein Creator and Rebel, New York: New American Library, 1972, p. 95.

“I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.… This is a somewhat new kind of religion.”

Albert Einstein, in a letter to Hans Muehsam, March 30, 1954; Einstein Archive 38-434; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 218.

“I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”

Albert Einstein, letter to a Baptist pastor in 1953; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 39.

“It is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished.”

Albert Einstein; quoted in W. I. Hermanns, "A Talk with Einstein," October 1943, Einstein Archive 55-285; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 215.

“The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.”

Albert Einstein, letter to a minister November 20, 1950; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 95.

“I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”

Albert Einstein, replying to a letter in 1954 or 1955; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 39.

“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”

Albert Einstein, Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A 1934 Symposium published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941; from Einstein's Out of My Later Years, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970, pp. 29-30.

“During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favor by means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old concept of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes.

“Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?

“The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God. It is the aim of science to establish general rules which determine the reciprocal connection of objects and events in time and space. For these rules, or laws of nature, absolutely general validity is required—not proven. It is mainly a program, and faith in the possibility of its accomplishment in principle is only founded on partial successes. But hardly anyone could be found who would deny these partial successes and ascribe them to human self-deception. The fact that on the basis of such laws we are able to predict the temporal behavior of phenomena in certain domains with great precision and certainty is deeply embedded in the consciousness of the modern man, even though he may have grasped very little of the contents of those laws. He need only consider that planetary courses within the solar system may be calculated in advance with great exactitude on the basis of a limited number of simple laws. In a similar way, though not with the same precision, it is possible to calculate in advance the mode of operation of an electric motor, a transmission system, or of a wireless apparatus, even when dealing with a novel development.

“To be sure, when the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large, scientific method in most cases fails us. One need only think of the weather, in which case prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. Nevertheless no one doubts that we are confronted with a causal connection whose causal components are in the main known to us. Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.

“We have penetrated far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of living things, but deeply enough nevertheless to sense at least the rule of fixed necessity. One need only think of the systematic order in heredity, and in the effect of poisons, as for instance alcohol, on the behavior of organic beings. What is still lacking here is a grasp of connections of profound generality, but not a knowledge of order in itself.

“The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.

“But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.”

Albert Einstein, Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A 1934 Symposium published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941; from Einstein's Out of My Later Years, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970, pp. 26-29.

“I cannot then believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws. As I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science.”

Albert Einstein; from Peter A. Bucky, The Private Albert Einstein, Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel, 1992, p. 86.

“The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.”

Albert Einstein, in a letter February 5, 1921; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 40.

“I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. Your counter-arguments seem to me very correct and could hardly be better formulated. It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere—childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world as far—as we can grasp it. And that is all.”

Albert Einstein, to Guy H. Raner Jr., July 2, 1945, responding to a rumor that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism; from Michael R. Gilmore, "Einstein's God: Just What Did Einstein Believe About God?," Skeptic, 1997, 5(2):62.

“However, Einstein's God was not the God of most other men. When he wrote of religion, as he often did in middle and later life, he tended to adopt the belief of Alice's Red Queen that "words mean what you want them to mean," and to clothe with different names what to more ordinary mortals — and to most Jews — looked like a variant of simple agnosticism. Replying in 1929 to a cabled inquiry from Rabbi Goldstein of New York, he said that he believed "in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exist, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men." And it is claimed that years later, asked by Ben-Gurion whether he believed in God, "even he, with his great formula about energy and mass, agreed that there must be something behind the energy." No doubt. But much of Einstein's writing gives the impression of belief in a God even more intangible and impersonal than a celestial machine minder, running the universe with indisputable authority and expert touch. Instead, Einstein's God appears as the physical world itself, with its infinitely marvelous structure operating at atomic level with the beauty of a craftsman's wristwatch, and at stellar level with the majesty of a massive cyclotron. This was belief enough. It grew early and rooted deep. Only later was it dignified by the title of cosmic religion, a phrase which gave plausible respectability to the views of a man who did not believe in a life after death and who felt that if virtue paid off in the earthly one, then this was the result of cause and effect rather than celestial reward. Einstein's God thus stood for an orderly system obeying rules which could be discovered by those who at the courage, imagination, and persistence to go on searching for them. It was to this past which he began to turn his mind soon after the age of twelve. The rest of his life everything else was to seem almost trivial by comparison.”

Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times, New York: World Publishing, 1971, pp. 19-20.

Thank you for reading.....; July 8, 2008 4:34 PM
Kel said...: lol, Ray to even compare yourself to one of the greatest minds of modern physics is extremely arrogant and egotistical on your part. To say Einstein believed in Intelligent Design is fundamentally dishonest as it's well established that Einstein was at most a Pantheist and regarded religious belief as childish.

Though I expect this kind of thing who uses a product of human intelligence (The banana) as proof of God. How much more intellectually bankrupt can you get? I'm sure Jesus will forgive your lies but here on reality we look down upon liars.; July 8, 2008 4:35 PM
Nicole said...: Goodness gracious. Einstein would be appalled at the type of anti-science that you peddle, as well as the attempt at intellectual resemblance. For shame.; July 8, 2008 4:42 PM
Remy-Grace said...: "I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment"
--Albert Einstein

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
--Albert Einstein

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
--Albert Einstein

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
--Albert Einstein; July 8, 2008 4:45 PM
(ShiVeR)Curtis said...: Desiring God Blog
The Advantages of Providence

Posted: 30 Jun 2008 06:17 AM CDT

(Author: John Piper)

Here is a sampling of God's complete providence in governing the world.

*"I have commanded the ravens to feed you there" (1Kings 17:4)
*"The Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah" (Jonah 4:6).
*"God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered" (Jonah 4:7).
*"I will send swarms of flies on you and your servants" (Exodus 8:21).
*"He summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread" (Psalms 105:16).
*"He gave them hail for rain" (Psalms 105:32).
*"He spoke, and the locusts came" (Psalms 105:34).
*"The Lord will whistle for . . . the bee that is in the land of Assyria" (Isaiah 7:18).
*"The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord" (Proverbs 16:33).
*"Even the wind and the sea obey him" (Mark 4:41).
*"He removes kings and sets up kings" (Daniel 2:21).
*"Even the unclean spirits, and they obey him" (Mark 1:27).
*"He upholds the universe by the word of his power" (Hebrews 1:3).

The most beautiful confessional statements of God's providence are found in the Heidelberg Catechism:

What do you mean by the providence of God? (Question 27)

The almighty and everywhere present power of God; whereby, as it were by his hand, he upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures; so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come, not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.

What advantage is it to us to know that God has created, and by his providence does still uphold all things? (Question 28)

That we may be patient in adversity; thankful in prosperity; and that in all things, which may hereafter befall us, we place our firm trust in our faithful God and Father, that nothing shall separate us from his love; since all creatures are so in his hand, that without his will they cannot so much as move.

Read, trust, worship, be radical.; July 8, 2008 4:49 PM
Rev. BigDumbChimp said...: mr.dumbchimp,

you go by bigdumbchimp and you offer medical advice ? maybe you need to consult GOD, STAT!!! your soul is at stake.

I'm not the one hearing voices.; July 8, 2008 4:57 PM
Paul Latour said...: Great post! Hilarious photo! I saw this earlier today and I'm still laughing.

Thank you, Ray! The seriousness with which you devote your faith to, blended with a great sense of humor is absolutely refreshing.

C'mon evolutionists, lighten up a bit! Smile, snicker, chuckle and laugh. There ya go...the evolution of laughter. :); July 8, 2008 5:11 PM
AllFiredUp said...: "BohonsRE said,
Quite honestly, posting a book from a religious organization about what Einstein believes is to say the least, disingenuous. Einstein used the word "God" much in the same way you and I would use the words "wonder" or "awe". With all due respect allfiredup, the book you quoted was not quoting Einstein fairly, only picking out the bits they needed to justify their original intention. Please do your own research and don't let someone with an obvious agenda fool you with half-truths."

Apparently you didn't read it as I had predicted.

The article already stated that Einstein did not believe in a personal God. But in what Einstein says as a "super personal" God.

Here is one part:

"Early in his life Einstein came to refer to God as "cosmic intelligence" which he did not think of in a personal but in a "super-personal" way, for, as he learned from Spinoza, the term "personal" when applied to human beings cannot as such be applied to God. (Cf. Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza, revised edition, Harmondsworth, 1962, p. 49: "It is a general principle in Spinoza's philosophy, which he constantly repeats to prevent misunderstandings, that no term when applied to God can possibly bear the meaning which it has when applied to human beings.")

"super-personal" was a definition of God that Einstein himself stated. Not that someone else said about him.

Wiki says it too... "As a Jewish scientist he had to flee from Nazi Germany, but it should be noted that he did not believe in traditional notions of a personal god, but rather perceived God to be a "superpersonal" entity, in ways that he declared to be inspired by Baruch Spinoza's and Arthur Schopenhauer's ideas. He also asserted that the Jewish scriptures, Jesus, Gautama Buddha and other religious figures were important guides for the ethical advancement of humanity."

You name the quotes that i listed that were disingenuous, please, if you want to get to the facts of the matter.

So what's your point then?

Did you even bother reading and checking out the references? I doubt since you had responded so furiously fast. It would have taken you longer to respond, but rather you made a hasty decision and looked up (talk origins I'm sure) some hasty quotes of Einstein against Christianity.

I gather that you just quickly skimmed the essay as I had mentioned an atheist would, and you drew your own erroneous conclusions.

You ditched it before you read it merely because it is written by a Christian organization.

What kind of fact hunter are you?

Try a better rebuttal of the article in a day or so when you've thoroughly gone over it and checked out all the references, instead of popping up your own objections in haste. Get Education already got himself in trouble over that, I've fallen into that trap myself. It's easy to do.

Researching takes time. That much I've learned.

Apparently the author of this "book", as you call it, has done far more research on Einstein than you, or even than I have.; July 8, 2008 5:12 PM
MacGyver Jr said...: Ray, I hate to break it to you, but when someone says: "Nice one, Einstein..." or "Way to go, Einstein." That probably is not a compliment. You might need to get your sarcasm meter checked.; July 8, 2008 5:18 PM
Michelle said...: @
All Fired Up...

I was wondering if you could give google directions for us to view your artwork online.

Thanks!!

Michelle :); July 8, 2008 5:23 PM
The Ranting Student said...: forgiven37 (Mark) said...

mr.dumbchimp,

you go by bigdumbchimp and you offer medical advice ? maybe you need to consult GOD, STAT!!! your soul is at stake.

Mark, maybe you need to consult a book, stat!! Your intelligence is at stake.; July 8, 2008 5:25 PM
John said...: Wow... You actually compared yourself to Einstein???

And please, although Einstein was not an atheist, he has no respect for religion either, yours included.; July 8, 2008 5:47 PM
Evolved Rationalist said...: Ray, you need to learn some humility.; July 8, 2008 5:50 PM
Steven said...: The man who thinks the banana(which is an artificially cultured crop) is the atheists nightmare has the hubris to compare himself to Albert Einstein. Is this a serious post I feel I must ask? What kind of priggish and arrogant attitude must a person have to espouse such a statement. Does your piety know no bounds?; July 8, 2008 5:51 PM
get_education said...: AllFiredUp,

Well, but you also forgot to read what BohonsRE quoted. I have also seen lots of different quotes. Contradicting each other. Conveniently however, those that point to Einstein as a true believer come from very religious people. I do not really care if Einstein genuinely believed in God as such, or if the Spinoza kind of god is not a god god. It seems like it was mostly a poetic belief in a universe with properties we should be able to understand, I do not know, and I do not care. What I do care about is that just as you said that BohonsRE should have read your post, you should have read his.

Also, I am much more willing to believe a secular source, than a christian one, given that the christian ones tell way too many lies, and accommodate everything to their beliefs instead of letting the evidence talk for itself. Of course, I would not use sources that just mock christianity for the sake of mocking. They are bound to be just as crazy and biased as the christians, but to the opposite side.

This is why, for instance, I can doubt that an historical jesus existed, but I cannot claim to know there was no historical Jesus. I just know that secular knowledge has not got into agreement about this piece of info. So, I cannot get to a conclusion either. You see what I mean? (Unless I were a historian whose field touched that about evidences of an historical Jesus, but I am not.)

Also, Einstein might have changed his mind during his life, and some quotes where he expressed belief, if true, might correspond to periods when he did not think too much about whether his indoctrination was valid or not. Or maybe he did not want to offend anybody.

Also, if Einstein believed that the teachings of those figures (conveniently inclusive) are good sources to advance ethics. Well, that does not mean he believed in God, but that he believed in the purpose of ethical foundations, and on the teachings as useful for such a purpose. So do I!

G.E.; July 8, 2008 5:59 PM
forgiven37 (Mark) said...: The Ranting Student said...

forgiven37 (Mark) said...

Mark, maybe you need to consult a book, stat!! Your intelligence is at stake.

he goes by rev.bigdumbchimp and my intelligence is at stake ? I have consulted THE BOOK (BIBLE) there mr.ranting student. It IS the only Book that matters ! Repent and turn to GOD before it is to late.; July 8, 2008 6:01 PM
Iago said...: Allfiredup in his posting was this tidbit :

Einstein was often asked, "Do you believe in God?", to which he sometimes replied "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all being". 24 "By God", Spinoza wrote at the very beginning of his Ethica, "I mean a being absolutely infinite-that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality". Proposition XV of the Ethica stated: "Whatever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived."

endquote

Seems like Spinoza is saying that we all live in the body of God, as it is everywehere and everything. And it has infinite attributes, good and evil. So the good of God and the evil of Satan are all there in some big meta entity.
That really does not jibe with anything in the Christian faith anyone here is proposing.; July 8, 2008 6:12 PM
(ShiVeR)Curtis said...: AllFiredUp said... ALOT!

AllFiredUp, I love reading your posts beccause they are well researched and though they are long, they are well worth reading. If ten or fifteen minutes of my life are spent reading a lengthy post and I actually learn something new, it is well worth it.

I tend to post lengthy posts on theological topics because I know that for those who "really" are interested in truth, and not just their pet theology or ideas, will benefit from them. In this bits and bites age so many who profess to be scientists, or at least interested in the truth, show their true colors by disregarding lengthy posts and reveal that they really only want to satisfy their personal convictions, and thus overlook the truth.

You have a gift in that you can pull out and apply information, on theology and science, correctly. I hope this doesn't puff you up, I don't know your stance on many theological issues, but I can see by your posts that you are reasonable and think through your comments to their natural end.

I trust I will see you in Heaven, and get a sense that I know you by the way you present your arguements. I've read several of your posts to my wife and she agrees that you sound an alot like a radio host we listen to regularly. I could just be that becasue we are born of the same Spirit that I can relate and understand the point you are going to, and trying to make, or it could be that you present your arguement so well that it makes sense without a doubt. When someone makes an arguement from clear biblical(literal) teaching, the truth is simple to the discerning ear. It's when people read into and add to the scripture that things get complicated. Before God saved me, I was like alot of the atheists that post here, ignorant, but now what the bible teaches seems so simple, though it takes diligent study.

Thank you for posting here, your presence is much needed in this sin cursed world, I thank God that you are so bold, and willing to say it as it is.

Proclaim the truth, be bold, and do it because your Master is in control of all things and commanded you to go. Go serve your King. Never stop preaching the truth for any reason, especially because someone doesn't have the "time" to hear it.

I love to read, so keep up the posting of thoughough explination of the truth.; July 8, 2008 6:15 PM
keywesthaven1@msn.com (Terry) said...: @ Ray,

I tell you as a retired counselor and former teacher that you and Einstein have ALOT in common!

I formerly believed he was a atheist, but it was just propaganda from the atheist community that I read. He found
God.

I respect both of you.

You are both "God's chosen people" and yes the physical attributes are very similar. If I may Say, you are a younger version of Einstein. :)

As you said, your brain child 'Hells Best Kept Secret' with the 'Gospel' at the core is invaluable for witnessing for Jesus Christ.

you said "Many times I have been told that I look like Albert Einstein. A few years ago when I was in Phoenix airport boarding a flight to Los Angeles, I gave million dollar bill tracts to four Moslem women and a little girl who was traveling with them. They were grateful, and told me that I looked like Einstein."

Just today, I was flying from Kentucky to Atlanta, and on to Key West. Enroute I was handing out your new Million dollar bills. As usual, they went like 'hot cakes'.

I witnessed to the guy in the seat next to me, compared Jesus Christ to a parachute, and we discussed your blog. He claimed to be Christian, and I sensed it in his responses to Jesus Christ being the Savior of the world.

We discussed the end times and how Christ will return for his own.
Such good fellowship in the air!

More people got involved as I passed out million dollar bills at 25,000 feet.

Even a agnostic appreciated the quality of the tract. Surprising!!

Your ministry is such a blessing brother! I continue to come out of my shell, more and more! Open Air preaching to people between flights! I was too shy until I watched your videos with Kirk
and saw the "urgency" to do it!

These thoughts went thru my head:
"Time is really running out!
I need to reach out to the lost."

The last leg of our journey was in a Cessna 402 from Fort Meyers to Key West. The pilot invited me to fly co-pilot, and I gratefully accepted. As we punched thru the cumulus clouds I thought about the New Heaven and how wonderful it will be! I shared it with the pilot, and he agreed!

Love those Million dollar bills!!!

What a wonderful plan our Savior has in store for us. I look forward to the fellowship with you and the other Christians through out the ages. Its mind bogling in a Good Way!

For those reading, you can get in on it!

Watch the video 'Hells Best Kept Secret' on my website and blogs!

don't wait!!! you never know when you will be snatched away from this life ... or a loved one!

God Bless!!! Praying for you non-believers! Repent! while you can.; July 8, 2008 6:26 PM
MJMD said...: rofl. Emily said "It's so funny (and even a tad eerie ;) hehe) that you look so much like Einstein. I never noticed the resemblance before!"

Sooooo much like Einstein that you never noticed. Contradiction anyone?
HAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahaha.........; July 8, 2008 6:41 PM
euthyphro037 said...: mark laine said:
"To euthyprho037,

Is it possible that God is speaking to you right now through me and asking you to go buy a book called "The Shack".

This is a book that might very well help you understand God a little better and the rationale for what the Trinity is and why God does not show himself so as to impede your free will.

It is a well written book and might shed some very interesting light upon God so that you too might begin to have a relationship with God through His son Jesus.

Read the book and wake up from your nightmare. Stop demanding God perform like a puppetmaster for your entertainment and you will do much better.

I can tell you for a fact...God is very fond of you but you have a lot of sin to repent from. Do so and live."

God, in all his omnipotence, cannot be bothered to actually do what it would take to convince me, so he sends you to tell me about a book I should read. The Jews were led by a pillar of smoke and flame, Paul gets struck on the road to Damascus, the apostles walked with Jesus, and Thomas put his fingers in the wounds, but the best God is willing to offer me is a book of apologetics.

And mark, do you ever pray? Do you think that prayers get answered? Don't let's start talking about demanding things from God like a puppetmaster.

I'm only asking him to make himself known to me in a way that would convince me. He knows what it takes, and he is all-powerful; it would take less effort on his part to convince me than it does for me to bat an eyelash. All I can conclude from his continued silence is that he is not really fond of me and he doesn't really care whether or not I am saved. That, or he's not really there at all.; July 8, 2008 6:56 PM
The Ranting Student said...: forgiven37 (Mark) said...

he goes by rev.bigdumbchimp and my intelligence is at stake ? I have consulted THE BOOK (BIBLE) there mr.ranting student. It IS the only Book that matters ! Repent and turn to GOD before it is to late.

Well, I don't believe in God. No amount of convincing on your part will do. But, you called me Mister. Thank you Mr. Mark, I hope you have a nice day.

@ Terry

Terry, I highly doubt you were in the military for 23 years, and you were a teacher, and a counselor...
and the pilot loved you so much he called you to co-pilot?

Terry. Repeat with me...
Reality is our friend, reality is our friend...; July 8, 2008 6:57 PM
Susan said...: Ray,

I am sorry that you are being attacked online for going to preach the Gospel at the WOF conference. I hope you won't let it discourage you.

I like the picture, it is really cool!

Susan; July 8, 2008 7:07 PM
Gringo Steve said...: Why are Ray Comfort and the other Christians on this blog serial liars?

If any of them had one ounce of real integrity they would address this direct quote by Einstein:

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

He could not have been any clearer.

Come on Ray... I dare you to rationalize that one away. If you choose to be a coward and not respond, I won't be at all surprised. It's just par for the course.

Flock of sheep indeed.; July 8, 2008 7:19 PM
Parijata Mackey said...: You, sir, are a moron. Have a pleasant day.; July 8, 2008 7:21 PM
JayBird's Joint said...: "An atheist is a man who believes himself an accident." — Francis Thompson; July 8, 2008 7:35 PM
Dimensio said...: I can tell you for a fact...God is very fond of you but you have a lot of sin to repent from.

Please demonstrate that your assertion is "fact".; July 8, 2008 8:16 PM
captain howdy said...: Watching that photo of Ray morph into Einstein and back again, over and over, makes me think

'...Smart...Stupid...Smart...Stupid...'; July 8, 2008 8:21 PM
faux said...: first of all, arthur stanley eddington was smarter than einstein. secondly, you're no einstein. thirdly, you're certainly no arthur stanley eddington. fourthly, please shoot yourself.; July 8, 2008 9:26 PM
The American Atheist said...: He looks more like Ciscoe Morris (from "Gardening with Ciscoe") than Einstein.

Don't believe me? Check google images since I can't post a link.; July 8, 2008 9:44 PM
Steven J. said...: Ray, Niven's 16th law states that there is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it. Intelligent Christians reading your blog must take great comfort (no pun intended) in that thought.

You don't agree with Einstein's rejection of eternal life, hell, or, for that matter, Jesus Christ. I suspect that you don't embrace his socialist economic and political views. So obviously, the fact that he epitomizes intelligence doesn't convince you that his every opinion followed from the facts. Why, then, would you expect anyone else to conclude that because Einstein believed (at one point, at least) in God (for some understanding of "God"), that they ought to believe the same thing?

By the way, can you actually cite any atheist who holds that anyone who believes in God hates science? I'm not sure that there are many atheists who accuse you, personally, of hating science, although of course there are several who note, quite accurately, that you know little about it.; July 8, 2008 11:01 PM
JMX said...: “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

Albert Einstein; July 8, 2008 11:07 PM
DisComforting Ignorance said...: This is, bar none, the most tasteless thing I have seen on the Internet recently. I realize that part of it is in jest, but the other part is asinine.

You misrepresent Einstein's religious views yet again, like you did with that post where you said he believed the Bible was the Word of God. But, putting that aside, you still paint him as a deist and say you care what he thinks/believes/likes as he epitomizes intelligence. If the fact that he was a deist (which he wasn't) should cause atheists to become deists due to his intelligence, then him being a deist should cause you to become a deist due to his intelligence. If not, then you should really abandon this tired appeal to authority.

And, as a note, what is so tasteless about it is quite simple. You title it Einsteinian Evolution and then show a picture of Einstein evolving into you. That's tasteless.

You build him up as an intellectual and then state that since you disagree with him on a religious matter, that you somehow trump him in that regard. That's tasteless.

I could just as easily say Newton was a brilliant genius and that since I disagree with on a religious matter, that I trump him on that. I don't say that, though, as that would be tasteless.

Tasteless.; July 8, 2008 11:21 PM
Ray Comfort said...: "captain howdy said... Watching that photo of Ray morph into Einstein and back again, over and over, makes me think '...Smart...Stupid...Smart...Stupid...'"

Captain ...I thought you liked Einstein.; July 9, 2008 2:41 AM
Jon A. Delamarter said...: euthyphro037 said...
Ray, I have an honest question.

Is God omniscient? If he is, he knows what it would take to persuade me to believe in me.

Is he omnipotent? If he is, then he has the power to persuade me, and being as great as he is, it wouldn't take hardly any effort to do so.

Is God omnibenevolent? If he is, then he would care if I went to hell and he wouldn't want me to go there.

If he's omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient, then why does he not show himself to me like he has shown himself to others.

You don't think I've asked for it? Ray, I've been in tears on the floor asking for God and Jesus to help me, and all I got was silence. I've asked in good faith and he said nothing.

Why doesn't God care enough about me to do the very small task of speaking to me and letting me know he's there.

I'd love if you addressed this in a blog post, but I can't hope for such an honor. You'll probably say something about lies, thieving, and adultery, and how I haven't actually asked God and Jesus to be my guides (even though I have). Even if you think I don't "want" God to be in my heart (even though I don't know how you can know that, since you are not omniscient), it would be such a small task for God to reveal himself to me. If he cares about me, why doesn't he do it?

Ray - As a fellow believer, I would ask that you do respond to this comment with a post.

euthyphro037 - To you I would say that I've been where you are. I do not know why God sometimes reveals Himself in different ways or at different times to individuals. I was raised in a Christian home by a father who taught Creation Science in a christian school, yet I had many unanswered questions. After a long, bitter journey, I have discovered God to be patient, merciful, and full of compassion. While I am infinitely far from being the christian I desire to be, I am growing as I draw closer to my Heavenly Father. I will pray that God will reveal Himself to your heart. By the way - it doesn't matter if I or Ray or anyone else believes that you are genuinely seeking God; He knows your heart and he loves you with an everlasting love. Here's a promise from His Word:
Jeremiah 29:13
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

God's richest blessings on you!

Praying for you,

Jon; July 9, 2008 3:35 AM
captain howdy said...: @mark w. laine--

Course it seems the same ah-theist loons are still here. They must have nothing better to do passing their time here on earth before returning to dust and entering into hell.

```````

That's rich. Somebody who admits he wrestles with an invisible demon that looks like Mussolini is calling me a loon!

Mark--Explain something to me. How can an invisible demon look like anything, much less look like Mussolini??; July 9, 2008 4:18 AM
captain howdy said...: @Ray--

Captain ...I thought you liked Einstein.

``````````

Ray, do you think Einstein died of natural causes? Or is the real reason he died because he knew too much?; July 9, 2008 4:22 AM
Ray Comfort said...: "captain howdy said... @Ray--
Captain ...I thought you liked Einstein. Ray, do you think Einstein died of natural causes? Or is the real reason he died because he knew too much?"

Tell me more...; July 9, 2008 5:10 AM
Ray Comfort said...: "Ray - As a fellow believer, I would ask that you do respond to this comment with a post."

Jon...it's on the list. Thanks.; July 9, 2008 5:11 AM
petew said...: Looks more like the chuckle brothers, to me.; July 9, 2008 5:11 AM
dale said...: Ohhhh Terry,
"The pilot invited me to fly co-pilot,..."

He may have invited you to sit in the co-pilot's seat. Unless you are properly licensed and checked out in that aircraft you did not "fly co-pilot."

If you "punched through the clouds" then you would need an Instrument Rating rather than a VFR (Visual Flight Rule) rating.
You would also need a Multi Engine Rating to fly the 402 in any capacity. That is a sweet little plane though.

I hear they are looking for a co-pilot for the space shuttle. Sounds like a job for Super Terry.

Disclaimer: Hey, I haven't pulled your chain for quite a while. I felt this was an appropriate opportunity. In fact, you are a breath of fresh air as compared to Syetenb!; July 9, 2008 5:20 AM
keywesthaven1@msn.com (Terry) said...: @ Ranting,

You can believe what you want in "Nazi soldier" pics, and the such, but I can prove my story with my service record.

FYI, I did not fly the plane, he had me there for emergency reasons.
Pilots have suffered heart attacks in midair. I would fly it in a emergency. Its just "stick n rudder".

My DD-214s tell the story.

I first joined the service in Nov 2, 1982 and I went to Orlando, FL for boot camp. The US Navy showed me the 'ropes' for many years.

I do have broken service, as I got out for a few years, and served in the US Army Reserve in Louisville, KY. Paper work and drills on the wx.

I was stationed in Lajes, Azores, Fighter Squadron 101 in Oceana, VA. Naval Air Station Willow Grove, PA, USS Jesse L. Brown (FFT-1089), CTF-72 Kamiseya, Japan, Helicopter squadron HSL-51, Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, Naval Security Group Activity Kunia, Hawaii, and USS Reuben James (FFG-57).

Wish I had made it to Christchurch, New Zealand. I did make it to Adelaide, Australia and to Darwin.

As a retired counselor (from the US Navy) I tell you in my professional opinion, that you need help !

It is not normal to identify yourself with a "Nazi" picture on your profile. Your subconscious is justifying the evil deeds they committed. Nazis will burn in Hell! Praying for you! Get Help!

I hope you will find God and come to Jesus Christ! Hell, is a reality friend.; July 9, 2008 5:51 AM
scmike said...: agersomnia,

""Maybe, after all, the same as those millions of gods that have existed through the ages, yours is also just a delusion.""

Is this statement absolutely true? If not, why should anyone care? If so, please explain how you account for absolute truth according to your worldview. God Bless.; July 9, 2008 6:12 AM
siener said...: Behold the sin of pride...; July 9, 2008 6:36 AM
George said...: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. " - Albert Einstein; July 9, 2008 6:37 AM
just another primate said...: CAN YOU READ! If you have ever read any of the books written about the life of Einstein you would know beyond a reason of doubt that he didn't believe in a personal god. YOU ARE A BUFFOON!!!; July 9, 2008 6:37 AM
just another primate said...: Well, you obviously cannot read! If you were to take the time to READ any of the many books on Einstein you would find out that you are dead wrong.... You are a buffoon!!!!; July 9, 2008 6:37 AM
scmike said...: faith minus,

""And the narcissism train rolls on and on and on.....

There is one very significant difference between you and Einstein, he actually understood science.""

One must first conclude that science is valid before using/understanding it. Since science is based on the uniformity of nature (which cannot be accounted for in an atheistic/evolutionary worldview) it would seem that you have some explaining to do yourself.

Please tell us how you account for the universal, abstract, unchanging laws (such as the law of non-contradiction) that make science and reason possible. God Bless.; July 9, 2008 6:43 AM
Free said...: There should be a law against desecrating the greatest scientist this world has seen with this nastiness. How dare you, Ray Comfort, you ignoramus even think you could do this. You should be ashamed of yourself.

But surely humility is not part of the 'virtues" you have.

Obviously there is no God, if there were you would have been struck down dead for this nonsense.; July 9, 2008 7:18 AM
Michelle said...: @

Ray...

WOW, your Einstein post (joke) really drew in the ah-theists....like Piranhas! What's amazing is how they did not read the post in it's entirety, which is revealed in the remarks about piety, humility, etc.

Atheists - reread the original post so that you can understand it. PLEASE!!; July 9, 2008 7:46 AM
Iago said...: Jon A. Delamarter said... many things.

And I will point out in the theme of Einstein and Spinoza, God supposedly has infinite attributes. That means infinite compassion but the flip side of that is also infinite cruelty. So just let that dichotomy sink in for a bit there.; July 9, 2008 8:14 AM
dale said...: Ray,
I am sure you will be happy to know that you once again were chosen as a blog topic at PZ Myers place. Here it is:

"I've been outclassed. Every scientist in the world is a modest little mouse in comparison. All of you readers: humble, demure, and retiring. Ray Comfort has just compared himself favorably to Einstein, saying that he has made a discovery more important than E=mc2. He even has a painfully vainglorious animated image on the page showing his face morphing into Einstein's.

I think Ray Comfort tried to look up "humility" in a dictionary once, but after slowly sounding out as far as "h - u -", he got stuck and settled for "hubris" instead. Close enough for a brain-dead Christian, after all!

I don't agree with PC on this.
Ray is not brain dead. That would imply that he has a brain.; July 9, 2008 8:16 AM
Chris (from Oz) said...: Since this post is about a comment I made, it's only fair I respond. Which I did, more than 24 hours ago now. Unfortunately my comment has not appeared on the blog, and I didn't keep a copy myself. Ray, did you moderate it out of existance ? Why?

I had a few points, one of which is that he's again trying to claim what atheists think, which was that "anyone who believes that God exists, hates science.". Plenty of good scientists are deists or theists. No atheist I've ever met claims that anyone who belives in God hates science.

Show me any quote from an atheist claiming that Newton hated science.; July 9, 2008 9:07 AM
JayBird's Joint said...: I can't believe that so many people would spend so much time on something they claim they don't believe in... Your interest is proof in itself...
Don't get angry with Ray, at least he's not calling you names like your calling him...; July 9, 2008 9:35 AM
get_education said...: Troll alert?

Guys, beware, there is another Sye in the making calling him/her-self scmike. Another deluded person who thinks logic, math, and uniformity of nature can only be accounted for if there is a god (again, not capitalized because not a particular god).

G.E.; July 9, 2008 9:38 AM
verandoug said...: As a formal convert to another religion, you are ineligible to become an aliyah.

Are you sure of your facts? My father is Jewish. My mom is not but I have been told that I could technically become an aliyah if I wanted.

The resemblance is remarkable!
Vera; July 9, 2008 9:57 AM
AllFiredUp said...: (ShiVeR)Curtis said, "AllFiredUp, I love reading your posts beccause they are well researched and though they are long."

Thanks Curtis! Thanks for your encouragements!

Regarding length. It's not that I want to be long winded or anything, but seriously, how do you talk about the things of God in short little "sandwich" bites?

I'm sure atheists here would agree that one can't talk about the intricacies of science in small bits.

I agree as well about the things of God.

Honestly it is hard to do on a such a blog. And I'm sure I miss out a lot on what others are saying. I know I miss times for rebuttal, as I have family to be with and work to do.

But pertaining with matters about God, I just cannot keep it too condensed. There is just too much information out there. And there's so much that scholars have done [yes I realize I stand on their backs].

I make sure that I include all the references and sources necessary for people to research.

In a small way studying the Bible is much like studying science (atheists cool down a moment). In that there is so much data in the Bible, I keep repeating "it's no small work" and it isn't.

I love the Bible, I love God's Word.

Every single time I read it (and I've been reading every night for quite some time now), I just am baffled at the amount of information that God is revealing to me. I learn new things every single day.

Regarding proclaiming truth. I don't mince words there. Ray hits the nail right on the head regarding the absent use of the Law in modern churches these days.

I am usually shy on the streets however as I've done open-air only twice, but I've spoken to atheists in person on the streets and for the most part, the ones I've met aren't as hostile as those here. But I do hand out tracts. Though I need to get into converse more in person.

I'm much better at writing than I am speaking in person. I guess, just like the Apostle Paul has mentioned that about himself. I am certainly not Paul though by a long shot, I'm not worthy to tie his sandals.

I agree with you on the issue of this "bits and bites" age. We do live in a fast-food world.

But if you think about it, that's not how God communicates, look at the Bible. Fast food information just like fast food itself is not good for the mind (nor the body).

I've begun reading books a lot, something I didn't do too much as a teen, but the more I do, the more I notice that my vocabulary skills are increasing.

That's a good thing! :)

So I'd encourage every Christian to read the Bible every day, just like what Ray says "No read, no feed!" "No Bible, no Breakfast"

Regarding my theology, I just say it as it is from God's Word. I don't try to interpret too much unless it needs clarification. The English Bible we have is pretty plain to understand. I recognize there are complicated areas, but they certainly don't pertain to the attributes of God's character, His love, His wrath, His mercy, his judgment, His holiness, and awesomeness.

The cross is indeed foolishness to atheists here as the Bible states, it was to me too before Christ saved me. But now, the more I read, the more I understand. I look forward to seeing you in heaven as well, if we do not meet here on earth first. :)

God Bless!; July 9, 2008 10:13 AM
verandoug said...: Dear Inoculated Mind,

If you've been around I didn't notice, sorry but just wanted to welcome you to the site. Thank you too for your picture. Nice to put a face to a name. Can't tell you how much that helps me personally.
Please know that I am using your post as a springboard to respond to the group, not just to you. Some of this information is from past things that we've talked about.

I think when Ray is referring to an "Intellectual Likeness" he is actually trying to be funny, which some people didn't understand. There are two viewpoints which are compatible with his phrase, the first being that the people perceived someone (Comfort) who is intellectually like Einstein, and the second being that the people perceived someone intellectual (Comfort), who is a likeness (physical) to Einstein.

It was a joke. Get it?

Can anyone say "chocolate cake?"

But, let me just tell you that knowing how to make it into heaven is a far greater revelation than relativity, believe it or not.

It never ceases to amaze me the knee jerk reaction of the folk on this site. You can blast Christians and Christianity to the ends of the earth but speak a word against Darwin or Einstein and it's Whoa Nellie.

By the way, the "Banana" argument is based on pure ignorance of plant breeding, and crop evolution and domestication. Wild "bananas" are tough, seedy, and barely edible. It took the intelligent 'designing' of humans to turn them into seedless delicious, and prolific fruits that we eat today. The only worst nightmare here is Ray Comfort's and it's his lack of basic science literacy.

Now, now, Let us not forget that the good banana was simply singled out of the ones that weren't so good through the process of elimination. It would be like finding the proverbial pea plant that is tall and singling it out with dominating genes or recessive ones as the case might be. And let us also not forget that genetic engineering went as far back as bibical bronze age folk per Jacob's little goat trick. See Genesis 30. Jacob didn't know dominate and recessive from a hole in the ground and never saw a strand of DNA under a microscope. But he understood the principle.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Vera; July 9, 2008 10:16 AM
Paul Johnson said...: “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” - Albert Einstein; July 9, 2008 10:28 AM
Iago said...: scmike said :

One must first conclude that science is valid before using/understanding it. Since science is based on the uniformity of nature (which cannot be accounted for in an atheistic/evolutionary worldview) it would seem that you have some explaining to do yourself.

Please tell us how you account for the universal, abstract, unchanging laws (such as the law of non-contradiction) that make science and reason possible. God Bless.

endquote.

Wow, just WOW. Such a level of incoherent babble.
I shall adivse you to just wave your hands in the air and say 'Goddidit' and bury your head in the sand again.
Good Day and may his noodly appendage come down and whap some sense into your hear.; July 9, 2008 10:29 AM
The Ranting Student said...: Het Terry,

If you look up Ralph Fiennes then you'd know my picture is not of a Nazi silly.

But, then of course all the non christian sites might be blocked from your computers internet.

I have a hard time believing anyhting you say really.

As a sane human being, I personally think you need help...

....a lot of help...

...an EXTREMELY lot of help.

But that's just my opinion. Really.

and until you prove to me Hell exists...well...Sorry, you lose.

Go back to sleep.; July 9, 2008 10:34 AM
Ethan said...: Just Another Primate,

If you're moral without faith, is that like being rational without logic, and smart without intelligence?; July 9, 2008 10:46 AM
Dimensio said...: And let us also not forget that genetic engineering went as far back as bibical bronze age folk per Jacob's little goat trick. See Genesis 30. Jacob didn't know dominate and recessive from a hole in the ground and never saw a strand of DNA under a microscope. But he understood the principle.

If you are suggesting that a myth that claims that placing specific colour patterns within view of breeding animals will directly influence colour patterns of the fur of the offspring of those animals is a demonstration of genetic engineering, then you are demonstrating a fundamental ignorance of genetics.

The story related in Genesis 30, which claims that the colour patterns of goats can be influenced by the patterns of objects placed within view of the goat parents, has no basis in fact at all.; July 9, 2008 11:05 AM
Benjamin Franklin said...: Ray-

You have very little in common with Einstein regarding religion.

No one on this website says Einstein was an atheist, but I think Einstein would disagree with virtually every substantial precept of your interpretation of religion, which he termed "childish".

The primary factor is that you consider the Bible to be the infallible, revealed word of God.

Your entire ministry, preaching about sin, law, righteousness, holiness, judgment, repentance, and hell, is based completely on your interpretation of the Bible, which Einstein considered "a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

So Ray, even though you feel deeply in your heart that anyone who sould say something like this just doesn't realize their own sinful nature, if you remove the circular logic of the authority of the Bible, (i.e. The Bible is the revealed word of God because it says in the Bible that the Bible is the revealed word of God,) your theology collapses like a house of cards.

You said "Intellectually, I'm not worthy to wash his socks." Perhaps you should ascribe to Einstein's intellectual position regarding God's word.

Or do you, deep down agree with Einstein that:

The idea of a personal God is naive.

Man is not judged.

There is no Hell.

Dawin's theory is valid.

Einstein said-
"A conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs."

You will not change your mind, because you cannot accept the intellectual conclusion of Einstein, even though you admitted that intellectually, you aren't worthy to wash his socks, but maybe you should change the quote on your website banner to something else. Maybe a nice psalm, or proverb.; July 9, 2008 11:13 AM
Skippy the Skeptic said...: Wow, once again Ray is a tremendous example of Christian humility...

Ray, brother, I don't think simultaneously being painfully daft and extraordinarily conceited is something you should be proud of.

Love and peace,
-Skippy; July 9, 2008 11:13 AM
Rev. BigDumbChimp said...: If you're moral without faith, is that like being rational without logic, and smart without intelligence?

I'll take false analogy for 1000 Alex; July 9, 2008 11:30 AM
dale said...: Iago said...

"scmike said :

One must first conclude that science is valid before using/understanding it. Since science is based on the uniformity of nature (which cannot be accounted for in an atheistic/evolutionary worldview) it would seem that you have some explaining to do yourself.

Please tell us how you account for the universal, abstract, unchanging laws (such as the law of non-contradiction) that make science and reason possible. God Bless.

endquote."

Wow, just WOW. Such a level of incoherent babble.

Iago,
SCMike is a presuppositionalist.

Presuppositionalism is a circular argument while presupposing without evidence that the bible is the word of God.

Syetenb has been trying to use this and he dedicates his website, etc to it.

It is probably one of the more absurd reasons for believing in God.
Reading about it is rather fun though.; July 9, 2008 11:48 AM
The Skeptical Sorcerer said...: ethan said.....

"If you're moral without faith, is that like being rational without logic, and smart without intelligence?"

No, what does morals have to do with faith? I'm pretty sure most Christians don't get their morals from the Bible or they would be stoning their disobedient children, owning slaves ect. If you are only moral because of your faith that is truly a sad state indeed, only being kind to your fellow man for fear of God's wrath.; July 9, 2008 11:51 AM
Benjamin Franklin said...: allfiredup-

I sloughed through your 9,000 plus word post, and, bottom line is- It didn't address the question. No one should argue that Einstein was deeply religious in his own way, but the fact is, his views on religion and yours are universes apart, without any possible reconciling.

Einstein was not a Christian.
He felt that the Bible was a collection of childish, primitive legends.
He didn't believe in the divinity of Jesus,
nor special creation of man,
nor the fall of man,
nor resurrection, nor judgement.

None of this is in any way refuted in, or by your post.

Einstein said-
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. In this sense I believe that the priest must become a teacher if he wishes to do justice to his lofty educational mission."

You and Comfort are priests, Einstein was a teacher, try to learn from him.; July 9, 2008 11:55 AM
Irukandji said...: @ Vera:

Are you sure of your facts? My father is Jewish. My mom is not but I have been told that I could technically become an aliyah if I wanted.

As you probably know, by halakhic definition you are not Jewish at all; "Jewishness" is inherited through the mother's bloodline. Although original Israeli immigration laws adhered to halakhic tradition, a 1970 amendment declared that anyone with a Jewish parent or grandparent (of either gender) was eligible to become an aliyah. However, this same amendment states that anyone who has voluntarily converted to another religion has forfeited his or her right to aliyah-hood.

I'm not an expert on Israeli immigration law, but yeah, I'm pretty sure that as long as you formally identify as a Christian, you're ineligible to become an aliyah.

Genesis 30 shows the exact opposite of a practical understanding of genetics, by the way. Historically, many agricultural and pastoral societies have developed remarkably sophisticated breeding techniques without knowing a gene from a hole in the ground. But having your goats get it on in front of a spotted stick so they'll produce spotted babies isn't a sophisticated breeding technique. In fact, it's just plain silly.; July 9, 2008 11:56 AM
Benjamin Franklin said...: Ray-

You have very little in common with Einstein regarding religion.

No one on this website says Einstein was an atheist, but I think Einstein would disagree with virtually every substantial precept of your interpretation of religion, which he termed "childish".

The primary factor is that you consider the Bible to be the infallible, revealed word of God.

Your entire ministry, preaching about sin, law, righteousness, holiness, judgment, repentance, and hell, is based completely on your interpretation of the Bible, which Einstein considered "a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

So Ray, even though you feel deeply in your heart that anyone who sould say something like this just doesn't realize their own sinful nature, if you remove the circular logic of the authority of the Bible, (i.e. The Bible is the revealed word of God because it says in the Bible that the Bible is the revealed word of God,) your theology collapses like a house of cards.

You said "Intellectually, I'm not worthy to wash his socks." Perhaps you should ascribe to Einstein's intellectual position regarding God's word.

Or do you, deep down agree with Einstein that:

The idea of a personal God is naive.

Man is not judged.

There is no Hell.

Dawin's theory is valid.

Einstein said-
"A conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs."

You will not change your mind, because you cannot accept the intellectual conclusion of Einstein, even though you admitted that intellectually, you aren't worthy to wash his socks, but maybe you should change the quote on your website banner to something else. Maybe a nice psalm, or proverb.; July 9, 2008 12:08 PM
capicua said...: This is just daft: "Atheists say that ... anyone who believes that God exists, hates science." Atheists recognize the obvious fact that most scientists also believe in one or other god (not capitalized because it's a common noun). What many atheists also claim is that science is corrosive to religious belief because humanity appears to be rapidly approaching a satisfactory naturalistic explanation of everything, thus rendering the supernatural irrelevant.; July 9, 2008 12:14 PM
Rufus said...: Ray Comfort:

Please cite your sources for writing that Einstein believed he was intelligently designed by God. Thank you.; July 9, 2008 12:16 PM
scmike said...: iago,

""Wow, just WOW. Such a level of incoherent babble.""

Sorry. I'll simplify it for you:)

Science is dependant on the uniformity of nature (that means that past experience is a guide to future experience). This is called the law of induction(pronounced en-duck-shun).

It is a universal (that means it's the same everywhere), abstract (that means you can't touch it, taste it, smell it, hear it, or see it), unchanging (that means it remains the same) law. This can not be accounted for (logically explained) in an evolutionary/atheistic worldview. Care to prove me wrong?? God Bless.; July 9, 2008 12:42 PM
Maragon said...: I'd like to see Allfired up get some thoughts of his own instead of copying and pasting huge spans of text that were written by others.

Your stolen diatribes are tedious, at best, and are largely ignored because they are so rarely doing anything to address the original post or the comments.

If you have nothing original or intelligent to say, perhaps saying nothing at all would be a feasible alternative to stretching out the comments section for everyone else.

I also hope you realize that your appeals to authority(AN EX-ATHEIST SAID THIS SO IT MUST BE TRUE) are transparent and juvenile.; July 9, 2008 12:43 PM
Maragon said...: Ethan said,

"If you're moral without faith, is that like being rational without logic, and smart without intelligence?"

This is such a primitive and obvious logical fallacy.
Do yourself a favour and Google 'logical fallacies' for a comprehensive list that will allow you to argue like an intellectual or not at all.

The particular fallacy you've stumbled into here is a False Dichotomy.
"The informal fallacy of false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, or bifurcation) involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are other options. Closely related are failing to consider a range of options and the tendency to think in extremes, called black-and-white thinking. Strictly speaking, the prefix "di" in "dilemma" means "two". When a list of more than two choices are offered, but there are other choices not mentioned, then the fallacy is called the fallacy of false choice."

You've also stumbled upon what I believe to be the funniest apologist pitfall of them all - Claiming that you are moral because you believe in God and that an atheist is immoral because they profess no belief in said God.
This, of course, opens up the issue that you are only being moral because you are being told to. In other words, the only thing stopping you from stealing, murdering, raping, lying, etc is that a book said that you shouldn't and that if you found out that this book wasn't infallible, you would proceed to steal, murder, rape, lie, etc.; July 9, 2008 1:03 PM
scmike said...: get_education,

""Guys, beware, there is another Sye in the making calling him/her-self scmike. Another deluded person who thinks logic, math, and uniformity of nature can only be accounted for if there is a god (again, not capitalized because not a particular god).""

Thanks for the compliment. However, there is only one Sye TenB.

I will say that after reading Sye's arguments on numerous posts with numerous atheists, I have realized the simple truth behind this line of reasoning. Not one atheist/evolutionist is able to account for ANY of the abstract, universal, unchanging laws, nor can they account for truth and knowledge. Yet, you use these concepts on a daily basis and even presuppose them in your posts. In doing so, you are living inconsisently with your professed worldview.

When I first started posting on this blog, I spent a lot of time and energy answering questions posed by atheists/evolutionists. The typical responses I received after exerting all that effort were things like: "that doesn't prove anything", "using the Bible makes you look stupid", etc.

So, for the sake of brevity I have learned how to get right to the heart of the issue when reasoning with atheists/evolutionists by asking essential questions that show the absurdity of your worldview. Hopefully, this will cause at least some of you to stop and give some serious thought to your worldview and to stop surpressing the truth that God has so clearly revealed to you.

So, how about it get_education, how do you account for all of the things you mentioned above. I'd love to hear. God Bless.; July 9, 2008 1:15 PM
capicua said...: Dear rufus. You're wasting your energy. The Way of the Master people stopped replying to me after two emails when I questioned the value of the Bible on the grounds that words like "foreskin", "sword" etc. appear far more often than "co-operation", "sharing" and the like.

But, who needs the truth just as long as the tithe-paying saved souls keep coming?; July 9, 2008 1:18 PM
Emily said...: Dale said, "I don't agree with PC on this. Ray is not brain dead. That would imply that he has a brain."

How sad for you that you are so full of hate and anger. You must know, even if only by way of logic and science, that no good can come from being so enraged. Its not only bad for your health, disposition and life, but its also bad for your SOUL. Its not Ray you hate Dale, but his message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

As you harden your heart toward the God that gave you life, you store up wrath for yourself in the day of judgement.; July 9, 2008 1:18 PM
Michelle said...: This post has been removed by the author.; July 9, 2008 1:24 PM
Kergillian said...: You are a funny man, Ray. A strange, deluded, funny little man.

Let me know next time you come to earth.; July 9, 2008 1:42 PM
Stacy said...: I don't understand why such a great deal of emphasis is being placed on whether or not Einstein believed in God. Surely he was entitled to his opinion, just as we all are, but ultimately he didn't truly know (at least before he died--I'm sure he does know at this point). Believing or not believing fails to change what is actually true.; July 9, 2008 1:48 PM
Iago said...: Dale,
Thank you I was looking for the proper term to use for these folks. Afterall if I were to call them gibbering idiots that would be very insulting and offensive to the residents of the land of Gib.

And I do admit to a certain amusement at the level of incoherent babble that comes out of the mouths of some of these folks.
Take care; July 9, 2008 2:00 PM
Mark W Laine said...: To "likestrayvoltage"
You said..."@Mark, it is possible that God is talking to me right now and asking me to tell you not to embarrass Him cos he didn't write that book you're recommending."

I did not say God wrote "The Shack" I said it was a book that was very good at explaining "God, Jesus, and The Holy Spirit" in layman terms for those who are actually searching for God. It sounded as if the person I was adressing was searching. The bible is the best source for searching but no ah-theist is going to read it, seriously.

As a Christian I have posted here on occasion and it never surprises me concerning the types of junk I read in some of the ah-theist postings here.

Some of which even causes me to desire calling down fire from heaven on your heads, were I capable of doing so. That is the Son of Thunder in me. But, Jesus keeps telling me peace, patience, kindness, self-control.

Someday I know that every head will bow before the One and Only Righteous Judge, The Holy of all Holies, Jesus the Christ. Yea!!!

There will be no more argument then. Before then...all you atheists better get right because you don't want to get left (with the goats).

OH BTW: If you don't like what I post don't read it.; July 9, 2008 2:03 PM
scmike said...: dale,

""SCMike is a presuppositionalist.""

Not necessarily. I'm just a Christian who happens to like using this line of reasoning with atheists/evolutionists.

""Presuppositionalism is a circular argument while presupposing without evidence that the bible is the word of God.""

Not true dale.

The Presuppositional argument is that God has revealed himself to all mankind in many different ways. Absolute, univeral, abstract laws and absolute truth are just some of the evidence that God has given as part of this revelation.

We know this, because none of these concepts can be accounted for without God (as many atheists on this blog have been so kind to demonstrate time and time again).

Those who deny God's existence despite this obvious evidence are supressing the truth and ignoring the only logical explanation for the existence of the evidence provided (check out the post "Dinner with 40 atheists" on Jan. 9, 2008 to see what I mean).

The Presuppositional method is very useful in exposing the silliness and inconsistencies of the severely flawed atheistic/evolutionary worldview.

Perhaps this is why it receives so much attention from atheists/evolutionists and is held in such contempt by you Dale? God Bless.; July 9, 2008 2:20 PM
dale said...: Iago,

From my comment on the thread way down the list called "Secular Philosophy."

Sye Tenb is the first person I have seen here actually trying to attempt to seriously inject the philosophy of presuppositionalim, although I have seen shades of it in Ray's writings.

"The presupper's first presupposition is that their bible is the word of God. No evidence, merely presuppose it.

There is no actual scripture that supports this minority delusion.

VanTil [the father of presuppositionalism] says,
“It is fatal to try to prove the existence of God by the ‘scientific method’ and by the ‘appeal to facts’ if . . . the scientific method itself is based upon a presupposition which excludes God."

Of course scientists do not presuppose anything. Ken Ham uses that all the time to try to put science on the same faith belief system as his own.

and...

"Our argument as over against this would be that the existence of the God of Christian theism and the conception of his counsel as controlling all things in the universe is the only presupposition which can account for the uniformity of nature which the scientist needs."

Oh? That is merely an opinion with nothing to back it up, an argument from credulity.

"But the best and only possible proof for the existence of such a God is that his existence is required for the uniformity of nature and for the coherence of all things in the world."

Again, there is no way for him to back that up.

From my crony, "Prof,"
"This is not a rational grounds for justification, it is an appeal to magic. It does nothing to actually provide a justification, it merely asserts that there is one. One might as well say that there is a council of twelve, universe-creating elves (tm)" who create uniform universes. This universe being an example of their handiwork. That "accounts" for the universe being uniform just as cogently as does positing the Christian God: in other words, its just a label - a magic word - abracadbra- without any content behind it. "Goddidit"

Next, there is an utterly unsupported assertion contained with statements like these: "the God of Christian theism and the conception of his counsel as controlling all things in the universe is the only presupposition which can account for the uniformity of nature." It is the presumption that the uniformity of nature needs to be "accounted for." In other words, the implication is: "without a God, a universe wouldn't be uniform." But precisely on what basis is such an assumption made? Exactly what experience, or special insight, does the author have of universes forming, that give
him the grounds for sneaking in the implicit assumption that Universes without a God are not uniform? How many "non-uniform," "un-created" universes has he been privy to, on which to derive his assumption?

The answer would be "none.""

Presuppers are just like all people of "faith." They have no evidence that God exists, they merely try to tell us it is fine to presuppose that God exists.

Addendum.

Now we have Ken Ham who likes to have his cake and eat it too. He is a resupper, but...also likes to play with science to build his biblical models. Of course he fails miserably, and worse yet, his "researchers" sign an oath to not publish anything that will contradic the bible in any way.

Yet, Ham and people like Syetenb, and SCMike like to say that scientists hold presuppositions, but you will not find any of them signing oaths that they will not publish rtesearch that challenges present knowledge. In fact the scientists I have worked with would like nothing more than to find information that would question present thinking. After all, that is the only way to make scientific progress.

There is a world of difference there.

The presuppers are like watching a dog chasing his tail, and it is even more humorous.

I find that most presuppers don't actually want you to know they are presuppers because once the philosophy is investigated it becomes obvious that it is the same old argument in a "new," yet old worn out package.

finis; July 9, 2008 2:30 PM
Kristine said...: Many times I have been told that I look like Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein will not be forever remembered for an argument about how well his, er, banana fit his hand.; July 9, 2008 3:07 PM
andrew w. said...: to euthyphro037 concerning his honest question...first off, i only know one thing to do in your case, but i stopped reading immediately after your entry and prayed hard for God to reveal Himself to you if it be His will...note: if He doesn't you're going to have to do like andrew w...i too have never had the honor of God 'revealing' Himself to me in the literal sense before or after becoming a christian but when our life is over and we do get that revelation, maybe then we will say i sure am glad God gave my personal, literal revelation to somebody else who needed it more...Jesus said to thomas how much better are those who have not seen and believed...you might be BETTER than these (that have seen and believed) euthy...

i went from wanting to see and believe to believing and wanting to see and now that i am believing i just want to keep believing and have others seeing!!!

andrew w.; July 9, 2008 4:05 PM
Emily said...: "Albert Einstein will not be forever remembered for an argument about how well his, er, banana fit his hand."

Actually, Ray will be remembered on earth as a soul winner for Christ. And in Heaven, Ray will receive crown(s) for everything he did in the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ.

Of course he will always be a mere joke to atheists and other non-believers, because the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. Speaking of perishing, if you reject Jesus Christ as your Savior, then you too will remember Ray as a soul winner when you're in hell for eternity, regretting your decision.; July 9, 2008 4:27 PM
Dimensio said...: The Presuppositional method is very useful in exposing the silliness and inconsistencies of the severely flawed atheistic/evolutionary worldview.

I am curious; it appears as though you are addressing atheism and acceptance of the theory of evolution as synonymous conditions. If this is the case, then why are you making such a fundamental error? If this is not the case, then why do you use the terminology as you do?; July 9, 2008 4:31 PM
Michelle said...: Whoops!! I had a typo in the earlier post. Here's the corrected one:

Einstein...one of the many atheist gods... No wonder all of the his devoted followers are getting their britches in a wad over this post. (Ray hit a nerve!)

Einstein said this...Einstein said that... A bunch of contradictions. Looks as if he was either a liar, had multiple personalities, or was unsure.........; July 9, 2008 4:52 PM
Iago said...: scmike,

I give you a challenge to prove the Bible. Give me a recogniable modern mammal buried in the same fossil layer as a T-rex & Gorgonopsid .; July 9, 2008 5:16 PM
Rufus said...: Ray Comfort:

Please cite your sources for writing that Einstein believed that he was intelligently designed by God. Thank you.; July 9, 2008 5:20 PM
Charles said...: smike said:"We know this, because none of these concepts can be accounted for without God (as many atheists on this blog have been so kind to demonstrate time and time again)."

dale eviscerated this claim rather nicely in his last post. For people who can't read a post longer than two paragraphs, I'm repeat what I believe is his main point: how does adding God into the equation really justify the existance of empirical evidence and rational thought? My only guess is that you're saying that we only know the universe is real and at least partially knowable and predictable because God made it that way. Which isn't really saying anything at all. Positing an infinite, all-knowing creator doesn't add anything to the equation. In fact, such a being would make trust in our senses and in logic even less certain, since he/she/it could reshape reality any way that he/she/it chose at any time, changing our perceptions and even our memories to suit his/her/itself.

Even Sye admitted in the end that the only way that he know that God existed and that there was a logical order to the universe was by personal revelation, not by reason. So your theistic world doesn't do any better a job at "accounting" for anything than a non-theistic view does.

Cheers! (to quote our friend Sye); July 9, 2008 5:26 PM
Zen said...: Ray says,"So, although Albert Einstein’s view of God is different than mine (he didn't believe in a personal God), it is pleasing to me that he humbly acknowledged the One who gave him life. He was no fool."

Funny thing is, according to the Bible, Einstein is burning in Hell for eternity.

I am sure his similarity to you is of little consequence to him as he gnashes his teeth in the bowls of Hell with all other non-Christians.; July 9, 2008 5:40 PM
Maragon said...: Hey there Emily,

I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know that people like you are EXACTLY what cause fellow believers to begin to question their faith. You are the exact opposite of the humble, kind, gentle, respectful, loving Godspawn that you claim to deify.

Your smug, self-important diatribe about hell is one that has been refuted verbatim, and yet you still trot it out. Why? Because it allows you to feel 'superior' to us 'lowly unsaved atheists', doesn't it? You feel so wonderfully assured of your choice that you ALMOST hope that we don't all get converted - because then who would you have to look down on and bolster your own faltering self-perceptions?

There's two sides to every situation, and while you pity us for not having blind faith in your sky daddy, we atheists pity you for deluding yourself and imposing a willful ignorance that prevents you from actually studying and understanding philosophy, psychology and the sciences.; July 9, 2008 5:47 PM
get_education said...: scmike,

It is a universal (that means it's the same everywhere), abstract (that means you can't touch it, taste it, smell it, hear it, or see it), unchanging (that means it remains the same) law. This can not be accounted for (logically explained) in an evolutionary/atheistic worldview. Care to prove me wrong??

Care to explain why this cannot be accounted for in an atheistic worldview? (evolutionary and atheistic are not the same. I corrected that bit for you. No need to thank me.)

G.E.; July 9, 2008 6:00 PM
keywesthaven1@msn.com (Terry) said...: @ Kristine,

Your comment concerning Ray Comfort was totally inappropriate and deragatory.

You should think before you send comments like that! How would you like it if I looked over your profile and blogs and spit out a quick judgment of "witch" towards you ?

Try your best to act like a lady.
Thank you in advance.

BTW, have you read your Bible today? I will pray for you evolutionist! You will die like the rest of us, and believe me there is no "nothingness" after death.

Without Jesus Christ in your life, you will go straight to Hell where all practicing witches and warlocks go ...when they die!

Its not too late for you, watch 'Hells Best Kept Secret' learn about the 10 commandments from God, and how we have all violated them. Jesus paid the fine for our sins on the cross.

He can save you, if you call upon His name, repent of your sins, and accept Him as Lord, Master, & Savior. God Bless! do it now, before its too late!!!

See my blogs or website for the video. Ciao! Have a nice day.; July 9, 2008 6:15 PM
The Ranting Student said...: Terry, I openly invite you to my blog.

Come as much as you want.

Theres a thing at my blog...I like the 1st Amendment.

So, take a swing.; July 9, 2008 6:32 PM
AllFiredUp said...: Benjamin Franklin said "Einstein was not a Christian.
He felt that the Bible was a collection of childish, primitive legends.
He didn't believe in the divinity of Jesus,
nor special creation of man,
nor the fall of man,
nor resurrection, nor judgement.

None of this is in any way refuted in, or by your post."

REALLY?!?!?!

You know what. You atheists have such a big pair of atheist glasses on that you totally missed my point.

I KNOW Einstein wasn't a Christian!

I KNOW his view of God is different than Christians view of God.

Ray knows this too.

You are not saying anything that we don't already know.

That's not Ray's point, nor mine.

What IS our point is this...

Einstein believed that there was some supernatural force which created the universe, he really did believe that the universe was created by God (albeit not the personal God that Christians describe).

Instead of "personal" Einstein uses the word "superpersonal", and he used the words "Cosmic Intelligence".

It's difficult to track what Einstein meant by "superpersonal" other than that it could mean an abstract force, beyond mere human understanding.

Again, my whole point was that Einstein was NOT an atheist. He did believe that some force, what he called God, controls the universe, and that the universe is not just chance.; July 9, 2008 6:43 PM
keywesthaven1@msn.com (Terry) said...: @ Ranting Lunatic -

IRT: Nazi SS Uniform

I have news for you youngster, your picture is identical to a 'SS' uniform for a Nazi officer.

In fact, it shows how much you know about this actor. He portrayed a SS!

He played that part in the movie "Schindler's List (1993)"

No! I am not going to post a picture of a 'pig' uniform to prove my point. Look it up on a search engine.

I found yours, and another with Ralph in uniform with a skull and crossbones.

I am not "foolish" enough to promote such sick fantasies! as you my fiend!

As far as me proving Hell exists, we have discussed this before on this blog. Check the archives, and my blog for evidence of Hell.

Stay on the path you are on, right now, and you will meet Adolph Hitler in person in agonizing pain, in Hell!

Have a nice day Ranting Lunatic!

BTW, I don't care what you think!

The Bible is the Word of God and I will take that over your "thoughts" every day of the week ..... and twice on Sunday atheist Nazi admirer!

Psalm 14

Sinful Men

" 1 The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are sinful and their actions are sinful. There is no one who does good. " That includes you atheist 'Nazi' admirer. May God have mercy on your soul ...; July 9, 2008 6:51 PM
get_education said...: BTW, have you read your Bible today?

Do it! But really read your Bible, Penn and Teller said it better than me: "the world needs more atheists, and reading the _[adjectives that ray would not allow]_ Bible is the best way to get you to be one"

Of course, if you really READ it. If you just make it fit to your imagery, then its useless.

G.E.; July 9, 2008 7:01 PM
keywesthaven1@msn.com (Terry) said...: @ Mark W. Laine,

Enjoyed your comments immensely!

Thanks brother! the atheists on this blog give me a 'good laugh' almost every day with the "foolish" remarks they write!

'Flinging' and 'Ranting' are legends in their own minds!
Only problem ...they won't be ... when they go to Hell!

More than "half" of these "A"s just 'cut n paste' from Richard Dawkins website. They actually take his religion as fact.

pathetic!

A bunch of 'drones' coming from Richard's hive of silliness, and false data.

Atheists! Evolutionists!!

Where's that book of evidence for evolution ? eh? Let me guess, he is still trying to find real evidence to publish in a book?! ha ha ha

He promised it in July. The man is a joke! As much as Obama! A joke!
The "sheep" of America can be so "foolish"! Turn away from your foolish ideas of "no God" while you can! Repent! Repent! Repent!!!!

God Bless Bro! take care!!! :)
Hope to see you at a Living Waters or Way of the Master conference.; July 9, 2008 7:03 PM
keywesthaven1@msn.com (Terry) said...: @ get_education

Get_ a_ Mind! Read your Bible while you can! Start with the Gospel of John ( my suggestion ), and read Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Time is running out for you!

get-saved while you still can!!!

We don't want you, or any of the atheists here to burn in Hell in agonizing pain for eternity!

Wise Up! Get_Real! Get Saved!!!
fieryphoenix.us; July 9, 2008 7:10 PM
The Ranting Student said...: Terry the VERY insane CHERRY
[if you're gonna resort to name calling]

Sometimes I wonder if you think.

Then I realize you dont.

And I dont care what you think...I don't like the Nazis, its a picture.

Its NOT REALITY. Something you can't grasp.

Terry's Brain 14

Nothing

"_____________________
_____________________________
________________________________" That includes your thoughts.

keywesthaven1@msn.com (Terry) said...
@ get_education

Get_ a_ Mind!

how ironic.

keywesthaven1@msn.com (Terry) said...

'Flinging' and 'Ranting' are legends in their own minds!
Only problem ...they won't be ... when they go to Hell!

hey, at least we have them.; July 9, 2008 7:31 PM
The Ranting Student said...: by the way terry,
your last post contains a link.

Good job following simple directions.; July 9, 2008 7:33 PM
Dimensio said...: More than "half" of these "A"s just 'cut n paste' from Richard Dawkins website. They actually take his religion as fact.

Please justify this assertion with references to specific postings and references showing where the exact content of those postings may be found on Richard Dawkins's website.

Where's that book of evidence for evolution ? eh? Let me guess, he is still trying to find real evidence to publish in a book?! ha ha ha

Are you not aware that Professor Dawkins has already authored several books that reference evidence in support of the theory of evolution? Your question demonstrates only that you have done no research and, as such, that you are not credible when speaking on the subject of evolution.; July 9, 2008 7:37 PM
The Ranting Student said...: by the way Terry,

yes, sheep are a joke. I'm sure you know first hand.

And please, come by my blog. I invite you. In fact, I'd love for you to stop by often.

Teach us atheists to keep in line and whatnot, eh?; July 9, 2008 7:44 PM
get_education said...: Do not worry too much Terry, while we do not think there is any hell, well, if there were, what Jesus went through would not amount, would not be equivalent, for even a very light toasting for billions of people to be forgiven. I am sure I have gotten worse while taking a sun bath.

G.E.; July 9, 2008 7:49 PM
Sye TenB said...: Get Education said: Guys, beware, there is another Sye in the making calling him/her-self scmike. Another deluded person who thinks logic, math, and uniformity of nature can only be accounted for if there is a god.

Methinks thou dost protest too much :-)

By the way, how do you account for the logic, math and the uniformity of nature outside of God - oh wait, you didn't.

Cheers,

Sye

P.S. Welcome SCMike!!!; July 9, 2008 7:55 PM
Iago said...: Mark W. laine said :

Some of which even causes me to desire calling down fire from heaven on your heads, were I capable of doing so. That is the Son of Thunder in me. But, Jesus keeps telling me peace, patience, kindness, self-control.

endquote

Hmmm sounds like you need to be worshipping Thor, or are you a Thor atheist? Or for fire you could try Agni, or are you anti-Agni ? Lots of options out there for you to be able to rigtheously smite the sinners aginast what you believe.; July 9, 2008 8:11 PM
Iago said...: Terry said :

We don't want you, or any of the atheists here to burn in Hell in agonizing pain for eternity!

endquote

Can't threaten people with wha thy do not believe in. I could threaten you with the boogey man under your bed or the monster in your closet and it would be about as effective.; July 9, 2008 8:14 PM
The Ranting Student said...: Oh, and some final thoughts for Terry...

I know about SS.

It's called Acting.

Hell doesn't exist.

Your evidence for hell is as convincing as Rays evidence against evolution.

And shut up about it. And Hells Best Kept Secret. And your super powers in the field of workforce.

Times running out! Read a book!

I don't want your brain to diminish to dust, save yourself while you still can!

Read anything in Scientific American and repent!

God Doesn't Bless Atheists! Take Care Bro!

Hope to see you on my blog soon.; July 9, 2008 8:16 PM
Storeytwin A said...: Ray,
You are so precious!! I loved your picture. But of course we all know you are 10 times the man that Einstein ever was. It's a shame he had so much intelligence and didn't use it to glorify God. But of course, only God knows whether or not Einstein repented before he died. I hope he did.

You just don't know the countless people whose lives have been changed because of your ministry. I am one of them.

A little over 6 years ago I was happy being a Church pianist and teaching Sunday School in a little Baptist Church. I went online to search for a place to order tracts and ended up on living waters. I had never seen tracts like yours before, so I ordered some of the wallet ones. When my order came, you had so generously given me a tape of Hell's Best Kept Secret for free. I listened to it many times before it finally clicked with me that I had been living a lie. I had been in Church all my life but never had repented and totally trusted in Jesus. The Churches I had been in never talked about the 10 Commandments or Repentance,they just taught the typical "ask Jesus into your heart and everything will be great" messages.

Well to make a long story short, I repented and placed my trust in Jesus. Now I have the assurance that I am saved and I know my prayers are being heard now. I feel awful if I don't have a purse full of your wonderful, biblical tracts to give people throughout my day.

One day a Jehovah's Witness fellow came up to me while I was pumping gas in my car and tried to give me his literature. Instead, I took him through the law and showed him that his religion was teaching him to earn his way into heaven and that none of us was good enough to enter on our own merit. Only by the amazing grace of Jesus who sacrificed himself for our sins can we ever have hope of seeing heaven.

Ray, I want to thank you for teaching the biblical way to witness to the lost, because there are so many Churches that have dumbed down the message so, and are misleading people into believing they are saved when they are not.

Since I was truly saved, I have had many trials come into my life, such as going next door to check on my Mother-in-law and finding her dead, dealing with a rebellious daughter, and still my faith is strong. God has been there for me through it all, and I have no reason to believe that HE won't still be there for me.

My faith is not based on whether or not I have an easy life, it's based on my trustworthy and everpresent FATHER who guides me every step of the way and proves HIS WORD to me daily.

Thanks again for all that you do Ray. And thanks for your gracious, loving spirit while dealing with these ungrateful people that hang out on your blog. Hopefully many will be changed before it is too late, but for those who continue to reject JESUS, they will be found without excuse on that terrible day of judgment.

May God continue to shower you with HIS blessings!; July 9, 2008 8:27 PM
Sye TenB said...: A story about Dale (Not our Dale).

Dale believed he was dead. This troubled his family greatly. Try as they did, they could not convince Dale that he was not dead. They tried everything, but nothing would change his mind. At a last resort, they thought of taking Dale to a medical doctor. Surely a doctor could convince Dale that he was not dead.

The doctor, understanding the problem, turned to Dale and asked: “Dale, do dead men bleed?” Dale thought for a minute, then responded: “No, of course not, the heart would not be pumping blood, so no, dead men don’t bleed.” With that, the doctor leaned over and pricked Dale's finger with a pin. Sure enough, the blood started to ooze out. Dale looked down at his bleeding finger and in astonishment said: “Well, what do you know dead men DO bleed!”

Simillar to that Dale, our Dale holds to presuppositions which he refuses to let go, no matter what argument he is presented with.

For one who denies absolutes, it would be self-refuting to say that it is absolutely true that God does not exist, and cannot reveal some things to us in such a way that we can know them for certain. If Dale was consistent, he would accept at least the possibility that the Christian worldview offers a path to certainty. Naturally, he refuses to do this, because he knows that his own worldview has no possible path to certainty. We are left with Dale making an argument that goes something like this: “We can’t know anything for certain, but it is certain, that Christianity is false.”

Although I do appreciate Dale exposing the inconsistency of his worldview for all to see, it does get tiresome. At least you all can see (especially in the “Secular Philosophy’ thread), to what length Dale will go to argue against the truth. As I have said in the past though, people like Dale are here for a reason. They are trying to shoot down all arguments for the existence of God to support their own suppression of the truth. It must be really close to the surface for Dale though, as he seems quite obsessed with his quest.

Join me in praying for Dale and his peers. What a horribly empty life they must lead.

Cheers,

Sye; July 9, 2008 8:33 PM
verandoug said...: Chris from Oz

You said, I had a few points, one of which is that he's again trying to claim what atheists think, which was that "anyone who believes that God exists, hates science.". Plenty of good scientists are deists or theists. No atheist I've ever met claims that anyone who belives in God hates science.

The atheists are mostly scientists that are offended at Christianity for imposing what they thought was the truth of creation on science. Scientists were not allowed to share their discoveries with students. This caused a gulf between the two that is being bridged by a group called Reasons to Believe.

If you go to iTunes in the podcast section and look up Reasons to Believe, there are a number of messages there worth listening to. In relation to this discussion though, the one called Louisiana Governor Signs Controversial Education Bill would help you to understand what happened and how we as Christians are now aware of the problem.

It seems that the war is really two competing jurisdictions.

Hope that helps.
Vera; July 9, 2008 8:37 PM
flinging dust said...: This post has been removed by the author.; July 9, 2008 9:02 PM
Steven J. said...: Scmike said,

Science is dependant on the uniformity of nature (that means that past experience is a guide to future experience). This is called the law of induction(pronounced en-duck-shun).

Pointless philosophical quibble: David Hume might disagree with you (well, if he weren't dead, and were in a position to comment) on your statement that induction is a "law."

It is a universal (that means it's the same everywhere), abstract (that means you can't touch it, taste it, smell it, hear it, or see it), unchanging (that means it remains the same) law. This can not be accounted for (logically explained) in an evolutionary/atheistic worldview. Care to prove me wrong?? God Bless.

Which part cannot be explained in an "evolutionary/atheistic" worldview: that we are capable of induction, or that induction should actually work? If you're arguing that we need a Supreme Lawgiver to ensure that laws of nature exist, I think that laws of nature are logically prior to lawgivers: that is, one can have uniform regularities of nature without consciousness or will, but one cannot have consciousness and will without uniformities and regularities of nature. What enables God Himself to remain the same from one moment to another, or to remain consistent in His purposes, or to will laws of nature (or, indeed, to will anything at all)? God doesn't solve the problem of how logic and natural laws can exist, because He Himself requires logic and laws of (His own divine) nature in order to remain God. They might in principle be coeternal with God, but they cannot have been created by Him. Logically, therefore, laws of nature must be capable of existing on their own. You must concede this, because you hold that a Being reflecting and possessing such properties is capable of existing on His own.

If, instead (or also), you are asking how we can be capable of using induction and recognizing laws of nature, the short answer is natural selection: entities prone to bad or irrational inductions have, as W.V.O. Quine put it, "a sad but praiseworthy tendency to die without passing on their genes."; July 9, 2008 10:01 PM
sinned34 said...: Well, I've been away for about four months from here and I see nothing has changed. Ray is still hardening hearts to the gospel as much as ever!

I suppose I should restart my research for the Ray Comfort Quote Mine Project, but does it really matter? Pointing out his lies and misrepresentations is just too damn easy, and people like David Irish, Dale and euthyphro037 are doing a better job of it than I can anyways!

Have fun, and play nice - no wishing death and torment on each other. (and that means you non-believers, too!); July 9, 2008 11:03 PM
weemaryanne said...: This post has been removed by the author.; July 10, 2008 3:57 AM
weemaryanne said...: This post has been removed by the author.; July 10, 2008 3:57 AM
Rev. BigDumbChimp said...: God does not exist, and cannot reveal some things to us in such a way that we can know them for certain.

I ask again, what ways?; July 10, 2008 4:59 AM
scmike said...: charles,

"" My only guess is that you're saying that we only know the universe is real and at least partially knowable and predictable because God made it that way. Which isn't really saying anything at all.""

Your guess is wrong. I am saying that knowledge of anything is possible only by revelation from a being who knows everything.

Now's your chance to refute me once and for all. How is it possible for YOU to know anything according to your worldview.

""In fact, such a being would make trust in our senses and in logic even less certain, since he/she/it could reshape reality any way that he/she/it chose at any time, changing our perceptions and even our memories to suit his/her/itself.""

Do you know this for certain? If so, how?

Surely you would agree that it is possible that God could reveal himself to us in such a way that we could be certain? If not, on what grounds do you disagree?

""Even Sye admitted in the end that the only way that he know that God existed and that there was a logical order to the universe was by personal revelation, not by reason. So your theistic world doesn't do any better a job at "accounting" for anything than a non-theistic view does.""

We however can account for reason, you cannot. Go ahead, prove me wrong. How do you account for universal, abstract, unchanging laws of logic and reason according to your worldview.

"Cheers! (to quote our friend Sye)""

Cheers! and God Bless.; July 10, 2008 6:35 AM
Dimensio said...: By the way, how do you account for the logic, math and the uniformity of nature outside of God - oh wait, you didn't.

I believe that your statement is a non-sequitur. You have yet to demonstrate that "God" is a necessary condition for the "logic, math and uniformity" of nature.; July 10, 2008 6:41 AM
Benjamin Franklin said...: allfireup said-

"You know what. You atheists have such a big pair of atheist glasses on that you totally missed my point."

You erroneously assume that I am an atheist. I am not. You have made this erroneous assumption based on absolutely no evidence.

This lack of critical thinking indicates a vital missing component which results in many of your other misconceptions.

You similarly accept your religious beliefs based solely on unfounded circular reasoning, and blind faith.

Not surprisingly, you missed my point - that no one here is arguing the fact that Einstein was not an atheist.

What is being argued is that it is wrong for evangelists to imply that Einstein was in any way supportive of a Christian worldview such as what you and Ray COmfort espouse, because it clearly was not.

From Albert Einstein-

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity."

That is what I hope for as well, but given your prediliction towards unjustified and incorrect assumptions, you are probably too intractable, and apparently incapable of recognizing a better, more intellectually satisfying path than your "Satan as talking serpent" myths.; July 10, 2008 6:42 AM
Chris (from Oz) said...: Vera,

I hadn't seen "Reasons To Believe" before. It looks like some creationist group trying to get themselves taken seriously by attempting to do real science. Is that about right ?

If they don't misrepresent the science, and use proper methods, then good luck to them.

If they are dishonest, then scientists will not like them. Whether they believe in God or not won't change that.; July 10, 2008 6:45 AM
verandoug said...: And let us also not forget that genetic engineering went as far back as bibical bronze age folk per Jacob's little goat trick. See Genesis 30. Jacob didn't know dominate and recessive from a hole in the ground and never saw a strand of DNA under a microscope. But he understood the principle.

If you are suggesting that a myth that claims that placing specific colour patterns within view of breeding animals will directly influence colour patterns of the fur of the offspring of those animals is a demonstration of genetic engineering, then you are demonstrating a fundamental ignorance of genetic manipulation by forcing the flock to breed and then removing the stronger males for mating and was careful to separate them from the rest of the herd.

The story related in Genesis 30, which claims that the colour patterns of goats can be influenced by the patterns of objects placed within view of the goat parents, has no basis in fact at all.

I read an excellent article once on this story but I can't find it on the Internet. What Jacob did was to first separate the flocks so that he has the multicolored ones. If I recall correctly, the items he placed in the water have an effect on getting the flock to mate. His half of the cattle was already multicolored. So it stands to reason that they would mate. The remarkable thing is that whatever these plants did, they caused the animals to conceive, which suggests some sort of hormonal substance much like yams. Then he would separate out the babies but make sure that all the mating was done with multicolored animals in his flock. He separated out his females from the herds so that they couldn't mate with Laban's cattle. For stronger cattle, he apparently had them drink this water with these rods so that they would conceive. We do this today with chickens and cattle giving them hormones. It wasn't that the water was causing a DNA change but a hormonal change.

I have also heard of primitive peoples doing some farming with hybrids. It was in an article from Newsweek called Prehistoric Farming -- in 7000 BC.

From this article it says
Scientists have long assumed that this process took place gradually, perhaps over thousands of years. When geneticist Svante Paabo in Leipzig, Germany, turned the tools of genetic analysis to this ancient question, though, he got a surprise. His study of maize samples from the Balsas River Valley in southern Mexico, published last week in the journal Science, reveals that modern maize appeared on the scene far earlier than scientists had thought—perhaps as early as 9,000 years ago, almost 3,000 years before the earliest archeological evidence. The findings suggest that ancient humans were capable of causing rapid and decisive changes in the genetic makeup of staple crops, even without the tools of modern genetics. And they raise the possibility that ancient Mexicans may have benefited from their own maize-fed green revolution, similar to the one fueled in the 1960s and 1970s by high-yielding strains of wheat and rice.

Interestingly, the original fruits are often higher in nutrients. A seed company called Seeds of Change only sells non-hybrid seeds from what I understand.

Anyway, the point is that genetic engineering is not solely a part of our modern day culture. It is something mankind has been doing for a long time and me thinks God has given us the wisdom to understand those things through our own observations. It doesn't really take a rocket scientist to figure it out - just an observant eye.

AND it makes for a really delicious banana through selective breeding of bananas. God did make the first good one though.

Vera; July 10, 2008 6:51 AM
scmike said...: iago,

""I give you a challenge to prove the Bible. Give me a recogniable modern mammal buried in the same fossil layer as a T-rex & Gorgonopsid .""

It is always amusing to see an atheist/evolutionist ask for proof of anything. You see Iago, proof requires knowledge, uniformity, and truth. These are things that cannot be accounted for in any evolutionary worldview.

In other words, it would be impossible to offer any proof to someone whose worldview doesn't allow for the concept of proof.
Perhaps we can address this inconsistency before we move on? Tell us, Iago, how is it possible to prove anything according to your worldview?? God Bless.; July 10, 2008 6:55 AM
verandoug said...: Are you sure of your facts? My father is Jewish. My mom is not but I have been told that I could technically become an aliyah if I wanted.

As you probably know, by halakhic definition you are not Jewish at all; "Jewishness" is inherited through the mother's bloodline.

Yes, I did know that. The funny thing is that it was the seed of Abraham, not the egg of Sarah that began the bloodline. :-) Also, there are quite a few women in the Jewish lineage that are not of true Jewish blood such as Ruth and Rahab, who were both direct relatives of King David. But it doesn't really bother me that people do not see me that way. In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile.

Although original Israeli immigration laws adhered to halakhic tradition, a 1970 amendment declared that anyone with a Jewish parent or grandparent (of either gender) was eligible to become an aliyah.

Yes, that is what I remembered.

However, this same amendment states that anyone who has voluntarily converted to another religion has forfeited his or her right to aliyah-hood.

I have friends that are clearly Messianic Jews that are Israeli citizens for the last 5 years. Their children are mandatorily part of the military and are serving. So, I don't think that this ruling is strictly adhered to.

I'm not an expert on Israeli immigration law, but yeah, I'm pretty sure that as long as you formally identify as a Christian, you're ineligible to become an aliyah.

They don't exactly call themselves Christians but continue to say they are Jews just Messianic ones. I think that's how they get around that law, if I'm not mistaken. Many Messianic Jews do not give up being Jewish. I know of another family from our homeschool group that has been living there for the last few years as well. I'm not sure if she's a citizen though. She would like people to believe that she is of Jewish lineage but I'm not sure that she can prove it. So do they just check the box "yes" for being Jewish?

Genesis 30 shows the exact opposite of a practical understanding of genetics, by the way. Historically, many agricultural and pastoral societies have developed remarkably sophisticated breeding techniques without knowing a gene from a hole in the ground. But having your goats get it on in front of a spotted stick so they'll produce spotted babies isn't a sophisticated breeding technique. In fact, it's just plain silly.

I hope you saw my other post on this. I don't think these rods were meant to alter DNA but hormones. He wasn't making these sticks striped but peeling them back and putting them in the water. If the purpose was just to look at, then why put them in water? The purpose was to get the animal to conceive at Jacob's choosing. I read that somewhere but can't find a reference. I know that wild yams have progesterone in them and I believe pomegranates have natural hormones.

Vera; July 10, 2008 7:04 AM
scmike said...: get_education,

""Care to explain why this cannot be accounted for in an atheistic worldview? (evolutionary and atheistic are not the same. I corrected that bit for you. No need to thank me.)""

Sure. Absolute, immaterial, unchanging laws are a direct reflection of God's character and nature which He has revealed to all mankind. These laws (mathematics, science, reason, logic, etc.) as well as concepts such as absolute truth and absolute morality cannot exist without God.

Now your turn. How do you account for each of the things above acccording to your worldview?? God Bless.; July 10, 2008 7:06 AM
scmike said...: sye tenb,

""Methinks thou dost protest too much :-)""

Ain't it da truth!

""P.S. Welcome SCMike!!!""

Thanks Sye! God Bless.; July 10, 2008 7:09 AM
Michelle said...: @
Terry..

I wouldn't venture over to ranting student's blog...sounds like some kind of setup.

Peace, Michelle :); July 10, 2008 7:27 AM
verandoug said...: "A conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs."

Benjamin Franklin,
There is a measure of truth in this statement. However, Einstein was coming from the perspective of assumption that everything Galileo and Darwin presented was inerrant truth because it was scientific. He also rejected the ethics that the church might impose on science. See the reverse of this statement is true as well.

A conflict arises when the scientific community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in scientific texts and journals. This means an intervention on the part of science into the sphere of religion; this is where the struggle of science against the doctrines of biblical truth belongs.

What we have here are two competing jurisdictions. What we need is to let science do its work and be held to a moral code of ethics in that research as any organization should whether it be medical, corporate, government or civil. We should be at peace in trusting God that His Word is true and that whatever is proven in science will undoubtedly match the text of the Bible and make it even clearer than it was before. We should embrace 1 Thessalonians 5:21 that says, "Prove all things." There is another verse where God urges us to seek these things to see if they be so. We, as believers, should not shirk back from reality. Science should not reject God or morality nor should science arise in pride against the Bible because they believe that they are superior.

By the same token, science should not dismiss or attack religion but should embrace God because ultimately what they are discovering is God. They should admit when they are wrong and share the truth when it is appropriate to do so.

What Einstein discovered was an aspect of creation that reflects the character of God. He knows that now.

Vera; July 10, 2008 7:31 AM
get_education said...: No scmike, that is not an answer. That does not explain why such stuff cannot be accounted for in an atheistic worldview. I need something very very clear. Care to try again? Let me rephrase:

Question number 1:
Why logic, math, and the uniformity of nature cannot be accounted for in an atheistic worldview?

------
Question number 2:

Why is it not possible to leave your semi-answer:

Sure. Absolute, immaterial, unchanging laws are a direct reflection of God's character and nature

As:

Logic, math, and uniformity are a direct reflection of nature

G.E.; July 10, 2008 7:43 AM
Dimensio said...: You see Iago, proof requires knowledge, uniformity, and truth. These are things that cannot be accounted for in any evolutionary worldview.

Please describe an "evolutionary worldview", and demonstrate that no such worldview can coexist with "knowledge, uniformity and truth". Repeatedly asserting such, as you have done, is not a demonstration.; July 10, 2008 7:57 AM
Dimensio said...: Sure. Absolute, immaterial, unchanging laws are a direct reflection of God's character and nature which He has revealed to all mankind. These laws (mathematics, science, reason, logic, etc.) as well as concepts such as absolute truth and absolute morality cannot exist without God.

Your reasoning appeals to a "begging the question" fallacy. You are assuming that the fundamental properties of the universe are a "reflection of God's character and nature", and then you are using that assumption to assert that the aforementioned properties cannot exist without God. Your argument is flawed because you have not demonstrated that your premise, that the fundamental properties of the universe are derived as you claim, is true.

Your argument that the fundamental properties of the universe cannot exist without "God" is predicated upon the assumption that the fundamental properties of the universe are a result of "God". Your reasoning is circular, and thus it is invalid.; July 10, 2008 8:01 AM
verandoug said...: Hey there Emily,

I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know that people like you are EXACTLY what cause fellow believers to begin to question their faith. You are the exact opposite of the humble, kind, gentle, respectful, loving Godspawn that you claim to deify.

Your smug, self-important diatribe about hell is one that has been refuted verbatim, and yet you still trot it out. Why? Because it allows you to feel 'superior' to us 'lowly unsaved atheists', doesn't it? You feel so wonderfully assured of your choice that you ALMOST hope that we don't all get converted - because then who would you have to look down on and bolster your own faltering self-perceptions?

There's two sides to every situation, and while you pity us for not having blind faith in your sky daddy, we atheists pity you for deluding yourself and imposing a willful ignorance that prevents you from actually studying and understanding philosophy, psychology and the sciences.

Maragon,

What Emily told you was a mercy to you. She is putting herself on the line for you. That is real love.

There was nothing smug about what she said. It was a warning. It's a true warning. If you do not repent, you will inherit, by your own free will choice, hell's fire. We are giving you the way out though. The reason we go through the Ten Commandments with you is to show you that you have chosen to sin in your life. God's love is manifest in the cross to redeem you from that sin and to set you free from it. THAT, my friend, is love. It is such a simple message.

Go Emily, Go!!

Vera

And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12; July 10, 2008 8:05 AM
Maragon said...: Verandoug said:

"Maragon,

What Emily told you was a mercy to you. She is putting herself on the line for you. That is real love."

What Emily told me is something that she believes to make herself feel good. It's so nice to feel superior to someone, isn't it? And you guys certainly feel that you're better than is silly atheists. She did not, once, not even a little 'put herself on the line' - she preached from atop her pedestal at us. About her ex-atheism and her conversion and whatever else. Her ex-atheism and conversion are not evidence of anything. Unless you'd like to concede that my ex-Christianity and de-conversion are evidence against your religion.

"There was nothing smug about what she said."

That's easy for you to say, you share the same attitude.

"It was a warning. It's a true warning. If you do not repent, you will inherit, by your own free will choice, hell's fire."

There is absolutely no proof of this. Did you know that there are millions of other devoutly religious people - maybe even more devout than you - that believe that YOU will be going to hell? Maybe you chose the wrong deity, or maybe you're just not worshiping yours properly. How many sects of Christianity are there again?
How can you assure yourself that you have chosen the correct path out of 1000's? Because your bible says so? Their holy books assure them of their correct choices. Because they were taught that they chose correctly? Every sect of every religion has been taught this. You can be no more certain in your choices than any muslim or jew. They think and know in their hearts that it is YOU who will perish in hellfire - not them.

"We are giving you the way out though. The reason we go through the Ten Commandments with you is to show you that you have chosen to sin in your life."

You are offering me a way to close my mind and forsake all of the knowledge that comes along with a very expensive education. Thanks, but I'll pass. The ten commandments hold zero sway over someone who doesn't believe your holy texts to be the inerrant word of a deity. Do you have any idea how many codes of laws existed before the commandments?

"God's love is manifest in the cross to redeem you from that sin and to set you free from it. THAT, my friend, is love. It is such a simple message.

Go Emily, Go!!"

Sin is in your mind. According to all of those other religions and sects YOU are sinning, and you will burn forever in their version of hell while they smugly remind you that you've chosen wrong.

Here's the thing about hell - it doesn't frighten anyone but religious folks. To us normal people, it's easy to see and understand that heaven and hell are simply tools of control utilized by the various religions to soothe and scare the masses into money-giving submission.; July 10, 2008 8:38 AM
Chris (from Oz) said...: Vera,

If I tell my friend there's a tiger outside and not to go out, and my friend doesn't believe me, goes outside, and gets eaten, was he actually choosing to get eaten ?

No. He didn't believe me. If I could have proven there was a tiger, he wouldn't have gone outside, because he didn't want to get eaten.

How about if I had the proof, but chose not to give it to him ? I'd be pretty evil.

But, what if, as well as that, I actually deliberately let the tiger out of its cage when my friend steps outside ? That'd be incredibly evil.

Yet, that's what you claim God is doing, by not showing himself to atheists, and then sending people to hell.

Nice God you have there.; July 10, 2008 8:47 AM
Benjamin Franklin said...: Vera-

The problem with your statement is that the scientific community, (including Einstein) does not insist on the "absolute" truthfulness of all statements recorded in scientific texts and journals. Please show examples of such requirements.

This indicates that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of science and the scientific method.

Einstein said -

"For a scientist, altering your doctrines when the facts change is not a sign of weakness."

It is the weakness of religious dogmatists who need the comfort of the concept of non-changing "absolute truth" such as "The only way to the Father is through Me".; July 10, 2008 9:02 AM
scmike said...: steven j,

""Which part cannot be explained in an "evolutionary/atheistic" worldview: that we are capable of induction, or that induction should actually work?""

Welcome to the discussion!

My point is that the uniformity of nature cannot be accounted for according to any evolutionary model. Yet, science is dependent on this uniformity and would be impossible to perform without it.

So, the question is a simple one: what grounds does any atheist/evolutionist have to expect the future to behave like the past?

""If you're arguing that we need a Supreme Lawgiver to ensure that laws of nature exist, I think that laws of nature are logically prior to lawgivers: that is, one can have uniform regularities of nature without consciousness or will, but one cannot have consciousness and will without uniformities and regularities of nature.""

One problem Steven, using absolute laws of logic and reason to determine that absolute laws of logic and reason exist in and of themselves is visciously circular reasoning. Please try again.

Also, how do you account for "consciousness" and "will" according to your worldview?

If evolution is true, then our thoughts are merely the results of chemical reactions taking place in our "evolved" brains. We can no more control this process than we can control the spontaneous results of combining baking soda with vinegar.

If this is the case, we have no will. So the question is, why are you arguing? Perhaps you can clarify this inconsistency?

""What enables God Himself to remain the same from one moment to another, or to remain consistent in His purposes, or to will laws of nature (or, indeed, to will anything at all)?""

The fact that he is absolute, immaterial, and unchanging.

""God doesn't solve the problem of how logic and natural laws can exist, because He Himself requires logic and laws of (His own divine) nature in order to remain God.""

Do you know this for certain? If so, please explain how it is possible for you to know anything according to your worldview.

If you cannot do so, why should anyone believe anything you claim to know?

""They might in principle be coeternal with God, but they cannot have been created by Him. Logically, therefore, laws of nature must be capable of existing on their own. You must concede this, because you hold that a Being reflecting and possessing such properties is capable of existing on His own.""

Wouldn't you agree that conclusions such as yours that are derived from viciously circular reasoning should be rejected (especially if the positer cannot account for the means by which he claims to know things)?

""If, instead (or also), you are asking how we can be capable of using induction and recognizing laws of nature, the short answer is natural selection:""

What I'm asking is how you can account for the uniformity of nature and how it is possible to know anything about the future by using the past as a predictor according to your worldview.

Also, how do you know that the senses you use to "recognize" laws of nature are reliable?

""entities prone to bad or irrational inductions have, as W.V.O. Quine put it, "a sad but praiseworthy tendency to die without passing on their genes.""

How do you determine what "bad" and "irritional" deductions are according to your worldview?

Steven, I look forward to your responses to each of the questions posed here. God Bless.; July 10, 2008 10:49 AM
The American Atheist said...: Terry said: "Without Jesus Christ in your life, you will go straight to Hell where all practicing witches and warlocks go ...when they die!"

The Bible says:
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." (Exodus 22:18)
"A man or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them." (Leviticus 20:27)

Will you be tracking Kristine down to kill her? If not, you are not obeying the Bible.

Mark W. Laine said: "But, Jesus keeps telling me peace, patience, kindness, self-control."

But Jesus said:
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34)
"I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished! Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division." (Luke 12:49-51)

God himself created evil and lives in darkness:
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." (Isaiah 45:7)
"The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice . . . clouds and darkness are round about him." (Psalm 97:1-2)

Do you love your Christmas tree? God doesn't.
"Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. . . . They are altogether brutish and foolish." (Jeremiah 10:2-8)

Have you sold everything you have and given it to the poor?
"And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? . . . Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor; and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." (Matthew 19:16-21. See also Luke 12:33)

I hope you hate your family and yourself:
"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26)

Of course this directly contradicts what is generally known as the 5th Commandment, but well, what are you going to do? It's the inerrant word of God, so you should both hate and honor your parents. Have fun.

Oh, and the 5th Commandment that God gave to Moses is actually "Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end." (Exodus 34:22)

Yes, I know, you will want to say the other list is the REAL list, but God never called that list (in Exodus 20) the 10 Commandments, only the list in Exodus 34 does he refer to in that way: "And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments." (Exodus 34:28)

Perhaps some of you should actually read your Bibles?; July 10, 2008 11:00 AM
Iago said...: verandoug said...

all sorts of stuff that boils down to if you don't believe exactly as we do you are going to burn forever.

And I tell you that unless you get yourself a plate of pasta and meatballs with marinara sauce you will miss out on an eternal party where you can be a pirate, and delight at the stripper factory and beer volcano. So repent his noodliness is still far away.; July 10, 2008 11:09 AM
Dimensio said...: My point is that the uniformity of nature cannot be accounted for according to any evolutionary model.

I do not understand what you believe that your "point" demonstrates. The theory of evolution only addresses the cause of biodiversity; it does not address nor has it ever attempted to address the cause of the "uniformity of nature". As such, the claim that no evolutionary model can account for such uniformity is correct, but meaningless.

Yet, science is dependent on this uniformity and would be impossible to perform without it. So, the question is a simple one: what grounds does any atheist/evolutionist have to expect the future to behave like the past?

That the fundamental properties of the universe remain constant is the basic axiom of science. It is a starting assumption, not a conclusion. All scientific research is predicated upon the assumption that the fundamental properties of the universe are constant. If this is not the case, then all scientific research is inherently unreliable.

Additionally, I do not understand why you continue to use the term "atheist/evolutionist" as though they are synonymous. They are not, and it is not honest to act as though they are.

 If evolution is true, then our thoughts are merely the results of chemical reactions taking place in our "evolved" brains.

This is false; that no evidence for any basis of thought beyond such chemical reactions has been observed does not demonstrate that there is no other basis. The theory of evolution does not require that human thought be entirely the result of chemical reactions within the brain, and discovery that human thought is a result of more than those chemical reactions would not falsify the theory of evolution.

We can no more control this process than we can control the spontaneous results of combining baking soda with vinegar.  If this is the case, we have no will. So the question is, why are you arguing? Perhaps you can clarify this inconsistency?

How is his argument with you inconsistent with the view -- which is not required by the theory of evolution -- that human thought is a result of chemical reactions within the brain? If the latter is the case, then clearly his argument with you is the end-result of those chemical reactions occurring.  
 The fact that he is absolute, immaterial, and unchanging.

Please substantiate your assertion.; July 10, 2008 11:35 AM
David W. Irish said...: Everyone, the issue of teaching creationism in public schools is really simple, and it is not a matter of "freedom of speech" in any sense.

If you don't like Evolution being taught to your kids in public schools, then by all means, exercise your freedom and put them in church-run schools. I have no complaints about people doing that.

The main question you should ask yourself is whether an academic subject's material should be up for a vote. If you answer YES to that, then it's only fair that ALL SUBJECTS be open for a popular vote. Suppose you live in a town that has lots of KKK activity, and lots of people who believe that Hitler never tried to exterminate the Jews. Would it be okay to allow holocaust deniers to include their materials as alternatives in history classes, and put the issue up to a vote? If the people vote to have holocause denial be included in the public school curriculum, should it be allowed, and would that be fair?

Suppose you lived in a community with a large Pagan population. Suppose a group of pagans complains about the science and history curriculum not being inclusive enough for them, and they propose to include Pagan versions of chemistry and astrology into science class, along with changes to history classes that do not offend them -- Pagans often complain that history ignores how Christians made Pagans suffer, and they wish to have Pagan historical revisions put into the curriculum. Should they be allowed to put that up for a vote? If the vote passes, would you allow your kids to be taught that material in school?

Suppose you are an African-American living in Idaho, in that town that has a church which preaches that Slavery in the south was actually "good for black people", and that slaves in the south were "treated more like family", and that the civil war had nothing to do with slavery. Should we allow the town to vote on whether or not to include these re-interpretations of history into the curriculum? What if the vote passes?

If anyone here can honestly say that they have no problem leaving all of these things up to a vote, then you will essentially leave the door open for any ideas, from just plain wrong to harmful and dangerous, to being taught to your kids.

You cannot vote on what the facts are. You cannot allow science, math, logic, history, or the English language to be subject to popular vote, any more than you Evangelicals can allow your doctrines to become subject to a vote. I'm sure none of you would stand still if your pastors or churches decided to start teaching Jehovah's Witness or Catholic or Mormon teachings, because the Church council simply voted on it.

Science is science. Science facts are not determined by popular vote any more than history is determined by popular vote. You may PERSONALLY BELIEVE one thing, but the world's experts on a given subject trump the average Joe, usually by virtue of the evidence. Catholics may not like hearing that various Popes in History were adulterers, that the Catholic Church not only started the Crusades, but used them as an excuse to attack and kill Orthodox Christians in Eastern Europe who disagreed with Rome following the great Schizm. But that's what the historical facts are, and it's documented in the Church's own writings.

Science curriculum is best left to be determined by America's academies of science. Math curriculum is best left to be determined by Mathematicians. History and English is best left up to Historians and English professors. The experts on these subjects know more about them than you do. If the WORLD'S SCIENTISTS, (and not just a few marginal scientists who could all fit on one short-bus together), all agree that theory X is valid and explains things better than theory Y, I think they are far more qualified to determine that than a pastor or a bus driver, or the head of a religious ministry. True, the world's scientists effectively outnumber creationists, but the fact is that science facts are not determined by a popular vote, even among scientists! Only actual data, experimental results, and evidence, presented in a peer-reviewed journal, and examined by competing scientists, can do that.

If you really beleive that the world's scientists are part of a large conspiracy against a minority religious faction in the USA (I will grant that "Evangelical Biblical-Literalist Fundamentalists" are growing in number, but they are still outnumbered by other denominations), then it's just begging the questions of "Why", "How do you know this is a fact", and "where is your proof". Until you can give a an adequate summary of why I should trust the world's scientists on everything EXCEPT EVOLUTION, you simply have no valid case.; July 10, 2008 11:42 AM
scmike said...: steven j,

""Which part cannot be explained in an "evolutionary/atheistic" worldview: that we are capable of induction, or that induction should actually work?""

Welcome to the conversation!

My point is that the uniformity of nature can not be accounted for in any evolutionary model. However, this uniformity is necessary to practice science. What grounds does any evolutionist/atheist have to believe that the future will be like the past?

""If you're arguing that we need a Supreme Lawgiver to ensure that laws of nature exist, I think that laws of nature are logically prior to lawgivers: that is, one can have uniform regularities of nature without consciousness or will, but one cannot have consciousness and will without uniformities and regularities of nature.""

Using universal laws of reason and logic to determine that universal laws of reason and logic exist in and of themselves is viciously circular reasoning. Please try again.

Also, how do you account for "consciousness" and "will" according to your worldview?

If evolution is true, our thoughts are simply products of chemical reactions within our "evolved" brains. We would no more be able to control these "reactions" than one could control the spontaneous reaction of combining baking soda and vinegar.

If this is the case, there is no such thing as "will". So the question is, why then are you arguing? Perhaps you can explain this inconsistency?

""What enables God Himself to remain the same from one moment to another, or to remain consistent in His purposes, or to will laws of nature (or, indeed, to will anything at all)?""

The fact that He is universal, immaterial, and unchanging.

""God doesn't solve the problem of how logic and natural laws can exist, because He Himself requires logic and laws of (His own divine) nature in order to remain God.""

Do you know this for certain? If so, please explain how it is possible for you to know anything according to your worldview.

If you cannot do so, why should anyone believe anything you claim to know?

""They might in principle be coeternal with God, but they cannot have been created by Him. Logically, therefore, laws of nature must be capable of existing on their own. You must concede this, because you hold that a Being reflecting and possessing such properties is capable of existing on His own.""

Wouldn't you agree that conclusions derived from viciously circular reasoning are invalid (especially if the positer cannot account for how he knows anything)?

""If, instead (or also), you are asking how we can be capable of using induction and recognizing laws of nature, the short answer is natural selection:""

What I am asking is: on what basis do you use the past as an indicator of future events according to your worldview?

Also, how do you know that the senses you use to "recognize" the laws of nature are reliable?

""entities prone to bad or irrational inductions have, as W.V.O. Quine put it, "a sad but praiseworthy tendency to die without passing on their genes.""

By what standard do you determine what "bad" and "irrational" inductions are according to worldview?

Steven, I look forward to your responses to the questions posed here. God Bless.; July 10, 2008 11:45 AM
David W. Irish said...: Chris (from Oz) wrote:
"Yet, that's what you claim God is doing, by not showing himself to atheists, and then sending people to hell."

Well, it's not that he's not showing himself, he's selecting a group of people to represent him who are either terrible examples (because of their personal hypocrisy), or who make incredibly ignorant arguments to persuade us.

If I was God, and I needed good PR, I would hire someone with a proven track record of making solid, intelligent, rational arguments -- not people who barely could pass logic 101 or who have difficulty understanding plain English.; July 10, 2008 11:47 AM
get_education said...: scmike,

When I first found Sye in this blog, I thought he might be a smart believer, because I had never heard this kind of "reasoning." However, after a while he started making such baseless assumptions about evolution and about what science states, that I had to see him for what he really is (unless, again, a smart atheistic troll making fun of both sides). And truth is, just a parrot who memorized and mastered the art of insistence on his stupid fallacy, plus a few other tricks,all disguised as "reasoning" (Not too successfully). Now you did the exact same:

If evolution is true, then our thoughts are merely the results of chemical reactions taking place in our "evolved" brains. We can no more control this process than we can control the spontaneous results of combining baking soda with vinegar.
If this is the case, we have no will. So the question is, why are you arguing? Perhaps you can clarify this inconsistency?

The complete lack of understanding of the most basic principles of evolution and biochemistry blatantly shows.

Selection has produced our brains, which do work by chemical reactions. However, these are not one-to-one reactions, nor are these reactions just random, otherwise there would not be any success. Evolution has produced control mechanisms, and for our brain to work, such control mechanisms include our ability to learn, and think. By biochemical/biophysical processes, all chemical reactions exquisitely ordered and manageable for the task of thinking, getting feedback, deciding, et cetera. This explain why we can argue. Your problem is that you cannot see how ordering biochemical reactions in space and time, can give exquisite results. the only word you have probably caught out from evolution studies was "random," so you stay by it as your excuse not to understand a thing, but pretend you do. Look out for a book on biochemistry. Pay attention to the explanations that involve entropy (coupling reactions, for instance). Maybe then you will start to understand why we are so convinced of evolution.

Such a sad thing that you use poor understanding as a defense for your beliefs.

Also, Steven J's evolutionary response (those who could not make sense died), is ... well ... exquisite! Did you even understand that?

Will you answer my two questions in the previous post?

G.E.; July 10, 2008 11:52 AM

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